RiskCube

What do they actually do

RiskCube offers a live web app that analyzes location-level exposure to climate and natural catastrophe risks. Users upload or integrate asset locations, see hazard dashboards (e.g., flood, wildfire), and generate downloadable, standardized reports for internal reviews, lenders, or regulatory needs like TCFD/CSRD (app.riskcube.com).

They are not yet operating as a full retail insurance brokerage. The public site states they are in the licensing process in California and will be launching soon, so purchasing and binding policies through RiskCube appears limited until licensing is complete (riskcube.com). The company positions the current tool for startups, SMBs, and risk managers to support insurance decisions and evaluate options such as parametric structures (app.riskcube.com; Y Combinator).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Small business and startup owners with one or more commercial locations: They lack a clear view of site-specific risks (flood, wildfire, other hazards) and struggle to compare coverage and pricing at renewal or when moving. They want a simple risk snapshot and a one‑page report to share with landlords or brokers.
• In‑house risk managers at SMBs and growth companies: They spend time stitching together fragmented data to satisfy internal stakeholders and regulators. They need standardized, compliance‑grade reports tied to specific assets and repeatable analyses.
• Small commercial real‑estate owners and property managers: They need to prioritize retrofits and insurance spend across buildings but lack consistent, portfolio‑level nat‑cat visibility and easy exports for underwriting. Current workflows are manual and inconsistent.
• Lenders, investors, and acquirers doing asset‑heavy due diligence: They need fast, defensible climate risk assessments that fit underwriting checklists. Current bespoke analyses are slow and hard to standardize across deals.
• Small brokers and specialty carriers building parametric products: They waste time on manual policy analysis and trigger modeling. They need tools to structure automated payout products and ingest client policies for gap analysis and faster placement.

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Run tightly scoped pilots with YC founders, local startups, and nearby SMBs that share asset locations in exchange for concierge climate risk reports and hands‑on onboarding; use learnings to fix UX gaps and produce case studies (Y Combinator; app.riskcube.com).
• First 50: Targeted outbound to California SMB landlords, property managers, and risk managers during renewal windows with an instant location‑risk check and standardized one‑page report; recruit 3–5 small brokers to co‑sell or white‑label reports and parametric structuring while broader licensing finishes (riskcube.com; app.riskcube.com).
• First 100: Stand up partnerships and automation: bulk‑upload and portfolio reporting for property‑management platforms, lenders, and regional broker networks; offer low‑friction pilots for carriers/specialty brokers to test parametric tooling, plus renewal‑season webinars and campaigns while expanding licensing beyond California.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

Climate‑risk software is estimated at about $550M in 2023, growing to roughly $1.16B by 2029 (Verdantix). In the U.S., commercial property lines account for about $104B of annual premiums (2024) within a ~$502B commercial lines market, defining the larger transactional pool once licensed placement is live (S&P Global / NAIC). Parametric insurance is a smaller but fast‑growing global segment, with 2024 estimates in the mid‑teens of billions (Global Market Insights).

Bottom-up calculation:

Near‑term SAM can be framed as (number of U.S. SMBs/CRE owners and risk teams needing location‑level climate analysis) × (annual software price per account or per location). Mid‑term transactional SAM is (portion of the ~$104B U.S. commercial property premium pool RiskCube can access) × (blended commission/fee rate), with upside from parametric placements.

Assumptions:

• Analytics ARPU based on per‑account or per‑location pricing that SMBs and small CRE owners will pay for standardized reports and dashboards.
• Blended commission/fee rate for placements in the 10–20% range, varying by product and account size.
• Reachable share constrained by state licensing, carrier integrations, and channel partnerships in the early years.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Jupiter Intelligence: Climate risk analytics for asset‑level hazard modeling and portfolio risk, serving corporates and financial institutions; overlaps with RiskCube’s analytics/reporting use cases.
• Cervest: Asset‑level climate intelligence and CSRD/TCFD‑oriented reporting tools for enterprises; a direct competitor on compliance‑grade climate risk reports.
• Zesty.ai: Property risk analytics (notably wildfire) used by insurers and real‑estate stakeholders; competes on location‑level hazard assessment and scoring.
• Embroker: Digital brokerage for SMBs offering online quote‑bind‑issue across lines; relevant to RiskCube’s planned ‘compare/buy/manage’ brokerage layer.
• Arbol: Parametric risk transfer and climate insurance platform; relevant where RiskCube aims to structure parametric products and automated payouts.