The Zebra
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Zebra is an insurance comparison site with headquarters in
Austin, Texas Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...
. It compares rates from over 200 insurance carriers.


History

The Zebra was co-founded by
Joshua Dziabiak Joshua Dziabiak (born 1987) is an American entrepreneur and business executive. He is the Founder of Gawq, ShowClix, MediaCatch and Co-Founder of The Zebra. Joshua started his first company MediaCatch at the age of 14 and sold the company three ...
and
Adam Lyons Adam Lyons is an American entrepreneur. He founded The Zebra, an insurance comparison website and REALLY Wireless, a telecommunications company. Education Lyons grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he attended Taylor Allderdice High Scho ...
. Originally named Insurance Zebra, the company was initially started in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
while Lyons was living in a friend's basement and collecting unemployment checks. The Zebra was part of the Alpha Lab Incubator Program run by the Pittsburgh venture capital firm Innovation Works, where it gained the attention of venture capital fund Silverton Partners. During a private beta period, the company showed testers 280,000 quotes. The company received $1.5 million in
seed funding Seed money, also known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor puts capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' suggests ...
from investors that included
Mark Cuban Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American businessman and television personality. He is the former principal owner and current minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and co-owner of 2929 Entertain ...
, Silverton Partners,
Floodgate Floodgates, also called stop gates, are adjustable gates used to control water flow in flood barriers, reservoir, river, stream, or levee systems. They may be designed to set spillway crest heights in dams, to adjust flow rates in sluices and ...
, and Birchmere Labs. The funding was used to officially launch the website, with the company relocating to
Austin, Texas Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...
. In September 2013, having closed a $3 million extended seed round, the company launched to the public in both
Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...
and
California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
, the two states with the most drivers. It initially offered quotes from 33 different insurers (approximately 90% of the market), requiring only a zip code and vehicle information to obtain a quote, although answering more questions, such as driving history, improved the accuracy of the quote. Companies included
State Farm State Farm Insurance is a group of mutual insurance companies throughout the United States with corporate headquarters in Bloomington, Illinois. Founded in 1922, it is the largest property and casualty insurance, property, casualty and auto i ...
,
Geico The Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO ) is an American vehicle insurance company headquartered in Chevy Chase, Maryland. In addition to auto insurance, GEICO provides motorcycle, ATV, RV, boat, snowmobile, travel, pet, event, hom ...
, and
Allstate The Allstate Corporation is an American insurance company, headquartered in Glenview, Illinois (with a Northbrook, Illinois address) since 2022. Founded in 1931 as part of Sears, Roebuck and Co., it was spun off in 1993, but was still pa ...
, as well as specialized insurers. The quotes were provided from a direct relationship that The Zebra had with the insurers, or through a rate manual from companies that it did not have a direct relationship with. The Zebra included real-time updating of quotes as users moved through the Q&A sections, and allowed users to shop anonymously. In addition to providing quotes, the company lets drivers learn about companies’ coverage and evaluate claims satisfaction. The website allowed a more detailed quote for users who answered additional questions such as driving history. By the end of 2013, The Zebra was available to users in all 50 states, while increasing its platform to 204 companies that included 22 carriers such as
Esurance Esurance Insurance Services, Inc. is an American insurance company. It sells auto, home, motorcycle, and renters insurance direct to consumers online and by phone. Founded in 1999, the company was acquired by Allstate in 2011. History Esuranc ...
and The General. It also received an additional $3 million of funding from its existing investors, adding investor
Simon Nixon Simon Justin Nixon (born 7 August 1967) is a British billionaire businessman, the co-founder of and former deputy chairman of Moneysupermarket.com. Early life Nixon was born in Stamford, Lincolnshire, on 7 August 1967. He spent the early part o ...
to the list of new investors. In January 2016, The Zebra announced that it closed $17 million in Series A funding with investment from Cuban, Mike Maples Jr., Nixon, Silverton, and new investors Daher Capital and Ballast Point Ventures, bringing total funding to over $21 million. The company planned to use the additional funding to create educational tools that explain to drivers what's behind their rates, and how they can reduce rates while increasing coverage. In 2017, The company announced a $40 million series B funding round, led by Accel Partners, bringing their fundraising total to $61.5 million. The company also brought on Keith Melnick as CEO. In 2017 the company added an "Insurability Score" which shows consumers to see what impacts their insurance risk, similar to a
credit score A credit score is a numerical expression based on a level analysis of a person's credit files, to represent the creditworthiness of an individual. A credit score is primarily based on a credit report, information typically sourced from credit bu ...
for credit. In 2018, Lyons left The Zebra and stepped aside from both day-to-day operations and his role as chairman of the board. The Zebra has received national media attention.
NBC Nightly News ''NBC Nightly News'' (titled as ''NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas'' for its weeknight broadcasts ) is the flagship daily evening News broadcasting#Television, television news program for NBC News, the news division of the NBC television network ...
recommended The Zebra as a tool to compare car insurance quotes and save on rates.


