keithamoore-blog

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Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it

Maya Angelou

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CoverHound's New $14M B Round Coverage by PropertyCasualty360

CoverHound, which recently partnered with Google on its Google Compare auto insurance platform, allows buyers to compare rates for auto, homeowners, renters and motorcycle insurance across 21 carriers. Users have to input information like zip code, age, type of vehicle and number of drivers, the year they obtained their license, education, if they have any accidents or tickets, average mileage in a year, marital status and other details. The program then provides them with multiple coverage options from several insurers in their area within minutes.

Read more about CoverHound at PropertyCasualty360

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We shop around when buying an appliance, purchasing a car or even spending for a new dress but when it comes to homeowner’s insurance people often stick with the coverage they have each year. “One of the things people don’t do is true comparison shopping,” says Keith Moore, Chief Executive of CoverHound, the insurance Website. “If you never shop the rate I guarantee you are paying more than you should.” According to Moore homeowners should shop their policy on an annual basis.

Click Here for the full article >>

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Michael Stelzner, of Social Media Examiner shares the vision behind MyKidsAdventures.com

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We will surely miss you Rusty... for almost 12 years you were part of every journey from coast to coast, and it never phased you.

Goodbye old friend; Your family will miss you very much.

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The amazing David Gilmour @ The Strat Pack 2004 The 50th Anniversary of the Fender Stratocaster guitar. "Marooned" (David Gilmour, Richard Wright) "Coming Back to Life" and "Sorrow"

Be sure to switch to the 1080 HD option.

Thanks to Gabe (@KidsAreHeroes) for sharing this great 3 song set with me via Twitter.

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LeadiD Receives $1 Million Capital Infusion to Support Accelerated Growth

Investment Supports New Products, New Markets and Expanded Team as Lead Gen Industry Embraces Lead Authentication Standard

Philadelphia, PA (PRWEB) August 13, 2013 - LeadiD, the first neutral, privacy-friendly, trusted arbiter of lead transactions, today announced that it has raised an additional $1 million in capital from Philadelphia-based Genacast Ventures, lead investor in LeadiD’s initial $1.7 million seed-stage investment. The investment supports the company’s growth trajectory and is a strong validation of both its business model and the growing adoption of the LeadiD authentication standard in multi-billion consumer verticals such as education, mortgage, insurance and short-term loans. LeadiD will use the new funds to expand its team, accelerate product innovation and continue to drive market adoption.

“LeadiD’s significant achievements and momentum over the last year are clear indications that we are building a breakout business and defining a new market,” said Ross Shanken, LeadiD CEO. “LeadiD is becoming the de facto standard for bringing both lead buyers and sellers together because our technology platform empowers a neutral and trusted transaction. This investment will enable us to sustain our outstanding momentum with new talent, expanded footprint and aggressive technology innovation and product enhancements.”

“Ross and his team have built a market-transforming company with a disruptive technology that is solving the lead gen industry’s biggest challenges,” said Gil Beyda, Founder and Managing Partner of Genacast Ventures. “Our support enables LeadiD to rapidly expand its reach and underscores our commitment to continue to support breakthrough technology.”

This new development builds on company’s early success in forming strategic partnerships with industry leaders to facilitate seamless adoption by lead buyers. Earlier this year, the company launched LeadiD Marketplace, a single source for best-in-class marketing solutions that support the LeadiD standard. Solutions in LeadiD Marketplace are fully integrated with LeadiD, and are offered ‘on-demand’ for rapid implementation, enhanced results and increased ROI.

A few short weeks ago, the company also reached another major milestone with the unveiling of the LeadiD TCPA Compliance app. The app provides organizations a way to obtain and demonstrate definitive confirmation that the proper TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) disclosures were present during the lead event and that the consumer did in fact provide express consent. The LeadiD TCPA app is the first truly scalable TCPA app because it doesn’t require disruption of dialer operations with manual screen shot review, thereby preserving an organization’s speed-to-contact advantages. LeadiD also commissioned a white paper and checklist addressing TCPA concerns in the online media sector.

The firm has also been recognized by industry peers for significant achievement and was named winner of the coveted Most Innovative Company award in the 2013 LeadsCouncil LEADER Awards program.

