From Wireless Antennas to AI-Native Insurance: Dax Craig's Path to Comeryx

From Wireless Technology to Insurance Analytics

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)

Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories Podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome adversity. As you listen today, let one idea shape what you do next. My name is Anthony Codispoti, and today's guest built a company to more than $400 million in annual premium and 4,000 agency partners, then left to start over from nothing. It wasn't the first time.

Fifteen years earlier, he sold a company he had spent over a decade building and started over again there as well. His path began in wireless technology, where he co-founded Zertex Technologies, building antennas for Bluetooth, cellular, and Wi-Fi devices, and earning two patents before the company was acquired in the year 2000. Two years later, he pivoted into insurance.

Co-founding Valen Analytics and spending 15 years building predictive analytics for property and casualty insurers before selling the company to Insurity in 2018. He then co-founded Pi Insurance, scaling it across 38 states before leaving in 2025. His name is Dax Craig, and he's the co-founder and CEO of Comerics, an AI-native insurance company built for small business contractors.

He incubated Comerics as an entrepreneur in residence at Boulder Ventures and raised a $7.5 million seed round led by AltiVentures with American Family Ventures and Arch Capital Group among the backers. But before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is brought to you by my company, AddBack Benefits Agency. And if you're in the insurance business, here's one you'll want to bring to your clients.

There's a program backed by Bain Capital Insurance that gives a company's employees unlimited access to doctors, therapists, and prescriptions. There's no co-pays, there's no deductibles to meet. It works alongside whatever health coverage they already have, and it even covers part-timers who don't qualify for major medical. And here's the part that matters most. This isn't a cost to your clients, it's a profit gain.

We recently helped one client add $900 per employee per year to their bottom line. That's real budget freed up that they can put toward the umbrella policy, that key person coverage, or the higher limits you've already been discussing with them. Results vary, but that's real money on the table. And you're the one who can hand it to them. See if your clients qualify at AddBackBenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the CEO of Camerics, Dax Craig.

Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Dax Craig (02:45)

you're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (02:47)

So, Dax, you spent seven years as an entrepreneur in wireless technology, co-founded Zertex Technologies. You're building antennas for Bluetooth cellular Wi-Fi devices, earned two patents along the way, as we mentioned in the intro. The company got acquired in 2000. You stayed on for a couple more years before leaving in 2002 to co-found Valen Analytics, a predictive analytics company for property and casualty insurers.

This is a really interesting crossover of industry experiences here. Tell me how this all unfolds.

Building and Selling an Antenna Business

Dax Craig (03:23)

Yeah, um it's a great question uh that I got asked by investors. Um why you uh I didn't know anything about wireless um and I didn't know anything about insurance. Uh but starting with the wireless industry, I actually was in class. Uh it was a business plan preparation class at the University of Colorado, uh taught by, you know, a f a famous entrepreneur in the the Boulder area.

Juan Rodriguez and everybody had to pick an idea um to jump on a team and build a business plan around. Well my idea was terrible, so it didn't get picked. Um but Juan shared a an idea from the university uh intellectual transfer uh intellectual property transfer office that was an antenna that was built by a professor at the university and I was like oh if Juan thinks it's a good idea

I'm gonna get on that team. Turns out it was a great idea, uh, but the technology didn't work. this was in ninety-four, really at the dawn of the wireless industry. And uh we pivoted and were able to uh bring in our own technology. That's why I have some patents. It helps to have a marketing degree when you're doing anything electromagnetic, uh not. Um it was just just like

Anthony Codispoti (04:48)

Okay, I was waiting for you to make that connection there 'cause I

didn't pick up on the sarcasm.

Dax Craig (04:51)

like freaky

thing that uh I I did in the antenna lab. Um but anyhow built that business uh and and loved it. But we reached an inflection point where we really needed to lower our cost of manufacturing.

And at the time, this is ninety-nine, two thousand, uh a lot of uh hardware manufacturing was being moved to China, Taiwan, uh and other parts of Asia. And and we had an inflection. We're like, well, we're either gonna go raise a bunch of money because the company had been bootstrapped at that point, or we're gonna sell the business to somebody that already has manufacturing. And we explored both. We had a number of term sheets.

but somebody came knocking. Um Centurion Wireless had they were the largest antenna manufacturing in the world, had seven uh plants around the around the world, two in China. These are early days of being in China, one in Malaysia, and so we sold the business. And it it was crazy how how right the hypothesis was.

We turned that little bitty company that I grew out of a business plan class when we sold, we were we were small, we were like five million revenue. Of course, now that's it, itty bitty. Then it wasn't wasn't too bad. We turned that company by moving on the manufacturing of China into a hundred million dollar business in 18 months.

Anthony Codispoti (06:28)

my gosh.

Dax Craig (06:29)

It was crazy successful. Um and so it

it it taught me a very hard lesson that scale matters when you're trying to manufacture anything. And if you're not manufacturing in China, hardware was not a place to be. And so I decided, um, when I knew I was gonna start another business that I didn't want to be in the hardware business. I want to be in the software business where you got paid for your intellectual property.

Anthony Codispoti (07:00)

Sorry, before we move on, I want to understand. So you moved to China, that solved your manufacturing problem. You were able to get your cost of goods down significantly, and you can share the number if you care to recall it. But then the other part that I I want to fill in the blanks here on i is the distribution part. You don't go from five million to a hundred million just by getting more manufacturing. You've got to have distribution. So what did that part mean?

Dax Craig (07:24)

Well, it's a great question. The um Centurion didn't change didn't help us with distribution. We already had the hooks into all of the major uh wireless players at the time. It was Motorola, Ericsson, Walcom, um, and then a lot of the Wi Fi players, um, Cisco. We we were already selling to those companies. They love the tech, but the pricing was

was expensive, right? So we were a premium product. Uh and so sales were low. When we we went from and these numbers aren't exactly correct, but uh it's illustrative. So we were manufacturing the US, thirty to forty dollars an antenna. Um and these were uh antennas that you could place in cars, they were placed on buildings, uh all over the place. They weren't

made for phones or anything. Um when we moved it to China, our manufacturing went down to three dollars and below. And so all of a

Anthony Codispoti (08:34)

That's a game changer.

Dax Craig (08:35)

sudden and we shared a lot of that uh savings with the the OEMs we were working with and things just went crazy. Now it was also a crazy time to be in wireless, right? Wireless phones were everywhere, so infrastructure was everywhere. Um

I mean a funny story. We in in two thousand one we put fifty thousand antennas in Las Vegas. And and now we don't even think about that. Like of course I can get a cell phone uh call at the tables. But back then you couldn't because they couldn't penetrate the buildings and the the casinos

we're realizing, my God, we're losing people 'cause they're taking calls and they're leaving the table. And so they don't want to leave the tables. And so they installed a ton of uh cellular radios into uh casinos and airports and all kinds of stuff like that.

