Social Lead - Product

Top 3 SPAC targets - Insurance. In the last iteration of this column, SPACInsider took a look at some industries and targets that should be high on a SPAC team's list, especially should inflation and interest rate pressures force a renewed focus on cash-generating targets. While that effort was limited to three target industries, a fourth entry in that thesis could have well been insurance. Insurance in the US consistently ranks among the country's most profitable industries and the most hated by its customers. In a sense, that duality is a double opportunity for disruptors with both large potential profits to be reaped and a customer base open to new entrants that can provide better service. And, ironically, the best way to bring a more human touch to this industry could be by handing more of it over to AI. Stand. Among the problems that legacy insurers have struggled the most to face is the changing liability risks around weather and disaster-related damage in a time of changing climates. Many major insurance carriers have completely pulled out of regions heavily affected by wildfires or flooding and what few remain have opted to raise premiums sky-high to balance out their risk. Stand is building a digital insurance platform for the specific instances that it believes can be reactive enough to make coverage work for both sides. It starts by mapping an applicant's home in a 3D model and then runs simulations of wind, water or fire conditions on the property. This brings it to a point where it can put a price tag on what insuring that specific property would cost, but it also gives the applicants several options for where this premium could be instantly dropped if the homeowner were to invest in some specific safety improvements. This helps it stay competitive with rates that are discounted by up to -70% based on these improvements. But, by also sending out its own vetted construction and landscaping crews to make these changes, it manages to keep even some of the customer savings under its umbrella. The company currently shows a waitlist on its site, so it would appear to working to meet all of the demand on its plate. To help aid that, the company just earlier today announced it had raised a $70 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation, bringing its total outside funding to date to $130 million. These are relatively small capital raises given the amount of R&D that has gone into its platform, especially considering that the company's insured portfolio has expanded to $10 billion worth of property. In that sense, Stand may not have an immediate need of SPAC cash for operations, but it could potentially be much more capital-efficient by gaining the ability to pull on public market levers for moves in the future. Extend. There is still disruption occurring on the B2B side of insurance as well. For the ecommerce world, every company now needs a strategy and tools to deal with the swirling issues around warranties, returns and package theft. Extend has developed a platform to help manage these risks informed by the user data it has accumulated from its seven years of work with now roughly 1,200 clients since its founding in 2019. Extend is also able to pull in data through its integrations with Shopify and BigCommerce. It uses this to underwrite warranty polices for e-retailers with dynamic pricing, which it finds not only allows those brands to capture additional value, but also increases customer satisfaction and loyalty. It now uses this same data engine to allow companies to automatically form dynamic customer policies based on user profiles for a variety of other instances. Knowing that 32% of first-time customers return their first purchases, for instance, Extend's engine might incentivize free exchanges with $10 in store credit for this first transaction, while requiring manual inspection or return fees for high-risk customers, and leaving it free for the low-risk cohort. This is in a sense a new front in retailer risk management that Extend can continue to finetune and monetize while still building a portfolio of warranty assets that have their own securitization potential. The company has not publicized how many warranties it issues annually, but noted that it sold 300,000 product protection plans in 2020, which was the first year it offered them, and it was on track for 3 million by 2021. It released this texture at a time when it had just announced a $260 million capital raise at a $1.6 billion valuation in early 2021. This is the last major capital move it has made, which suggests some capital discipline on its part. It also suggests that the company may be ready for a new move that values it based on all of the progress it has made in the five years since. Jones. Legacy systems have also struggled to provide flexible solutions to the construction sector and that is where Jones steps in. For an industry where risk of injuries and other incidents are elevated and the work itself is counted in days not years, there has been a lot of efficiency left on the table. Furthermore, any construction firm might be involved in a number of projects at the same time. Some of these maybe large, complex affairs, others may be a one-day maintenance job for an elevator their firm is responsible for. All of this work requires a certain amount of insurance and Jones' platform helps companies to ideally pay for all of the insurance they need and none of the insurance they don't. The company's main portal, the Jones Platform, promises a full review and provision of documents required for regulatory compliance in less than 24 hours. But, to go one step beyond this, Jones offers the Jones Operator, which uses a mix of AI and human operations to automatically run insurance compliance as well as claims and worker's compensation for its construction firm clients. This platform can also analyze the firm's existing operations and actively let its team know where their compliance is falling a little short or a little heavy. Already, about 40,000 projects have been fed through this system, covering 3 billion square feet and involving about 50 million insurance documents. Jones is also used on an ongoing basis by property managers and owners as well as the financial asset managers backing them to gradually reduce risk and cost across the portfolio. Given this integration all the way from the work site to the c-suite, there are likely many more adjacencies Jones could expand into. And, given that its last capital raise brought in just $15 million in January 2025, the time could be now to get aggressive on those opportunities.