About LeadiD Founded in January 2011 by Ross Shanken, LeadiD is the only independent, neutral, open technology platform, which tracks the origin and history of every lead event that utilizes the LeadiD system. No supplier-proprietary data is exposed, but rather, LeadiD allows Lead Sellers and Lead Buyers to make real-time decisions based upon definitive origin and history flags that are predetermined. LeadiD fosters an environment of trust in the transaction, one where both Lead Sellers and Lead Buyers alike derive top-line value. With unmatched data, LeadiD is the industry standard for authenticating lead origin and history and the authentication platform of choice for firms of all sizes. For more information, visit LeadiD.com or follow on Twitter @LeadiD

About Genacast Ventures Genacast Ventures (http://www.genacast.com) invests in Internet technology entrepreneurs with a vision and passion for forging new markets or disrupting old ones. Established in 2008 as a partnership between serial entrepreneur Gil Beyda (Real Media and Tacoda) and Comcast Ventures, Genacast’s commitment to helping exceptional entrepreneurs build great companies is already experiencing success with its first investment Invite Media being acquired by Google and its second investment Demdex being acquired by Adobe. Current portfolio companies include DoubleVerify (online advertising), PackLate (travel), Enterproid (mobile), Mortar Data (big data), LeadiD (lead generation), YieldMo (mobile advertising), Rocketrip (corporate travel) and Riskive (security). Genacast invests up to $1M in 3-4 seed-stage start-ups each year.

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Audi CMO: What U.S. Automakers Are Doing Wrong Audi CMO Scott Keogh Wags a Finger at Detroit's Marketing NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- German luxury brand Audi is a refreshing change from what most of the news in the auto business has been about lately. The Volkswagen subsidiary has pumped up its U.S. advertising budget by 20%, increased its market share and been surprisingly successful in marketing "clean diesel" models against competitors' hybrids. In this eight-minute video, Audi America CMO Scott Keogh recaps the company's strategies at the same time he wags his finger at what he portrays as the hopelessly bland marketing of U.S. domestic automakers.

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Our critics are our friends, they show us our faults

Benjamin Franklin, an American patriot, inventor, journalist, printer, diplomat, & statesman

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"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle."

Inspirational Quote by Steve Jobs of Apple | Pixar

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Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.

Great Quote by Sam Walton, leader and founder of Sam's Club & Walmart

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5 Dysfunctions of a Team - Lencioni's Pyramid on Building Better Teams

The pyramid of the five dysfunctions of a team (in order of importance, from the bottom, up): 1) Absence of trust: stemming from an unwillingness in the team members to be vulnerable and genuinely open up with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses. 2) Fear of conflict: inability to engage in unfiltered, passionate (yet constructive, though it may strike you as odd) debate. 3) Lack of commitment: no buy in and commitment can be expected when ideas and opinions have not been aired and genuinely taken into consideration prior to a decision. 4) Avoidance of accountability: without commitment to a clearly defined set of goals, team members will hesitate to call their colleagues on their actions and behaviors that are counterproductive for the team. 5) Inattention to results: Lencioni brings it all home through the realization that avoidance of accountability leads to a state where team members tend to put their individual needs above the team's collective goals.

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The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing

English Philosopher Edmund Burke

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Does this sound familar? Teenagers, amusing images, sharing only with trusted friends? In some ways, Tumblr is actually Facebook 2.0! As Facebook has become a real-life social network infested with parents, co-workers, ex-friends, and people you barely know, Tumblr has become the place where young people express themselves and their ACTUAL INTERESTS with their ACTUAL FRIENDS. And Tumblr is growing — it’s now one of the top 10 websites in the United States, with 20 billion pageviews a month. The tremendous user engagement is enabling the company to quietly and discreetly build a powerful Interest Graph of things its users actually like and want to share. Read more about Tumblr on TechCrunch >>

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TechCrunch: CoverHound Lands $4.5M From RRE, Bullpen & Blumberg To Become The Kayak Of Online Insurance

Car insurance is a necessary evil for all drivers. Of course, if you don’t happen to be accident prone, paying expensive monthly or annual bills is a headache and seems equivalent to setting your wallet on fire. Of course, insurance companies are great at reminding us that the world is a wild and dangerous place and that more coverage equals better protection from the vagaries of the road and those costly surprises. Plus, there’s the fact that auto insurance is required by law.

