Y Combinator grad and AI insurance brokerage Harper raises $47M | TechCrunch

"What often takes a traditional broker five to seven days, we can often do in one to two. A typical sales team at a human-led brokerage handles 20 to 30 deals a month, but AI enables Harper to handle more than 1,000 customers a month. Harper has more than 5,000 customers to date."

"The future of agencies will look more like software companies, with software margins. Harper is an almost fully autonomous licensed commercial insurance agency that matches small- to mid-sized businesses with more than 160 insurance carriers to assist with workers' compensation, as well as general and professional liability."

"My ego made it hard to accept the failure. In hindsight, I should have shut it down a year earlier. I hated insurance, swore I'd never end up in it. But then he had an idea to build an AI-native insurance brokerage."

Dakotah Rice founded Harper, an AI-native insurance brokerage that secured $46.8M in combined Series A and seed funding. Drawing from his family's insurance background and lessons from his previous company Poolit's failure, Rice and co-founder Tushar Nair built an almost fully autonomous licensed commercial insurance agency. Harper matches small- to mid-sized businesses with over 160 insurance carriers for workers' compensation, general, and professional liability coverage. The platform dramatically accelerates traditional processes, completing in one to two days what typically takes brokers five to seven days. Harper operates with software-like margins and handles over 1,000 customers monthly, compared to traditional brokerages' 20-30 deals. The company has already acquired more than 5,000 customers since launching in 2024 and participated in Y Combinator's W'25 batch.

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