★ YC W25 · San Francisco · Founded 2024

They Swore
They'd Never
Do Insurance.

"I hated insurance. Swore I'd never end up in it." — Dakotah Rice, CEO

Then they built the most ambitious AI brokerage on the planet. Meet Harper — the company turning a $100B industry of email and spreadsheets into a fully autonomous engine for Main Street America.

YC W25 $54M RAISED 5,000+ CLIENTS AI-NATIVE

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Harper founders Dakotah Rice and Tushar Nair

$54M Total Raised

5K+ Businesses Covered

35 States Licensed

160+ Carrier Network

85% "Uninsurable" Success Rate

Origin Story

A Name Borrowed from Mom. A Mission Borrowed from Middle America.

They named their company Harper — after Dakotah's mother's maiden name. A family touch on a business that's anything but sentimental about the status quo.

It started with a trauma — and maybe a grudge. Dakotah Rice grew up watching his dad run a nightclub, his uncle's trucking company get crushed by insurance and financing costs before it ever had a real chance. The system was supposed to protect these businesses. Instead, it buried them.

After stints at Goldman Sachs (Investment Banking), Carlyle, and Coatue — and a Harvard Business School chapter he left unfinished — Dakotah tried his hand at Poolit, a fintech that scaled to $100M AUM before hitting a wall. He shut it down in 2023. "My ego made it hard to accept the failure," he told TechCrunch. "In hindsight, I should have shut it down a year earlier."

Humbled and re-energized, Dakotah called up his old Goldman colleague Tushar Nair — a 9-year Goldman engineering veteran who spent years automating the commodities desk with ML/AI. Their first instinct was to build AI tools for existing brokers. Then they had a better idea: become the broker.

Every legacy professional services business will have an AI-native counterpart that operates more efficiently, generates more revenue, and grows faster than incumbents.

— Harper Founding Thesis

The Journey

2012

Dakotah Rice graduates Brown University (Political Science). Tushar Nair finishes Computer Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology. Both join Goldman Sachs — and meet for the first time.

2015–2022

Tushar spends nearly 9 years at Goldman leading ML/AI engineering for the commodities desk. Dakotah moves through Carlyle and Coatue, sharpening his investment edge.

2021–2023

Dakotah and Tushar co-found Poolit — a fintech company that scales to $100M AUM before closing. A tough lesson in humility and focus.

Aug 2024

Harper is founded. First customers onboarded in October 2024. Within weeks: $6M+ in annualized premiums written across 35 states. The bets are paying off.

W25

Harper joins Y Combinator's Winter 2025 cohort — the most competitive class in YC history. Emergence Capital, Peak XV, and YC back the vision.

Feb 2026

Harper announces $46.8M in combined Seed + Series A, bringing total funding to $54M. TechCrunch covers. The insurance world pays attention.

The Architects

Goldman. Carlyle. Coatue.
And Now: Insurance.

Co-Founder & CEO

Dakotah Rice

A finance heavyweight turned startup founder, Dakotah brings the kind of pedigree that commands boardroom respect and the kind of street cred that comes from watching real businesses get crushed by a broken system. He didn't choose insurance — insurance chose him. His family owned a brokerage. He hated it. Then he built the better version. Dakotah studied Political Science at Brown ('12), briefly attended Harvard Business School, and worked his way through Goldman, Carlyle, and Coatue before founding two companies. The second one is Harper.

Brown '12 HBS Dropout '21 Goldman IB Carlyle Coatue Poolit (prev)

Co-Founder & CTO

Tushar Nair

The quiet engine behind Harper's intelligence. Tushar spent nearly a decade at Goldman Sachs, rising to Software Engineering Manager, building ML/AI systems that automated complex workflows for the commodities and private wealth desks. He later joined Harry's (the razor brand) as a Staff Software Engineer before co-founding Poolit with Dakotah. When they shut Poolit down, Tushar brought the technical lessons and doubled down on automation — this time in insurance. Illinois Institute of Technology, Computer Engineering.

Illinois Tech — CS Goldman (9 yrs) Harry's Inc. ML/AI Expert Repeat Founder

The Problem, Illustrated

Why Traditional Insurance Brokers
Are Living in 1987

Day 1: Daycare calls broker for quote

The broker answers. Takes notes by hand. Promises to "get back to you." Transfers file to manila folder. Manila folder joins pile.

5–7 DAYS TO QUOTE ⏳

Week 2: Roofer checks in

Gets voicemail. Emails go unread. Broker is busy. Broker is always busy. Broker handles 20–30 deals a month. That's the limit. That's been the limit forever.

EMAIL + SPREADSHEETS 📧

Week 3: Trucker deemed "uninsurable"

Traditional broker doesn't know the right carrier. Doesn't have the network. Doesn't have the data. The trucker stays uncovered. The dream park stays parked.

85% REJECTION RATE 🚫

Harper exists to end this story.

The Product

Harper Hub: The AI Brain
Running Under the Hood

Customers don't know Harper uses AI. And they don't care. They just know it's faster, cheaper, and someone picks up the phone. That's the point. Harper Hub — the company's flagship internal AI platform — does the invisible work that makes the magic happen.

🤖

Automated Form Completion

Applications that used to take days to fill out are completed automatically. No human bottlenecks, no transcription errors, no coffee breaks.

// What used to take hours: now minutes

🎯

Carrier Matching at Scale

A seasoned broker knows a few dozen carriers. Harper's AI synthesizes across 160+ simultaneously — weighing appetite, pricing patterns, and underwriting behavior in real time.