Anthony Codispoti (09:37)

Okay.

So you had the relationships already. The price point

Dax Craig (09:41)

We did.

Anthony Codispoti (09:41)

just wasn't there. So they could only put you into their premium products. You brought the price down. I mean, your cogs went down by a a factor of, you know, ten. And so you shared a lot of that savings. So you had those relationships. The product takes off. And then as you're thinking about what's next, right? So you exit this business, you're thinking about what's next. You didn't want to do hardware again. Because you're like, the grass has got to be greener. And so then take me through the rest of that thought process.

Dax Craig (10:08)

Yeah, so it wasn't well thought out, I will tell you that. Um it was you know, I was looking for different types of software. Uh the internet bubble had burst. Um so I I you need to be careful about what we were doing. But SaaS had started to come into play. ah Salesforce was being successful, they weren't huge like they are now, but they they had shown success and that

we could actually do it rather than on prem. I was like, it's gotta be uh SAS. Uh we didn't call it on the cloud at the time.

And we I was with a a very good friend of mine looking around at a bunch of businesses and I'll tell you, this is this is like the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life. Um he was like we should do uh we should do a business where we um have people upload videos and then other people can watch them. And I was like, What? Who would do that? That's the dumbest thing ever. This is two thousand one. And he's like, No, I think I

I was like, well, why would people watch them? And is there enough bandwidth? And he's like, the bandwidth is coming. We can do this. We can build it and we can sell ads. I was like, no way, that's stupid. Of course, YouTube came out. Um several years later. Not to say that we would have been YouTube, but you know, we would have been very early in those. Yeah, yeah,

Anthony Codispoti (11:34)

It turned out not to be such a dumb idea after all. Yeah.

Dax Craig (11:37)

yeah. Um, but one that we settled on was uh

This notion of using machine learning to help businesses make decisions. And we thought we could build this platform that people could actually uh leverage to make business decisions using these really advanced uh machine learning techniques. I mean it's 2001, 2002. This is super early days.

Anthony Codispoti (12:06)

Nobody's really using terms

like machine learning back.

Dax Craig (12:11)

No, no, but my co-founder was a genius. And so um he was into all this stuff and he had been playing around with it uh for a while. Like, oh, that sounds interesting. Have no idea what the use cases are. And so we we decided to to look at drug discovery and healthcare applications, and then that led us into well, we can we can do this for insurance as a proof uh of concept.

And then we'll go, you know, broad based, but we'll we'll focus on a point solution first. And that's how we landed on an insurance application. We're like, oh, well we can probably price and interrate better than they can with these analytics. Well, it turns out

Anthony Codispoti (12:58)

What type of in

what type of insurance we talking?

Dax Craig (13:01)

We didn't care. We didn't know. We didn't know I mean, I had purchased insurance, but that's all I knew about insurance. I didn't know anything.

Anthony Codispoti (13:07)

I

love this total outsider. Okay, go on.

Dax Craig (13:09)

Yeah, yeah,

yeah. Well, I mean, it took a total outsider, right? An insider would have never done it. Um, yeah, so that's I mean, that's actually a very good lesson. Uh don't be afraid of being an outsider. So we we we built this thing and we realized that there was no way it was gonna scale. No way, because we didn't have the compute power. We worked with Sun Microsystems and we did all these crazy things to uh to build parallel computing.

Right, might sound familiar. Parallel computing didn't come out really until two thousand seven, two thousand eight. We were doing it in two thousand four. There's actually a paper out there written about us.

Anthony Codispoti (13:51)

Explain parallel computing.

Dax Craig (13:53)

Well, so at the time, right, um, if you were doing any kind of processing, either you were doing it on a supercomputer, if it was heavy processing or mini computer, mainframe. Um but what we were doing, because those are single processor kind of things, what we were doing was distributing the work, because these a these algorithms are as we all know now, uh

Massively complex and take a tremendous amount of compute power. But they break the the pieces up and spread it around to servers all over the place. And so we figured out how to do parallel processing with these advanced machine learning algorithms. Nobody had ever done it, at least to our knowledge. It didn't matter, it still didn't work. Um we just couldn't get to compute power. And so, but we're already, we're already.

full into this thing, we're like, we gotta we gotta pivot again. Uh we're burning through cash like crazy. And we're like, well we're gonna go all in on insurance as a point solution. We're not gonna focus on building the platform. It's just we're gonna figure out insurance, uh, and we're we're gonna move away from the really advanced machine learning algorithms because we we just couldn't get it to work. So we went to what are called generalized linear models, which are

far simpler to build uh and didn't require as much compute and went at the market that way and built um a SaaS business uh where insurance companies would pay us to build the models, run the models, manage the models, manage all the data uh in a a SaaS kind of subscription model. And that's that turned out to be really good.

And why I did it for uh I did it for fourteen years.

Anthony Codispoti (15:51)

But bridge this for me. So you've got a co-founder who's brilliant on the technical side. You seem to be the visionary, connect the dots, make the deals happen kind of a guy. But why are the insurance companies paying any attention to two guys who have no experience in insurance? How did you get those deals?

Dax Craig (16:09)

The

I mean it it's it's kind of a wonder actually. Um I

Because by all rights, they shouldn't have paid attention to us at all. We were two guys and a dog, um, didn't know anything about insurance. We knew none of the acronyms, we knew none of the the the way insurance companies work. But we had this idea that you could use analytics to do it better. And so we um we convinced one company who was actually already looking for something like this, something called Selective.

which is a a reasonable size insurance company in Jersey. Um and they uh they're like, yeah, we'll do a pilot with you. Uh and of course we're like paid. And they they said yes, they would do a paid pilot with us. And we didn't have an office. We didn't have anything. It was two guys and a dog. And they're like, okay, we're gonna come out and do us Yeah, the dog

Winning the First Insurance Pilot

Anthony Codispoti (17:08)

What was the dog doing?

Dax Craig (17:11)

my dog.

They're like, we're gonna do a site visit in uh and we got it I mean, 'cause they kinda knew. Like, we wanna be there next week. Like, oh, okay. Sure, we'll do a site visit. So we scrambled, we got an office, got an office set up, we hired some temps, and even though it was small, right, it was you know, like a thousand feet, we had four people plus us, so it looked like we were

Kinda real. They came to the site visit. They said yes, let's do it. And we built the pilot for them. Uh

Anthony Codispoti (17:51)

And I gotta ask,

were the temps actors, or did you actually have jobs for them? Like were they just sort of there to look like okay.

