QED Investors Joins $15 Million Incremental Series D Round for Home Insurer Kin

Amias Gerety

Alexandria, Va.-based QED Investors has joined an incremental $15 million Series D round for Kin, a direct-to-consumer home insurer. New investors in the round included Geodesic Capital and others. The Chicago-based company had earlier raised $94 million in Series D. It has so far raised over $400 million from investors.

“Kin is an intrepid group of entrepreneurs bringing analytical firepower and operational excellence to home insurance markets that are increasingly disrupted by climate change,” said QED Investors partner Amias Gerety, who was previously a presidential nominee, serving as acting assistant secretary for financial institutions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Kin, founded in 2016, calls itself the only “pure-play” digital home insurer, relying on technology to reach consumers directly. It uses thousands of data points about each property to enhance pricing accuracy and better underwriting results.

Sustained Valuation

“Despite the tough market for high-growth companies right now, we’ve increased revenue 2.2x, improved each of our major operating metrics, and kept the same valuation,” said Kin CEO Sean Harper, a former Groupon executive. “These are good outcomes, especially when other startups are accepting punishing terms or a valuation hit.”

Founded in 2007 by the trio of former Capital One executives — Nigel Morris, Frank Rotman and Caribou Honig — QED focuses predominantly on fintech and data startups. QED has raised $1.4 billion from five funds. The last, raised in 2021, was the biggest at $1.1 billion.

QED Built 27 Unicorns

Today, the boutique venture firm has $4.3 billion in assets under management, after making portfolio investments of $662 million. Its portfolio consists of over 200 companies in 17 countries, 27 of whom are unicorns valued at over $1 billion each. It has made 24 exits including SoFi, Credit Karma and Klarna. QED’s recent investments include Rain, Carmoola, Finch, GovForce.us and Treasury Prime.

Morris, who serves as managing partner, previously served on the boards of Capital One, The Economist, Klarna, Braintree, TransUnion and London Business School. Prior to QED, he co-founded Capital One Financial Services in 1994. Today, Morris chairs ClearScore and Mission Lane, and serves on the boards of Remitly, Quinto Andar, Bitso, Amount and Current.

Rotman serves as QED’s chief investment officer and has made Forbes’ Midas List each of the past five years as “One of the World’s Best VC Investors.” Prior to QED, he was one of the early team members that created Capital One. He spent 13 years at Capital One, managing risk operations and several card units.