Startup Insurance

Insurance built for the way startups actually grow.

Startup insurance: the coverage you need at every stage

Startup insurance is the set of policies a young company buys as its leases, customer contracts, hires and funding rounds require them: general liability, cyber, Tech E&O, EPLI, workers' compensation and D&O. Most founders start with a basic set for a few thousand dollars a year and add the rest trigger by trigger; 2026 medians run from $180 for general liability to $6,300 for D&O (Vouch, 2026).

Reza Azar · Senior Insurance Broker · OnePark Risk

Last updated October 19, 2026

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The short answer (as of October 2026)

What it is: six core policies — general liability, cyber, Tech E&O, EPLI, workers' compensation and D&O — bought in the order your leases, customer contracts, hires and funding rounds require them, not all at once.
Where to start: general liability plus a combined cyber + Tech E&O form covers a pre-seed or seed company's first lease, customer contract and customer data. EPLI and workers' compensation follow your first employees; D&O follows your first priced round or independent director.
What it costs: 2026 medians are about $180 for general liability, $2,900 for cyber, $3,700 for Tech E&O, $4,300 for EPLI and $6,300 for D&O (Vouch, 2026). A funded startup carrying several of these typically spends in the low five figures a year.
How to buy it: through an independent broker that reads the contract or term sheet first, then places each policy with the carrier that fits. OnePark Risk has access to more than 100 major insurance carriers and excess lines carriers throughout the country.

What is startup insurance?

Startup insurance — also called startup business insurance or business insurance for startups — is the set of commercial policies a young company carries to satisfy its leases, customer contracts, employment law and investors. It is not one policy but a program that grows with the company, triggered by milestones rather than bought all at once.

Startup business insurance uses the same policies any small business might buy, but the order and the sizing differ. A consulting firm buys general liability on day one and may never need D&O. A venture-backed software company holds customer data before it has revenue, signs enterprise MSAs before it has an office, and seats outside directors who expect D&O before the round closes. Business insurance for startups is therefore organised around those triggers: the lease, the customer contract, state law once you hire, and the term sheet. This page is written for technology startups, but the stage logic holds for any company raising outside capital.

What insurance does a startup need?

Most startups need six core policies: general liability, cyber liability, technology errors & omissions (Tech E&O), directors & officers (D&O), employment practices liability (EPLI), and workers' compensation. A basic set of general liability, cyber, and Tech E&O comes first; EPLI and workers' compensation follow your first employees, and D&O your first priced round or independent director.

These six are the core program; the checklist further down adds the coverage that bigger leases, benefit plans and larger contracts bring online later.

General liability

Covers: third-party bodily injury, property damage and advertising injury claims, including defense. Who asks for it: landlords at your first lease and enterprise customers in the MSA, usually at a $1M limit. Median cost: about $180 a year (Vouch, 2026). Read the general liability insurance guide.

Cyber liability

Covers: breach response, ransomware, regulatory defense and business interruption after an attack. Who asks for it: security reviews and customer contracts as soon as you hold customer data. Median cost: about $2,900 a year (Vouch, 2026). Read cyber insurance for startups.

Tech E&O

Covers: claims that your software or service failed, was late or caused a customer a financial loss, including the contractual liability in the MSA. Who asks for it: paying customers, through the insurance clause; most startups write it on a combined cyber + Tech E&O form so there is no gap between a failure and a breach. Median cost: about $3,700 a year (Vouch, 2026). Read the Tech E&O insurance guide.

D&O

Covers: founders, directors and officers personally — and the company — for claims of mismanagement brought by investors, co-founders, acquirers or regulators. Who asks for it: term sheets and independent directors before a priced round closes. Median cost: about $6,300 a year (Vouch, 2026); for companies under $50M in revenue, $1M of D&O coverage typically costs $5,000–$10,000 a year (Embroker). Read D&O insurance for startups.

EPLI

Covers: discrimination, harassment, wrongful termination and retaliation claims by employees and candidates. Who asks for it: your own hiring — 88,201 new discrimination charges were filed with the EEOC in FY 2025, with $660M recovered for workers (EEOC). Median cost: about $4,300 a year (Vouch, 2026). Read EPLI for startups and what EPLI covers.

Workers' compensation

Covers: medical costs and lost wages for employees injured at work, and the employer's liability for those injuries. Who asks for it: state law — Workers' compensation is a legal requirement once you have employees under the applicable state law, and most leases and customer contracts require it as well. Cost: a rate per $100 of payroll, so it scales with headcount rather than a flat premium. Read what workers' compensation is.

For the full policy-by-policy guide, read what insurance a startup needs.

Startup insurance by stage

Coverage follows triggers, not the calendar. A first lease or customer contract brings general liability, cyber and Tech E&O online; first employees bring EPLI and workers' compensation, which state law requires in most states; a priced round or independent director brings D&O. The table maps those triggers to the stage at which they usually arrive.