Dax Craig (17:56)

No, they were actual temp workers. They weren't actors. They were

actors would have been funnier. we didn't we didn't do that. No, they had I mean, they were, you know, doing one was anthropomphones, one was, you know, acting like they were doing data, stuff like that. It was they weren't legit. They were acting, but they weren't actors. One day.

Anthony Codispoti (18:12)

They were acting though. So yeah, okay. So you brought in for for the presentation and then

yeah, one day. Okay. I I kind of uh I admire the theatrics of it. Go ahead. Tell me what's next. So you they s so they're like, okay, let's go for it.

Dax Craig (18:24)

Well well funny enough, the guy that

that I talked to that said yes, um, he is a consultant uh to Comerics today. I've been working with him for twenty five years. love the guy. Um so we we we didn't know what we were doing, uh we didn't know anything about insurance. We're like let the data speak, the algorithms are gonna figure it out, and we'll we'll come up with something great. But these things are black boxes.

mean they're just absolute black boxes. And even though we had pivoted to something that was simpler, still a black box. And we we got the results for the pilot and we were presenting it uh to the entire leadership team of this company.

And we were like, Wow, this is amazing. Like we showed that if they had used our system, they would have uh made a bunch more money. So we're presenting this to uh the group and the CEO stops us sort of mid presentation said, Well, why is that? How how does that work? And my co founder and I looked at each other like, We don't know. We literally have no idea.

I mean, does this sound familiar? This is AI, but it was so early. We're like

Anthony Codispoti (19:42)

Yeah. So what was the input?

Like what did they give you and what was it that you were giving them back? Like I want to understand what this pilot project was.

Dax Craig (19:50)

Yes. I mean we

were we were inventing this stuff as we went. So they gave us all of their uh so it's an insurance company, it was uh workers compensation insurance. It was all the policy information. So think like demographic information about the companies, um, you know, what kind of business they were in, where they were located, uh it was all their claims history, uh and all of that went into a big soup. Um

And we let the algorithms tell us, okay, using all of this data, um, what should the price have been? And these are blind tests, so you don't cheat. Um, what's what

Anthony Codispoti (20:33)

I was gonna say 'cause if you know the result then it's pretty easy to

Dax Craig (20:37)

i exactly, right? You can fit the data perfectly. So they were blind, blind testing. We're like, well, what should we have done?

Should priced one policy a different, we should have given it a a debit versus a credit, uh, or we shouldn't have written an account. And then we compared what we said um we should do versus what they actually did, and then we measured the results, which was better. You know, classic uh backcasting, uh, if you will, blind test. And the blind test was remarkably better, but we didn't know why.

We literally had no idea why, because it was the

you've heard of these things today. Like, yeah, like we don't really know how it works. Well, we didn't either. And the CEO looked at me in the eye and he said,

I am not betting, it was a two billion dollar company at the time. I'm not betting two billion dollars on you, and the meeting was over. And we were we're like, oh, that's really bad. I mean, we couldn't explain it. Um, but we knew we had something at that point because they gave us the data. We knew there was something there, and it took a

Anthony Codispoti (21:56)

So where do you go from

there?

Pooling Data to Help Smaller Insurers Compete

Dax Craig (21:59)

Well, so we use that. We use that data. We didn't tell who it was, but we used the information to just gut it out and one at a time convince somebody do a pilot with us, we'll show you what it is. We figured out how to explain it. That took some time. And we f we figured out that um the biggest problem with this stuff was that

People didn't have enough data. Selective had enough data, but we didn't have enough um on our own. And any individual company, usually they were smaller, they didn't have enough data. So we're like, well, what if we pool all this data almost like a credit bureau does? Um that that concept doesn't exist in insurance. And so we we decided that in order to sell this to the people that

actually need it, which are the mid and small size insurance companies, we pull all their data together into a contributory database and then we use it to build these pricing models. And that's what did.

Anthony Codispoti (23:07)

How on earth did you

get the insurance companies to agree to this? Like the pulling of the data? Was it just the promise of what was on the other end for them?

Dax Craig (23:16)

Yeah. Yeah, because i I mean that over time, um, the big companies like Hartford and Travelers, they started doing this on their own and they started winning big time. And so the little companies were getting smoked. And so they they had to do something, but they they didn't have enough data, they couldn't afford it. And so we would come in and say, Well, we can build this for you.

Because we have all this data. Everybody shares in the benefits of this data, and you cannot use us unless you contribute data. So we built this contributory database, which actually became the largest non-bureau data store in the country, uh, and we used it to help them price and underwrite better, and it worked. But it was hand-to-hand combat. It was literally

the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Um convincing

Anthony Codispoti (24:19)

Just getting the insurance

companies to give you the data and to sign up with you.

Dax Craig (24:23)

No, getting

them to to use it. They would buy it and then they wouldn't use it. They're like, yeah, our underwriters are better than this. We're like, No, they're not. The they're not. We can show it to you in data. Yeah, but the underwriters, they know. And every year we'd sit in front of the board and we'd be like, Okay, here are the results that you could have had had you used it. Here are the results you had. And it became really frustrating. Um

And it was it was kind of like um if you were an anti-smoking volunteer, you know, campaign owner in nineteen seventy two, everybody knew it was terrible for you, but everybody still smoked. And that's kind of what we felt like. We're like, my God, we're we're we're screaming in the dark, uh, because nobody nobody will really use it. They'll buy it.

But then we'll really use it. Um and it was incredibly frustrating. But I learned so much about insurance that I was like, there's a real opportunity.

Anthony Codispoti (25:33)

Did you eventually get that momentum or did it just always feel like a struggle? And I guess the second part of my question is, was there ever a thought that maybe the data that you had was useful in a different way?

Dax Craig (25:50)

Yeah. Um well let me answer the first question, the struggle part. Um

Insurance is not known for being on the cutting edge, uh, right? And for good reason, right? Because they needed an ability to pay your claim if you have it, right? And they take that very seriously. Uh, and they take their social responsibility very seriously. So they're very slow to move. They're very slow to adopt new technology, even if it's really, really good and works. I'm not giving an example. Progressive started using uh

FICO scores back in the nineties, it took twenty years before that was widely adopted. And there are still companies today that don't use credit score, even though it's you know, incredibly predictive. So it just takes a long time. So we got to I don't know, fifty or sixty clients, which was because there's only three hundred, so we got a pretty good penetration. But it was still just really

Really hard to to sell. And that was frustrating.

Anthony Codispoti (27:00)

And so you decide to

exit, right?

