EverQuote
Online insurance marketplace
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
EverQuote, Inc. is an online insurance marketplace founded in 2011 and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
 | |
| Formerly | AdHarmonics |
|---|---|
| Company type | Public |
| Nasdaq: EVER (Class A) Russell 2000 Index component | |
| Founded | 2011 |
| Founders | Seth Birnbaum Tomas Revesz |
| Headquarters | , United States |
Key people | Jayme Mendal (CEO)[1] Tomas Revesz (Chief Architect) John Wagner (CFO) |
| Website | everquote |
Description
EverQuote began as a marketplace for car insurance but has since expanded to home, health, and life insurance.[2]
EverQuote matches insurance-seekers with companies that others with similar profiles preferred in the past.[3] EverQuote does not directly quote insurance rates. Instead, it selects a few companies whose insurance products were bought by similar drivers in the past, and gives those companies the insurance-seeker's contact information. The company representatives then will quote prices for products they offer.[4]
The company's revenue model is lead generation. Its service is free to insurance-seekers. According to the Boston Globe, "EverQuote collects referral fees from insurance providers when customers buy policies, but it doesn’t allow companies to pay to be included in its recommendations."[3]
History
EverQuote was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Seth Birnbaum and Tomas Revesz, who met at MIT.[3] Originally named AdHarmonics when it began in 2008, the company changed its name to Everquote in 2011, after creating its online insurance marketplace.[5]
EverQuote was a part of the Cogo Labs incubator program run by the Massachusetts-based venture capital firm Link Ventures.[6][7] In 2013, the company moved to its own office space.
In May 2015, MicroStrategy founder Sanju Bansal and Vestmark CEO John Lunny became members of the board of directors.[8] In October 2016, EverQuote received $23 million in Series B funding via Savano Capital Partners, Stratim Capital LLC and Oceanic Partners, and T Capital Partners.[9][10][11]
In 2017, Everquote added $13 million to its previous $23M funding. At the same time, they added Mira Wilczek, CEO of Cogo Labs at the time, to their board of directors, where she replaced Jonathan Shapiro.[6] Since 2019, Paul Deninger has served as a board member of EverQuote.[12]
In 2020, following the death of company founder Seth Birnbaum, he was replaced as CEO by the company's president Jayme Mendal.[13]
Advertising
In 2016, EverQuote began an Internet advertising campaign featuring images of two young employees (not always the same two employees,) with text such as "How 2 math grads are disrupting the insurance industry." This juxtaposition suggested to many that the young people in the photo were founders of Everquote.[14][15]
In response to controversy over the ads, co-founders Birnbaum and Revesz said that the photos were meant to showcase a "young, diverse" team at EverQuote. In March 2017, Everquote stated that they had paused the ads.[14] Everquote said that future ads would end confusion about the roles of the young employees pictured.[15]
EverDrive app
In 2016, EverQuote launched a new smartphone app called "EverDrive" to help drivers measure their driving safety, based on five criteria: phone use, speeding, accelerating, cornering and braking.[16] Between 1/4 and 1/3 of drivers using this app upgraded their safety skills, over a period of four months, to earn better scores from the app. [17]