Jul 13 min read

Scout InsurTech Interview with Cocoon

Cocoon is a home & data management company. They seek to simplify homeowners' lives by making it easy for them to care for their home and protect their most valuable tangible asset with a Cocoon Home plan. Michael Fiedel sat with Founder, Brandon Day, to learn more about how Cocoon is impacting the industry.

What is Cocoon’s client focus?

“Today, our client focus is primarily on homeowners, but we look beyond homeowners to find ways to add real value to our channel and service partners.”

What does your product do?

“From a bird's eye view, our domain is home management. If we take that one level down, that domain breaks down into care for the home, risk management for the home and a connected home. What all that means for homeowners is that we're a life-simplifier company. We make it easy to care for the home with a single solution delivering the knowledge and services a homeowner needs in one place.”

How much capital have you raised?

“We've comfortably raised enough capital to ensure we have the resources to expand and grow at a pace that meets our goals.”

Was the company born from within or outside the industry?

“Both. With a long career in insurance myself, the challenges of leveraging technology to improve the understanding of the customer and their needs and to enhance the ability to assist with those needs were well known to me. The challenges of managing the home are clear to me on almost a daily basis. The core of our team has over 100 years’ experience in the home space. Our desire is to bring that expertise in delivering an industry-defining solution for homeowners.”

What growth metrics have you accomplished over the last 12 months?

“2023 was a year of building, and beta testing, an integrated suite of platforms to ensure that we deliver an exceptional user experience. While doing that, we built a top-of-funnel awareness with several thousand households interested in our product. Our enhanced product is now in the market, and reception is great.”

Within your domain, what’s the current challenge that the industry is facing?

“It's very hard to bridge the gaps between understanding the home, promoting care for the home and servicing the home. Each facet requires a different type of engagement and different technology applications. To do it all together really requires a bespoke suite of platforms seamlessly interacting to manage the home across those gaps. Those platforms, and their seamless interaction, is difficult to build, and that’s just the technology. Layering on an efficient operating model and business model, properly enabled by the technology, is equally challenging.”

How does Cocoon take a unique approach to providing value?

“We built that suite of platforms to bridge those gaps. We're bringing to the home and the homeowner a better understanding of their home, its risks and support to better care for the home while simultaneously reducing those risks. In short, we deliver a complete solution.”

What inspired the team to start this company?

“I'm the sole founder of Cocoon. I worked at AIG for most of my career. Early on, as an underwriter, I ran an international P&L that underwrote service contracts and also did the claims administration. I later led the design and development of a policy and claims administration platform for this particular space and led its global rollout. So, professionally, I've seen the challenges in this space in the past. Personally, when I finally left living in big cities and owned a home, I realized firsthand that no one has successfully married technology with data to understand and service the home in a way that better protects the home while making the life of the homeowner easier. Given my past, unique experience in both building business and systems, seeing this problem still exist in a space where I started my insurance career was an inviting challenge to solve.”

Can you share any goals for the next 12 months?

“One goal is to be well on our way to having our product offering in half the continental U.S. Couple our technology with our belief in data in a service culture, and that leads us in our continued goal of creating exceptional value for homeowners and for all parties with whom Cocoon does business.”