7 ms·

Leaky (YC S11) is Hipmunk for Car Insurance

162 points by jasontraff 15y ago

vaksel 15y ago
um, is it me or aren't there like a hundred other insurance comparison sites? Granted I'm not sure if they are realtime, but insurance lead generation is a MAJOR business. I'd think a site that makes 40 million a year off lead generation would be able to offer anything like this as well.
salem 15y ago
I'm looking forward to using this. I hope it exposes a certain insurance companies practice of underinsuring people to make it appear they are cheaper and get the sale. Save 15 minutes to get less insurance than you need, for more than it would cost elsewhere...
jerrya 15y ago
It's probably a terrific service and I look forward to using it, but wow, just to get a quote I have to give out enough information to own me good, not just in cyberspace but IRL. Name DOB Address Make, model, year of car Drivers License Optional Social Security Sex Marital Status Student/military affiliation Optional Employer Optional Professional/Alumni Associations
- zacharycohn 15y ago
  It's the same information you'd have to give out to any insurance provider...
  - jerrya 15y ago
    That could be -- it's been awhile since I checked. There does seem to be a bit of chicken and egg barrier though. I may be willing to give out this information to allstate.com or statefarm.com or progressive.com but I am not sure I or others will be as willing to give it out to leaky.com. Maybe they are awesome, and maybe it's just me, but if you want me to give this information out on the spur of the moment, I guess I would like a site that somehow exudes a bit more trust.
    - zacharycohn 15y ago
      Are you speaking from your perspective, or from the perspective of Random Joe User? The fact that they're YC backed at earns my trust, at least to the extent that they're not planning anything malicious with my data (not necessarily trust that their security is competent).
      - jerrya 15y ago
        I'm speaking from my perspective of other's perspectives. That they are YC backed encouraged me to click and try it out. Otherwise, I would probably not have clicked at all. (But YC backing isn't really enough for me to eagerly give out all that information, not until pg and yc is providing ebay like yc-clickers-insurance on their portfolio. :) ) Regarding the average user, I suspect that insurance companies have names like Prudential, All State, State Farm, and symbols like the Rock of Gibraltar, big old granite columned buildings, and stuffy images for a reason. And um, leaky isn't doing it for me. ymmv
        tptacek 15y ago
        I think you're wrong. For instance, there are health insurance search sites that demand more than this, and there's clearly enough affiliate money in health insurance to keep those things up and running. I think you're probably just a part of a small sliver of the market that is hypersensitive to this stuff.
        ericd 15y ago
        What is an acceptable outcome for the operators of those sites may not be acceptable for an angel or VC funded startup.
- mahyarm 15y ago
  How is that different than esurance.com, a close competitor?
  - jerrya 15y ago
    It may not be. I was just going to Progressive which I think does something similar and iirc they say if they can't get you the best quote themselves, they're okay with that. Otoh, how IS leaky different from esurance? I don't understand that from their website either.
    - mey 15y ago
      esurance and progressive actually sell insurance. This site appears to be an aggregation who gets revenue through referral bonuses.
      - marvinkennis 15y ago
        But for the users, that wouldn't really matter?
  - mtogo 15y ago
    Esurance is an insurance company, leaky is an aggrigator for insurance prices.
grep 15y ago
I'm wondering how they are going to reach users. Given that PPC for "insurance" can cost $50++ per click, how to reach users?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- prawn 15y ago
  Word of mouth will work if the benefit is there.
Hisoka 15y ago
So they get paid once for every affiliate they refer. Seems like a site someone will visit once or twice in their lifetime.. and not a "sticky" site like Reddit. What are they going to do if Google penalizes their site (even by mistake) for something incredibly dumb, and they lose all their traffic, and all their income because it's not recurring revenue?
- hugh3 15y ago
  Seems like a site someone will visit once or twice in their lifetime If you're smart, you'll visit every six months and see whether someone else is cheaper. At the very least you should visit every time you get a new car. If they're smart they'll send you a reminder email every six months to get you to try again every time your insurance is up for renewal. Heck, they could recalculate everything for you (based on the new set of assumptions) and email you a set of quotes -- that's one semi-spammy email I wouldn't mind getting at all. However, I can't get the site to work. Maybe it's getting hammered, maybe it doesn't work yet, maybe there's something iffy about my input (I did put in a fake licence number because I was too lazy to find my real one). All I'm getting is a bunch of "N/A"s. Never mind, I renewed my car insurance last month anyway, so they've got four months to fix it.
  - wheels 15y ago
    If they're smart they'll send you a reminder email every six months [...] Eventually that would just drive down the affiliate fees. The reason that they're (presumably) high is that they've factored in the lifetime value of a customer. If you systematically lower that, then the referral fees will follow.
    - hugh3 15y ago
      Perhaps, but you'd get more of 'em. Still, lifetime value, really? I admit that I've been letting my car insurance roll over from year to year because I'm too lazy to go looking for new quotes (though this site, once it's working, will significantly lower that barrier) but next time I get a new car I'll certainly shop around to see who'll give me a good rate.
ccollins 15y ago
Heads up guys: I am getting 500 errors when I enter a zip code on your site.
- mey 15y ago
  ditto
  - darrennix 15y ago
    Our database servers aren't able to handle the traffic. We're working on increasing space.
    - wuster 15y ago
      Curious: are you guys using cloud infrastructure or using your own machines?
      - darrennix 15y ago
        Cloud. Turns out it was an issue with whether you landed on http://www.leaky.com http://www.leaky.com or http://leaky.com http://leaky.com. 302 Redirect has now fixed some of the errors.
    - KingOfB 15y ago
      Was able to get through a ways, but I'm hanging on Farmers insurance. Hope you saved a cookie so I don't have to re-enter that... Never thought I'd say that !
puls 15y ago
I got a 500 error after entering my ZIP code. So much for that.
sahillavingia 15y ago
Great idea, but I think you should differentiate a little bit more from Square, design-wise: http://www.leaky.com/ http://www.leaky.com/ vs. https://squareup.com/ https://squareup.com/ EDIT: I realize they say "until we can hire a designer of our own." — but don't they have the Start Fund + YC + SV Angel money?
- benologist 15y ago
  Down the bottom it says they actually derived their layout from Square till they can get their own designer.
  - prawn 15y ago
    It's a bit more than just the layout - the colours and look and feel are almost completely identical.
