When “Founder-First” Insurance Meets Its Match

For a startup built on real-time human presence, silence can be an existential threat. In June 2025, a major outage at Hetzner’s European data center took the platform Rent A Cyber Friend offline for hours. The disruption froze a micro-economy of small but vital payments—income that, in ordinary weeks, flows from brief sessions of mentoring, guidance, or simple availability.

The company carried insurance explicitly marketed to founders for moments like this. What followed, over the next two months, was not relief but process: a sequence of shifting demands, internal contradictions, and procedural escalations that turned a modest claim—by all accounts well within the policy’s stated sublimit—into stalemate.

An Urgent Response Meets a Moving Target

According to correspondence reviewed for this report, the startup’s response began within hours: crisis-communications work commenced to contain reputational harm and reassure a user base numbering in the millions. Larger agencies declined, citing their inability to mobilize immediately. The founder therefore enlisted an affiliated firm already on call and able to start at once, on deferred billing.

From the outset, Network Adjusters—the third-party administrator assigned to the file—requested routine documentation. Hannah Tubbs, the adjuster on the claim, asked for a Statement of Work; it was provided. She asked for invoices; they were delivered. She asked for proofs of payment; those, too, were produced. At each turn, the requested materials were sent.

Then the ground began to shift. R. Stacy Lane, writing “on behalf of United Specialty Insurance Company and Vouch,” questioned the engagement itself—arguing after the fact that the crisis-PR hire should have been pre-approved, even as earlier requests had sought details from that very vendor. Hourly breakdowns were demanded and then dismissed as “insufficient,” without a clear standard of sufficiency. A recorded statement was requested despite policy language that contemplates written declarations and, in limited cases, a formal Examination Under Oath (EUO).

No written denial arrived. Nor did an approval. Instead, the file accumulated addenda.

Sympathy Without Authority

The public messaging of Vouch Insurance— “by founders, for founders,” “trust reinvented”—appeared to collide with its internal lines of control. Sam Hodges, Vouch’s chief executive, acknowledged the situation in direct emails and expressed concern, but said he lacked authority to intervene in claim decisions. Weeks later, Kelly Wulff, Vouch’s General Counsel, wrote that Vouch “is not involved in [the] claim decisions and has no authority to influence the outcome,” directing the insured to work with Corix Underwriting Managers and Network Adjusters instead. The same message copied Robert Love, the CEO of Hiscox Europe, signaling the presence of additional decision-making layers even as influence was disclaimed.

The process expanded further. Luis Larios of Allied Universal Investigations followed up to arrange a recorded video statement—as if such a step were a foregone procedural stage. In mid-August, outside counsel Scott A. Schechter of Kaufman Borgeest & Ryan LLP, “on behalf of United Specialty, Corix, and Network Adjusters,” issued a cease-and-desist instructing the founder to stop contacting the entities involved and demanded an EUO.

By then nearly two months had passed since the initial notice of loss.

A Case Study in Attrition

To practitioners, the pattern will be familiar. Claims do not have to be denied to be defeated. They can be blunted by incremental requirements, contradictory guidance, and procedural leverage—particularly when decision-making authority is distributed across a marketing entity, an underwriter, an administrator, and a global insurance partner.

Individually, each step can be defended. Together, they produce a result: delay that becomes its own form of damage. In the case at hand, the coverage at issue concerned reputational harm and crisis management—a category whose value diminishes hour by hour. A system that cannot move at the pace of the risk it sells to cover is a system that adds risk.

California law recognizes the duty of insurers to act promptly and fairly when liability is reasonably clear. The record here reflects no sustained challenge to the category of coverage, the existence of the incident, or the reasonableness of mobilizing communications quickly. What it reflects is process without closure.

Names on the File

• Insurtech/Distributor: Vouch Insurance (public brand and point of sale).
• Insurer of Record: United Specialty Insurance Company.
• Program/Underwriting: Corix Underwriting Managers, LLC.
• Claims Administration: Network Adjusters, Inc. (adjuster: Hannah Tubbs).
• Counsel/Investigations: R. Stacy Lane; Luis Larios (Allied Universal Investigations); Scott A. Schechter, Kaufman Borgeest & Ryan LLP.
• Global Partner: Hiscox Europe (CEO Robert Love copied on correspondence).
• Vouch Executives Referenced: Sam Hodges (CEO); Kelly Wulff (General Counsel).

These are not incidental names. They illustrate how many hands can touch a claim that, on its face, concerns a decent amount within a sublimit and routine documentation.

Beyond One Founder

Rent A Cyber Friend operates in what its creators call the New Human Economy—a marketplace where presence and attention translate into income. In that context, crisis-communications coverage is not a cosmetic add-on; it is core business continuity. The longer a young platform remains publicly unanswered during an outage, the more trust decays—among users, partners, and investors alike.

And here, the insurers made another miscalculation. The tactics they deployed did not confront an inexperienced founder.

If the shifting demands of an insurance labyrinth happened to land on anyone else, the case might have collapsed quietly. But in this instance, the file fell onto the desk of the wrong person. Francesco Vitali—CEO of Rent A Cyber Friend, with three decades of experience as a strategist and longtime advisor to public figures such as the late Ivana Trump—is not a founder easily deterred. What for others might have ended in resignation instead became a case study in exposure.

The company has now launched a public archive—ToVouchOrNotToVouch.com—to publish a timeline of correspondence and invite other founders to share similar experiences. It is a move born of calculation as much as frustration: regulators and courts can compel action, but sunlight often moves slow systems faster.

Two months on, the claim remains unresolved. The question that lingers is less about contract interpretation than about operational tempo. Can an insurance apparatus built across multiple entities, each with partial authority, respond at the speed required by the very risks it markets to cover?

In an era when a platform’s most valuable asset is trust, the answer may determine more than the outcome of a single claim. It may determine whether “founder-first” insurance is a promise kept—or a promise deferred until its value expires.

For the full record of documents and ongoing updates, visit: https://tovouchornottovouch.com/