So, as with airline tickets, hotels and many other necessary purchasing decisions, drivers want to be able to comparison shop for the best rates, deals and packages to limit costs and make an informed buy. In spite of the millions the big insurance companies spend on marketing, the industry remains inefficient, search and discovery is still messy and there really hasn’t been much innovation in recent memory. That’s why CoverHound launched its comparative insurance platform last summer — to introduce transparency and simplicity to insurance shopping.

Founded by veterans of insurance companies like InsWeb, Unitrin Direct and State Farm, the San Francisco-based startup is building a platform that provides consumers with instant, accurate and actionable rates from top carriers. Incubated alongside companies like Astrid, Kismet and Crittercism as a graduate of AngelPad’s startup accelerator, CoverHound allows everyday drivers to not only compare policies by buy and manage their plans directly through its platform.

With the number of policies sold through the platform growing by over 60 percent month-over-month, CoverHound is announcing today that it has raised a $4.5 million round of series A financing led by RRE Ventures. Bullpen Capital and existing investor Blumberg Capital also contributed to the round, which brings the startup’s total funding to $6.5 million.

While plenty of the largest insurance companies offer comparative rates, CoverHound wants to become the Kayak of personal insurance, a destination that aggregates rates from all the major carriers and acts as an independent insurance agency. Carriers themselves have to hold and support the policies their customers purchase, while issuing and upholding the risk associated with each plan.

By remaining independent, CoverHound isn’t tied to the same risks that issuers are subject to with their customers/shareholders, however, the startup wants to make sure that it doesn’t allow its model to turn into a use to be a hands-off-type middleman.

Instead, the startup provides ongoing service to its policyholders, monitoring and adapting their policies as their needs change in attempt to ensure that they’re getting the best fit and pricing. It does this, in part, by providing its customers with access to professional advice both online and over the phone during the shopping process via its in-house team of insurance professionals.

The platform collects users’ basic personal information and what kind of policy the’re looking for, at which point it presents a list of prices and plans for the user to review. The startup has partnered with carriers like Travelers, GMAC, Safeco, Progressive and others to provide consumers with accurate, personalized rates.

The company is also attacking the B2B2C side of the industry with a portable “Storefront” that enables financial institutions to provide their customers with CoverHound’s rate comparisons and personalized policy vehicle. In other words, with a single snippet of code, banks and institutions can offer the startup’s insurance rates and policies, adding car insurance to the services they already provide online, like loans and credit cards, along with getting access to a supplemental revenue stream.

Now in over 30 states in the U.S., the startup plans to use its new funding to expand its support nationwide, ramp up hiring and continue to pursue partnerships with brands looking to power their own insurance channels. While it’s been primarily focused on auto insurance, CoverHound has begun to move into homeowners and motorcycle insurance and plans to build out support for other personal insurance products.

The startup declined to share specifics on its monetization (although, like any other insurance agent, CoverHound is paid a percentage of the premium for every policy they sell) or how much it’s been able to save its customers on insurance policies, which isn’t always a good sign; granted, it’s still in the early going.

Consumers are increasingly going online to research and discover the best insurance services and solutions, and this macro change in consumer purchasing behavior can work in CoverHound’s favor. Of course, while the online insurance shopping market is growing steadily, there are still plenty of options for insurance shoppers.

The big insurance providers have already established significant presences on the Web, and carriers like Progressive have been loudly touting their comparison shopping tools for years now in TV commercials that seem to air every five seconds. What’s more, the model feels more than a little familiar, to a degree derivative of web insurance pioneers like Esurance, which was the first platform to offer comparison quotes online. Progressive sold to Allstate in 2011 for $1 billion, and this consolidation could work in the startup’s favor.

If CoverHound is able to prove that its algorithmic comparison shopping engine is more refined and its service more personalized and consumer-friendly than these incumbents, there’s no reason to think it couldn’t be a huge business. But there are a lot of options and a lot of noise in this space, and while insurance of every stripe is always in need of greater transparency, startups have to work extremely hard to stand out.

What’s more, CoverHound is competing not just with giants like Progressive and Esurance but brokers as well, who essentially do their own comparison shopping to provide their clients with better deals. In the end, it’s all about who can offer the best rates, and certainly CoverHound could have a leg up by automating comparison shopping and removing the friction.

“We’ve spent the past year building an insanely complex comparison engine that allows users to sift through tens of thousands of different carrier and coverage combinations to help them discover the policy with the best value. But we’re really just getting started,” said CoverHound founder and CEO Basil Enan. “Our dream is to become the brand that consumers trust for all of their insurance needs.”

