Two companies can both call themselves InsurTech startups and have almost nothing in common. One builds software for commercial carriers. Another is launching an MGA. Others are building AI for claims, employee benefits technology, embedded insurance infrastructure, underwriting tools, new distribution models, or catastrophe risk products. An investor who understands one of those businesses won’t necessarily understand the others.

So look past whether a fund says it invests in “insurance technology” and read its portfolio and the backgrounds of the people making the decisions. Check whether they have backed a company with your business model, whether they understand your customer, and whether they have worked in the part of the value chain you are trying to change. Sector fit is far more specific than the label on a website.

An investor can know insurance exceptionally well and still be the wrong investor for your round. Early-stage InsurTech investors concentrate on pre-seed and seed. Growth investors back companies that already have meaningful revenue and are raising Series A or later. Some funds span several stages but write very different checks depending on the opportunity. Before you spend weeks pursuing a fund, find out its:

• Typical first check size
• Preferred investment stage
• Revenue or traction expectations
• Ownership targets
• Whether it typically leads rounds
• Whether it reserves capital for follow-on investments

Then ask the longer-term question:

Insurance has more nuance than most industries. A generalist investor may understand SaaS economics, marketplaces, or enterprise software extremely well; what a dedicated insurance investor adds is familiarity with the environment that software has to operate in. They already know why carrier procurement takes so long, how brokers evaluate new products, why capacity becomes a bottleneck for an MGA, and why an integration that looks simple on paper gets complicated inside a large carrier.

That saves founders months of explaining the basics, so conversations move faster to what makes the company different. Specialist investors can also contribute to the product itself. Their relationships with carriers, brokers, underwriters, and actuaries give founders a way to test assumptions, understand customer requirements, and spot the features or product structures that become an advantage. This matters most for founders building insurance businesses rather than selling technology into insurance. Programs such as the InsurTech NY MGA Lab exist for the same reason: building an MGA requires expertise across underwriting, capacity, distribution, regulation, and product, not just startup execution.

For an early-stage company the right introduction can be worth more than the money, and this is where a specialist InsurTech investor has the clearest edge. Depending on the business, that might mean access to:

• Carriers and reinsurers
• Brokers and agencies
• Capacity providers
• Potential customers and distribution partners
• Insurance executives and subject-matter experts
• Other founders who have solved similar problems
• Future investors

“We have a strong network” is easy to put in a pitch deck, so ask what it looks like in practice: who the fund works with regularly, how portfolio companies actually get in front of those people, and whether the investor can point to partnerships, customers, or hires that came through it. Those answers tell you more than anyone’s LinkedIn connection count.

Almost every venture fund promises to help its founders. Vanessa’s test is what that help looks like when the plan slips:

Investors work very differently after the round closes. One is heavily involved in strategy and fundraising; another concentrates on industry introductions; others provide recruiting help, product expertise, regulatory knowledge, or board-level guidance. None of those models is wrong, but you should know which one you’re getting. Ask how often they work with portfolio founders, where they think they are most useful, and what they have actually done for companies at your stage. Support an investor can’t describe with examples probably isn’t there.

The quickest way to understand a fund is to look at what it has already invested in. Note the stage those companies were at when the fund came in, the insurance markets they serve, their business models, and where they operate. Then the practical questions: does the fund already hold a stake in a potential competitor? Has it made follow-on investments? Does it stay involved after the round? Are portfolio companies visibly connected to the fund’s wider network?

If you can, talk to a few portfolio founders and ask what the investor was like during fundraising and, more importantly, afterward. A portfolio shows you what a fund likes to back and how it behaves once it has.

A dedicated InsurTech fund isn’t automatically the right investor because you’re building an InsurTech company. An investment is a relationship that lasts for years, so you need to understand how the investor thinks about growth, governance, future fundraising, and exits, and how they behave when things don’t go to plan. References work both ways in venture capital, and other founders can answer the questions a fund’s website won’t:

• Does the investor respond when something goes wrong?
• Are they useful between rounds?
• Do they make the introductions they promise?
• How do they handle disagreement?
• Do they know when a company needs patience rather than pressure?

Insurance expertise and industry connections are valuable. You still need to want that investor around the table.