    - benologist 15y ago
      Right, but they actually say that on their website!
      - prawn 15y ago
        Is that alright these days? If they're pals, fine, but otherwise?
        tptacek 15y ago
        It is definitely not alright. They must have permission. An acceptable looking ThemeForest template is a $20 cash outlay; who would risk their launch over this?
      - wuster 15y ago
        This is just a sign of a helpful startup ecosystem. I don't see anything wrong with this arrangement.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
ck2 15y ago
Wow, quotes without having to get a credit and background check on every insurance site? Oh wait, DOB and SS# and driver's license? Um, NO - there is no need for this kind of info to get a general quote - I've had it with big insurance harvesting personal info. There really ought to be a law. Car insurance quote should be three questions: 1. What zip code do you live in 2. What year were you born 3. What do you drive (and obviously if you've had accidents recently) Insurance tables shouldn't work like they do. What they are trying to figure out from all your personal info is if you own or rent, where you work, how many times you have moved recently, etc. That's a bunch of bull.
- rorrr 15y ago
  No, insurance depends on your previous fuckups, so you definitely need DOB and SSN. Otherwise they might misquote you, which can end up in court.
  - jahmed 15y ago
    There's usually some disclaimer saying this is just a quote and may differ from the actually policy written for you.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      Yes, and the price difference between the hypothetical quote and the real quote is so big as to make the hypo quote irrelevant. Insurance quotes that don't take your PI are bait-and-switch ploys, not services. A smart thing to do here might be to figure out a way to do progressive quotes/queries; take the DOB+zip+car information just to start, then let the user decide whether the variance in the results (which will be the best-case ones) merit coughing up more info.
      - almightygod 15y ago
        So as a hypothetical ignorant consumer, they'd bait me into providing more information. The effort to get my initial quote would require significantly less data - I'd see the results, like what I see (a.k.a. establish trust) and then it wouldn't be much more effort to get that SSN/DOB at that point.
rjett 15y ago
Filling out the survey was a breeze but it took at least 3 minutes to calculate quotes and then when it was finished, it listed quotes for each insurer as N/A... buggy and anticlimactic. I'll check back later when they've worked kinks out.
krisneuharth 15y ago
Am I missing something about the name? Leaky abstraction? It sounds more like a service targeting people in need of a plumbing repair quote.
- ebiester 15y ago
  Or, at least homeowner's insurance. The last thing I want my car to do is go "leak."
yid 15y ago
Just curious -- how are you guys storing all this super-personal information, or is it ephemeral while you make API calls to various insurance provider backends? That's quite the identity theft kit that I'm being asked to upload to a site called "leaky".
- darrennix 15y ago
  The information is transmitted via HTTPS to the carrier. Once your session on Leaky ends, the data is gone -- there is no data store.
  - yid 15y ago
    Interesting -- so are you ruling out the possibility of storing the data in the future for features like periodically checking for updates in my rate? That sounds like a killer feature (that I would even be willing to pay a subscription for), but then I'd also want to be damn sure that you're storing that data well. EDIT: in fact, for a subscription based service, you could figure out the optimal pricing quite easily. If the annual price of your subscription were less than the typical insurance savings by having it monitored, you'd have a hell of a business model.
    - jasontraff 15y ago
      Yeah -- we'd certainly love to, but we didn't think that we'd be able to securely store the data at the moment -- so we didn't want to risk it. That's absolutely a feature that we'd like to implement though!
      - lurker19 15y ago
        Protip: Consumers don't care about security.
  - qeorge 15y ago
    That implies you're keeping such information with my session (across requests). Is that the case? I may just be misunderstanding. If so, you need to encrypt it first. Storing sensitive data in the user's session is akin to writing it to disk in plaintext.
craigmc 15y ago
In the UK pretty much every second advert on TV is for a car insurance price comparison site. The 3rd best selling book last Christmas was the fictional account of the character of one of these adverts (a meerkat called Aleksandr). Meanwhile the market leader is a FTSE 250 company. As such I couldn't believe it when I read (in the TC article) that Leaky is the first (or even the 10th) real-time aggregator in the US. These sort of sites aren't a perfect solution by any means, but a large % of people in the UK now use them to buy car insurance, and so presumably Leaky is on the road (see what I did there...) to being a household name by doing the same thing in the US.
- jasontraff 15y ago
  Hi Craig, yes -- we too someday we hope to have a mascot as cute as Aleksandr
  - craigmc 15y ago
    They've even started giving you a free Aleksandr when you use Comparethemarket.com... Which was almost enough to get me to switch my loyalty from Confused.com. Of course in the States you guys have that old bloke and his gecko to compete with... and he has pretty deep pockets ;)
pplante 15y ago
Maybe its just me, but I hate the idea of giving all my personal information to a site called leaky. It fails to instill confidence. The design is pleasing on the eyes, thanks square!
watty 15y ago
Is there an option to hide the (YC ##) spam?
- jergason 15y ago
  A greasemonkey script would do it pretty easily. That is the traditional HN solution, it seems.
JunkDNA 15y ago
Congrats on launching! Some comments: 1)Even though I know you guys are from YC (and not for example the Russian mob). I still bailed when you asked for my driver's license # and SSN. It's not enough for you to just say "trust us". 2) I checked it out from the couch quickly on my iPhone. The experience was not that good. The form drop-downs were slow loading and left me staring at empty pick lists. I had to scroll side to side to read the label on each field. 3) I was prompted twice to enter my email as an early adopter (once for each car I was entering presumably). This did not instill me with confidence about supplying personal info. Hope that's info you guys can use. Good luck!
iwd32900 15y ago
After going through all that, I just get a page full of "N/A" as quotes. Cool idea though.
- jasontraff 15y ago
  Sorry about that -- something seems to have slipped through and we're working to replicate the errors and fix them.
- prestia 15y ago
  Same here. I actually have to renew my policy by September 1, so I was hoping this would be a fun experiment!
- mark242 15y ago
  Yes, total and complete fail, after going through what seems like a pretty standard 2-driver use case. There's no sort of progress meter, so I don't know how long I have to wait, and after the N/A quotes there's still a spinner running, so I'm unsure as to whether I should wait, or what. Idea: great. Execution: really sub-par.
