
Root Insurance raises $100M for a $1B valuation - kaboro
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/22/a-new-unicorn-is-born-root-insurance-raises-100-million-for-a-1-billion-valuation/
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tumanian
Looks like another "cherry-pick your customer" fin-tech startup. They do
extremely well in the first stages of growth, but exhaust the potential market
pretty fast and then go into turmoil when the VC's rightfully demand growth.
With CAC in hundreds of dollars, the well dries up fast. I would be delighted
to see them break this barrier and flourish.

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bradlys
So drive slow for 1-3 weeks every time you want a new discount and then drive
normal. If this literally dropped my insurance by $600+/yr (I pay over
$1200/yr for one car) then I'm totally down... I wonder how they determine
your risk. Mainly speed and g-forces I'd guess. So just use typical efficient
driving techniques (large buffer in front of you to avoid using the brakes,
accelerate slowly, prefer constant speed vs varying) and then go slow through
turns while observing all speed limits.

Kind of doubt they do this discount for certain cars or demographics tho.
Young men, basically.

God I'd love this for motorcycle insurance. S1000RR goes from $4k+/yr to
insure to 2k. Woo!

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hooloovoo_zoo
I wouldn't be surprised if the most useful features were things like time of
day driven, total time driving, locations driven to, etc. Those are also more
annoying to game than g-force etc. Of course, using some of those might be a
recipe for a discrimination lawsuit.

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Neil44
Aviva here has it's Drive App, you need to drive 200 miles to get a score from
1 to 10 which discounts your premium, though they only go up to 28% discount
vs. 50% from Root.

[https://www.aviva.co.uk/car-insurance/drive/](https://www.aviva.co.uk/car-
insurance/drive/)

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malloreon
meta note: this is one of the worst written articles on techcrunch I've ever
seen.

I visit the site only through random links from HN, but if this is the median
article quality these days...

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habosa
Anyone know how this compares to Metromile? I see a lot of my friends who have
cars in San Francisco switching to that and saving money.

Aside: I thought this was going to be about cybersecurity insurance. Root
insurance would be a great name, and I think that's an industry that should
see a huge amount of growth in the near future.

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DonHopkins
Oops, I thought it said Robot Insurance raises $100M.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXnL7sdElno](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXnL7sdElno)

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r00fus
Does anyone use Root? Do you need to leave the app on constantly while you
drive?

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lbarrow
I interviewed there in 2016 and you only needed to have the app on while
driving for a week or two before you got a quote. After you got the quote you
didn't need to have the app on. It's possible this has changed since then; but
back when I spoke with them they were clearly trying to balance collecting the
telemetry needed to give good discounts with the natural privacy concerns.

~~~
paulrosenzweig
Hey Lionel! I bet they have a lot of Braintree alums interviewing there. Dan
is great to work with.

Also, we should catch up!

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RobLach
inb4 RootInsuranceDiscountGuide.com and the value proposition diminishes to 0