The Idea Behind Starting an Insurance Company

Dax Craig (27:04)

Yeah, I mean so the data was easy. That was the easy part. Um and and there there might have been other uses for the data. I mean, we owned it full stop. Um, we never explored those other uses. Um but what what happened, I I got to a point where I was like, I am really tired of trying to convince people to stop smoking.

And use this stuff to their benefit. Um, and I hatched an idea. I'm like, you what? I'm just gonna become an insurance company on my own. I'm just gonna just go be an insurance company. And I'm gonna run the exact playbook I've been trying to get them to do. Uh and I had happened to um meet Nigel Morris, who was one of the co founders of Capital One, and he invested in Valen and

I was having dinner with him. This was 2011. I was already massively frustrated by this point. and I said, you know, I think there's a way to to become an insurance company. And he told me the story of Capital One, which I don't know if you know. But I'll make it real brief. They were a consulting firm. They were trying to get companies to use credit score, and nobody would. All the banks for credit cards.

And so uh he and his co-founder, uh Fairbank, Rich Fairbank, were like, you know what, we're just gonna start our own credit c credit card company. And they they only got one bank in I can't remember the name of them, but they were in Richmond, Virginia. That's why Capital One was in Richmond. to lend them their balance sheet and to do it. And Capital One was born. Uh and he's like, You could do the same thing in insurance and that.

That really inspired me um to figure out how I

Anthony Codispoti (29:03)

It's kind of what you were already thinking. But

Dax Craig (29:06)

was thinking it, but I didn't know how to do it. I didn't understand the capital part. I didn't understand, and that piece was freaked me out because the capital needs of an insurance company are so big. Um and so I I figured out that that was the path eventually, um, because the value capture.

with Valen was so missing. the customers were getting the value capture um but they weren't taking advantage of it. And then of course Valen wasn't getting paid for it because they weren't taking advantage of it. So just the whole value chain was lopsided. Um it was sort of unrealized value if you will. And so it took me five years to figure out how to

actually get it off the ground. Uh and once I I had done that, then it was time to to sell Valen.

Anthony Codispoti (30:04)

What was the hardest part

of that? Was it capitalizing the project?

Dax Craig (30:08)

capital. So I knew how to

Anthony Codispoti (30:09)

And how did you

Dax Craig (30:10)

do it.

Anthony Codispoti (30:10)

how did you do it?

Dax Craig (30:12)

So um

At the at the uh around the same time Nigel invested, um I wanted I didn't have anybody on my board that knew insurance. And I knew that was a just a real problem. I had investors and uh independents that nobody knew insurance. So I went out to seek uh somebody on the an independent that really knew insurance. Um and I knew that this was a possibility. um

And I'd heard of this company called White Mountains, who at the time owned eSurance, was uh you know, very well capitalized, didn't have operations, sought out this kind of thing. They were the funders behind eSurance, so they they were willing to take you know some some wild swings. Uh, and I called the founder, cold call.

he was like, Listen, I love what you're doing. I'm not the right guy. I'm literally dying of cancer. And he died like six months later, really sad. but my co-founder, Morgan Davis, might be interested. And of course, you know, hey, would you introduce me? Nope, but you can call him. Slight cold called Morgan. And yeah, he's he's a salty dog. He's like, You got like two minutes. And I told him what I was doing.

And he's like, Okay, a little more. And I said, I'm gonna be in uh LA for Thanksgiving. I know you're in Newport. Will you just meet me? And he said, I'll give you 15 minutes. So I drove down from LA. I met him at Starbucks in Newport, and he gave me 15 minutes. That 15 minutes turned into an hour and a half. And he loved the idea, loved the I the whole concept. We agreed to join the board.

And he introduced me to White Mountains. And White Mountains invested in Valen, all for this, you know, hanging around the hoop, they called it. They're like, We don't know what's gonna happen with these guys, but something good. So we're gonna just hang around the hoop and see what happens. And I pitched the idea of starting an insurance company in Morgan. He's like, That's the stupidest idea ever. That'll never work. White Mountains will never go for it. But I kept at him, I kept chipping away at it.

And finally he he made an intro to somebody at White Mountains that could actually do it. And I made the pitch in uh January of twenty sixteen. And it was classic. Thanks a lot, don't call us, we'll call you. I'm like, well that didn't go well. So I put my head down and just continue to build Val uh Valen and um

I literally got a call ten months later. Out of the blue, Kip Oberton was CFO of White Mounds. He said, We've been thinking about your idea. Ten months. Uh-huh.

Anthony Codispoti (33:20)

For ten months with no contact.

Dax Craig (33:23)

No contact.

Anthony Codispoti (33:24)

See, it doesn't go this way. You you when things go quiet that long, that means it's dead. They've moved on. They've got a thousand other priorities. Okay. This is great.

Dax Craig (33:29)

Right. I thought it was dead. I thought it was dead and

he calls me out of the blue and 'cause I am heads down focused on making Valen successful.

And he said, We really like your idea and we want to do it.

And they had figured out all the capital, all the structure. They had already done all the work. And so they basically handed the like, I'm gonna create an MGA, we're gonna be the capital. Uh, these are a bunch of wonky insurance things. We're gonna be your front and your reinsurer, and uh, we'll invest in the business, and off we go. And so, um, that was that we had to do a bunch of due diligence and

uh they introduced me to my co founder John Swaggart who had an insurance pedigree so it actually was a a really good match 'cause I didn't have the insurance pedigree uh and he had the insurance knowledge. So he and I got together and uh started pie.

Launching Pie and Scaling Its Pricing Model

Anthony Codispoti (34:36)

So, okay, this is the start of Pi Insurance, which the whole idea here is that you wanted to sell workers' compensation coverage

Dax Craig (34:43)

Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (34:44)

to small businesses faster and more transparently than the traditional market. And you guys and basically it was taking the playbook you were trying to teach all of your Valen customers to do, and they weren't listening and just doing it yourselves. Eventually Pi reaches more than $400 million in premiums across 38 states.

Dax Craig (35:06)

Way bigger now.

Anthony Codispoti (35:07)

Okay. Four thousand agency partners, bigger now that on that number as well.

Dax Craig (35:13)

Yeah, I mean the company is yeah, well over six hundred million in premium, um five thousand agencies.

Anthony Codispoti (35:21)

How did you do it? How how did you get such scale?

Dax Craig (35:26)

I mean it's so simple. It's so simple. Um the the playbook that we were trying to get uh our insurance customers avowed to do was to

Take the underwriter out of the pricing game. And have the underwriter only do complicated things. You know, understanding what a business actually does versus what they tell you it does. um Understanding the operations, you know, they say they're a framer, but they're really a roofer. Those are two totally different risks. That kind of thing. The underwriters are very good at that.