mtogo 15y ago
Hmm.. the mixed content on the homepage is not very reassuring about your security practices, esp. with all the personal information you're asking for.
joelmichael 15y ago
There is actually another company that has this concept: CoverHound. I'm one of the co-founders. We started a few months before Leaky. We went through the AngelPad incubator during the Winter 2011 class. TechCrunch covered us in a little blurb at the time. Since then we've received VC funding and have built out our team a little bit. There's no publicly available pricing API for insurance carriers yet, so I'm curious as to how Leaky comes up with their numbers.
- InfinityX0 15y ago
  You need more clarity on the homepage. It's obvious that it's car insurance but the process is information->information->start, which Leaky makes it obvious and it basically goes start->figure it out. Get the user started on the conversion funnel while you explain to them what the service does - I'm pretty certain (based on my lead generation experience) that this will end in a far superior conversion rate for you.
  - slouch 15y ago
    I agree with this guy. CoverHound.com reads like the envelopes I get from Progressive...a few pages more than I am willing to read. edit: To find this page I went to the bottom of the home page, tried to click on the Pennsylvania state outline, clicked the Pennsylvania text link, looked for my car on the most stolen cars lists, found "Car insurance quotes get started" at the bottom http://coverhound.com/step1 http://coverhound.com/step1
- jerrya 15y ago
  I greatly appreciate you will help me find insurance that protects my car from alien abduction. Does that cover me, my passengers, and cow, or is it just for the vehicle itself? :) http://i.imgur.com/B9zdt.png http://i.imgur.com/B9zdt.png http://coverhound.com/ http://coverhound.com/
- lacker 15y ago
  I don't think it's really the same concept. On Leaky, you type in your information once, and then they show you insurance quotes. Whereas CoverHound just gives me links to insurance companies' websites, and then I have to fill out my information on each of those websites. If I were you guys, I would switch to the Leaky model, because it seems a lot easier for the user to only type in their information once.
jamiequint 15y ago
It just hangs here for me after I took the time to fill in all that information: http://o7.no/pHl2qg http://o7.no/pHl2qg Do you have plans already for filling the top of the funnel here? Its going to be really hard to compete with established businesses buying traffic in this market.
philfreo 15y ago
We need a Hipmunk for pretty much every type of insurance...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
akent 15y ago
Perhaps I've just not been paying attention, but I'd never really heard of Hipmunk before. The "X for Y" only works if X is sufficiently common. Surely better to define in simple terms what the site actually does.
rglover 15y ago
Not sure why they ripped off Square so blindly (and no "All design credit goes to Square. We based our design on their home page until we can hire a designer of our own." doesn't cut it), but I'll be honest, that discouraged me from using their app. It's the little things that matter, folks.
- jcc80 15y ago
  I think they ripped it off because Square's design is great. And, personally I think it's pretty decent they acknowledge it. I've seen plenty of designs ripped off and nobody ever has the guts to give credit.
muppetman 15y ago
Am I the only one that thinks "I don't want to type my personal details into leaky!" What a bizzare name choice. Looks like a good product though, but isn't this sort of thing fairly old? Or is it just new for car insurance? These sort of price comparison websites have been the staple of UK Prime Time TV advertising for the last 3 years.
martingordon 15y ago
If I'm going to be handing over my personal information to someone, I don't want it to be to some fly-by-night operation. I'm not saying you guys are but you need to eliminate all appearances of it: 1. Hide the About Us page, or make it less specific (instead of "four guys", call it a "team of entrepreneurs". A grainy cell phone picture of the team playing video games in lawn chairs with a messy coffee table doesn't lend any more confidence to the average consumer. 2. Get rid of the "design credit goes to Square until we can hire a designer". The average consumer will wonder why you haven't hired a designer yet and will be turned off by whatever answer you give them. 3. This one is more for the nerds than the average consumer (though the average person might spot that something is wrong even if they can't pinpoint it): that iPad on the homepage is badly photoshopped (it's extra wide and the Safari toolbar doesn't extend the width of the screen). 4. The word leaky has a negative connotation. Your product offers a positive outcome (saving money on car insurance), so you need to come up with a more positive name for your business.
- vaksel 15y ago
  yeah #4 could mean that they leak your information to identity thieves.
- wyclif 15y ago
  Re: #4. The name is not working for me. "Leaky" in association with anything vehicular is not one you want to make. Even without that association, the thought of anything leaking is not a pleasant one, esp. with young potential customers who are the intended user base. See other recent posts submitted here (from DHH and others) about how expensive, short, .com domains aren't necessarily essential for launching.
- AltIvan 15y ago
  https://leaky.com/about_us/ https://leaky.com/about_us/ Alcohol, video-games and four guys that couldn't get together for a photo in formal suits... introduction, you are doing it wrong.
  - johnx123-up 15y ago
pitdesi 15y ago
We are very similar but in a b2b space... http://feefighters.com http://feefighters.com - Love what you guys do... it is in many ways exactly what we do (as for the site layout, hey - it looks good!)... The trick is convincing people that what you're providing is different from the standard lead gen sites. You've done a good job in the description, but people will always be wary. Drop me a line if you want to talk shop Question: anyone know if someone has a similar model in the health insurance space? It's sorely needed.
jergason 15y ago
One slight UX issue: The "Next" buttons seem like they have two different controls on them. I wasn't sure if clicking the arrow would do something different than clicking the text of the button. I think it would be more clear without the extra arrows on the buttons.
lozofsky 15y ago
Interesting site. But not really new. I work at Answer Financial (www.answerfinancial.com) we're a national auto and home insurance agency that represents over 20 insurance carriers. You can get quotes and buy online from our carriers in 49 states. We do this via direct XML connections into the carriers we've contracted with. We're also the company that powers comparative quotes on esurance.com (our sister company). I very much like this concept though, its much like Confused.com in the UK as the techcrunch article pointed out. The challenge is getting enough carriers to actively participate so there's a high quality customer experience. I would guess Leaky is screen scraping the carrier sites. A bit easier in CA since you can't use credit scoring to price auto insurance here.
auston 15y ago
