Startups

Startups + Weed + ? = Profit

  It’s no secret that marijuana is going mainstream in America.  The size of the illegal drug market in the US is estimated at anywhere between $200 and $700 billion.  The legal marijuana trade has already cracked into that number with an estimated market of $1.43 Billion in 2013 and projections hitting $2.34 billion in

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

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

Does EPLI Insurance Matter for Startups?

  We place a lot of D&O coverage for our clients because it can be vital to startups for several reasons.  D&O Insurance is only one piece of the overall Management Liability puzzle.  The other big piece is Employment Practices Liability Insurance (“EPLI”).  This post will answer two important questions: what is EPLI insurance, and

Why Startups Should Care About the New US Cybersecurity Framework

  With potentially 70 million effected by the recent Target data breach, the US government thinks it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room for the tech world: Cybersecurity protocol.

What Startups Need to Know About Business Interruption Insurance

What is it? At a very high level, business interruption insurance (“BII”) protects the insured when business operations are interrupted (no, really?!).   Typically this coverage is paired with others, including General Liability and Cyber Liability.

One Trade Agreement Startups Should Know About

  Venturebeat originally posted about this earlier this week and we thought it was an important one to be aware of. Unbeknownst to most, a new trade agreement between the Trans Pacific Parternship (the “TPP”) has been in development for almost a year now.  The TPP consists of the United States, Mexico and a handful

Startups: Don’t Overlook Key Man Insurance

  We usually talk about key man insurance with our clients in the wake of a freshly closed round of institutional funding.  Investors typically make their portfolio companies get key man insurance to protect their own cash.  They realize that at most startups, the team is the company.  It takes a truly phenomenal team to guide

Snapchat: Proof that Startups Need D&O Insurance

  One of the major products we provide for our clients is Directors and Officers Insurance.  Admittedly 90% of our D&O clients sought us out because their investors required them to get coverage.  Don’t be mistaken, though…startups need D&O insurance regardless of the investor situation.

Startup Cyber Risk Checklist

Cyber liability is a huge area of exposure for most startups.  Even if you’re not a “tech” startup per se, most tech companies today tend to leverage 3rd party tech products in ways that can leave them exposed.

Insurance for Startups: Cost or Investment?

The Affordable Care Act and Startups

With the recent launch of fresh government programs under the Affordable Care Act, the landscape is changing massively in the health insurance space.  We can’t help but think about what effects the new healthcare laws will have on startups.

Startups Beware! CA Breach Notification Laws Expanded

The New CA Breach Notification Law If you’re a tech startup, your duties to protect your users’ personal information just got a bit more onerous.  Last Friday (Sept 27th), Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law that expands the security/data breach notification requirements beyond their current spectrum.  

Why Startups Need Insurance

While this list is definitely not exhaustive, I wanted to briefly shed some light on a couple of the reasons why startups need insurance and should look into coverage options regardless of where they are in their life cycle.

Startup Insurance & Cyber Liability realities you might not expect…

Cyber Liability Insurance is one of the biggest issues we deal with at Founder Shield.  The vast majority of our clients are either straight tech startups or they’re leveraging technology to make their product or service scale.  I think we can all agree that it’s probably impossible to run a startup these days without a