They're terrible at pricing. And I'm okay saying this 'cause I've been saying it for twenty years. They're terrible at pricing. They just intellectually they can't hold hundreds of data elements in their head at the same time and figure out the weights of those things on on what the price is.

Nobody did that. Nobody. So they would use the Valen technology to help the underwriter think about what to price if they wouldn't actually use the analytics to price. So we went out and said, that's not we're gonna do. We're gonna use the analytics to price. Full stop. Underwriters are not gonna have a say in pricing. And we we knew that there was a market.

in the small business segment that was hard to place. I mean roofers are a great example, trucking companies. And there you you can't afford to underwrite because the the policies are so small. A couple thousand dollar policies, as soon as you put a human underwriter in the loop, you lost money uh as an insurance company and it's slow. The agent doesn't like it. If it's a hundred thousand dollar account, nobody cares. They're like, yeah, the underwriter great.

You it's slow, whatever. Uh, but when it's a two thousand dollar count, everybody cares that it's super fast uh and doesn't waste everybody's time, including the insured. When like we can do this with analytics, nobody can do this with underwriting. There's no way in which we're gonna go after this segment of the marketplace. And it turned out to be exactly right.

Anthony Codispoti (37:50)

And so were you going direct

to consumer or did you have distribution partners that are helping you get to these folks?

Dax Craig (37:56)

So this is the part I knew the least about was distribution. And we're like, we're gonna have a multi channel distribution. We're gonna have direct to consumer, uh, we're gonna have retail agents, we're gonna have wholesale brokers, and we're gonna have payroll companies. And so we built uh the distribution. We did direct, we spent a ungodly amount of money on direct advertising.

digital advertising. And then um we signed up retail agents, you know, the the agent down the street that you all know. And then the wholesale brokers, which are they sit kind of in the middle. Um and then eventually we we got to payroll companies because we got enough scale. I will tell you it was a mistake to go multi-channel because

Anthony Codispoti (38:52)

Mm.

Dax Craig (38:53)

there was channel conflict.

People didn't trust us. They thought that we would take their business because we had a direct operation. And we spent so much money on direct. It was so cash consumptive that uh we literally couldn't make it pay. And so we should have never done direct and we should have focused on wholesale or retail, not both. Uh and we should have absolutely done payroll. Though that turned out to be a monster.

Anthony Codispoti (39:23)

So

d talk to me how the payroll partnerships came about. First of all, I want to understand how you approached them, where they saw the value add, and then how you actually get plugged into their customer base once they say yes.

Dax Craig (39:40)

Yeah, so um

I've learned, you know, after starting three businesses that your investors, your advisors are actually really, really important. And you should pick them not only by the knowledge they have, but who they know and who they can help you get to know. Because it i like anything, it is a who you know game, but I that to me is is is not the story, it's who you get to know.

and so with the payroll companies, we had gotten introduced to um the the founders of uh a company called Guard Insurance, which was kind of the pie of nineteen eighty. They were small business, highly technical. They had sold the business to Berkshire Hathaway, they were interested in uh doing insurance uh in insurance technology investments.

We gotta introduce them, they love the idea. Uh and Judge Chaval um knew all the payroll players because they invented the whole payroll business and Warcomp.

So he introduced us. It was as simple as that. He introduced us. Of course, we weren't ready. I mean, ADP's like, yeah, whatever. When you're ready, give us a call. Um, and we did. you know, a couple years into the business, we had grown like crazy. We were doing everything we said we would do. Um and and I remember talking to ADP and they're like, well.

we've already got seven work comp providers and they all have multiple billions behind them. You know, it's it's Travelers, it's Hartford, it's Liberty, it's all the big insurance companies. Why do we need you? Like there's nothing you can provide that they can't. And I said, Well, let me ask you something. Do you write any trucking companies today? No.

Do you have any roofing companies today? No. Landscapers? No. So all those guys were going after the same exact low-risk business. The accounting firms, the dentist office, the retail stores, stuff like that. And I'm like, that's we're not playing in that pond. We're playing in a completely different pond where we're going after the small business segment that you don't have.

And if you do this, because we we learned that work comp was a precursor to payroll. So they would sell the work comp and then they'd get the payroll. It wasn't the other way around. I thought it was the other way around. Like, you're probably not doing payroll for any of these kinds of companies either. And they said, No, we're not. So it basic

Anthony Codispoti (42:46)

So ADP was the one

who was actually selling and promoting the workers' comp.

Dax Craig (42:51)

Yeah, because it was it was a way for them to get payroll. That's why it was so successful

Anthony Codispoti (42:55)

Interesting.

Dax Craig (42:56)

for them. They're the largest uh commercial um agency in the country. They're huge. They're huge. A small portion.

Anthony Codispoti (43:05)

I know them as a payroll

company. I didn't realize that that sort of their foot in the door a lot of times is the workers' comp product. Okay.

Dax Craig (43:12)

Right,

right. And so they're like, Yeah, whatever, everybody tells us that and I'm like, let's just run a test. You send us um you know, ten thousand policies that you that you didn't get quoted because they were qu they they had this a total machine. So they sent us the policies and we that all got declined by all the big guys. And we quoted like eighty percent of them.

And it uh made them real believers. And so we got on the platform

2022. Um so four years after we started selling, it took us four years to get there, but we got on the platform. We were by far the smallest company, by orders of magnitude, the smallest company. And uh within three months we broke in the top five. Um I don't have the exact statistics today, um, but after I can't remember the exact, but it was around nine months.

We went to number one uh and never left. I'm pretty sure Pi's number one today, but I don't know for sure. Yeah. And

Anthony Codispoti (44:29)

That's impressive. So

Dax Craig (44:31)

and it expanded just like we thought it would, their payroll business uh significantly.

Why Dax Stepped Away From Pie

Anthony Codispoti (44:36)

Why did you step away?

Dax Craig (44:41)

Great question. Um

Anthony Codispoti (44:43)

You build a rocket ship. I mean, this is really cool.

Dax Craig (44:47)

It fun. It was a lot of fun. I'll answer that question, but let me tell you a a quick aside. Um so when I was recruiting people to come to Pi, uh because we recruited non-insurance people and insurance people, and and we were recruiting very, very capable people from you know technology companies. And like, why would I come to insurance?

Like insurance kinda sucks. And I'm like, Exactly, insurance sucks. We're trying to change that. And do you have any f affiliation with a small business? yeah, my dad was a you know, electrician or whatever.

