Our investment in Noyo

Picture yourself a soon-to-be mother expecting your first child. You go to the doctor’s office a week before your due date for a final check-up. You check-in at the front desk and let the receptionist know that you recently switched health insurance plans as your spouse joined a new company. The receptionist looks up your credentials and can’t find any proof of insurance. You call your health insurance carrier, and after 40 min on the phone, they say that you’re not insured. You check your HR portal, and it says your coverage is pending. You try calling your health insurance carrier again. Same answer: you’re not insured. A moment of panic ensues.

These enrollment errors are all too common in the world of health insurance that’s ridden with paper forms, fax, phone calls, and custom-coded data files. As a consumer, the lack of transparency leaves you in the dark at critical times when you need your coverage the most. When contacting an insurance carrier, you’re met with lofty call wait times and online portals that are only open during business hours, despite the internet being online 24/7. Modern HR platforms, like Gusto, Rippling, and more, have made some progress in creating better consumer experiences. However, this is akin to putting lipstick on a pig, masking health insurance carriers’ antiquated, error-prone data processes.

Why isn’t it as easy to understand and confidently use one’s health insurance as it is to send money to your friends?

Enter Noyo. We’re thrilled to announce our Series A investment in Noyo, a digital infrastructure platform powering connected health insurance experiences. Noyo’s powerful APIs allow for faster, more secure, and more accurate data exchange between health insurance carriers and benefits software, drastically reducing errors and improving the consumer experience. Noyo is enabling a world where people understand and feel protected by their health insurance benefits.

I was fortunate enough to work with founders Shannon Goggin and Dennis Lee years ago at Zenefits. Shannon and Dennis were leading the company’s initiative to integrate with hundreds of health insurance carriers. Frustrated with the technology solutions available to them at the time, they set out to build Noyo — the technology that they wished they could have built upon while at Zenefits. In a short amount of time, Noyo has built a stellar team (they’re hiring!) and earned the trust of some of the largest health insurance carriers, partnering with top carriers like Humana, Ameritas, and more.

At Spark Capital, we love investing in and being hyper-users of amazing products. This could be physical products (Oculus, Cruise, Mirror, etc), apps we use daily (Twitter, Discord, Postmates, etc), or those we use in the workplace (Invision, Slack, Trello, etc). This can also be the core infrastructure (Plaid, Marqueta, Nylas, etc) that is powering these product experiences. We believe Noyo’s APIs will power a new age of connected health insurance experience, enabling new, delightful consumer experiences.

A person heading to the doctor should be able to confirm their visit will be covered right on their phone. Someone considering a new job offer should be able to understand which benefits package will best meet their needs. A family working on their finances should know how much they will need to budget for their child’s braces. We believe Noyo will power this.

We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Shannon, Dennis, the entire Noyo team, and a stellar group of co-investors, including Costanoa, Homebrew, Fika Ventures, Precursor Ventures, Core Innovation Capital, Garuda Ventures, and Webb Investment Network.