It’s one thing to attract one of the most proven entrepreneurs in the area to lead your new company; it’s another thing to attract two. However, that’s just what 19days’ latest venture, Agentech, has done with Alex Pezold and Robin Roberson, ahead of its launch next month.
Agentech's vision is to create the AI workforce for the insurance industry. With an initial focus on pet insurance, this AI claims assistant is helping insurance providers process claims in a matter of minutes, increasing each adjuster’s daily productivity by 4x. Alex and Robin joined Agentech as CEO and President, respectively, in early 2024, just as we began work with our design customer.
A founding team with decades of venture experience and multiple successful exits
Alex Pezold founded, scaled, and exited his company, TokenEx, in 2022 with one of the largest technology exits in the state of Oklahoma. Through successfully raising minority Series A and majority Series B investments from equity partners on both coasts, Alex has proven his ability to build executive teams, design businesses for growth, and deliver on technology vision. Following the TokenEx exit, Alex founded Pointe Capital, where he is an advisor and investor for early-stage companies navigating the complexities of starting and scaling a technology business.
Alex says, “When I discovered that 19days was developing an AI-driven concept, I was immediately intrigued. Having spent the last two years immersed in understanding AI and its impactful applications, I recognize the quality that both Gitwit and 19days consistently deliver.”
“Agentech possessed all the characteristics I was looking for in a business, drawing from my previous experience at TokenEx: it was a SaaS platform with access to executive-level entry points and was mission-critical for our customers. Additionally, joining Agentech gave me the opportunity to work with Robin, a collaboration I had long anticipated.”
Robin Roberson was the co-founder and CEO of WeGoLook, a successful technology-enabled crowdsourcing company that she exited in 2020. Since then, Robin has gone on to lead companies in insurtech, gaining extensive knowledge and building an impressive network in the insurance industry.
“I've spent the past twelve years building technology solutions centered around creating claims efficiencies for insurance carriers, TPAs, and IA firms. With the advent of GenAI adoption and advances within the insurance industry, Agentech truly brings two great passions together in a single platform: AI and custom claims productivity solutions.”
Agentech tackles the most time consuming aspect of claims adjudication in the trending pet care industry
“Launching a startup like Agentech presents numerous challenges, regardless of the technology involved.” However, Alex mentions, “the groundwork laid by Gitwit and 19days over 12 to 18 months — which included extensive ethnographic research, engineering, and strategic planning — significantly lowered these barriers for us.”
The team began by researching the veterinary industry, doing 30+ interviews with doctors and vet techs, as well as multiple days of ethnography at clinics — a process that eventually led us to focus on pet insurance.
Due to the high costs of care and people increasingly treating their pets as family members, pet insurance is on the rise; yet even with pet insurance, there are still issues around cost/payment. Customers are required to pay upfront for care and most often don’t know what procedures and how much of the costs will be covered by their insurance policy. They only learn after the fact when their claim is submitted, processed, and a reimbursement is issued — a process that can take upwards of 6 months.
Understanding the pain points from the customer and veterinarian’s perspective, we wanted to explore what’s happening on the insurance provider’s side of the fence. Why does it take so long to process a claim? Why can’t a customer know upfront what their policy covers and how much of the cost they will be responsible for paying?
We found the claims servicing process to be an incredibly manual and time consuming process. Insurance providers employ vet techs to look at claims, examine medical records for pre-existing conditions and explanations of care, and compare these against the pet’s policy. The data across this process is highly unstructured; and, unlike the medical field, there are no standards for documentation in veterinary care or universal medical coding. Documents and notes can be handwritten and filed irregularly.
“The Agentech team has been working with a carrier for several months and training AI Agents over the past year to become experts within the pet insurance claims handling process.” Robin continues, “Seeing the actual platform operational and in production, delivering insane time-related gains within the process, is extremely exciting. Agentech’s AI Assistants remove the mundane and repetitive work (think of 200+ manual clicks in 20 minutes across 7 systems reduced to only 40 seconds) from the adjuster's queue. It allows the claim handler to process four times the volume while focusing on the customer.”
Alex adds, “Our partnership with a design customer has been invaluable. Their collaboration has allowed us to accelerate and refine our platform development, leading us to a launch-ready product — a rarity, as most projects begin with just a concept or an MVP.”
We’re rapidly approaching a Q4 launch with our design partner, where Agentech will be fully integrated with the design customer’s team and claims servicing workflows. Using Agentech, they will be able to work through their current 6 month backlog in less than 2 months, without hiring additional staff.
Looking forward
With launch, “challenges are inevitable,” says Alex, “but Robin and I are prepared to tackle the go-to-market strategy, product development, and customer success. Given the clear product-market fit, our initial focus will be on a specific line within the insurance sector, with plans to expand our technology across the industry.”
Looking forward, Alex and Robin are confident in their and the team’s ability to move quickly past challenges and jump on opportunities. “Having business analysts, a full marketing department, a finance/accounting team, an operations and project management team, a development and engineering team, etc., enables the leadership team to move quickly with any initiative,” Robin says. “It's like walking into a mature and fully operational business.”
