We dive deep into our sectors. Our research drives our insights and thesis-driven approach.

The Equal Ventures Insurance Index is a quarterly summary of public equity performance in the P&C insurance industry. This post summarizes Q3 2024 performance of our insurance indices, and aims to highlight key themes and trends underlying the price action. As always, our goal is to help support observers of the insurance industry in identifying key drivers and catalysts (and not to recommend any specific investments).

Recently, we’ve seen incredible interest in AI-enabled services. We’ve long been believers in technology’s potential to unleash value in service businesses (previous investments include companies like Vettery, Block Renovations and Leap), but we think it’s essential to determine the scope and sustainability of technology’s impact on a company’s economic performance to determine if the thesis makes sense. We refer to this as “measuring the moat”.

As many know, Equal’s journey as an Emerging Manager has not been a straight forward one. I left my job at Lightbank in 2018 with zero knowledge of raising a fund or managing LP relationships. I had delivered returns for my prior fund and felt confident there was a gap in the market for our product, but I vastly underestimated the challenges ahead. I’ve unveiled some of those challenges and will choose to keep others private to my inner circle, but the process of starting and sustaining Equal remains one of the most trying experiences of my life.

As we (and others) have written about in recent months, the venture market is experiencing some systemic challenges that have the potential to depress returns for some time. Simply put, there is too much capital seeking too few opportunities, particularly at the seed stage. Multi-stage firms have eliminated pricing discipline at seed stage and the proliferation of seed firms has made the task of investing at this stage as competitive as it’s ever been, leading me to believe that indexed seed investing in today’s environment will produce poor returns.

1 day, 5 keynotes, 30 speakers, 400 attendees, and an astounding 4,500 people on the waitlist. The second annual Climate Capital Summit hosted by Equal Ventures is officially in the books!