Applying for homeowner’s insurance should be as easy as waving your phone camera around your room. That’s the premise behind Cover, an app that recommends insurance based on what’s photographed in your home.
Whether it’s electronics, jewelry or even your pet, Cover will cover just about anything. Cover is licensed to sell insurance and they work with Progressive, Allstate, Nationwide and other major providers to tailor a plan for the customer, taking about a 10 to 15 percent commission for referring the business.
Now they’ve raised an $8 million Series A led by Social Capital and are announcing a previously undisclosed $3 million seed round. Arjun Sethi from Social Capital will be joining Cover’s board.
Cover is “reducing the amount of friction it takes for you to feel secure as a human being,” said Sethi. “Everyone needs insurance.”
The Cover team believes their biggest competitor is Geico and that there’s a large market opportunity to make the insurance process more convenient for consumers. CEO Karn Saroya says that taking a photo is essential to the process. “You’ve proven that your property exists in a given time in a given place in a given condition.”
The room-scanning process is completely free for consumers and Saroya says it’s resulted in almost 100,000 requests since launching last year. He says the typical user is age 28 and has a college degree. Auto and homeowner’s insurance are the most common requests.
Cover is not the only startup to use the phone camera for insurance purposes. Snapsheet has built a business around smartphones and car accidents.
Before Cover, Saroya and others on his team built a company that was acqui-hired by Shopify. They then launched Cover via the popular Y Combinator startup accelerator.