Why QED invested in Tint

When Matheus Riolfi was asked to become the head of international for (now the soon-to-be-public) car sharing company Turo, he never thought that his life would be dominated by the question of insurance. But in every geography that Matheus went, the most important and most difficult ingredient for expansion was quality insurance coverage for a fundamentally different approach to rental cars.  

Building a startup requires a founder to sell the promise of these new tools without social proof, brand trust, or long experience. Every startup has to sell their customers and their partners on a vision just ahead of where they know they can deliver. But how do they get the customer to cross the bridge with them?

There’s a great line attributed to Henry Ford that says, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” While Ford himself probably never said this, it’s a touchstone remark for startup founders and product designers.  

It’s also a fun reminder that great ideas don’t need to be quite right to be powerful. Cars didn’t work perfectly when they started, and quotes don’t need to be accurately attributed to inspire.

So when Matheus took Turo international, he knew that the idea of lending your car to someone else in a system managed by a startup required strong insurance coverage. And even though car insurance was nothing new, and rental cars were nothing new, traditional insurance companies weren’t always ready to underwrite the risk or understand the business.  

As it turns out, insurance coverage and other guarantees have a long history in brand building for startups and insurgents – from George Forman’s Meineke commercials to AirBnB’s continued improvement of their host and guest coverages.  

At Turo, Matheus and co-founder Jérôme Selles had to build their full insurance system themselves and realized that the innovation hubs around the world were constantly churning out new promises and new risks that traditional insurance companies weren’t prepared to underwrite or manage.  

This is the origin story of Tint where QED is proud to lead a $25 million Series A to support its cadre of exciting and innovative customers and bring the magic of guarantees and insurance to thousands of startups over the next decade.  

The company provides their partners a full insurance operating system – not only helping them find insurance coverage for marketplaces, crypto deposits, P2P motorcycles, RVs and foreign contractors, but also helping them structure that risk in ways that allow them to self-insure or simply offer responsible guarantees even when insurance companies or outside capital doesn’t want to underwrite the risk.

Tint’s capabilities have captured the imaginations from product and leadership teams of startups that have raised well more than $1 billion dollars – companies like Deel and Outdoorsy  – and their product is nimble enough to work even with seed stage market places like Rider Share.  

We believe Tint is building a digital Lloyds of London, attacking a huge market  – Lloyd’s alone transacts over $50 billion in insurance premium each year. And we believe that Tint’s vision is essential to driving growth of this market. They are building the infrastructure and the market for innovative insurance to support innovative companies; helping startups cross the bridge between an interesting promise and product-market fit.