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Harper

AI-native commercial insurance brokerage

At Harper, we are building a fully autonomous commercial insurance brokerage powered by AI. Our initial focus is on mid-sized businesses with complex insurance needs, but our vision is to eventually serve every business in the country. By leveraging AI to automate key workflows in the insurance process, we efficiently secure optimal coverage for each client's unique requirements at competitive prices and with rapid turnaround. Our AI system learns from the expertise of our brokers, accumulating not just knowledge but also the specific workflows, data, and capabilities that pave the way to full autonomy.
Jobs at Harper
San Francisco, CA, US
$100K - $135K
0.50% - 1.00%
Any (new grads ok)
San Francisco, CA, US / New York, NY, US / Remote (San Francisco, CA, US; New York, NY, US)
$100K - $180K
0.50% - 2.50%
Any (new grads ok)
Harper
Founded:2024
Team Size:8
Status:
Active
Location:San Francisco
Group Partner:Tom Blomfield
Active Founders

Dakotah Rice, Founder

CEO @ Harper (W25) Building an AI-native commercial insurance brokerage. prev: Goldman, Carlyle, Coatue, Poolit. Brown '12, HBS dropout '21
Dakotah Rice
Dakotah Rice
Harper

Tushar Nair, Founder

CTO @ Harper (W25) prev: Goldman, Poolit. Building an AI native commercial insurance brokerage.
Tushar Nair
Tushar Nair
Harper
Company Launches
Harper: AI-native commercial insurance brokerage
See original launch post ›

Hey YC! It’s Tushar and Dakotah, and we're building Harper, an AI-powered commercial insurance brokerage transforming how businesses get the coverage they need. Since acquiring our first customers in October, we’ve already grown to write over $6M in annualized premiums across 35 states.

The Problem

Commercial insurance is drowning in operational inefficiency:

  • Manual processes that limit broker productivity
  • Complex, redundant applications
  • Information asymmetry and limited market access

These antiquated systems create terrible customer experiences and prevent traditional brokerages from scaling.

Our Solution

We built an insurance brokerage with a suite of AI solutions that we use internally to enhance our sales, operational, and service interactions. Harper Hub, our flagship tool can:

  • Complete forms automatically
  • Find optimal carriers and underwriters
  • Manage client communications seamlessly

This creates an infinitely scalable brokerage that delivers superior service with significantly higher margins.

Our Vision

At Harper, we believe that every legacy professional services business will have an AI-Native counterpart that will operate more efficiently, generate more revenue, and grow faster than incumbents. We want to become the largest insurance brokerage in the world with the best NPS. The commercial insurance brokerage market represents over $100B in annual commissions.

The Team

We've known each other since we started our careers at Goldman Sachs, where Tushar led ML/AI engineering teams automating services for the commodities desk while Dakotah worked on the Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Team in Investment Banking. He then spent time at Carlyle and Coatue.

Tushar spent nearly 9 years at Goldman before leaving to found Poolit with Dakotah, a fintech company that scaled to $100M AUM. While looking for their next project, they started thinking about the highest-impact solutions for LLM-based AI tools.

We decided to blend Dakotah’s family history in insurance and entrepreneurship with Tushar's technical expertise in automation to build the world’s first AI Native Commercial Insurance Brokerage.

Our Ask

If you know any businesses with complex insurance needs, please reach out to us at harper@harperinsure.com