This is quite interesting! I suppose your plans are to revolutionize the entire Insurance industry? I personally know how bass-ackwards it is to get a quote for things like general liability. Is there any chance you guys are going to break into the commercial insurance space? I'd love to talk to you!
dfc 15y ago
Who is hipmunk? i am not a huge start up junkie so I am assuming it is another YC funded company. On your actual website you say you are orbitz for car insurance. I would stick with the orbitz analogy. (Or is it simile, i always forgot which is which.)
- akent 15y ago
  Who are Orbitz? Why not just explain what the site does without namechecking other companies.
  - dfc 15y ago
    Come on you have never heard of Orbitz?
    - akent 15y ago
      I kid you not, I have only vaguely heard of Orbitz before now. Suspect it is US-centric? A generic term for this kind of thing might be "price comparison".
      - dfc 15y ago
        I guess it is US centric. I was going to try and make a marmalade joke/comparison/analogy but could not come up with anything that was funny:) I guess if you have never heard of orbitz you most likely are not in the market for american car insurance. On a side note everyone talks about how global the internet is but I wonder how many "internet based services" outside of media portals are actually global...
sendos 15y ago
Besides the name issue (leaky) and the giving-your-sensitive-data-to-a-small-startup issue, one other thing that I question is how sticky is this startup? That is, how often will you visit it? Once a year, tops. If you find an insurance that you are happy with, you'll likely stick with it for a couple years at least, and there is no reason to visit this website during these years. Given the above, I don't see how they can ever make a ton of money.
- waterlesscloud 15y ago
  I suspect that the referral fees from the insurance companies are paid out as percentage of the premium for the life of the policy. If so, that would add up fast.
  - sendos 15y ago
    Assuming people pay ~$500/year, and assuming 200 million drivers, and leaky gets x% of the drivers and y% of each premium, then they get $10xy million per year If x% is 1%, and y% is 1%, that leads to about $10 million per year. Not too bad, if they can get those sorts of numbers for x and y. One question would be, how long will people use them for, once they find a good insurance company? I've stuck with one insurance company for the last 10 years. I suspect that x will start low, and then grow as the company becomes known, and then shrink as people stop using it.
- philwelch 15y ago
  If you've turned on a TV at all in the past several years, you'll see there's TONS of money in getting people to switch car insurance providers.
blackboxxx 15y ago
The name "Leaky" is such an obviously lousy name, I'm suspicious it's a marketing ploy. Are you going to change your name a few weeks from now to get more ink from Techcrunch et al? It's the only reason my mind can fathom.
JoshTriplett 15y ago
Looking at your homepage, you say "car insurance" in the smaller text, but the big text just says "quotes from every major insurer" and doesn't say "car"; you also don't have any images anywhere that hint at which type of insurance. Since you very specifically cover car insurance, you should make that more clear. I'd also really appreciate it if you added "why do we ask this" flyouts next to each field. For instance, when you ask about home ownership, you don't actually provide homeowner's insurance, so you should make it clear why: "Some car insurance companies give you a discount if you own your own home." For some reason, the text "(including your spouse)" seemed like an odd bit of reminder text. Do people forget this often? In any case, the flyout reminders could help here too, since you could add more detail: "This includes anyone who will drive any of your vehicles---you, your spouse, your kids, etc"
Stratego 15y ago
Who gives a shit about appearances, nothing looks more respectable on the surface than insurance companies, yet they are some the most opaque and dubious businesses there is. This is precisely what the insurance business needs, a breath of fresh Web air. I'll be eagerly waiting for this service to make it to Florida. Good luck guys.
FraaJad 15y ago
Sorry guys, but you have to work on the delivery a lot more. I spent not less than 15 minutes filling out all the information on your site and the site back with NOTHING. The quotation page kept spinning and spinning. My experience with regular insurance company websites has been a lot better and that's why they have my money. I gave my(and my spouse's) personal info and time because this is a YC venture. Disappointing.
krschultz 15y ago
So I ran my information through even though I'm not really in the market for changing since I just just switched a few months ago. - The homepage is hit or miss, the pictures really conveys what youare about but there are a lot of words clouding the message - I thought the interface was very responsive and intuitive through the initial steps - I didn't like how the 'options for coverage' was buried below the fold, everything looks cheap when they offer $50k/100K liability, you really have to compare apples to apples on that page if you want to tell me how much I am saving - I only was shown a quote from 1 insurance company, that's no big deal for me right now but obviously that limits the usefulness, I got a prompt saying 'we're not available in your area' and took my email so at least you won't lose customers who see what I'm seeing right now - [BUG] The 6 month premium shown in the left hand column with all the insurance companies is different than the 6 month premium shown in the 'buy now' box.
Shenglong 15y ago
An note about claims histories: When I worked briefly for an UK-based insurance company, I realized they had a strange policy: non-fault claims raise your premium more than at-fault claims. Why? Because statistically, they've found that people who get into a non-fault claim typically end up in a serious at-fault claim within the next two years. Creepy huh? If there is no API available for the US carriers, I'm very curious as to how internal information like this is being collected.
flomincucci 15y ago
I actually worked for a company making a product exactly like this, but for Argentina. They launched almost 6 months ago: http://www.123seguro.com.ar http://www.123seguro.com.ar
seasoup 15y ago
What would be neat instead of filling out a bunch of questions and then getting results would be to list one question at a time and have it adjust your estimated totals as you complete questions. You could spin it positive by listing your savings, starting with $0 and as people fill in information, have it raise their savings based on the information they fill in. And don't require people to fill in all of their information, allow them to bail out at any time and go get the insurance. You could even have people enter their current rate and compare what you can get them against that, so they see themselves saving more and more. That would actually end up being kind of fun to fill out, and I would be enticed to enter more and more information to see if I saved more. If I do not save more, I would want an indication of why for that question I did not save more. You could contract with a game designer for this, since they have experience making things fun.

