Faura has been keeping this from you...
BIG FAURA ANNOUNCEMENTS
WE ARE BACK!
Hello hello everyone! My name is Valkyrie and I’m the cofounder and CEO of Faura. Thank you for tuning into our newsletter and if you’d like to stick around, feel free to subscribe to get bimonthly updates or follow us on LinkedIn for more consistent posts!
For those of you who are new here, Faura uses climate and property risk analytics to help insurance companies and homeowners reduce their natural disaster risk. Most people know which homes are going to be hit in a natural disaster; we tell you which ones are most likely to survive. By combining structure and building science with disaster stats, we’ve built an innovative platform that helps residents streamline protecting their homes and gives companies the data they need to be able to incentivize that risk reduction.
There has been SOOO much that has happened since we last spoke and I’m going to try to keep it short (but if I go off the deep end, don’t be afraid to reel me back in!) Thank you for your patience and without further adieu, let’s hop into it!
CLOSING OUR PRESEED ROUND + METAPROP ACCELERATOR
It’s official - Faura has officially raised $500k for our preseed round! We want to thank everyone for your support and for keeping us driven, along with our fabulous investors who support our mission of building resilience in the property insurance sector. Huge thank you to Honors Fund by CEAS, Metaprop, Dorm Room Fund, Localhost, Responsibly, and all of our amazing angel investors.
On top of that (and if you’ve been following our socials, this isn’t a surprise), but we’ve been accepted into the Metaprop Accelerator program! Metaprop has selected seven startups in the proptech space to go through the 2024 program and we couldn’t be happier to be in this latest class. I want to thank Ryan Coon for his awesome advice, Evan Petitt for his mentorship, Aaron Block and Zach Aarons for their coaching, and everyone on the Metaprop team that has been so incredible; it’s not often I walk into a room and feel so much warmth from a team that happens to also be the best executors in the game.
Our goal for the next six months is to build the company and focus on growing both our consumer and sales arms in markets like Florida, California, Texas, and more coastal states. For those of you in these areas, we would love for you to give us feedback on our public assessments, as it helps us better target the homeowners and insurers that really need the support. You can check it out here.
ONBOARDING OUR FIRST CLIENTS
Over the past few months, we’ve started to officially onboard insurance companies and agencies to the platform! We’re now serving homeowners and agents in Hawaii, California, Oregon, and Texas and are expanding to Florida quite soon!
Something we learned quite early on in this process was just how expansive the insurance space is. P&C isn’t even a category to me…it’s an entirely different worldview. From personal to commercial, property to auto to renters (and don’t even think about mentioning specialty insurance), it’s been a challenge navigating the complexities of what different stakeholders want and how we can best offer a solution.
But with that being said, we are definitely learning through this process; we’ve increased the amount of assessments taken from ~100/month to over 600/month just in the last quarter! Not only that, but since we’ve switched our approach to both insurance companies and agencies, we’ve been able to diversify and get twice the deals we had before in the last month.
Not only is Faura a great way to diversify, but it’s a great way to really hone in on high-risk policies and offer more benefits, as well as develop more trust for homeowners that are willing to take the extra steps (and from what we’ve been seeing, there are a lot of people willing to take those steps).
OUR ASK
Our only ask is if anyone has any introductions to MGAs, carriers, or agencies (bonus points if they reside in fairly high-risk disaster territory), we would love to speak to people in the space! We’re currently offering wildfire and wind tools to our clients (and expanding into flood very soon), so let’s chat!
On a more personal note, I’ve officially moved to New York and Amanda is bouncing between New York, Washington, and Vermont! If you know of any special people we should meet while we’re here, feel free to reach out. We’re so excited to continue growing and onboarding and it really means a lot to us; we couldn’t be happier (peep the paper towel toast at the Metaprop Kickoff).
And last thing: if you’re attending InsurtechNY this Wednesday/Thursday and/or know of anyone else who might be there, give us a shout!
Until next time :)
