Jones offers a solution to kill the headache of liability insurance for owners, managers and builders hiring independent contractors at scale.
New York, NY (September 17, 2018) – Jones, a New York City based commercial insurance startup, announced today a $2.8 million seed round led by Hetz Ventures alongside JLL Spark, MetaProp Ventures, GroundUp Ventures and 500 Startups.
Jones helps real estate owners, managers, and builders to tackle the recurring headache of liability insurance that arises when hiring trade contractors. By combining Software-as-a-Service tools and Payas-you-go insurance products, Jones delivers a quick and affordable solution for trade contractors to comply with enterprise insurance needs.
With Jones, trade contractors can use their smartphone to instantly obtain a certificate of insurance (COI) that complies with requirements and have it approved by the enterprise, all within minutes. For trades that already have insurance, Jones automates the insurance compliance cycle making it easy to approve COIs without the back-and-forth hassle between enterprises and agents. That means owners, tenants and general contractors can easily hire any qualified vendor while managers and builders can reduce their administrative overhead by up to 25%.
“We were thrilled to make Jones one of the first investments from our new JLL Spark Global Venture Fund. The Jones product immediately resonated with challenges we had been hearing from the field and are excited to bring Jones to JLL and to our clients. We are already piloting their solution in buildings we manage and the initial reception has been extremely positive,” said Yishai Lerner, Co-CEO of JLL Spark.
Liability insurance is an obstacle that runs deep in the value chain in the real estate and construction verticals. While enterprises typically transfer risk downstream, this causes an unintended market failure as contractors, subcontractors and their subcontractor’s don’t bid for jobs because liability insurance is cost prohibitive.
“Jones is rewriting the rules of construction insurance. Rather than simply using traditional parameters to assess the risk, the company’s data-driven approach picks up on small signals and inefficiencies to revolutionize an industry that hasn’t changed in decades. We were instantly attracted by the team, its fresh thinking and the long term vision of becoming the construction go-to-insurance provider,” said Judah Taub, Managing Partner of Hetz Ventures.
Jones is currently in beta with a handful of large construction and real estate players including ARCO Construction and JLL. The startup plans to use the funds to launch its first product, a flexible duration General Liability insurance policy this fall in partnership with Chubb Insurance and a handful of marquee distribution partners in the construction and real estate industries. Jones is currently licensed in 12 states, and has plans to be in 30 states by the end of 2018.
“Chubb’s partnership with Jones further reinforces our commitment to challenging the one-size-fits all insurance product model and providing innovative, digital solutions to meet our customers’ evolving needs,” said Casey Campbell, SVP, Digital North America Commercial Lines.
“We’re thrilled to team up with a group of industry focused investors. We know that transforming our industry takes real distribution power. We’re glad to have partners on board that share the vision,” said Omri Stern, CEO and Co-founder of Jones.
About Jones
Jones is an insurance platform helping property managers and construction companies to kill the headache of insurance compliance. We provide an easy, automated insurance checkup and offer pay-asyou-go liability insurance enabling vendors to bid for any job. Need Jones? www.getjones.com.
About Hetz Ventures
Hetz Ventures is a $55M UK-based fund, backed by some of Europe’s most successful and bestconnected investors. The value the fund adds centres on its unique network with major international companies, providing the ability to validate a company’s proposition and quickly accelerate a company’s business. The fund is focusing on Seed and Series A investments across various sectors including Fintech, Enterprise IT, Retail and Construction. Hetz Ventures is constantly seeking exceptional Israeli entrepreneurs and teams building deep and defensible technologies or disruptive business models. Go to hetz.vc for more info
