Danil Kolesnikov, Co-Founder, Marin

Mang-Git interviews Danil Kolesnikov, previously a founding engineer at Shepherd, a commercial insurance MGA for construction that underwrites on behalf of carriers and distributes through brokers. He explains Shepherd’s thesis that tech-enabled contractors are better risks and should receive better pricing and coverage. The core build-vs-buy decision was whether to buy a policy administration system or build one; Shepherd chose to build due to vendor pricing that takes a percentage of premium (a lasting “tax”) and the need for flexibility and speed. Danil says owning the platform improved onboarding and day-one productivity across underwriting, claims, and compliance, and helped Shepherd deliver quotes in under 24 hours versus weeks for legacy carriers. They also discuss the complexity of commercial lines, a painful Salesforce integration, and how AI shifts the bottleneck from coding to domain understanding and workflow automation.  00:00 Introductions  02:38 What an MGA Does  04:30 Shepherd’s Tech Advantage  06:10 The Build vs Buy Call  11:45 Evaluating PAS Vendors  13:17 Why Owning the Stack Wins  16:14 Org Design and Automation  18:59 Vertical Integration and Salesforce Pain  22:56 Secret Sauce Not for Sale  24:12 Lessons and AI Prompting  26:22 Lightning Round and Wrap Up This episode was brought to you by Anvil [https://useanvil.com].