Viewing profile — seanharper

The national flood insurance program shows one of the downsides with government participating in the private market (there are some plusses as well) - their rates were set too low,…

People will always be willing to pay a premium to live near the ocean. There are some places where that premium will be too high except the very very wealthy - living on a barrier …

+1 for metal roofs -- I run an insurance company that specializes in high risk areas. Metal roofs are a superior technology to shingles and tiles.

In Florida Citizens is the largest homeowners insurance company and it competes vigorously with the private market. The issue with Citizens is that it does create a lot of financia…

Here is a decent summary from one of the weather modeling firms about the impact of global warming on hurricane strength -- https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/kcc-mainwebsite-dev/p…

The issue in Florida is also idiosyncratic to the state -- in addition to macro factors such as an increase in reinsurance costs (driven by increased cost of capital) and increased…

The issue in CA is idiosyncratic to the state. In 2020 the average price of homeowners insurance in CA was $1,241 and in Illinois was $1,144. It probably doesn't make sense for Cal…

I don't think that's a fair characterization of how pricing works in homeowners insurance. Every time you want to change prices, you need to justify the price change to the regulat…

I am the CEO of a tech company that provides homeowners insurance in hard to insure places. I don't think it's really a bad thing for a company like Farmers to cut costs. Insurance…

+1 -- Chicago is top 5 in startup/vc activity, has a number of big/successful tech companies -- groupon, orbitz, 37s, Braintree, etc. Google has nearly 3000 people there (including…

There is actually the capability to do an instant transfer over visa and mastercard networks as well, but it is somewhat expensive (>0.20) -- the pin debit networks are smaller and…

They are not using ACH for this, but rather probably using the PIN-debit networks such as star, interlink, nyce and accel.

Recently more so, for example they recently legalized concealed weapons, and the current VP candidate Ryan and also their current governor are both pretty extreme. Historically Wis…

Hey Conductr - we have been able to replicate the issue, it appears to only impact 1 merchant account provider. I suspect it has to do with something changing in their API. Our foc…

Hello everyone -- this has been an interesting and painful conversation to watch. I am Sean, co-founder of FeeFighters. Integrating the acquisition of a small company into a large …

Hey everyone -- integrating a company after an acquisition is hard. Several of the people who were involved in marketing and customer support left as part of the acquisition, and w…

Respect. Stripe is a very smart company solving a big problem.

Its not really fair to adjust for factors such as not taking time off to have kids. There are a number of biological reasons why it makes sense for women to be more involved in the…

I agree, turntable is really fun in a way that pandora is not, and the music selection is better (pandora keeps playing repeats for me and blending songs from one channel into the …

You are not giving Chicago a fair shake. I bootstrapped one company in Chicago and raised money from local angels and funds and coastal angels and funds. Venture funding in Chicago…

This is fascinating, and I would really like to try this at some point. However, I am 30, married and have a 1 year old kid. Does anyone have any similar resources, examples, for p…

Did you actually read dodd frank? Because you are completely wrong about what it says. The Durbin amendment to Dodd Frank is a reduction of interchange fees for debit cards issued …

I think its debatable whether american apparel did well because they were vertically integrated / located in the US, or in spite of it. Nucor is another example frequently cited as…