Well, go ask your dad how hard it is to get insurance. Of course, they go ask. my dad just went off. It was so awful. Couldn't get it and hated his broker and all this stuff. And we'd we'd get people to come on. And they're like, well, why are you in it? And I said, I can't believe I'm actually saying this out loud. I started a wireless company at the the dawn of the wireless explosion, and it was so fun to be in that.

But it but there becomes a time in every company's life where it it is no longer the entrepreneurial game. it needs to graduate from an entrepreneurial company to a professionally run organization. Um right with compliance and and we were regulated, we'd become an insurance carrier, so we were dealing with 50 state regulators.

And that was all I was doing. Like the fun stuff of starting a business, all the original mistakes, we weren't I wasn't doing. And not because I didn't want to, it's just we didn't need any of that. I was, you know, managing the business as the president. My co founder took all of the uh the finance, accounting, legal, reinsurance stuff, and I did all the operations. So sales, marketing.

uh underwriting, all that stuff.

And it just wasn't as much fun. And I had the idea for Comerics and I even tried to sort of incubate it inside a pie. And there was no way I was gonna get uh the traction because we were so focused on I mean the company's still growing 30% a year. It's just I wasn't gonna get any traction. yeah, no, I'm still

Anthony Codispoti (47:31)

You still have equity? You have a board seat and th okay.

Dax Craig (47:34)

a very large shareholder. I I love pie. Um yeah, I'm I'm cheering for pie.

The Idea Behind Comeryx

Anthony Codispoti (47:39)

So what was the new idea?

What what's Comerics?

Dax Craig (47:43)

Well, the idea was that to run the same exact playbook we ran at at Pi, which was tough to place small business insurance, artisan contractors, but in a different segment of the insurance industry. We only did work comp. I thought we could do general liability and and some things that uh small businesses need. But it's just we just there was no way to do it inside of Pi effectively.

And so the combination of it's not as fun anymore. I'm an entrepreneur at heart, like truly an entrepreneur. Uh I'm gonna go do this again. And so I mean I left on great terms uh with Pi. I mean I in fact my co founder and I have uh every couple of weeks we meet. Um so I'm I'm still in in loosely involved. I don't have any part of management or board.

Anthony Codispoti (48:42)

So what's

the new product

Dax Craig (48:43)

Stuff.

Anthony Codispoti (48:43)

line or product lines?

Dax Craig (48:45)

Yeah, so um

We we did a lot of discovery trying to figure out what's missing in the marketplace in small business. And just like Pi, like you can go get a general liability policy if you're a retail store, because that's like a slip and fall, who cares? that's really easy to get, really easy to do. But if you're a if you're an H V A C person or plumber.

Getting general liability insurance actually turns out to be kind of hard. and what we discovered was that many of these small businesses have um what's called an incidental pollution liability. So what that means, think of think about Plumber, right? They they build a new house and um the toilet upstairs.

isn't connected properly. And three years down the road, um the they discover the problem because the toilet falls through the floor. I mean this is a real this is actually a real example. um Toilet falls through the floor and you know crashes the ceiling, does all this damage, and then they discover there's mold.

throughout the house because that thing had been leaking for three years. That's a pollution problem. That's a pollution liability problem. And your general liability insurance doesn't cover it. And they all have these kinds of things, like a roofer, like a leaky roof, same kind of thing. Um or, you know, somebody does power washing. I mean, there's all kinds of examples of it. And so we figured out that we could use AI the same way we

We did at Pi, but we I mean we just brute forced it at Pi with technology. Now we can actually leverage AI. And we could build the same kind of mousetrap. We could deliver really fast low-touch, no-touch insurance for these small artisan contractors that had general liability and pollution liability in one policy. Uh

And solve a big problem for these small contractors. And that was the the idea. And so that's what we're starting with.

Anthony Codispoti (51:22)

And is the distribution look the same as it did for Pi? It used going through like the ADPs and the

Dax Craig (51:28)

No, I

Anthony Codispoti (51:28)

payroll companies of the world?

Dax Craig (51:30)

I learned a hard lesson that we're gonna f stick to one distribution channel. We're working with wholesale brokers because they have the reach. So we don't have to go out and build a huge sales force and work with independent agents. There are thirty five thousand agencies in this country. Uh that's a lot. And they all have, you know, on average ten to twenty people. so there's a lot of independent agents out there.

Wholesale brokers, they already work with all of them. Uh, and so give up a little bit of margin, but we have really broad reach, and they have um services that the small independent agent likes. and so we can leverage those things as well. We're not gonna work with payroll companies um because they don't have the proper licenses to sell this kind of insurance. You have to have a special license.

Anthony Codispoti (52:26)

This is a different license than what you need for a workers' comp.

Dax Craig (52:29)

Yeah, it's called um an an excess and surplus license and so it's just really specialty thing that most retail agents don't have.

Anthony Codispoti (52:38)

Was it easy for you to get to the wholesale brokers because now you're Dax Craig and you've got, you know, some of these success stories under your belt? Pi, for example.

Dax Craig (52:48)

I will say that Pi carries yeah, a lot of weight. Um I don't know somebody, generally they'll take my call. So it's been a huge advantage. Um for sure. The uh the insurance industry as big as it is, I mean it's trillions of dollars. This actually ends up being kind of small. Um there's really only a few players in the wholesale broker market. Um

And so if you can get to them, you get to most of the market. so that's been a real advantage. Um yeah, I mean who knew that you know, a a wireless technology guy would build an insurance company and have access to a lot of insurance people. Uh it's it's been an interesting ride.

Anthony Codispoti (53:39)

And so these policies for these really small companies are still profitable for the brokers to sell, obviously, or you just wouldn't have much interest.

Dax Craig (53:45)

Well they're they're

not today. This is the this is the problem. So a retail agent, this this is why it's so hard for I mean, the people that are building the backbone of America to get insurance. Like it's really hard. It's a real problem for them. Because nobody will pay attention to them, because nobody in the chain makes any money. The retail agents like, Really? I'm gonna go get a two thousand dollar policy.

I make two hundred bucks and it's gonna cost me as much time and energy as a hundred thousand dollar policy. I think they're just not gonna do it unless they're desperate. The wholesale broker, same thing, they're like, I am not gonna do this. So and then the carrier is like, I'm not writing a two thousand dollar policy. As soon as I have to underwrite it, I lost money. So everybody in the chain loses money, yet that artisan contractor has to have it.

