Decent, the Austin-based health insurance provider is “shutting down all of its operations to just a core team,” according to a blog post published Friday afternoon by Nick Soman, the company’s founder, and CEO.
“Decent’s mission since Richard Luck and I founded the company five years ago has been to deliver affordable health insurance for all. Starting in Texas in 2018, we launched health plans for 35% less than market rates with a Net Promoter Score of 79 vs. the industry average of 14. In 2021 we launched a professional employer organization to help small businesses band together to get even lower rates, and saw 100% renewal among eligible small businesses. I’m proud of what we’ve built, and prouder of the team that has built it.”
“Unfortunately, we just hit a massive and unexpected setback. It’s not impossible to move forward, but we will need time to figure out how,” Soman wrote. “For that reason, we are winding down all of our operations to just a core team.”
The company had 60 employees, according to an interview with Soman last November. The current number of employees is 40, according to a spokeswoman.
Decent, founded in 2018, has raised $43 million to date including a series that closed in December of 2021, according to a spokeswoman. Last fall, the company launched a massive ad campaign in Austin promoting its services on billboards around town.
In his post, Soman reports that Decent had been working with a major partner to prepare for nationwide expansion this quarter. It wound down its product in anticipation of the partner’s new and improved one, according to Soman.
“We were all systems go as of last Wednesday,” Soman wrote. “Then late last week, our major partner pulled out without warning, citing unspecified concerns from their executive team and leaving us with no near-term path to market. We explored every possible avenue to salvage the partnership, but to no avail.”
That left Decent without a health insurance product, and as a result, it has to stop serving customers, according to Soman.
Decent will let its team go in the coming months with notice and severance, according to Soman.
Correction: Title corrected and updated to reflect Decent winding down operations to a core team, but not shutting down completely. Also, the article was updated with the current employee count and funding amount of $43 million.
