At-Bay Cyber Insurance

Marco  Di Maggio; David  Lane

Case | HBS Case Collection | July 2019

At-Bay Cyber Insurance

Abstract

At-Bay was a cyber insurance startup that offered companies coverage against a wide array of cyber risks—exposure to which the firm was able to quickly assess and price on the basis of technical expertise that traditional insurance carriers lacked. In mid-2019, At-Bay was working to build underwriting revenue ahead of a Series B round of venture funding that the company hoped to receive by year’s end. This required not only scaling its underwriting capacity and convincing insurance brokers to include the startup among the carriers they quoted to their corporate clients, but also ensuring that At-Bay avoided the temptation to grow revenues by taking on riskier clients than it might otherwise prefer.

Keywords: Business Startups; Disruptive Innovation; Risk Management; Product Marketing; Distribution Channels; Information Technology; Salesforce Management; Insurance Industry;

Language: English

Format: Print

23 pages

Educators

Citation:

Di Maggio, Marco, and David Lane. "At-Bay Cyber Insurance." Harvard Business School Case 220-005, July 2019.

Case | HBS Case Collection | August 2019 (Revised December 2019)

Zillow Offers: Winning Online Real Estate 2.0

Luis Viceira, Marco Di Maggio and Allison Ciechanover

Founded in 2005, Zillow had become the leading online real estate and home-related marketplace. The brand was recognized as a trusted resource for players in the real estate market, providing information and transparency on home prices. Revenue, which was historically derived primarily from advertising fees paid by realtors and mortgage lenders, totaled $1.3 billion in 2018. This was in the process of changing, however. The company had entered the direct home buying and selling market in 2017. To Zillow, the move was a logical extension of its business model. Research showed that there was pent up desire to sell homes, but that sellers disliked the conventional process. Zillow Offers made home selling easy and fast – for sellers of homes that met certain criteria, Zillow Offers made an offer within 48 hours of the seller submitting a request for an offer online. Zillow Offers provided sellers a fair price and a guaranteed cash close, then performed renovations and hoped to sell the home within a target of 90 days, although actual times varied by market. The company’s stock was more volatile in the period since launching Zillow Offers and some industry observers wondered if it was in part due to the market’s perception of the risks associated with the new business. CEO Rich Barton believed the “instant buyer” or iBuyer market could one day account for up to 30% of all domestic real estate transactions and that Zillow Offers could bring in an additional $20 billion in annual revenue within three to five years. But there remained work to be done to improve transaction metrics, fend off competition from well-funded startups and incumbent realtors, and convince shareholders of the attractiveness of the new businesses.

Keywords: real estate; corporate culture; Intermediation; brokerage; Startup; Evaluating business investments; Property; Technology; Business Model; Expansion; Business Startups; Real Estate Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States;

Citation:

Viceira, Luis, Marco Di Maggio, and Allison Ciechanover. "Zillow Offers: Winning Online Real Estate 2.0." Harvard Business School Case 220-021, August 2019. (Revised December 2019.) View Details

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At-Bay Cyber Insurance

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