Built by a founder, for founders
Sam Hodges knows what it costs to buy insurance for a startup. Not in premiums - in time, confusion, and the particular dread of being handed a generic policy designed for a 1987 dry cleaner when you're a SaaS company with 20 engineers and $5M in ARR.
He lived it at Funding Circle. He and his co-founder Travis Hedge co-founded Vouch Insurance in 2018 specifically because they had run out of patience for a market that treated every tech company like it was selling widgets from a warehouse. The idea was precise: build the insurance company that should already exist, one that speaks startup, prices startup, and moves at the speed of startup.
"Vouch is the kind of insurance company I wished existed when I founded my last company."Sam Hodges, Co-founder & CEO
Before Vouch, Hodges spent a decade building Funding Circle US. He joined early, scaled the U.S. operation to over $1.5 billion in total loan originations, and watched the London Stock Exchange IPO happen in 2018. It was a full arc - from zero to public company - and it gave Hodges something most insurance executives don't have: firsthand knowledge of what it actually feels like to be a founder hunting for coverage.
He started his career doing strategy work at major health and life insurance carriers, then moved into venture investing at Pequot Capital (later FirstMark Capital), working alongside InsurTech pioneer Larry Wilson. That combination - operational insurance experience plus venture-stage pattern recognition plus founder credibility - is not a resume. It's a thesis. Vouch is the thesis.
"Our mission is to insure ambition." Four words. Zero padding. That's how Hodges runs his company.
Vouch launched officially in August 2019, one year after the founding. In September of that year it raised a $24.5 million Series A led by Ribbit Capital and Silicon Valley Bank. Y Combinator was already in. The signal was clear: this wasn't a sideline project. This was a company with a conviction built on lived experience.
By the time the February 2025 Series D landed - led by Allegis Capital, with all major prior investors participating - Vouch had crossed 6,000 clients and partnered with more than 200 venture funds including JPMorgan and HSBC. The round came alongside the acquisition of StartSure Insurance Services, a New York-based MGA that added coworking and inventory coverage to the Vouch platform. The company also runs Corix, its own MGA brand, which delivers instant quoting across 80+ carrier relationships.
Hodges holds an MBA and MS from Stanford and a bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, from Brown. He is a Fellow of the inaugural Finance Leaders Fellowship class at the Aspen Institute. He sits on the board of RunTitle, invests through Endurance Companies, and serves on the investment committee at Waterman Ventures. He also advises Brown University on internship access for students.
"Customers tell us they love that Vouch feels like SaaS: fast, modern, and integrated."Sam Hodges
What Vouch built is not a repackaging. It's a full-stack insurance operation - proprietary products, risk assessment tools calibrated for high-growth companies, and claims management that doesn't require a fax machine. The company created Vouch Horizon specifically for scaling companies, and that product line now accounts for roughly half of total premium volume.
The Freediving Principle
Hodges trained in freediving. He pushed his breath-hold from about two minutes to nearly five. The key insight: most of the discomfort was CO2 buildup, not actual oxygen deprivation. His body was screaming "stop" long before any real danger. He uses this as a working metaphor for startup leadership - understanding what real limits are versus what just feels uncomfortable.
That distinction shapes how he thinks about team-building, too. He's a committed reader of Carol Dweck's growth mindset model, advocates for diverse and interdisciplinary teams, and draws a firm line between mistakes (things you learn from) and failures (things you give up on). His rule: "You only fail when you stop and give up." Everything before that is data.
He reads Haruki Murakami and David Mitchell. Magical realism. The kind of fiction that holds two incompatible things true at once - which, if you think about it, is also a reasonable description of the startup insurance market he's trying to fix.
What comes next
The acquisition of StartSure in 2025 signals a push beyond pure tech startups. Vouch is expanding brokerage capabilities, deepening carrier relationships through Corix, and developing products for a broader set of high-growth sectors. Hodges is explicit about the ambition: "Through this Series D financing and joining forces with StartSure, Vouch is expanding our capabilities to provide unmatched service and innovative products to high-growth companies."
The company that started as a better answer to a frustrating question now sits at the center of the startup risk infrastructure layer. For founders still arguing with a broker who doesn't know what an API is, that's not a coincidence. That's Hodges, still building the company he needed.