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Stanford's ENCORE Award Winner for 2012 Entrepreneurial Company of the Year: LinkedIn

Congratulations to LinkedIn for being recognized as Stanford's 2012 ENCORE Award winner!

In the late 1970s, the Peninsula Chapter of the Stanford Business School Alumni Association saw an opportunity to recognize the entrepreneurial spirit of the companies springing up in Silicon Valley. The Chapter created the Entrepreneur of the Year (ENCORE) Award and the first honor was given to the CEO of ROLM Corporation in 1977.

After five years of honoring CEOs of innovative companies, it became clear that a company's success was based on the contributions of many people rather than one individual, so the award was changed to the Entrepreneurial Company of the Year.

The ENCORE Award event is now sponsored by the Stanford Business School Alumni Association.

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Zillow, Inc. (NASDAQ: Z), the leading real estate information marketplace, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Mortech, Inc. , a mortgage technology company that provides essential software tools to the mortgage industry, for approximately $12 million in cash and 150,000 shares of restricted stock. The transaction is subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2012. This acquisition accelerates the development of Zillow® Mortgage Marketplace, Zillow's lending marketplace where borrowers can connect instantly with reputable lenders to get personalized loan options and real-time mortgage rates. Now Zillow will deliver valuable marketing and productivity solutions to mortgage professionals to help them manage their business, and convert more borrower contacts to funded loans. Currently on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, borrowers submit more than 1 million loan requests per month and receive on average 25 customized quotes, which they can compare alongside over 22,000 lender reviews. "We are following our proven strategy of building home-related marketplaces. In the case of Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, we first innovated on behalf of consumers by creating a transparent marketplace where the borrowers' needs come first, then we connected borrowers with lenders, and now we are investing in tools to help lenders be even more successful serving consumers," said Spencer Rascoff, Zillow's CEO. "Enhancing the capabilities of mortgage lenders ultimately leads to a more vibrant and transparent consumer experience." Founded in 1987, Mortech™ is based in Lincoln, Neb. and has 39 employees. Mortech's subscription-based software solutions include: > A product and pricing engine to help lenders quickly match the right mortgage products to the needs of a borrower at the best prices > A lead management platform to help lenders efficiently serve borrowers from multiple channels both online and offline > Marketing tools to keep lenders' brand and rate quotes in front of borrowers throughout the mortgage shopping process "At Mortech, we are focused on helping mortgage professionals do a better job at closing deals through a variety of best-in-class productivity tools," said Don Kracl, president of Mortech. "We're thrilled to join the Zillow team, which has demonstrated a deep commitment to empowering both consumers and professionals in the mortgage industry through their innovative mortgage marketplace. Becoming part of Zillow will enable us to broaden the reach of our product and deliver even better technology solutions to lenders." Mortech will continue to operate from its Nebraska office. Mortech will be the fifth acquisition by Zillow in two years, and its first in the mortgage sector. The company last week announced the acquisition of Buyfolio™, an online and mobile collaborative shopping platform where home shoppers can search, track, organize and discuss for-sale listings with their real estate agent and others in their personal network. In June 2012, Zillow acquired RentJuice®, the foundation of Zillow Rentals. In 2011, the company acquired Postlets®, a leading online real estate listing creation and distribution platform and Diverse Solutions®, which helps real estate agents market their businesses and improve their personal websites. Each of these companies provide valuable services that support Zillow's strategic expansion beyond a traditional media model to offer a suite of marketing and business services to local professionals. About Zillow, Inc. Zillow (NASDAQ: Z) is the leading real estate information marketplace, providing vital information about homes, real estate listings and mortgages through its website and mobile applications, enabling homeowners, buyers, sellers and renters to connect with real estate and mortgage professionals best suited to meet their needs. More than 35 million unique users visited Zillow's websites and mobile applications in September 2012. Zillow, Inc. operates Zillow.com®, Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, Zillow Mobile, Postlets, Diverse Solutions, Zillow Rentals and Buyfolio. The company is headquartered in Seattle. Zillow.com, Zillow, Postlets, Diverse Solutions and RentJuice are registered trademarks of Zillow, Inc. Buyfolio is a trademark of Zillow, Inc. Mortech is a trademark of Mortech, Inc. SOURCE Zillow, Inc.