Eric Ong’s Post

Chariot Claims just raised a $10M Series A. We first invested in 2023, leading their angel round, on a thesis that had nothing to do with legal tech: What happened to consumer banking was going to happen next to consumer legal. Neobanks worked because two things landed at the same time. Regulation opened a door, and technology made it cheap enough to serve the customers incumbents had written off as too small to bother with. Consumer legal now has both. Here's what that unlocks, in numbers Chariot published this month. Only 4% of consumers harmed by privacy violations, hidden fees or false advertising ever file a claim. For a large company that number is the entire calculation - breaking the law is cheaper than complying with it, and everyone involved knows it. The average consumer recovery in these kinds of claims, per the CFPB's own analysis, is $32. Through Chariot it's an estimated $460. What made it easy to underwrite is that the incentives actually point the same direction. There's no fee unless the consumer wins their claim and actually receives the money, so you don't have to trust anybody's intentions - Chariot only gets paid when the consumer gets paid. Then there's Zim Hang. He had the background that matters here, early stage startups in regulated industries, and the rarer thing: he builds from first principles instead of copying somebody's playbook. He's also done four things together that almost nobody manages. He pivoted without losing the plot, stayed scrappy through it, hired a genuinely good team, and scaled the thing past 200,000 pre-qualified claims a month. That combination is very rare, and it's most of why we were comfortable early. Here's how you know it's working. Over a million people have signed up to claim money they're owed. In a category everyone assumes consumers ignore, that's your product market fit. None of this was a consensus deal in 2023. A consumer legal company doesn't fit neatly into a consensus bucket. That's the whole reason it was still available. Congratulations to Zim Hang and the entire Chariot team, and to Mike Dodd and Silverton Partners for leading the round. Proud that Lightbank gets to keep backing this one, alongside our friends at FJ Labs, Indicator Ventures, Neon, Alumni Ventures, Rosecliff, Vermilion Ventures and others. Press Release: ordnl.link/hnZUD3N Zim's Post: https://lnkd.in/p/evVd3HDj