162 points by jasontraff 15y ago

um, is it me or aren't there like a hundred other insurance comparison sites? Granted I'm not sure if they are realtime, but insurance lead generation is a MAJOR business. I'd think a site that makes 40 million a year off lead generation would be able to offer anything like this as well.

salem 15y ago

I'm looking forward to using this. I hope it exposes a certain insurance companies practice of underinsuring people to make it appear they are cheaper and get the sale. Save 15 minutes to get less insurance than you need, for more than it would cost elsewhere...

jerrya 15y ago

It's probably a terrific service and I look forward to using it, but wow, just to get a quote I have to give out enough information to own me good, not just in cyberspace but IRL. Name DOB Address Make, model, year of car Drivers License Optional Social Security Sex Marital Status Student/military affiliation Optional Employer Optional Professional/Alumni Associations

zacharycohn 15y ago
It's the same information you'd have to give out to any insurance provider...
- jerrya 15y ago
  That could be -- it's been awhile since I checked. There does seem to be a bit of chicken and egg barrier though. I may be willing to give out this information to allstate.com or statefarm.com or progressive.com but I am not sure I or others will be as willing to give it out to leaky.com. Maybe they are awesome, and maybe it's just me, but if you want me to give this information out on the spur of the moment, I guess I would like a site that somehow exudes a bit more trust.
  - zacharycohn 15y ago
    Are you speaking from your perspective, or from the perspective of Random Joe User? The fact that they're YC backed at earns my trust, at least to the extent that they're not planning anything malicious with my data (not necessarily trust that their security is competent).
    - jerrya 15y ago
      I'm speaking from my perspective of other's perspectives. That they are YC backed encouraged me to click and try it out. Otherwise, I would probably not have clicked at all. (But YC backing isn't really enough for me to eagerly give out all that information, not until pg and yc is providing ebay like yc-clickers-insurance on their portfolio. :) ) Regarding the average user, I suspect that insurance companies have names like Prudential, All State, State Farm, and symbols like the Rock of Gibraltar, big old granite columned buildings, and stuffy images for a reason. And um, leaky isn't doing it for me. ymmv
      - tptacek 15y ago
        I think you're wrong. For instance, there are health insurance search sites that demand more than this, and there's clearly enough affiliate money in health insurance to keep those things up and running. I think you're probably just a part of a small sliver of the market that is hypersensitive to this stuff.
        ericd 15y ago
        What is an acceptable outcome for the operators of those sites may not be acceptable for an angel or VC funded startup.
mahyarm 15y ago
How is that different than esurance.com, a close competitor?
- jerrya 15y ago
  It may not be. I was just going to Progressive which I think does something similar and iirc they say if they can't get you the best quote themselves, they're okay with that. Otoh, how IS leaky different from esurance? I don't understand that from their website either.
  - mey 15y ago
    esurance and progressive actually sell insurance. This site appears to be an aggregation who gets revenue through referral bonuses.
    - marvinkennis 15y ago
      But for the users, that wouldn't really matter?
- mtogo 15y ago
  Esurance is an insurance company, leaky is an aggrigator for insurance prices.

grep 15y ago

I'm wondering how they are going to reach users. Given that PPC for "insurance" can cost $50++ per click, how to reach users?

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
prawn 15y ago
Word of mouth will work if the benefit is there.

Hisoka 15y ago

So they get paid once for every affiliate they refer. Seems like a site someone will visit once or twice in their lifetime.. and not a "sticky" site like Reddit. What are they going to do if Google penalizes their site (even by mistake) for something incredibly dumb, and they lose all their traffic, and all their income because it's not recurring revenue?

hugh3 15y ago
Seems like a site someone will visit once or twice in their lifetime If you're smart, you'll visit every six months and see whether someone else is cheaper. At the very least you should visit every time you get a new car. If they're smart they'll send you a reminder email every six months to get you to try again every time your insurance is up for renewal. Heck, they could recalculate everything for you (based on the new set of assumptions) and email you a set of quotes -- that's one semi-spammy email I wouldn't mind getting at all. However, I can't get the site to work. Maybe it's getting hammered, maybe it doesn't work yet, maybe there's something iffy about my input (I did put in a fake licence number because I was too lazy to find my real one). All I'm getting is a bunch of "N/A"s. Never mind, I renewed my car insurance last month anyway, so they've got four months to fix it.
- wheels 15y ago
  If they're smart they'll send you a reminder email every six months [...] Eventually that would just drive down the affiliate fees. The reason that they're (presumably) high is that they've factored in the lifetime value of a customer. If you systematically lower that, then the referral fees will follow.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    Perhaps, but you'd get more of 'em. Still, lifetime value, really? I admit that I've been letting my car insurance roll over from year to year because I'm too lazy to go looking for new quotes (though this site, once it's working, will significantly lower that barrier) but next time I get a new car I'll certainly shop around to see who'll give me a good rate.

ccollins 15y ago

Heads up guys: I am getting 500 errors when I enter a zip code on your site.

mey 15y ago
ditto
- darrennix 15y ago
  Our database servers aren't able to handle the traffic. We're working on increasing space.
  - wuster 15y ago
    Curious: are you guys using cloud infrastructure or using your own machines?
    - darrennix 15y ago
      Cloud. Turns out it was an issue with whether you landed on http://www.leaky.com http://www.leaky.com or http://leaky.com http://leaky.com. 302 Redirect has now fixed some of the errors.
  - KingOfB 15y ago
    Was able to get through a ways, but I'm hanging on Farmers insurance. Hope you saved a cookie so I don't have to re-enter that... Never thought I'd say that !

puls 15y ago

I got a 500 error after entering my ZIP code. So much for that.

sahillavingia 15y ago

Great idea, but I think you should differentiate a little bit more from Square, design-wise: http://www.leaky.com/ http://www.leaky.com/ vs. https://squareup.com/ https://squareup.com/ EDIT: I realize they say "until we can hire a designer of our own." — but don't they have the Start Fund + YC + SV Angel money?