They have to have it or they cannot set foot on a site. And so what happens the way they get it, because they do get it, it's always in accommodation. It's like the retail, it's like, okay, my brother-in-law asked me to do this, I'll do it for you. And then they convince the wholesale broker, listen, I've got ten million dollars of other business with you. Just get this one done for me. And the then the wholesale broker talks to the carry, and the carrier's like,

Yeah, you got a billion dollars with us. I'll do whatever you want. And so it's all it's a it's all accommodation. Nobody makes money in the chain. But with AI, like that completely gets erased. I mean, we we did the exact same thing at Pi, and we anecdotally, so we don't know this for fact, but our agents told us that their business on average increased ten to thirty percent uh after they put

pie on their platform.

Using AI to Speed Up Insurance Applications

Anthony Codispoti (55:48)

Okay. But what about comerics? How do you make that work? Is it the same idea? Because it still takes a lot of labor to make that.

Dax Craig (55:53)

Well it's it's even better, right?

Because we're doing it all with AI. I mean I'll give you a very specific example.

Anthony Codispoti (56:02)

So the shortcut here is in the underwriting proces, not the sales proces.

Dax Craig (56:07)

It is not the sales process. The sales process does not change. It is not just the underwriting process, it's all of the the the entire process of getting a policy. So something most of your listeners will understand is how they get a mortgage. And a mortgage is a total pain in the butt, right? All the paperwork, all the diligence, all the stuff that has to happen, you know, it usually takes weeks, sometimes months to get a mortgage.

God, why is this so freaking hard? This ought to be automated. Rocket mortgage figured out, and you know, look at what they've done. It's the same concept. The the process of getting insurance, like you've got to underwrite it, you've got to price it, there's all kinds of regulatory things. Each insurance policy is a bespoke contract that has literally thousands of permutations.

So human beings sit there and construct these things and it's very time consuming. An average underwriter can underwrite maybe half a dozen a day, maybe. And it takes weeks to get these things done. So you're a contractor, you've got a job, and all you need is a certificate of insurance.

And it's a new job, so you didn't know about it three days ago, and you've got to get this certificate of insurance in three days. No way in hell that's happening. No way. With Comerics, totally different story. And we've already we we haven't launched yet, so we'll launch in a couple weeks. Um all they do send an email and they literally can get a policy in a few minutes. Literally.

So the average response time will quote the business in three or four minutes. Uh and if they want the policy, it takes another couple of minutes and they've got it all right there. Uh and that's all because of AI.

Anthony Codispoti (58:15)

Is it some kind of a self-serve model? Is it sort of like a like a SAS front end?

Dax Craig (58:23)

yes and no. It's think about the the agent does all the work, the broker. it's it's all email. Yeah, they say they need it.

Anthony Codispoti (58:31)

So the contractors get in touch with their agent and the agent is

is still it's still an email communication from the agent side or are they interfacing with a web UI that is doing all this sort of behind the scenes?

Dax Craig (58:44)

So today most

of them do all of this through email. And then the the carrier does it all by hand. I mean, they've got twenty different things open, they've got spreadsheets, it's a it's kind of a crazy mess. With Comerics, all they do is they send an email, our AI system ingests it, um, adds a whole bunch of information from external sources to it, and we either quote or decline it. That's it. Uh

you know, damn near instant. Um they can also go on a portal. We have a portal. We don't think anybody's gonna use it 'cause they all love email. Uh and we have APIs.

The only people that are gonna do APIs are super high volume uh brokers, and there are a few of those. But most people just send an email.

Anthony Codispoti (59:38)

So what is the anticipated launch date?

Dax Craig (59:42)

Uh we are launching in Q four, hopefully early part of Q four.

Anthony Codispoti (59:47)

Okay. potentially by the time this interview comes out, we're recording in September of twenty twenty six, so fun

Dax Craig (59:52)

Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (59:54)

stuff. what's a big hurdle that you need to cross over before you get there?

Dax Craig (1:00:02)

Um

It's finishing the technology build. Uh that the age of AI is a wonderful place to be as an entrepreneur. It is absolutely amazing. It took us about six years and about a hundred and fifty million dollars to build out the tech stack at Pi. Crazy complicated stuff. We will have

pretty close to an equivalent system, uh, Echomerics and we started twelve weeks ago with two people. It is staggering. It's staggering. It's what we can do.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:47)

And what's the all

in to get there, including compute costs and tokens and whatnot?

Dax Craig (1:00:56)

Million bucks.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:58)

Did you really have to rebuild the whole infrastructure? You couldn't do like a copy and paste from Pi and and make some tweaks? No, 'cause this is a n whole new venture, a whole new set of owners and principles. Yeah.

Dax Craig (1:01:08)

It's a whole new business. Yeah.

And and we wanted to build it from the ground up, um, because it's AI native and and the Pi system, right? You wouldn't rebuild the Pi system today because it's not AI native, but you also wouldn't throw it away because it works exceptionally well. So it's um yeah, we and it's a different line of business, so there's a lot of different nuances to it.

The Hardest Stretch: Nearly Running Out of Money

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:34)

So somebody who's been through as many different business ventures as you have, there are ups and man, we've talked about the rocket ships you've been riding, and there are always big downs. Tell me about one of the hardest things that you've had to overcome and what going through that taught you.

Dax Craig (1:01:56)

well I like to joke, right? You uh as an entrepreneur, you read many books, um, but the most important book is your checkbook. Uh we uh we almost hit the wall multiple times at Valen, um 'cause we ran out of money. Uh and those are some pretty dire times. Um when you're looking at

I'm literally not gonna make payroll in two weeks.

And there is no way I can land enough clients in two weeks to pay for uh payroll. Um that is really scary. Uh really scary. And one time um I got in gotten super crossways with one of my investors. He wanted us to keep spending and keep hiring, and I said, No, I think I think

We're not having the the market take up like I thought we would, right? I don't think we have the product market fit uh right. He's like, No, I think you do, and you need to keep hiring. And I said, No, I think we're we're gonna slow down. He said, If you do that, we're gonna fire you as CEO. So this is back in the days when uh founding CEOs didn't have nearly the power they have today. I

I took him at his word and I kept hiring, uh, against my better wishes. Uh and I knew the prop market fit wasn't there. And finally I called a board meeting. I said, We gotta let staff go. Um

And it was one of the darkest days in my entire life. We um we didn't have that many people. We had thirty-four people. Uh but it was about thirty-four too many. Um we we went down to fourteen uh in a single day. It was awful. Um letting go people you hired and right the promise of of

Amazing job and amazing company and amazing outcome and none of that came to pass. That was terrible. Uh, but we still weren't out of the woods. Um we didn't have enough money to keep keep the lights on for very long. And one of the so that was a very dark day, but it was followed by one of the best days ever. Um I called one of my investors.

I was not on the board and I was just giving them an update. And uh he said, Dax, um, what do you need? And I was like, I don't really need anything. I appreciate everything. He goes, No, no, how much money do you need? And sheepishly I was like, six hundred grand. Um and he's like, Okay. You will have it tomorrow.

