Relay Platform Raises $5.2M Seed Round
Today, the team at Relay Platform (“Relay”) announced their USD $5.2M seed round, led by Drive Capital. Highline Beta also participated in the round. Drive Capital is a Columbus-based venture capital firm founded in 2012 by former Sequoia Capital partners Chris Olsen and Mark Kvamme. Drive Capital has previous investments in insurtech, including Root Insurance (IPO’d in 2020), Circulo and Battleface.
Relay was originally incubated through Highline Beta’s Venture Studio and we’ve supported the company throughout this recent growth phase. Additional partners such as NFP Ventures joined early on as investors and partners, creating immense value. It’s been an incredible journey so far and we’re excited to see how Relay will grow, evolve and have a massive impact in the insurance industry, with additional capital to support them.
What is Relay Platform?
Relay is a global property and casualty (P&C) Quote-Bind-Issue portal provider. Working on top of traditional policy administration systems, Relay’s white label solution is used daily by retail/wholesale brokers and cedents across commercial lines. With Relay, they tackle the challenges of securing competitive quotes in hardening markets, remarketing more business profitably, and boosting quote-to-bind ratios and renewal rates. Customers are using Relay to streamline placements, improve margins, and extend their market reach.
Originally, Relay started in the reinsurance space, after exploring a number of different opportunities. Today, they support both high-ticket and high-volume placements across a wide range of industry participants in all commercial lines. Current implementations tackle cyber, executive risk, professional liability, commercial property, private clients, terrorism, financial institutions and surety.
Why did Highline Beta invest?
Our Venture Studio model is to build venture backed, scalable startups with great founders and corporate partners that unlock an unfair advantage. We had the right ingredients when Relay was initially incubated, and Greg Boutin and his team have continued to navigate the complex waters of the insurance market, validate the opportunity and prove they can deliver product in-market and traction. We’re excited about the opportunity to continue supporting Relay and work alongside Drive Capital, NFP, past investors and partners. Relay is now in a position to accelerate its growth trajectory and impact.
This new round will enable us to better serve the retail and wholesale brokerrages, MGA and MGUs, carriers, and reinsurers whom we already count as clients and users in the US, UK, Canada, and the Middle East. We will extend our distribution and deliver on our promise of a smarter, faster, leaner solution that unbolts game-changing results for our ecosystem partners.”
Greg Boutin
CEO Relay Platform
Building startups is unquestionably hard. It requires dedication, perseverance, talent and luck. It also requires capital to make the right bets, learn along the way, iterate and find the scalable opportunities to win. The Relay team is well on its way to achieving its mission and we’re thrilled to participate and help along the way.