benologist 15y ago
Down the bottom it says they actually derived their layout from Square till they can get their own designer.
- prawn 15y ago
  It's a bit more than just the layout - the colours and look and feel are almost completely identical.
  - benologist 15y ago
    Right, but they actually say that on their website!
    - prawn 15y ago
      Is that alright these days? If they're pals, fine, but otherwise?
      - tptacek 15y ago
        It is definitely not alright. They must have permission. An acceptable looking ThemeForest template is a $20 cash outlay; who would risk their launch over this?
    - wuster 15y ago
      This is just a sign of a helpful startup ecosystem. I don't see anything wrong with this arrangement.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

ck2 15y ago

Wow, quotes without having to get a credit and background check on every insurance site? Oh wait, DOB and SS# and driver's license? Um, NO - there is no need for this kind of info to get a general quote - I've had it with big insurance harvesting personal info. There really ought to be a law. Car insurance quote should be three questions: 1. What zip code do you live in 2. What year were you born 3. What do you drive (and obviously if you've had accidents recently) Insurance tables shouldn't work like they do. What they are trying to figure out from all your personal info is if you own or rent, where you work, how many times you have moved recently, etc. That's a bunch of bull.

rorrr 15y ago
No, insurance depends on your previous fuckups, so you definitely need DOB and SSN. Otherwise they might misquote you, which can end up in court.
- jahmed 15y ago
  There's usually some disclaimer saying this is just a quote and may differ from the actually policy written for you.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    Yes, and the price difference between the hypothetical quote and the real quote is so big as to make the hypo quote irrelevant. Insurance quotes that don't take your PI are bait-and-switch ploys, not services. A smart thing to do here might be to figure out a way to do progressive quotes/queries; take the DOB+zip+car information just to start, then let the user decide whether the variance in the results (which will be the best-case ones) merit coughing up more info.
    - almightygod 15y ago
      So as a hypothetical ignorant consumer, they'd bait me into providing more information. The effort to get my initial quote would require significantly less data - I'd see the results, like what I see (a.k.a. establish trust) and then it wouldn't be much more effort to get that SSN/DOB at that point.

rjett 15y ago

Filling out the survey was a breeze but it took at least 3 minutes to calculate quotes and then when it was finished, it listed quotes for each insurer as N/A... buggy and anticlimactic. I'll check back later when they've worked kinks out.

krisneuharth 15y ago

Am I missing something about the name? Leaky abstraction? It sounds more like a service targeting people in need of a plumbing repair quote.

ebiester 15y ago
Or, at least homeowner's insurance. The last thing I want my car to do is go "leak."

yid 15y ago

Just curious -- how are you guys storing all this super-personal information, or is it ephemeral while you make API calls to various insurance provider backends? That's quite the identity theft kit that I'm being asked to upload to a site called "leaky".

darrennix 15y ago
The information is transmitted via HTTPS to the carrier. Once your session on Leaky ends, the data is gone -- there is no data store.
- yid 15y ago
  Interesting -- so are you ruling out the possibility of storing the data in the future for features like periodically checking for updates in my rate? That sounds like a killer feature (that I would even be willing to pay a subscription for), but then I'd also want to be damn sure that you're storing that data well. EDIT: in fact, for a subscription based service, you could figure out the optimal pricing quite easily. If the annual price of your subscription were less than the typical insurance savings by having it monitored, you'd have a hell of a business model.
  - jasontraff 15y ago
    Yeah -- we'd certainly love to, but we didn't think that we'd be able to securely store the data at the moment -- so we didn't want to risk it. That's absolutely a feature that we'd like to implement though!
    - lurker19 15y ago
      Protip: Consumers don't care about security.
- qeorge 15y ago
  That implies you're keeping such information with my session (across requests). Is that the case? I may just be misunderstanding. If so, you need to encrypt it first. Storing sensitive data in the user's session is akin to writing it to disk in plaintext.

craigmc 15y ago

In the UK pretty much every second advert on TV is for a car insurance price comparison site. The 3rd best selling book last Christmas was the fictional account of the character of one of these adverts (a meerkat called Aleksandr). Meanwhile the market leader is a FTSE 250 company. As such I couldn't believe it when I read (in the TC article) that Leaky is the first (or even the 10th) real-time aggregator in the US. These sort of sites aren't a perfect solution by any means, but a large % of people in the UK now use them to buy car insurance, and so presumably Leaky is on the road (see what I did there...) to being a household name by doing the same thing in the US.

jasontraff 15y ago
Hi Craig, yes -- we too someday we hope to have a mascot as cute as Aleksandr
- craigmc 15y ago
  They've even started giving you a free Aleksandr when you use Comparethemarket.com... Which was almost enough to get me to switch my loyalty from Confused.com. Of course in the States you guys have that old bloke and his gecko to compete with... and he has pretty deep pockets ;)

pplante 15y ago

Maybe its just me, but I hate the idea of giving all my personal information to a site called leaky. It fails to instill confidence. The design is pleasing on the eyes, thanks square!

watty 15y ago

Is there an option to hide the (YC ##) spam?

jergason 15y ago
A greasemonkey script would do it pretty easily. That is the traditional HN solution, it seems.

JunkDNA 15y ago

Congrats on launching! Some comments: 1)Even though I know you guys are from YC (and not for example the Russian mob). I still bailed when you asked for my driver's license # and SSN. It's not enough for you to just say "trust us". 2) I checked it out from the couch quickly on my iPhone. The experience was not that good. The form drop-downs were slow loading and left me staring at empty pick lists. I had to scroll side to side to read the label on each field. 3) I was prompted twice to enter my email as an early adopter (once for each car I was entering presumably). This did not instill me with confidence about supplying personal info. Hope that's info you guys can use. Good luck!

iwd32900 15y ago

After going through all that, I just get a page full of "N/A" as quotes. Cool idea though.

jasontraff 15y ago
Sorry about that -- something seems to have slipped through and we're working to replicate the errors and fix them.
prestia 15y ago
Same here. I actually have to renew my policy by September 1, so I was hoping this would be a fun experiment!
mark242 15y ago
Yes, total and complete fail, after going through what seems like a pretty standard 2-driver use case. There's no sort of progress meter, so I don't know how long I have to wait, and after the N/A quotes there's still a spinner running, so I'm unsure as to whether I should wait, or what. Idea: great. Execution: really sub-par.

mtogo 15y ago

Hmm.. the mixed content on the homepage is not very reassuring about your security practices, esp. with all the personal information you're asking for.

joelmichael 15y ago

There is actually another company that has this concept: CoverHound. I'm one of the co-founders. We started a few months before Leaky. We went through the AngelPad incubator during the Winter 2011 class. TechCrunch covered us in a little blurb at the time. Since then we've received VC funding and have built out our team a little bit. There's no publicly available pricing API for insurance carriers yet, so I'm curious as to how Leaky comes up with their numbers.

