Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ryan Hartman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Ryan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I have been involved in the car industry since I graduated from college. My first job was at GEICO, then I had stops at Esurance, Allstate, and prior to Chaiz, was the head of marketing at The Zebra. For those that aren’t aware, The Zebra is the leading comparison marketplace for insurance products in the US.

Austin, Texas, where I live, is a great place to own a convertible due to the climate. So, after my last car was a total loss due to an accident, I pulled the trigger and bought a used BMW convertible. It came with pretty low mileage and was a BWM certified pre-owned car. A few years later I remember pulling into my garage and hearing a loud knocking sound coming from the engine. I figured it couldn’t be anything major since I didn’t even have 60K miles on the car. I took it into the mechanic and he told me the knock I heard was what they referred to as “the knock of death” and it could “make it another thousand miles or it could completely break down on my drive home”. He told me a total engine rehaul was needed to the tune of about $10K out of pocket. He saw my aghast face and said, “I hope you have an extended warranty on the car”. Well, I didn’t — so I learned my lesson the hard way. For my next car, I was shopping around for vehicle service contracts (aka extended car warranties) and I found the shopping process to be brutal. I couldn’t even get quotes online! I had to call into call centers or call auto dealerships and try to compare pricing and coverage manually all by myself. I thought to myself, “why doesn’t a comparison site exist for extended car warranties?”. This was something I had to fix!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As for Chaiz, we are the only comparison site for extended car warranties. About 90% of extended car warranties are sold in person at dealerships or over the phone. The customer only gets one price, take it or leave it, and often doesn’t know what is covered and what is not. Chaiz allows you to compare multiple providers and plans all in one place — completely transparently. We allow you to read third party reviews of the provider, explicitly tell you what is covered in the plan you select, and allow you to purchase online without having to talk to anyone! This is important to customers, because when people hear “extended car warranties” their mind goes to the historically spammy industry full of unscrupulous companies and endless robocalls. One thing to highlight about Chaiz, is we are the only company that shows you multiple quotes without asking any personal information like email address or phone number… we don’t want to be known as the company that hounds you once you give us all of your contact info. The best thing about Chaiz though is how much the consumer can save. Unlike the car dealerships and call centers, we don’t have to pay for sales commissions and other overhead costs, so we pass along that savings to the consumer. In fact through our competitive pricing analysis, we are on average 40% cheaper than our competition.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Car dealerships make a lot of money from selling car warranties, so we knew we would be seen as a threat to their business. However, there are always people in antiquated industries that are forward-thinking and we were lucky to find a dealership owner that wanted to be a part of evolving the way car warranties are sold. He liked what we were aiming to do, and he was able to give us a lot of advice on the industry and the innerworkings of warranty products. Finding an expert the field in which you are trying to disrupt is invaluable!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Fundraising, especially in this environment, is especially tough. We probably were told “no” over 50 times. However if you have a mission you believe in and your market research all points to a gap or inefficiency in the way things currently are, keep at it! You have to remember a lot of investors make decisions due to their personal affiliations or backgrounds. Heck, last night I was watching Shark Tank and Daymond said no to a startup pasta company because pasta flares his acid reflux. A lot of the people we pitched Chaiz to live in NYC or SF and haven’t ever even owned a car! How could they relate to a company selling car warranties?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.chaiz.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chaizcom/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/chaiz/