Life is Too Short for Bad Software

For far too long, insurance distribution and compensation software has suffered from underinvestment and poor implementation. Chestnut is here to change that - we’re delivering a technology platform tailored specifically for insurance distribution management. Our vision is to overhaul the insurance industry's technology and data infrastructure. By turning distribution management and incentive compensation into strategic revenue drivers, we help carriers drive growth, improve business quality, and enhance the producer experience.

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So, What is Chestnut?

Our mission is simple: revolutionize the insurance industry's technology landscape. From distribution management to incentive compensation, our platform transforms these traditionally siloed functions into strategic assets. We help insurance carriers grow while also improving business quality and producer experience in ways that weren’t possible before.

The idea to launch Chestnut came from a gap we noticed firsthand. During our time at Ethos, my co-founder Nick and I worked with a wide range of carriers. A common complaint we heard was the outdated and rigid nature of producer management and compensation platforms. After starting Chestnut, we validated this pain point by speaking with dozens of agency presidents, carrier chief distribution officers, and insurance professionals in compliance and compensation roles. We kept hearing about clunky systems, endless manual adjustments, and a lack of transparency. For an industry that knows distribution is the lifeblood of revenue and growth, it seemed odd that carriers were using such outdated systems and processes to manage this critical function. The industry needed a better, more modern solution—one that offers flexibility, precision, and insights. That’s exactly what we set out to build with Chestnut.

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Where Are We Now?

Since day one, we’ve made significant progress. After spending over a year and a half building the foundation of our platform, we secured our first national carrier customer and continue to attract attention across the industry. We understand the challenges of breaking into a traditional space like insurance, and we’re fully aware that the road to becoming a market leader won’t be easy. But we’re ready for the journey.

A common objection we hear from carriers is that Chestnut is a startup—and we get it. But being a startup is also our greatest advantage. We bring a fresh perspective unburdened by decades of technical debt and outdated technologies. Carriers want better software and the assurance that they’re investing in a solid, stable solution. To address these concerns, we focused on three key areas early in our company’s life: 1) rock-solid funding, 2) an experienced team, and 3) modern product and technology.

Our primary financial backer is Andreessen Horowitz, one of the largest and most successful venture capital firms in the world. They share our vision of improving insurance infrastructure and software, and we are incredibly grateful for the trust they’ve placed in us. With Andresseen Horowitz’s early investment, Chestnut is well capitalized and on robust financial footing to achieve our goals.

Chestnut also values deep insurance industry experience - collectively, our leadership team has over 70 years of insurance expertise. Nick and I made sure that we coupled our Silicon Valley engineering roots with insurance leaders who know first-hand industry nuances and end customer needs. We are humble enough to know what we don’t know and have made it a priority to bring on the best teammates for us to succeed together.

Finally, we built a best-in-class product and technology foundation. From day one, we knew that handling distribution management and incentive compensation for insurance isn’t just about digitizing forms, tracking payments, and showing pretty graphics. It’s a complex web of compliance requirements, hierarchical structures, schedules, effective dates, advances, and retroactive changes that need to be processed accurately and at scale. To address these use cases, we deployed the most-robust and scalable enterprise software architectures available today to develop an extensible insurance-specific data model and a high-volume transaction engine that sits at the core of our platform. We layered in insurance-specific logic required for managing the complexities carriers face, ensuring that our customers can manage distribution relationships and process compensation accurately at scale while surfacing insights that drive real, strategic outcomes.

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What’s Our Differentiator?

What sets Chestnut apart isn’t just our product or technology—it’s our people and culture. Early in my career, I worked for the legendary investor David Swensen, who taught me that what separates good organizations from great ones isn’t the strategy or product, but the people and culture. Competitors can replicate your strategy and product, but they can’t easily mimic a strong culture and team.

So yes, you may hear other vendors—particularly those who’ve been in the market for decades—claim they offer the same technology, better functionality, or superior capabilities. And maybe they do. But if that’s the case, why have market solutions stagnated? Why do so many insurers still rely on manual processes? And why do so many implementations fail?

At Chestnut, we won’t promise what we can’t deliver. You can trust that we will do everything in our power to create value for our customers. Our motto is simple: we win only when our customers win. While we believe we have a strong product and technology advantage, perhaps our most important differentiator for long-term success is the trust we will build—one satisfied carrier at a time.

If that’s a future you’re interested in, let’s talk!

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