After 20 months of trying to raise funds, insurance startup Loop cuts staff

The email continued, saying the company decided to reduce its headcount as it seeks to operate through its financial difficulties. It’s unclear how many people were impacted. However, according to a LinkedIn post by a former employee, the cuts impacted people who were insurance agents, in customer care, data analytics, marketing, software engineers and product.

Henry did not immediately respond to our request for comment. 

Henry co-founded Loop with Nadeau in 2020 shortly after stepping down from his role as a venture partner at his firm Harlem Capital, according to his LinkedIn. As TechCrunch previously reported, Loop sought to serve as an alternative insurance model for pricing insurance that didn’t rely as heavily on structurally biased metrics like credit scores and education used by legacy models. 

The company launched out of stealth mode in 2021, raising a $3.25 million seed led by Freestyle VC, with participation from Backstage Capital and Uprising Ventures. Loop then went on to raise a $21 million Series A, the company said, led by Foundry Group and 01A (former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and COO Adam Bain’s fund). In 2023 it raised an $8 million extension round, according to Pitchbook.

Loop’s fundraising troubles are not unique to Black-founded companies. TechCrunch reported last year that Black founders raised less than 1% of all venture capital funding, a number that has continued to dwindle as the promises to back more Black founders made after the murder of George Floyd have diminished in recent years. 2024 continues to be a difficult fundraising year across the board. Outside of select areas, like AI, 2024 has seen some of the slowest funding rates since 2018, Crunchbase reported.