No contract, no preferred stock, no nothing. He wired six hundred thousand dollars to the company and I was like, my god, what like that's amazing. We need to pay for this, he's like, Don't worry, we'll figure it out. Um and uh it was so it was a very dark day followed by an amazing day and and uh was an incredible reminder of

Anthony Codispoti (1:05:42)

Somebody who just believed in you.

Dax Craig (1:05:44)

Believed in and we turned it around and built the business.

Anthony Codispoti (1:05:48)

That's incredible. You got Santa Claus came knocking on your door early.

Dax Craig (1:05:54)

Yeah. Yeah, it was it was incredible. Um but those dark days um were almost all about money and just running out of

Anthony Codispoti (1:06:04)

It's so hard. You know, uh if folks are listening and you've ever had trouble paying your own bills, that's stressful, right? Take that and multiply it by a hundred when you don't think you're gonna make payroll, right? Because now you're responsible for all these other people's livelihoods. And are they gonna be able to pay their bills? And then the feeling of having to let somebody go, particularly when it's not for cause, right? It is one of the worst feelings in the entire world.

Back me here, Dax. I mean it's it's like breaking up with somebody and taking their wallet at the same time.

Dax Craig (1:06:38)

Well, it's also i yes, it's it's awful and it's and it's I failed. I failed someone. Um, I failed to live up to the implicit promise of you come to work here and you do a great job, we're gonna have job. Um and that's that's really terrible, uh as an entrepreneur and

There is probably no worse thing uh than having to let somebody go for that reason.

Anthony Codispoti (1:07:13)

How did you cope? How did you

get through it? What was your support system?

Dax Craig (1:07:18)

Um

Well, thankfully I have a wonderful wife. Um I didn't

had one child at the time. He was too young to be a support system. My wife comes from an entrepreneurial family. Her dad was an entrepreneur. Saw many ups and downs. A couple bankruptcies, right? People knocking on the door, uh trying to take their house. Um and so I I had her, which was amazing, to have her as a support system. And that any entrepreneur

Right. If if your spouse or your significant other is not on board, it's gonna be miserable. Uh so goes your family, so goes your business, so goes your business, so goes your family. They're all connected. And then um I had a CEO group. uh many of you might be familiar with YPO, um, or Vista or EO, there's a number of them. Um and it's

It's almost like AA for CEOs. and all you do is support each other um and try and help you become a from in my case, right, a better husband, father, CEO in in that order. Uh I had them. Um and they uh were great at showing a a mirror up to me, like this is on you.

This is not this is not an external. This is not your investor who told you to hire people. This is yours. You did this. Uh you can't blame it on him. This I was like, you're right. I should have done what I thought was right and I didn't. And that was a very tough lesson to learn.

Anthony Codispoti (1:09:19)

And that peer support is so key. I mean, it's great that your wife is supportive, and I agree a hundred percent. Without supportive family, this all unravels pretty fast. But your wife doesn't understand what you're going through, right? She doesn't know the

Dax Craig (1:09:32)

No, no.

Anthony Codispoti (1:09:33)

business side of it. That's where these peer groups are so incredibly helpful because they've walked in your shoes. They know that pain. And they've got a different, they've got that perspective. They can call

Dax Craig (1:09:43)

That's right. And you and and you're not

Anthony Codispoti (1:09:45)

you on it.

Dax Craig (1:09:47)

and you're not investors in each other's businesses. So all you care about is each other's success, right? And and holding each other accountable. They're amazing. I I strongly encourage anybody to seek these out.

Anthony Codispoti (1:10:03)

Dax, before I ask my last question for you here, I'm going to do three quick things for the audience. First of all, if you want to learn more about what Dax Craig is doing, go to his website. Comerics.com is spelled the the word com C O E and then R Y X. C O E R Y X, Comarics.com. It'll be in the show notes, but you can remember that, comarics.com. And if you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to subscribe wherever you're listening.

It sends a signal that helps others discover our podcast. So thank you for taking a quick moment to do that. And as a reminder to insurance brokers of all kinds, there's a program backed by Bain Capital Insurance that gives their employees unlimited access to doctors, therapists, and prescriptions, no co-pays, no deductibles, and part-timers qualified.

That's why they'll love it. And the reason you'll both love it is because it adds real dollars to a company's bottom line every month. Dollars they can put towards the coverage you're already presenting to them. AddBackBenefits.com. So, Dax, last question for you. In the work that you're doing now, what is it that you most want to be remembering?

Dax Craig (1:11:20)

Uh that is very easy for me.

Are you a fan of Simon Sinett?

Anthony Codispoti (1:11:29)

Big time. yeah.

Dax Craig (1:11:30)

Love Simon

Sarah.

Yeah, start with why.

Uh a long time ago, I had listened to his original TED talk and then read his book and I had been trying to figure out sort of my own personal why. Uh and it it f it hit me on a plane ride uh coming home from a business trip. I called my wife, I was super excited about it. Uh and I just babbled, you know, for an hour driving home about

my why and it it's that

Business should be a uh force for good in in our world. it it's not all about profit. Profit's important, but profit is not the goal, in my opinion. Um and and I had this Pollyanna view of business when I came out of college that uh businesses always did the right thing no matter what. that was not true.

uh I found out fairly quickly. Um it always bothered me. It just bothered me that that you know people would do things that weren't right and weren't right by their customers, screwed people, whatever. And it just it upset me. Um and and the whole notion of uh well it's not personal as business, that is such BS. It's always personal.

And don't I don't like it. I don't like that kind of thinking. And so my why is very simple. I want to build amazing companies that do the right thing no matter what. No matter what. Um like even when we let those people go, we gave them huge severances so they could land on the feet. It sucked, but that was the that was the right thing to do. And it was hard on the business because we didn't really have the money. Um when we messed up.

Implementations of Allen, we actually gave their money back. We didn't have to contractually, but we we messed up. The right thing to do is to give their money back.

So I want to be remembered for that. I want to be remembered for building businesses that actually were very successful and did the right thing.

Anthony Codispoti (1:14:02)

I love that.

Dax Craig (1:14:02)

It's been my wife for a while.

Anthony Codispoti (1:14:04)

That's amazing. Dax Craig from Camarics. I wanna be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you being here.

Dax Craig (1:14:14)

You're welcome and thank you for the opportunity. I love uh I love your show and I'm I'm really uh honored to be here.

Anthony Codispoti (1:14:21)

Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us. And if one thing stood out, put that into action today.

Connect with Dax Craig:

Website: comeryx.com