Claims Denied is back for a new season! Thrilled to kick it off with @Will_Johnson, co-founder and CEO of AI startup @GydeInc (gydehealth.ai/). I drove down from Dallas to Austin to sit in-studio with Will, who was 17 months post-incorporation at the time, with a decade at @OscarHealth behind him. Will brought a thesis I hadn't heard anyone articulate this cleanly: Healthcare's real front door isn't the carrier or the PCP. It's the broker, and there are fewer of them every year while the job gets harder every year. We get into why Will thinks commission rates stay flat while ACA premiums rip 14%, why an AI founder calls himself "a huge software bear," why roll-up is a banned word inside his own M&A shop, and the Capstone deal he thought was dead until a February coffee in Austin. Healthcare keeps trying to go around the broker. This episode makes the case for going through them. Check out this highlight video and get the full conversation at the links below: Listen to the full episode on Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas… Listen to the full episode on Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5rO… Watch on YouTube: piped.video/watch?v=U59i9neh…

Building while raising a family has been one of the most fulfilling parts of the journey. Can't recommend highly enough!

everyone’s talking about AI replacing jobs. will johnson is asking the other one: what happens when there aren’t enough people to replace the ones who leave? @Will_Johnson, co-founder and CEO of @GydeInc, gave Lightwork an exclusive perspective on a dwindling profession: health insurance brokers. as the healthcare space increasingly digitizes, he approximates that six brokers are retiring for every one entering the field. he aims for the opposite: bolstering and modernizing an industry that is actively bleeding manpower. on top of that, he announced their upcoming product exclusively on our show: Renewals AI, designed to make brokers’ workflow more efficient.

1. GET COVERED In most countries coverage is automatic, but in the US how you get covered shapes everything downstream - step zero of healthcare and it's a mess. @GydeInc (@will_johnson) is an AI-native brokerage that acquires top insurance agencies and arms their brokers with AI tools to guide people through Medicare, ACA, and benefits decisions Evermore runs "smart benefits" infrastructure, matching Medicare Advantage and Medicaid members to supplemental dollars for food, OTC meds, and transport on a single card. (2/9)

This is another big economic win for Austin... Apollo selects Austin as site of second headquarters US private capital giant Apollo Global Management has selected Austin as the site of its second headquarters, picking the Texas city over two locations in Florida, according to two sources briefed on the matter. The $1tn in assets investment group has been planning a second headquarters from its longtime base in New York City, the FT reported in March, and said its new offices will house the bulk of its new hires. Apollo conducted an internal survey among its top dealmakers to decide between Palm Beach, Miami, Nashville and Austin as a preferred location for the second headquarters. Apollo never shared the results of its survey with employees, and chief executive Marc Rowan decided to anoint Austin its second home, one of the people said. ft.com/content/036a838f-8209…

Medicare brokerage is being rebuilt around guidance, not just transactions. @GydeInc acquired @WKMIncWA as @will_johnson, Sam Wiener, Andrew Shults, and Jonathan Hale build an AI-native brokerage platform while expanding trusted distribution through agency acquisitions. The next insurtech winners will not replace advisors. They will remove the administrative drag that keeps advisors from guiding people when decisions actually matter.

This wasn't the podcast I had planned with @anothercohen & @will_johnson. It was supposed to be about the business of health with a sprinkling of Austin. Instead it was all the love, frustrations, & on the ground realities of building a startup in Austin. Drops Wednesday.

Austin has historically imported talent. In the next decade, it is going to be developing it.

We're proud to officially welcome Gerrick Diaz and the Avid Health team to Gyde.

Staying power matters in careers just as it does for startups If in the right seat, better to stay there and compound then keep jumping around

Frederic Hanika joins Gyde as Head of M&A! Frederic built his career partnering with PE and VC-backed companies to design value creation plans and drive growth. At Gyde, he'll work on sourcing deals and bringing the best agency partners to the table. Happy to have you on board

I joined @SpencerSmithSF on the Self Funded podcast to provide an introduction to @GydeInc and what we bring to partners. The broker is an essential part of the value chain for consumers and employers, but is buried by administrative work that doesn't add value to clients. @GydeInc is building the infrastructure to power the most ambitious agency owners. More at the link below. piped.video/watch?v=pZMmlYON…

Brokers are the entry point to coverage decisions, but much of the work is still manual. @GydeInc is changing that by building an AI-powered platform that supports insurance brokers through a partner-centric approach, streamlining operations. Today, we’re proudly leading their $60M funding. This week on The Investment Memo, @BrentonFargnoli and Gyde Co-Founder & CEO @WillJohnson_15 discuss why brokerage is a fragmented market well-suited to an AI-driven roll-up, why Gyde is approaching it differently, and more below. 0:00 Welcome, Will Johnson! 2:33 Why Insurance Brokerage Is an Ideal AI Rollup Market 5:36 The Broker’s Role in the Healthcare System 7:42 Why the Brokerage Market Is Underinvested 10:44 Gyde's AI Rollup & Partner-and-Build Model 13:10 Why Gyde Isn’t a Pure Software Company 18:50 Founder Market Fit & Team Advantage 24:58 Gyde's Mission Beyond Insurance 29:33 Market Size, TAM & Competitive Landscape 33:44 Real AI Use Cases for Brokers & Consumers 41:14 What the $60M Funding Enables 42:17 Gyde's Long-Term Vision & North Star 43:54 Advice for Founders in the AI Era

Talk to anyone in PE who has done rollups and they’ll all tell you the same thing The majority of services businesses require strong human to human relationships When most rollups fail they’ve failed because of churn If the VC rollups aren’t focusing a lot of their AI products on how to improve that customer relationship and are only focused on less headcount for service delivery and AI driven growth they’ll be doomed Home service companies, MSPs, vacation rental management…history shows us the mistakes that have been written

just do it

New year, new you

Something special is happening in Austin. The next education boom will be here. If you are young, hungry and want the ability to think critically not bend to woke political correctness... Austin is going to be the future. Here's why... I just had breakfast with Ryan Streeter heading up what may become the next Hoover Institute at University of Texas. We have another friend @jtlonsdale building UATX a truly free thinking university w/ some of the greatest contrarian minds of our generation. We have @evanbaehr heading Arena Hall a great minds social club. We have @aei making a big push into the ATX ecosystem. We've had every major political candidate come through to fundraise and speak this election cycle. We have many of the greatest contrarian media minds from Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, Lex Fridman here. Contrary to all the news in the world, I see a future that is bright and full of possibility... IF we work towards it. Long Texas.