Stand is a San Francisco insurtech that uses physics-based simulation and AI to underwrite and insure homes in places most carriers have abandoned - the wildfire belt of California and the hurricane corridors of Florida. Instead of statistical averages, Stand builds a digital twin of each property and models how embers, wind, and water would actually attack it, pairing coverage with concrete mitigation upgrades.
Hemant Shah is a serial entrepreneur and catastrophe risk pioneer who co-founded Risk Management Solutions (RMS) in 1989 as a Stanford grad student and built it into a $300M+ global leader in catastrophe modeling over nearly 30 years. He then co-founded Archipelago in 2018, an AI-powered commercial property risk data platform that now manages over $12 trillion in insured properties and has raised $72M+ in venture funding. Shah transitioned to Executive Chairman of Archipelago in July 2023 and in 2025 joined FortressFire as Vice Chairman, continuing his mission to bring data intelligence to the most consequential risks facing the built environment.
Ilya Volodarsky co-founded Segment in 2011 with MIT dorm-mates, building it from a failed classroom tool into the definitive customer data platform before selling to Twilio for $3.2 billion in 2020. After nine years scaling Segment to 600 employees, he pivoted to the problem of catastrophic wildfires, co-founding Wildfires.org and joining Convective Capital as a partner to back early-stage climate and healthcare startups.