// Like having 100 experts in one click

📨

Underwriter Follow-Ups

The AI manages submission routing, follow-up cadences, document collection, and pipeline tracking — eliminating the operational weight that buries human brokers.

// The work nobody wants to do, done

💬

Client Communications

Every client interaction logged, managed, and optimized. Harper handles more than 1,000 customers per month — versus 20-30 for a typical human brokerage team.

// 50x the capacity. Same personal touch.

🛡️

100% E&O Tech Placement

Harper achieves 100% placement success on Tech E&O policies — without AI exclusions. Even the AI companies need insurance, and Harper delivers where others can't.

// Yes, the irony is noted

📈

Continuous Learning

Every broker conversation, every placement, every claim interaction feeds the system. Harper gets smarter every day — accumulating the institutional knowledge that took traditional brokers decades to build.

// The brokerage that never forgets

By The Numbers

The Scoreboard

$54M

Total funding raised
(Seed + Series A)

5K+

Businesses insured
to date

1K+

Customers handled
per month

1–2

Days to quote
(vs. 5–7 traditional)

Who They Serve

From Daycares to Aerospace.
If You Run It, Harper Covers It.

Harper's edge isn't specializing in one sector — it's solving the complex, the weird, the "nobody will cover us" cases that traditional brokers turn away. Their sweet spot: mid-sized businesses with operational complexity, compliance needs, and risk profiles that require real expertise.

✈️ Aerospace & Defense

💻 Tech & AI Companies

🏗️ Manufacturing

🚛 Transportation & Trucking

🍽️ Restaurants & Hospitality

👶 Daycares & Care Providers

🚗 Car Dealerships

🔒 Security Guards

🏥 Nursing Homes

⚖️ Professional Services

🛒 Consumer Goods & Retail

🏛️ Public Sector

🚀 Emerging Ventures

💼 Financial Services

Inside Harper

The Details That Make
This Company Unforgettable

🧠 Fun Fact

They Don't Tell Clients About the AI

Harper's clients — daycares, roofers, truckers — often don't know the platform runs on AI. "ChatGPT is sometimes foreign to them." That's the point. The tech is invisible. The service is undeniable. Build great AI. Let the service do the talking.

💌 Named After Mom

Harper = Dakotah's Mother's Maiden Name

A $54M company named in quiet tribute to family. Dakotah's family owned an insurance brokerage. He hated it. Then he built the future version of it. Full circle.

📊 Market Opportunity

$100B+ in Annual Commissions

The US commercial insurance brokerage market generates over $100 billion in annual commissions. Most of it still runs on email and spreadsheets. Harper sees that as an invitation, not a moat.

🏆 The Thesis

"We Will Become the Voice for Entrepreneurs"

Dakotah's long game isn't just insurance. He wants Harper to become a one-stop operational layer for small and mid-sized businesses — covering risk, compliance, and eventually the full back office. "Make it simple for them to do their core work, and we basically do everything else." That's not a brokerage pitch. That's a platform play.

⚡ Speed Advantage

1–2 Days vs. 5–7 Days

The industry average for a commercial insurance quote is 5–7 business days. Harper does it in 1–2. In a world where a daycare needs a certificate of insurance before Friday to open its doors — that's the difference between open and closed.

Backed By

The Believers

Harper's $54M has come from some of venture's most respected names — institutions that don't bet on incremental improvements, but on companies trying to own entire categories.

Emergence Capital (lead)

Y Combinator

Peak XV Partners

Antler

10x Founders

Lobster Capital

Outset Capital

Optimist Ventures

Pioneer Fund

Untapped Ventures

Harper exemplifies how AI can unlock software-like margins in a traditionally low-tech industry.

— Emergence Capital

Harper Is Hiring.
14 Open Roles.

Engineering, Sales, Operations, Product, Recruiting, Support.

They're building out engineering to push Harper Hub further. Growing a brand that Middle America will trust. And doing it with a 25-person team that moves like 250. If you want to own something real — the unglamorous, essential machinery of business insurance — this is the room.

View Open Roles → Get a Quote

What They Cover

8 Lines of Coverage.
Zero Boilerplate Fluff.

🏢

General Liability

The right protection — without the padding, the exclusions, or the fine print traps. Real coverage for real businesses.

💼

Professional Liability (E&O)

100% success placing tech E&O with no AI exclusions. Yes, including AI companies. Yes, the irony is the point.

🚗

Garage & Commercial Auto

From a single vehicle to a full fleet. Garage liability for service and storage. Built for the businesses that keep America moving.

🏭

Commercial Property

Safeguard buildings, equipment, and inventory. Because the place where you work deserves protection too.

🔐

Cyber Insurance

Defense against data breaches and digital threats. In a world where every business runs on software, every business needs this.

☂️

Umbrella & Bonds

Extra layers when the unexpected happens. Surety bonds to secure contracts and financing. The insurance your insurance needs.

They SworeThey'd NeverDo Insurance.

A Name Borrowed from Mom. A Mission Borrowed from Middle America.

Goldman. Carlyle. Coatue.And Now: Insurance.

Why Traditional Insurance BrokersAre Living in 1987

Harper Hub: The AI BrainRunning Under the Hood

The Scoreboard

From Daycares to Aerospace.If You Run It, Harper Covers It.

The Details That MakeThis Company Unforgettable