Exclusive: Shopify to bring accelerated checkout service 'Shop Pay' to India. Shopify is preparing to launch its accelerated checkout product, Shop Pay, in India by the first quarter of 2027, sources told Inc42. Shopify's existing relationships with D2C brands would give it a ready base of potential merchants for Shop Pay, increasing competition for checkout providers. The company is in talks with payment orchestration platforms to integrate payment service providers, while its India pricing remains unconfirmed. Commerce technology company Shopify is preparing to bring its accelerated checkout product, Shop Pay, to India by the first quarter of 2027, sources told Inc42. The company is in talks with payment orchestration platforms to integrate payment service providers, the sources added. Shopify provides software that helps businesses build and run online stores, manage inventory and orders, and integrate payments and other services. A plethora of Indian D2C brands use its platform to run their online businesses.

Shopify says AI-referred sessions convert 80% better. Wed, 14th Oct 2026 (Today) Shopify has launched a data hub called The Entrepreneur Effect and reported that AI-referred sessions converted at a higher rate than organic-search sessions. Between April and June 2026, the conversion rate was 80% higher. The figures sit alongside broader data on how people start and run online businesses, with Shopify arguing that technology is reducing barriers of time, cost and geography. AI is also changing customer acquisition patterns on the platform. Shopify said AI channels drove nearly twice as many orders from new buyers as other channels over the same period, while AI-referred orders recorded average order values 14% higher than organic-search sessions. The data also suggests AI-led discovery may be helping smaller and more specialised merchants. According to Shopify, 75% of AI-referred sales came from merchants selling outside its 100 most common product categories, indicating that narrower product ranges may be gaining more visibility through AI tools. Australian impact In Australia, businesses using Shopify generated AUD $101.1 billion in economic activity in the year to 30 June 2026 and supported 300,000 jobs. Australian merchants also increased cross-border sales by 119% since 2022. Globally, Shopify's merchant and partner ecosystem generated more than AUD $1.73 trillion in economic activity in the past year, up 110% from 2022. Shopify-powered businesses supported about 9.6 million jobs worldwide, a 193% increase over the same period. The data points to continued growth in first-time entrepreneurship on the platform. In 2025, about 1.2 million stores made their first sale on Shopify, or roughly one every 26 seconds, while the number of first-time sellers has risen sevenfold since 2018. Lower barriers Shopify said 78% of surveyed merchants built their online stores themselves, while 41% launched with a single product. Merchants also installed 21 million apps in 2025, up 19.5% from 2024. Early sales timelines also appear to be shortening. Compared with 2022, 43% more stores now make their first sale within one day of signing up, while onboarding support from Sidekick increased the share of new merchants reaching five orders within 15 days by 8%. The platform's customer base continued to expand as well. In 2025, 186 million people bought from a Shopify merchant for the first time, or around six first-time buyers every second. Merchants generated more than AUD $1.44 billion in sales per day on average in 2025 and shipped orders to one billion distinct addresses. Rural cross-border sales rose 342% over six years, increasing from AUD $943 million in 2019 to AUD $4.2 billion in 2025, Shopify said. Harley Finkelstein, President, Shopify, said: "Entrepreneurship is what happens when ambition meets agency. We've never seen that happening faster, in more places, and with greater success, than we're seeing today. The future of commerce is being written now." An Australian merchant cited by Shopify said lower barriers to entry are changing what smaller businesses can attempt. James Lewin, Chief Operations Officer & Co-Founder, Empress Athleticus, said: "For sure, entrepreneurship is worth it, but it's not for everyone. The barrier to entry is as easy as possible now with Shopify and AI, but you still have to be willing to keep learning and keep pivoting. AI has opened up so much more of what we can do. We're not limited by finances in the same way anymore. We're limited by our imagination and our effort. We have 14 staff in the business now, and our car park is full of women with lives and stories. We've also had friends start businesses because they've seen what's possible through us. If you're ready to chase something different, go for it."