It’s August, which means that many pre-seed startups are keeping their heads down until more investors are back in action in September.

We already have a bunch of interesting companies to bring you from next month. In the meantime, let’s look at an interesting B2B insurtech company that has just raised its first external funding.

Full details are below. As usual, Premium subscribers get the full story. Why not join them? 👇

– Martin

(PS: PreSeed Now will take its annual summer break next week, and then we’ll be back in full effect the following week at the start of September)

Better inputs. Sharper outputs. Download the guide to premium AI.

Building or refining generative AI models? This guide shows why scraped data falls short—and what to use instead. Learn how real-world behavior signals, clustering, semantic scoring, and visual diversity improve output. Plus, see how Shutterstock’s licensed data and services reduce risk and boost performance. Train smarter, faster, and more responsibly.

Download the guide

Meshing together a smarter way of keeping SMEs properly insured

Insurance is one of those overheads that every sensible business needs, and often legally requires. But being suitably insured at the right price can be a challenge for SMEs.

“Whether it's Aviva, or AXA, or Zurich, or Royal and Sun Alliance, they all estimate that between 50% to 80% of SMEs in the UK are under-insured, which means that in the event of a catastrophic loss, they have a much higher propensity never to get trading again,” says Mark Costello, CEO of Meshed, an early-stage startup looking to tackle this problem with its fresh take on insurance brokerage.

Meshed is using technology to optimise the processes a broker goes through to source and sell insurance to a business, claiming to cut the quoting process from one hour to just nine minutes.

“We are using AI and automation to release a lot of the time wastage in commercial insurance, which allows us to pass the savings of that back to the customer,” Costello explains.

In practice, a big part of this means taking a lot of the legwork out of the data collection needed to provide insurance cover, and then keeping an eye on how that data changes over time to ensure the level of cover remains appropriate over time.

“We integrate with customers’ own technology ecosystem so that we can track the turnover, and the wage roll, and their headcount in real time,” Costello explains.

Vincent Liu, CTO at Meshed, explains that the startup’s software integrates with its customers at the accounting software level, hooking up to platforms like Xero and QuickBooks.

“We analyse the data in real time, to identify any insurance issues or coverage gaps with their existing policy. And then, from that, we make suggestions to customers like ‘these are the issues that you should probably look at, and these are high priority, because it could make or break your business’, Liu explains.

Costello adds that Meshed eventually wants to monitor customers’ capital expenditure as well, to help track all of the ‘vital signs’ that might indicate that something's changed in the business.

“We can then automate outbound to, go to that customer to get updates of the details and make sure they stay covered in the correct fashion,” Costello says.

This automation also saves the time of Meshed’s own staff too.

A common stat thrown around in the insurance world is that brokers spend 60% of their time doing administrative work. Whether that figure is completely accurate or not, it points to an awareness in the sector that this is an admin-heavy role. Costello says Meshed wants to get its employees’ admin time “as close to zero as possible so they can spend their time meaningfully interacting with the customers.”

Liu explains that Meshed has deployed AI agents to automate tasks like collecting insurance quotes or collecting details from customers.

“Ultimately, what we have is our own custom data layer that connects to every different piece of software that we use in different teams, and that allows us to go really quickly,” he says.

The story so far

Meshed is Costello’s second startup in the insurance brokerage space. The first, initially known as Hubb and later rebranded as Taveo, had a similar ‘automation, efficiency, and value for money’ value proposition. After selling the business in 2023, he teamed up with former Taveo product director Jake Wells to co-found Meshed.

Wells then found Liu via a co-founder matching platform, to bring the technical chops to the new venture.

Costello explains that Taveo was initially focused on fleet business, but Meshed is aimed at the broader SME market, with the tech allowing the startup to scale quicker in different customer segments.

In its first year, Meshed has signed agreements to work with 50 insurers, and Costello says they’re close to reaching full authorisation with the Financial Conduct Authority. Like many fintech and insurtech startups, Meshed started out as an appointed representative for FCA oversight.

“We've already taken the quote time and the manual work to zero in some cases, and have taken processes that took hours down to minutes,” Costello says.

“We are super-excited about where we are. Because we use digital tax platforms as our integration point to customers, it makes sense to partner with accountants. We've got about 40 accountants now ready to go with the business, and we’re working in lockstep with them to get what their customers want.”

Funding:

Meshed has this week announced that it has raised a £950,000 pre-seed round from Haatch, Aviva (via Founders Factory), and Exponential Science Foundation, plus angels. Prior to this, the startup was funded by the founders.

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.