An aerial view of repair vehicles at sunset passing near beachfront homes that burned in the Palisades Fire as wildfires cause damage and loss through the LA region on January 15, 2025 in Malibu, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
Midway through December, tech entrepreneur Dan Preston debuted insurance startup Stand’s first product focused on protecting property in wildfire zones. He should have had months to work with prospective customers and to market the offering before any catastrophic fires hit the U.S.
In California, Stand’s home state, fire season normally lasts from early summer through October or November. Stand, which Preston co-founded early last year, announced a $30 million financing round and the new product on Dec. 16, a few days before the official start of winter.
But it’s been a winter like no other. Three weeks after Stand’s launch, wildfires ravaged parts of Los Angeles, killing more than two-dozen people, scorching about 41,000 acres due to extreme winds and destroying at least 12,300 structures.
“This is certainly not a time you would normally see events like this,” Preston said in an interview this week. “It has put an accelerant on business in a pretty massive way. As soon as this stuff started happening, the inbound demand was about 5-10x overnight.”
Preston has been trying to innovate within the typically boring and slow-moving insurance industry for well over a decade. In 2013, he became technology chief at auto insurance upstart Metromile, and later took on the role of CEO, guiding the company into the public market in 2020 through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Metromile hit a rough patch after its SPAC and sold to tech-powered insurer Lemonade in 2022. Preston stayed on at Lemonade for another year.
At Stand, Preston is aiming to go big in a market that legacy insurers are rapidly abandoning because it’s viewed as too risky. As of mid-2024, at least eight insurance carriers had left the state or limited their exposure. The California FAIR Plan, generally viewed as an insurer of last resort, had seen a 137% increase since 2019, and that was well before the latest LA fires began. According to LendingTree, about 10% of homes in Los Angeles are uninsured.
It’s not a surprise that firms are exiting the state. Goldman Sachs estimates that insurers could face up to $30 billion in losses tied to the LA. fires.
Through a combination of technology and a reimagining of home insurance, Preston wants to offer reasonably priced protection to homeowners in wildfire zones.
Stand CEO Dan Preston, who was previously CEO at Metromile
Winni Wintermeyer
For property owners, the key piece is recognizing that they have to make changes to their homes and the surrounding land so that fires are less likely to spread out of control. That could include pruning trees, replacing wood fencing with steel or adding concrete barriers between homes.