Startups

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

Business Insurance 101: HealthTech, Health Marketplaces, & Telemedicine

Using Debt Financing as a Bridge Into Your Next Round

This is a guest post from Meredith Wood, Head of Content and Editor in Chief at Fundera. If your company relies primarily on equity financing to fuel growth, chances are you haven’t considered debt financing as an option. After all, if you are used to or considering going through the traditional Seed to Series A to

2015 Employment Lawsuits: Where are Startups at Risk?

2015 employment practices lawsuit data is in: which states are at the highest risk? Every company encounters a hiring situation in which things don’t play out quite as planned — hiring is a liability.  A candidate is overly demanding or misaligned with the hiring team, an employee didn’t perform as expected or wasn’t a cultural

The Importance of Tail Insurance Coverage for Startups

A tail insurance policy is one of the most important risk mitigation tools for a startup approaching an exit. The mission for every founder is pretty much the same: get some traction, get funded, scale rapidly, and hit an exit opportunity.  While the occasional unicorn might be fortunate enough to IPO, most startups go the

4 Key Things to Look for On Your Business Insurance Quotes

It would be extremely surprising if you didn’t have some questions when looking at your first business insurance quotes.  They’re extremely detailed and certainly not the easiest document to digest.  Here’s a quick overview of the major items you should be looking at on your quote. [Note: this article is mainly pertaining to errors and

Getting Business Insurance for On-Demand Startups

Top Reasons Your Startup Needs Product Liability Insurance

Product liability insurance is an extremely important piece to the risk management puzzle, particularly for startups that sell a tangible product.  Usually included in a General Liability policy (though sometimes offered standalone), product liability insurance protects your company from liability lawsuits related to bodily injury or property damage caused by product defects. Whether you’re e-commerce

Best HR Practices for Your Startup

This is a guest post from Amy Klimek, VP of HR at ZipRecruiter.com. Startups cannot run their businesses the way established companies can. Established companies leverage their name and stability to attract the best talent in the industry. Your startup does not have an established name or track record of stability, but you do have other principles

The Business Insurance Renewal Checklist (for Startups)

Business insurance renewals are usually uncharted territory for a young startup.  Typically, venture-backed startups experience significantly more change/growth year over year compared to your standard new business venture.  It’s important to understand how this affects your startup’s insurance coverage and how to ensure you’re properly protected.  Here’s the “checklist” of items to be aware of as your policies renew.

The 2013 Target Data Breach: Insurance Coverage Recap

Retail Giant Target was hit with a massive data breach incident during the holiday season of 2013.  We posted a few articles outlining the severity of the breach and speculating on how cyber insurance may be their lifeline.  Here’s a quick follow up on the claims the company has seen since the incident. VentureBeat recently reported

Startup Risk Tips: Don’t Let Your Business Insurance Lapse

Sometimes things don’t go quite as planned and your company ends up a bit more cash strapped than anticipated at year end.  The typical gut reaction is to pull the rip chord and cut any and all “extraneous” expenses.  Insurance is considered by some to be one of those expenses.  Here’s why you shouldn’t be quick to

Year in Review: 2014 Cyber Attacks (What Startups Should Know)

2014 Cyber Attacks Reviewed For the last four years, cyber risk management firm Net Diligence has done a report on cyber insurance claims for the year…and 2014 has been a hell of a year for cyber attacks.  This year’s report has been published and has some very interesting findings pertaining to the startup community.  

Meet Priori Legal: Connecting Startups to Trusted Lawyers

  We’re all about teaming up with great startups on a mission to help the startup community excel.  Priori Legal is one of those awesome companies.  This guest post will introduce the company and shed a little light on the kind of advice they’ll be sharing on our blog.  

Intellectual Property Insurance — What Startups Need to Know

2 Sneaky Ways Business Insurance Adds Value for Startups

Office-Sharing Can Save Startups. Here’s How.

  By now we are all acclimated to the sharing economy model. We share our cars, our homes and our dog sitters. Sharing your office may not be the first thing that comes to mind as the next sharing economy service, but it should be, especially if you’re a startup. It might even save your

The “Dos” &”Don’ts” of Buying Startup Company Insurance

Buying startup company insurance can be a daunting task.  The insurance market is fragmented and there is no shortage of products out there.  The industry is not exactly tech savvy either, and many brokers still employ tools as archaic as fax machines in their practices.  Just finding where to start can be a hassle! When

Startup CEOs & Cyber Security: Track your Tech!

Why startup CEOs should care about cyber security The data breach that Target suffered around Thanksgiving last year has finally worked its way up to the top of the organizational totem pole.  A couple of weeks ago, Target’s CEO Gregg Steinhafel lost his job a result of the cyber security shortcomings or liabilities that cost the company

Startup Internships: What Founders Need to Know

**This is a guest post by Scott Smedresman of Sorin Rand.**

How a Startup Insurance Policy is Born

At Founder Shield, we pride ourselves on getting our clients in front of underwriters immediately.  But as we present our clients to underwriters for quoting, we get a lot of questions about what’s going on under the hood.  To clear the air, here’s a quick and basic overview of the process and to tools that

EPLI Risk Exposure Checklist for Startups

  Last week we posted about the importance of Employment Practices Liability Insurance (“EPLI”) for rapidly growing startup companies.  If you read that post, it should be pretty clear why there’s so much risk exposure related to employment practices.  I wanted to follow up that post with a quick EPLI risk exposure checklist for startups.  Here’s