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 John Pergande
Founder and Chairman of the Board
"Through our sound business strategy backed by advanced technology and
insurance domain expertise, we expect InsureZone to be cash positive by
year-end 2001."
A Brief Summary of John's Career
John Pergande is the founder and chairman of
InsureZone. He is also general partner of Buena Venture Associates, the
venture capital firm that financed InsureZone. John was chairman and
CFO of Pyramid Services, a developer of insurance claims processing
software. Pyramid was acquired by an investment
partnership formed by John, which included Sid R. Bass and Pyramid
management. John started his career at Spear, Leeds and Kellogg on the
floor of the New York Futures Stock Exchange and then spent two years
as a market maker, trading stock options at the Chicago Board Options
Exchange. From 1991 to 1995, he served as a corporate banker for
Citibank. From there, he joined the corporate finance group at
Electronic Data Systems. Through BVA, John is an investor in and a
director of INSpire, Tradecast, Inc., Xactimed, Inc., and Single Source
Communications LLC. His nonprofit interests include board seats of the
Boys & Girls Club of Fort Worth, The Community Foundation, and
fund-raising for the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. John earned a
bachelor's degree in economics and political science from Yale
University and a master's degree in business administration from
Northwestern University.
John on what led him to InsureZone
"While I was at Pyramid Services one of our goals was to process claims
over the Internet. We sold Pyramid to Kemper before we had a chance to
fully implement that strategy. At BVA, we further explored the idea of
Internet-based claims processing, but found the market for selling
insurance over the Internet to be far more lucrative. That idea became
InsureZone. By establishing this company we are living out our vision
of selling insurance online, using an advanced e-commerce platform to
manage the entire sales process for an insurance policy, end-to-end."
John on his role at InsureZone
"My role as Chairman of InsureZone is to help the management team make
the best strategic decisions possible. We are building a company that
incorporates the success of an existing brick-and-mortar model, and
complements it with Internet-based capabilities that will enable huge
revenue growth. Our merger with Higginbotham & Associates, the
nation's 118th-largest insurance broker, is proof of that. We needed
real insurance industry experience, and we also needed the ability to
incubate our ideas. Higginbotham has given us both of those things.
This company has revenue and consistent positive cash flows. We've
never believed that it makes sense to spend millions of dollars to
brand a business that you hope will have the market share to justify
losing money for five years before
you break even. Through our sound business strategy backed by advanced
technology and insurance domain expertise, we expect InsureZone to be
cash positive by year-end 2001."
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