London-based Atlian has launched with a pre-seed round led by Fuel Ventures, marking the return of serial founder James Buckley-Thorp after a year of silence.
Buckley-Thorp was in the early team at Zego, Britain’s first InsurTech unicorn.
He also built Bequest, Britain’s first life insurance app, backed by Aviva.
His new company uses AI to spot construction projects in Britain from the moment they are planned and puts them in front of the brokers who insure them.
“I went quiet for a year because I was looking for a problem big enough to spend the next decade on. Construction is it,” said Buckley-Thorp.
“Britain builds £200bn a year and still insures it like it’s 1995.”
Alongside Fuel Ventures, the round includes SyndicateRoom’s Access EIS, the GI Network (GIN) and angel investors including Chris Mairs CBE, who co-founded Metaswitch.
The round is the first investment by GI Network, a newly formed UKBAA-accredited angel syndicate.
Mark James, Syndicate Lead, GI Network, said: “We wanted our first investment to show exactly what our members can back: a founder who has done it before, going after a huge market that technology has barely touched. Atlian is that company.”
Mark Pearson, founder and managing partner at Fuel Ventures, said Buckley-Thorp has built multiple successful tech businesses and “raised over £17m across his career”.
The funding takes Atlian through its commercial launch, deepens its construction data and brings in its first senior hire, a head of sales from the broker market.
Atlian says more than 728,000 projects are live across the country at any one time, yet brokers often hear about a job only after a rival has got there first.
The company says submissions are stitched together by hand and lost in crowded inboxes.
Its first brokers come on board in November.
WhoWritesThis.co.uk, the free market finder Atlian built for brokers, has handled nearly 1,000 searches since launching this month.
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