Ignite Startups: Fixing Insurance for Small Businesses Using AI with Tanner Hackett | Ep268

What if insurance isn’t actually about protection—but about who understands risk better than anyone else?Tanner Hackett has spent his career at the edge of massive shifts—helping build Lazada into Southeast Asia’s e-commerce backbone, then co-founding Button to ride the mobile commerce wave. Now he’s the founder and CEO of Counterpart, an insurtech company rebuilding small business insurance with AI-driven underwriting, real-time risk insights, and a growing dataset across 35,000+ policies.In this episode, Tanner breaks down why insurance—one of the largest financial markets in the world—still runs on outdated assumptions, and how Counterpart is quietly rewriting the math.In Today's Episode We Discuss:00:01 – Introduction and Tanner Hackett Background00:33 – Early Career: Lazada and Southeast Asia E-commerce01:30 – Building Button and Mobile Commerce Insights02:03 – Founding Counterpart and Shift to Insurance02:19 – Initial Idea: HR Tech to Insurtech Pivot04:11 – What’s Broken in Insurance Today06:15 – Why Previous Insurtech Startups Failed08:16 – Understanding MGA and Insurance Business Model09:16 – Why Now Is the Right Time for Counterpart11:49 – Rethinking Value in Insurance13:07 – Insurance Categories Counterpart Focuses On17:28 – Distribution vs Underwriting Bottlenecks19:45 – Data Advantage and Underwriting at Scale21:25 – Insurance Basics for Startups27:02 – Counterpart’s End-to-End Platform Approach29:28 – AI, Data Infrastructure, and Pricing Risk33:48 – Building a Data Moat in Insurance35:10 – Founder Advice: Reducing Risk and Lowering Premiums38:05 – Real-World Claims and Insurance Stories39:21 – Fintech and HR Tech Companies Tanner Admires40:58 – Long-Term Vision for Counterpart42:29 – Closing Thoughts and Future of Insurance“Insurance is a math problem—but most of the industry is still pricing to averages.”“Every dollar paid out on a bad claim gets passed on to the next customer. That’s the system we’re fixing.”Tanner’s journey started with marketplaces and marketing tech. Now he’s building a company where the product isn’t just coverage—it’s understanding risk at a level traditional insurers never could. Because in the end, the companies that win in insurance aren’t the ones with the biggest balance sheets. They’re the ones who see the risks others miss.Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Ga6v0YUsHotLhjap67uu5Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ignite-conversations-on-startups-venture-capital-tech/id1709248824Follow Tanner Hackett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tannerhackett/Follow Tanner Hackett on X: https://x.com/Tan_HackFollow Brian on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bblinkedin/Visit Our Website: https://www.teamignite.venturesSubscribe to Our Newsletter: https://insights.teamignite.ventures/👂🎧 Watch, listen, and follow on your favorite platform: https://tr.ee/S2ayrbx_fL 🙏 Join the conversation on your favorite social network: https://linktr.ee/theignitepodcast