Meet co-founder Christine Anderson He tweeted. The health and retirement benefits firm she and co-founder Andrew Ambrosino started six years ago is closing Monday.
Anderson and Ambrosino created Catch, and as she explained in a Twitter thread and on the organization’s website, “with the crazy idea that our interests shouldn’t be tied to traditional recruitment and the W2 form.
“We had the audacity to believe that the trillion-dollar ecosystem built by our corporations, governments, and financial institutions over the past 75 years could collapse in its infancy,” Anderson wrote. “Today? We still believe. What we have to do now is accept that we are not. We have made the difficult decision to close our Catch.
In a tweet, Anderson credited Kach’s customers, investors, team, friends and what she labeled as “less than friends” for their support in growing the Kach app, including salary and benefits for self-employed people.
Andersen previously spoke with me about raising $12 million in Series A funding in 2021. The round was led by Crosslink and added existing – and I might add high profile – investors including Khosla Ventures, NYCA Partners, Kindred Ventures and Urban Innovation Fund. In total, the company has raised $18.1 million in venture capital since its launch in 2019.
While it took nearly two years for Catch Group 15 (by 2021) to get approval to sell its platform in 38 states through the federal marketplace, the company finally had insurance licenses in 47 states and the District of Columbia, according to its website.
After receiving those insurance approvals, Catch became one of eight companies to reach that stage at that time, and one of three companies approved to sell benefits to consumers, Anderson said.
Anderson, whose Twitter profile now reads “failed fintech founder,” has received an outpouring of support on her Twitter feed. Anderson did not respond to a request for comment.
Anderson didn’t specifically say why the company decided to close on Twitter, but in an email to Catch users and reached by TechCrunch, Anderson and Ambrosino said, “Unfortunately, we are unable to continue operating in the current market.” …” and all Catch accounts will be closed on April 6th.
Speaking about a Series A in 2021, Anderson mentioned that it would eventually go after a Series B round. However, in the past year, the fundraising environment has become tighter, especially for insurance companies. As several of my colleagues have noted in recent stories, investment in the fourth quarter of 2022 has fallen to “the lowest level since Q1 2020,” and insurance will exit through M&A in 2021.
“The only hope we have to build a strong and successful middle class is to build a new kind of wealth for workers and make it easier to protect their families,” Anderson wrote on Twitter. “There are further iterations of these ideas, and we hope that our work and studies will find them in the future.”