InfinityX0 15y ago
You need more clarity on the homepage. It's obvious that it's car insurance but the process is information->information->start, which Leaky makes it obvious and it basically goes start->figure it out. Get the user started on the conversion funnel while you explain to them what the service does - I'm pretty certain (based on my lead generation experience) that this will end in a far superior conversion rate for you.
- slouch 15y ago
  I agree with this guy. CoverHound.com reads like the envelopes I get from Progressive...a few pages more than I am willing to read. edit: To find this page I went to the bottom of the home page, tried to click on the Pennsylvania state outline, clicked the Pennsylvania text link, looked for my car on the most stolen cars lists, found "Car insurance quotes get started" at the bottom http://coverhound.com/step1 http://coverhound.com/step1
jerrya 15y ago
I greatly appreciate you will help me find insurance that protects my car from alien abduction. Does that cover me, my passengers, and cow, or is it just for the vehicle itself? :) http://i.imgur.com/B9zdt.png http://i.imgur.com/B9zdt.png http://coverhound.com/ http://coverhound.com/
lacker 15y ago
I don't think it's really the same concept. On Leaky, you type in your information once, and then they show you insurance quotes. Whereas CoverHound just gives me links to insurance companies' websites, and then I have to fill out my information on each of those websites. If I were you guys, I would switch to the Leaky model, because it seems a lot easier for the user to only type in their information once.

jamiequint 15y ago

It just hangs here for me after I took the time to fill in all that information: http://o7.no/pHl2qg http://o7.no/pHl2qg Do you have plans already for filling the top of the funnel here? Its going to be really hard to compete with established businesses buying traffic in this market.

philfreo 15y ago

We need a Hipmunk for pretty much every type of insurance...

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

akent 15y ago

Perhaps I've just not been paying attention, but I'd never really heard of Hipmunk before. The "X for Y" only works if X is sufficiently common. Surely better to define in simple terms what the site actually does.

rglover 15y ago

Not sure why they ripped off Square so blindly (and no "All design credit goes to Square. We based our design on their home page until we can hire a designer of our own." doesn't cut it), but I'll be honest, that discouraged me from using their app. It's the little things that matter, folks.

jcc80 15y ago
I think they ripped it off because Square's design is great. And, personally I think it's pretty decent they acknowledge it. I've seen plenty of designs ripped off and nobody ever has the guts to give credit.

muppetman 15y ago

Am I the only one that thinks "I don't want to type my personal details into leaky!" What a bizzare name choice. Looks like a good product though, but isn't this sort of thing fairly old? Or is it just new for car insurance? These sort of price comparison websites have been the staple of UK Prime Time TV advertising for the last 3 years.

martingordon 15y ago

If I'm going to be handing over my personal information to someone, I don't want it to be to some fly-by-night operation. I'm not saying you guys are but you need to eliminate all appearances of it: 1. Hide the About Us page, or make it less specific (instead of "four guys", call it a "team of entrepreneurs". A grainy cell phone picture of the team playing video games in lawn chairs with a messy coffee table doesn't lend any more confidence to the average consumer. 2. Get rid of the "design credit goes to Square until we can hire a designer". The average consumer will wonder why you haven't hired a designer yet and will be turned off by whatever answer you give them. 3. This one is more for the nerds than the average consumer (though the average person might spot that something is wrong even if they can't pinpoint it): that iPad on the homepage is badly photoshopped (it's extra wide and the Safari toolbar doesn't extend the width of the screen). 4. The word leaky has a negative connotation. Your product offers a positive outcome (saving money on car insurance), so you need to come up with a more positive name for your business.

vaksel 15y ago
yeah #4 could mean that they leak your information to identity thieves.
wyclif 15y ago
Re: #4. The name is not working for me. "Leaky" in association with anything vehicular is not one you want to make. Even without that association, the thought of anything leaking is not a pleasant one, esp. with young potential customers who are the intended user base. See other recent posts submitted here (from DHH and others) about how expensive, short, .com domains aren't necessarily essential for launching.
AltIvan 15y ago
https://leaky.com/about_us/ https://leaky.com/about_us/ Alcohol, video-games and four guys that couldn't get together for a photo in formal suits... introduction, you are doing it wrong.
- johnx123-up 15y ago

pitdesi 15y ago

We are very similar but in a b2b space... http://feefighters.com http://feefighters.com - Love what you guys do... it is in many ways exactly what we do (as for the site layout, hey - it looks good!)... The trick is convincing people that what you're providing is different from the standard lead gen sites. You've done a good job in the description, but people will always be wary. Drop me a line if you want to talk shop Question: anyone know if someone has a similar model in the health insurance space? It's sorely needed.

jergason 15y ago

One slight UX issue: The "Next" buttons seem like they have two different controls on them. I wasn't sure if clicking the arrow would do something different than clicking the text of the button. I think it would be more clear without the extra arrows on the buttons.

lozofsky 15y ago

Interesting site. But not really new. I work at Answer Financial (www.answerfinancial.com) we're a national auto and home insurance agency that represents over 20 insurance carriers. You can get quotes and buy online from our carriers in 49 states. We do this via direct XML connections into the carriers we've contracted with. We're also the company that powers comparative quotes on esurance.com (our sister company). I very much like this concept though, its much like Confused.com in the UK as the techcrunch article pointed out. The challenge is getting enough carriers to actively participate so there's a high quality customer experience. I would guess Leaky is screen scraping the carrier sites. A bit easier in CA since you can't use credit scoring to price auto insurance here.