Company recognition

The company issued a joke which
Time Magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps as ''TIME'') is an American news magazine based in New York City. It was published weekly for nearly a century. Starting in March 2020, it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York Cit ...
included in its Best April Fools’ Pranks of 2014, and the company was named a Best Place to Work in Austin for four consecutive years from 2015 through 2019.


Funding

In September 2017, The Zebra received a $40 million Series B round of funding. In 2019, revenue grew almost 200% to nearly $37 million. In February 2020, the company announced a $38.5 million Series C funding round. Just like the Series B round, the Series C was led by Accel.


Business model

The Zebra offers a way for consumers to get real-time quotes from car insurance companies by filling out an online form. As the driver fills out the form, answering more questions about things like their age, driving record, and credit score, the quotes increase in accuracy. Because The Zebra itself is not an insurance agency, it's not biased toward sending customers to one company or another. As of 2019, The Zebra provided over 1,800 car insurance products from more than 200 national insurers.


Research

The Zebra analyzes more than 83 million car insurance rates to compile its annual State of Insurance report. The report covers topics including how much the average American is paying for their coverage, the states where rates are rising or falling, the most and least expensive cars to insure, how much a ticket raises drivers’ insurance rates, and other variables that affect insurance rates such as marital status, age, credit score and education. The Zebra has published additional reports on topics that impact the insurance industry, such as: * Distracted Driving Report: This report reveals car insurance companies raise penalty for distracted driving 10,000%, proving that getting caught using a cell phone while driving is getting exponentially more expensive as car insurance companies are just beginning to penalize drivers for distracted driving. *Gender-Based Pricing Report: This report uncovered that women now pay more than men for car insurance in 25 states (even though men are riskier drivers). *Car Technology Report: In this report, The Zebra looked into why tech that makes your car safer won't lower your insurance rates and revealed that despite proven safety and security benefits, new in-car safety and anti-theft technology features save drivers less than 1% on car insurance. *Marijuana Report: The Zebra presented a survey of drivers in the U.S. who have access to recreational marijuana and found that 60% of drivers who use marijuana in legal states drive under the influence.


Leadership

Joshua Dziabiak joined after the financing in 2013 as COO/CMO. Keith Melnick, previously President at Kayak, was named CEO of The Zebra in 2017. The company's CTO is Meetesh Karia. After leading the company as CEO for 6 years, Lyons served as chairman of the board. He left in 2018, now serving on the board of CASA and as EIR at Bill Wood Ventures.


See also

* Disruptive innovation *
Metasearch engine A metasearch engine (or search aggregator) is an online information retrieval tool that uses the data of a web search engine to produce its own results. Metasearch engines take input from a user and immediately query search engines for results. ...
*
Online marketplace An online marketplace (or online e-commerce marketplace) is a type of e-commerce website where product or service information is provided by multiple third parties. Online marketplaces are the primary type of multichannel ecommerce and can be a wa ...


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Zebra 2012 establishments in Pennsylvania American companies established in 2012 Companies based in Austin, Texas Comparison shopping websites Insurance companies of the United States Online insurance companies Financial services companies established in 2012