01 / Smart business insurance
Purchasing business insurance is usually a slow and painful process. Embroker set out to change that. Our customers: CEOs, founders, and small business owners looking to switch brokers and save money. We were a small scrappy team determined to revolutionize business insurance.
02 / The MVP
The MVP wasn’t groundbreaking technically. But it set out to prove that great design, basic education, and policy transparency could remove 80% of the hassle of buying business insurance.
In-house brokers would recommend a policy and host it on the platform. Customers could log in, view their policies, shop for new ones, manage certificates and claims, and track payments. Over time we built features for managing multiple accounts and expanded into new industries, cyber, cannabis.
03 / From old world to new world
Embroker had specialized brokers based in Chicago. We worked closely with that team to understand what clients needed, what the industry expected, and what was legally feasible.
From there, we translated familiar insurance templates to a digital model. We performed automated scrapes for uploaded documents and hid as much irrelevant or excessive data as possible to speed up and simplify the process.
04 / Messaging and UX strategy
My messaging strategy was not to make insurance more fun, but less of a burden. Direct, plain language, with the voice and tone of a helpful, well-researched assistant.
In the product, I focused on the primary goal: guiding new customers through selecting the right policy, uploading essential documents, and filling out forms.
This meant cutting “insurance speak” from the UI in favor of policy-level notifications and actions.
05 / Evolving to mobile
Our product started desktop-only. As we expanded our offerings, certain clients (property managers, contractors) wanted an easy way to manage certificates on site. We redesigned to support smaller screens, and a single-question-per-screen flow boosted click-through rates.
06 / Naming the mascot
The Embroker team held a naming contest for our canine mascot. My submission, “Shotwell,” won, named after the street in San Francisco’s Mission where the Bay Area office sat.