auston 15y ago

This is quite interesting! I suppose your plans are to revolutionize the entire Insurance industry? I personally know how bass-ackwards it is to get a quote for things like general liability. Is there any chance you guys are going to break into the commercial insurance space? I'd love to talk to you!

dfc 15y ago

Who is hipmunk? i am not a huge start up junkie so I am assuming it is another YC funded company. On your actual website you say you are orbitz for car insurance. I would stick with the orbitz analogy. (Or is it simile, i always forgot which is which.)

akent 15y ago
Who are Orbitz? Why not just explain what the site does without namechecking other companies.
- dfc 15y ago
  Come on you have never heard of Orbitz?
  - akent 15y ago
    I kid you not, I have only vaguely heard of Orbitz before now. Suspect it is US-centric? A generic term for this kind of thing might be "price comparison".
    - dfc 15y ago
      I guess it is US centric. I was going to try and make a marmalade joke/comparison/analogy but could not come up with anything that was funny:) I guess if you have never heard of orbitz you most likely are not in the market for american car insurance. On a side note everyone talks about how global the internet is but I wonder how many "internet based services" outside of media portals are actually global...

sendos 15y ago

Besides the name issue (leaky) and the giving-your-sensitive-data-to-a-small-startup issue, one other thing that I question is how sticky is this startup? That is, how often will you visit it? Once a year, tops. If you find an insurance that you are happy with, you'll likely stick with it for a couple years at least, and there is no reason to visit this website during these years. Given the above, I don't see how they can ever make a ton of money.

waterlesscloud 15y ago
I suspect that the referral fees from the insurance companies are paid out as percentage of the premium for the life of the policy. If so, that would add up fast.
- sendos 15y ago
  Assuming people pay ~$500/year, and assuming 200 million drivers, and leaky gets x% of the drivers and y% of each premium, then they get $10xy million per year If x% is 1%, and y% is 1%, that leads to about $10 million per year. Not too bad, if they can get those sorts of numbers for x and y. One question would be, how long will people use them for, once they find a good insurance company? I've stuck with one insurance company for the last 10 years. I suspect that x will start low, and then grow as the company becomes known, and then shrink as people stop using it.
philwelch 15y ago
If you've turned on a TV at all in the past several years, you'll see there's TONS of money in getting people to switch car insurance providers.

blackboxxx 15y ago

The name "Leaky" is such an obviously lousy name, I'm suspicious it's a marketing ploy. Are you going to change your name a few weeks from now to get more ink from Techcrunch et al? It's the only reason my mind can fathom.

JoshTriplett 15y ago

Looking at your homepage, you say "car insurance" in the smaller text, but the big text just says "quotes from every major insurer" and doesn't say "car"; you also don't have any images anywhere that hint at which type of insurance. Since you very specifically cover car insurance, you should make that more clear. I'd also really appreciate it if you added "why do we ask this" flyouts next to each field. For instance, when you ask about home ownership, you don't actually provide homeowner's insurance, so you should make it clear why: "Some car insurance companies give you a discount if you own your own home." For some reason, the text "(including your spouse)" seemed like an odd bit of reminder text. Do people forget this often? In any case, the flyout reminders could help here too, since you could add more detail: "This includes anyone who will drive any of your vehicles---you, your spouse, your kids, etc"

Stratego 15y ago

Who gives a shit about appearances, nothing looks more respectable on the surface than insurance companies, yet they are some the most opaque and dubious businesses there is. This is precisely what the insurance business needs, a breath of fresh Web air. I'll be eagerly waiting for this service to make it to Florida. Good luck guys.

FraaJad 15y ago

Sorry guys, but you have to work on the delivery a lot more. I spent not less than 15 minutes filling out all the information on your site and the site back with NOTHING. The quotation page kept spinning and spinning. My experience with regular insurance company websites has been a lot better and that's why they have my money. I gave my(and my spouse's) personal info and time because this is a YC venture. Disappointing.

krschultz 15y ago

So I ran my information through even though I'm not really in the market for changing since I just just switched a few months ago. - The homepage is hit or miss, the pictures really conveys what youare about but there are a lot of words clouding the message - I thought the interface was very responsive and intuitive through the initial steps - I didn't like how the 'options for coverage' was buried below the fold, everything looks cheap when they offer $50k/100K liability, you really have to compare apples to apples on that page if you want to tell me how much I am saving - I only was shown a quote from 1 insurance company, that's no big deal for me right now but obviously that limits the usefulness, I got a prompt saying 'we're not available in your area' and took my email so at least you won't lose customers who see what I'm seeing right now - [BUG] The 6 month premium shown in the left hand column with all the insurance companies is different than the 6 month premium shown in the 'buy now' box.

Shenglong 15y ago

An note about claims histories: When I worked briefly for an UK-based insurance company, I realized they had a strange policy: non-fault claims raise your premium more than at-fault claims. Why? Because statistically, they've found that people who get into a non-fault claim typically end up in a serious at-fault claim within the next two years. Creepy huh? If there is no API available for the US carriers, I'm very curious as to how internal information like this is being collected.

flomincucci 15y ago

I actually worked for a company making a product exactly like this, but for Argentina. They launched almost 6 months ago: http://www.123seguro.com.ar http://www.123seguro.com.ar

seasoup 15y ago

What would be neat instead of filling out a bunch of questions and then getting results would be to list one question at a time and have it adjust your estimated totals as you complete questions. You could spin it positive by listing your savings, starting with $0 and as people fill in information, have it raise their savings based on the information they fill in. And don't require people to fill in all of their information, allow them to bail out at any time and go get the insurance. You could even have people enter their current rate and compare what you can get them against that, so they see themselves saving more and more. That would actually end up being kind of fun to fill out, and I would be enticed to enter more and more information to see if I saved more. If I do not save more, I would want an indication of why for that question I did not save more. You could contract with a game designer for this, since they have experience making things fun.