Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 5/5 debate potential 3/5

Utah threatened Zenefits with fines for offering free software to businesses

Parker Conrad · a16z Podcast | How One Startup Went from Being Banned by Regulators to Being Open for Business · Jan 2, 2019 · at 1:13

Parker Conrad, co-founder and CEO of Zenefits, describes the enforcement threat made against Zenefits by Utah insurance regulators regarding its free business model.

0:00 / 0:36exact quote · 36.9s
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“In Utah, the insurance commissioner in Utah decided to take action, said that, listen, one of their missions as a DOI was to make sure that there was fair competition between all brokers in the state, and everyone was on a level playing field, and they said that Zenefits' technology actually gave us an unfair advantage in competing for these clients because we made it so easy for companies to get up and running with insurance and That it was unfair to other brokers. And so they said that we had to start charging for our service or they were going to start levying some really big fines on, on benefits.”

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Insight
B2B SaaS lacks the natural political advocacy base of consumer tech
“They're just these natural constituencies for consumer technology companies, because there are so many consumers that are using their service. But for like a B to B SaaS company like us, where we're selling to businesses, they're just, Fewer constituents that …”
Parker Conrad Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 3:33 a16z Podcast | How One Startup Went from Being Banned by Regulators to Being Open for Business
Assertion Contradicted
Utah legislation clarified that Zenefits was never illegal under existing state law
“Technically what the bill did is I think it actually didn't change the law. What it did is it clarified that the existing Utah law never made benefits illegal in the first place. So it was a clarification rather than a change to the law”
Parker Conrad Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:51 a16z Podcast | How One Startup Went from Being Banned by Regulators to Being Open for Business
What-if
Zenefits should have recognized the Utah dispute was political, not legal
“I think what I probably would have done differently in the case of Utah is I probably would have, I wish I had realized earlier in the process that we were in sort of a political battle rather than a legal battle with the Department of Insurance.”
Parker Conrad Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 10:50 a16z Podcast | How One Startup Went from Being Banned by Regulators to Being Open for Business
Insight
Small business B2B clients are highly influential political allies for startups
“Small business owners in our case, like tend to be politically very well connected. And so when you have, you know, small business owners who, you know, in Utah who have, you know, if you have a company that has You know, 50 or a hundred employees, like, that'…”
Parker Conrad Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 15:08 a16z Podcast | How One Startup Went from Being Banned by Regulators to Being Open for Business
Disclosure
Zenefits gives its HR platform away free, monetizing as an insurance broker
“We give the core system away for free, and we make money in, in a variety of different ways, but one of them is that we act as a broker on companies lines of health insurance.”
Parker Conrad Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 0:51 a16z Podcast | How One Startup Went from Being Banned by Regulators to Being Open for Business
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