AKKO

Jared Brier came from a branding and digital marketing background with a passion for music, but he found himself frustrated by the fragmented world of device protection. "I was sick of all the confusing, expensive, and unnecessarily complicated warranty plans for all my music gear, plus my phone, my laptop, and so on," he recalls. He knew there had to be a better way, and when he discovered the product didn't exist, he decided to build it. Eric Schneider, a former jet engine engineer at GE Aviation turned management consultant at Harvard Business School, immediately recognized the potential when Jared pitched the concept of bundling device protection like Spotify bundles music. The two co-founders saw an opportunity to consolidate fragmented, opaque warranty offerings into one seamless platform.

The spark came not from abstract market analysis but from personal pain. While researching warranties for an earlier physical product (a smart lock), the founders realized they had stumbled onto a much larger problem. The device protection market was dominated by complicated, siloed offerings that confused customers and failed to address their actual needs.

Rather than build in isolation, the founders tested their concept by partnering with an established insurance company in the student property protection space. This early partnership validated the core idea and revealed critical gaps in the customer experience. They then switched to a new underwriting partner that gave them full control over the program, allowing them to customize the protection offerings and dramatically improve both the customer and claims experience.

From day one, Jared and Eric focused on design and user experience. Their goal was to create a tech platform that made it easy for users to inventory and protect all their items in one place. "The goal was for our users never to worry or wonder about what was protected and what wasn't and to give them a single destination for all their support questions, repairs, and replacements," Jared explains. This customer-centric approach to building the product—rather than engineering from the insurance industry's perspective—became their competitive advantage.

AKKO launched direct-to-consumer but quickly discovered that wasn't their optimal channel. Instead, the product's compelling value proposition generated significant inbound interest and unsolicited partnership inquiries. This unexpected traction revealed their real opportunity: organizations across the country wanted a single, seamless way to protect devices for their customers, members, students, or teams.

The founders pivoted to B2B and B2B2C, discovering that parents and school administrators were far more receptive than students alone. They also benefited from organic press coverage—news outlets recognized the uniqueness of their customer-friendly approach and amplified their message. A crucial partnership with the Repairs First Association enabled them to reach hundreds of local repair shops, turning the claims experience into a major growth driver. Social media marketing and a focus on building relationships with businesses and influencers further accelerated customer acquisition.

The direct-to-consumer student focus didn't work. Marketing explicitly to students proved challenging because they lacked warranty knowledge and purchasing power. The turning point came when the founders shifted their target audience to parents and administrators, then expanded to adult and family plans. This repositioning unlocked exponential growth.

Similarly, early attempts to appeal to niche demographics—musicians, extreme-sports enthusiasts—failed until the founders stopped making assumptions without data. As Eric notes, "we learned not to make assumptions about consumer behavior and purchasing decisions without the data to back them up." The real lesson was flexibility: listen to customer needs and adjust accordingly. The focus on customer experience across all touchpoints—employees, partners, repair shops—became the engine that attracted both customers and enterprise partnerships.

AKKO has grown to 20+ team members spread from New York to Hawaii, operating in all 50 states and Canada with partnerships across over 500 repair shops. The company recently completed a $3 million seed funding round with Fika Ventures and Pear VC. The founders describe their current position as having built an entire ecosystem connecting repair-shop partners, underwriters, customers, and enterprise partners into a unified platform.

Looking ahead, AKKO is shifting from inbound-driven growth to outbound sales and preparing to launch a new partner portal that will streamline the ability for partners to sell plans and track claims. Jared and Eric remain focused on their core mission: decomplicate device protection by building an intuitive, reliable platform that serves thousands of customers nationwide while maintaining a distributed, flexible company culture that prioritizes employee well-being and genuine customer empathy.