Carl Niedbala

Startup Risk Tips: Optimizing your Insurance Policies

Insurance should be seen as more of an investment than a cost, but given the busy and chaotic lives of Founders, it sometimes becomes a check-the-box activity.  When utilized properly, companies can get value from their policies well beyond that generated by a “set it and forget it” approach.  Here are a few tips to optimize your insurance policies

Pivoting? You Should Probably Call Your Insurance Broker

It’s been a tough year for retail. Just ask J.C. Penny, Macy’s or Target. As e-commerce continues to overtake retail (thanks Amazon), traditional retailers need to employ different strategies to satisfy customers. In other words, it’s time to start pivoting. Startups are all too familiar with pivoting, and many startups do so at least once. Sounds

Business insurance 101: commercial drone insurance

Drones are hotter than ever. From Amazon’s plan to deliver merchandise to the Super Bowl’s electric halftime show, drones are here to stay! It’s predicted that there will be 7 million drones in the airspace by 2020 with 2.7 million of them dedicated to commercial use. But what exactly is a drone? What is their

Navigate Your Business Property Insurance Policy as Gracefully as a Gazelle

Day to day business operations are strenuous enough.  And who has time to read through every line of their property insurance policy? We’re here to take on the legwork to ensure our clients are properly protected. Our goal is to simplify all of this industry-specific insurance jibberish so you can understand your coverage quickly and

Key Man Insurance: VCs – You’re Doing it Wrong

Given our relationships with a lot of early stage VCs in around the country, we do a ton of Key Man Insurance policies.  If you’re unfamiliar with these, Key Man policies are basically a life insurance policy that pays out to the company if anything happens to the “Key Man.”  And if you’re unfamiliar with

Professional Liability Insurance: What You Need to Know (by Industry!)

So you’ve probably heard of professional liability insurance (aka errors and omissions Insurance). In brief, professional liability insurance protects the professional services industry from negligence claims that result in the financial loss of a third party (typically your clients) arising from an act, error, or omission committed in the course of the policyholder’s performance of services

Your Business Insurance Covers Stolen Laptops — But How?

The holiday season is upon us!  Time to lock up the offices and head home to spend some time with family and friends.  Everyone’s taking some time off, right? Unfortunately, it’s ‘one of the busiest and most lucrative times of the year for criminals. It’s not uncommon for us Founder Shield folks to come back from

Startups Giving Us More to be Thankful For (2016 Edition!)

  The holiday season is upon us, and there’s a lot to be grateful for.  Extra time spent with family and friends, good food, cooler weather…and plenty of startups doing good in the world.  Just as in previous years, we want to highlight some of those companies that are making a difference. e-NABLE Have a 3-D

Insurance for Bitcoin Companies

The Space Bitcoin use has been exploding lately, with recent (September 2013) numbers suggesting that over 66,000 bitcoin transactions occur each day!  More and more e-commerce platforms and vendors accept Bitcoin as payment each day to the point where the market cap is currently $1.6B and only expected to grow. Needless to say, the bitcoin

Why High-Growth Businesses Need Social Engineering Insurance

When we mention “cyber insurance” to most clients, they tend to immediately picture situations like the Target or Yahoo data breaches.  They picture some mystery mastermind on the dark web scheming up an elaborate plan to crack firewalls and compromise networks. While that clearly happens more than we’d all like, it’s not the only liability out there, and it

How Insurance Companies Measure Payroll (and Bill You For It)

If you’re a growing business operating in the 21st century, you’ve most likely read about or experienced the importance of separating salaried employees from 1099 workers (Independent Contractors).  If you’re less well-read on the subject, bottom line is this: at the end of the year, your workers compensation insurer will “audit” your payroll and charge

Beware: On-Demand Company Workers Compensation Costs

Update: We’ve released a new whitepaper examining the Sharing Economy industry. We dive into the insurance landscape, legal climate and how to approach risk management for companies in this sector. You can download the report here!

Pokemon Go, Harry Potter, & Augmented Reality Insurance Risks

  Are you one of the 30 million worldwide users who has downloaded Pokemon Go in the last few weeks? It’s likely, since the app has been downloaded more times in its short existence than Tinder has over the past four years. Regardless of whether you run around chasing Pokemon in your day-to-day, chances are

Product Liability, Contamination and Product Recall Insurance

Lately it seems like everything from children’s toys to food products are being recalled. Product recall is defined as “insurance coverage for the cost of getting a defective product back under the control of the manufacturer or merchandiser that would be responsible for possible bodily injury (BI) or property damage (PD) from its continued use

Patent and IP Insurance: Protect Your Ideas

  So what exactly is the value of an idea? These days it can make or break your business.   There has been a 71% increase in patent lawsuits over the last 6 years. There was a mind-blowing number – 2,754 to be exact – of patent infringement lawsuits filed in 2015; for which the

FS101: Minimum On-Demand Delivery Insurance Requirements

Update: We’ve released a new whitepaper examining the Sharing Economy industry. We dive into the insurance landscape, legal climate and how to approach risk management for companies in this sector. You can download the report here! Basic risk management tips for on-demand delivery companies We work with no shortage of on-demand companies operating in the ride share, car

Business Insurance 101: HealthTech, Health Marketplaces, & Telemedicine

Behind the Scenes: Quoting Insurance for Scaling Companies

Let’s go shopping! Think of the insurance market like a fruit market.  You want the fresh, clean, beautiful fruit that’s in season!  You shop around, check for bruises or marks, and then decide which fruit to buy. The way we get insurance quotes is quite similar. We review all the quotes that we receive from

Humans, AI, and the Future of Health Insurance

Via our FS Health VP of Sales, Will Treichler, and originally posted on LinkedIn here. At the end of the day, yes, I agree with Choon Yan (@battlechoon) that the role of the insurance agents of all stripes will be dramatically changed by IoT device-fed AI that assesses and accurately prices risk in real-time.  With transparent

Understanding Insurance Costs as Your Company Grows

FS + 99Designs Starter Kit

We’re excited to announce that we’ve partnered with 99designs on the small business starter kit: a go-to source for all of the tools younger companies need to ramp up accelerate growth. Beyond an insurance 101 lesson from Founder Shield, the kit includes many other tips and tricks for anything from getting funding, building a brand, hiring to create

3 Signs it’s Time to Leave Your PEO Insurance Provider

The Benefits of a PEO Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs) are great when a company is just getting off the ground.  At an early stage they deliver two major benefits: Simplify HR administration with many built-in services Reduce the cost of health insurance However, at a certain point, it makes sense to switch because there are