Stage	Typical triggers	Coverage that comes online	Typical GL limit
Pre-seed	First customer pilots or contracts, a first lease, and the first customer data — usually founder-only, with no priced round yet.	General Liability — at your first lease or customer contract; Cyber Liability (entry-level) — as soon as you hold customer data; Tech E&O — if customers rely on your software or services	$1M
Seed	First hires, paying customers, SAFEs or notes converting, and often a first priced round or independent director.	Cyber + Tech E&O combined form — sized to your largest customer contract; EPLI — with your first employees; Workers' Compensation — a legal requirement in most states from your first employee, at whatever stage that happens; D&O — with a priced round or independent director	$1M
Series A	Board formation, enterprise MSAs with insurance clauses, multi-state hiring, and a first office lease.	D&O with real limits (often $3M–$5M) — board and investor requirements; Cyber with breach-response retainer — enterprise security reviews; Tech E&O with contractual liability extension — enterprise MSAs; EPLI with multi-state coverage — hiring across states; Commercial Property — if leasing space	$2M–$3M
Growth (Series B–D)	Larger headcount and benefit plans, bigger enterprise contracts, and international expansion.	Higher D&O limits + Side A DIC — larger board and later-round investors; Higher cyber limits with sublimit review — larger contracts and data volumes; Umbrella / Excess Liability — contracts requiring higher limits; Fiduciary Liability — once you sponsor employee benefit plans; International coverage extensions — employees or customers abroad	$2M–$3M+
Mature / IPO-track	IPO or M&A planning, complex governance, and global operations.	Public-company-ready D&O (A-B-C structure) — IPO planning; Crime / Employee Dishonesty — staff handling funds and payments at scale; Representations & Warranties — M&A; Global program coordination — international operations; Captive feasibility review — premium scale	$5M+

Stage labels are shorthand for when these triggers usually arrive, not rules. Workers' compensation in particular follows employment and state law, not your round — a pre-seed company with one employee in a state that requires it needs it now, and a later-stage company with no employees in a state does not.

Limits step up with the company. $1M of D&O and $1M of cyber are typical at seed; D&O often moves to $3M–$5M at Series A, and the limits that made sense at seed usually step up to $3M–$10M+ as headcount, revenue, contract requirements and board complexity grow.

Work through your own round with the startup insurance checklist by funding stage, or download the checklist as a PDF.

Startup insurance checklist

Buy in trigger order: the lease and first customer contract, the first customer data, the first employee, the first priced round and the first enterprise MSA. Each line below names the policy and the milestone that brings it online, so you add what the milestone requires and nothing more, and tick it off as you go.

General liability — at your first lease, coworking agreement or customer contract; most ask for a $1M limit.
Cyber liability — as soon as you hold customer data; security reviews ask for it with specific limits.
Tech E&O — at your first paying customer; usually a combined cyber + Tech E&O form.
Workers' compensation — legally required in most states once you have employees; leases and customer contracts often require it as well.
EPLI — with your first employees, and multi-state coverage once you hire across states.
D&O — before your first priced round closes or your first independent director joins.
Match limits to contracts — read every MSA's insurance section before signing; enterprise agreements commonly require $1M–$5M in combined Tech E&O and cyber.
Fiduciary liability — once you sponsor a 401(k) or other benefit plan; usually packaged with D&O and EPLI.
Umbrella / excess liability — when a landlord or larger customer requires limits above your primary general liability.
Commercial property — when you lease space or hold equipment worth insuring.
Key person and international coverage — when an investor or lender asks, and when you hire or sell abroad.
Certificates of insurance — keep current certificates with additional-insured wording ready for every lease and MSA.

The startup insurance checklist by funding stage walks the same list round by round.

What investors and customers require

Investors require D&O: most institutional term sheets make it a closing condition, and independent directors ask for it before they take a seat. Customers require general liability, cyber and Tech E&O through the insurance clause of the MSA, usually with specific limits, additional-insured wording and a certificate of insurance before signature.

Enterprise MSAs commonly ask for $1M–$5M in combined Tech E&O and cyber, name the customer as an additional insured on general liability, and set a cancellation notice period. Security questionnaires increasingly ask for proof of cyber insurance next to SOC 2 evidence, and some landlords and larger customers require an umbrella above your primary general liability limit.

Send the insurance section to your broker before you sign: matching a clause is usually a limit or endorsement change, not a new policy. The insurance requirements for enterprise contracts guide translates the standard clauses line by line.

How much does startup insurance cost?

A basic policy set — general liability, cyber and Tech E&O — often runs a few thousand dollars a year combined. Adding D&O and EPLI as you raise and hire pushes a funded startup's total into the low five figures. Across 3,000+ startups in 2026, Vouch reports medians from $180 for general liability to $6,300 for D&O.

Policy	2026 median annual premium (Vouch)	What moves the price
General liability	$180	Square footage, foot traffic, contract limits
Cyber liability	$2,900	Records held, security controls, limit
Tech E&O	$3,700	Revenue, contract limits, what the product does
EPLI	$4,300	Headcount, states, claims history
D&O	$6,300	Capital raised, board, revenue, exit plans
Workers' compensation	Rate per $100 of payroll	Payroll and job classification

For $1M of D&O, companies under $50M in revenue typically pay $5,000–$10,000 a year (Embroker).

What drives startup insurance cost

Five things move the number most: the limits your contracts require, the capital you have raised (the main D&O driver), headcount and the states you hire in (EPLI and workers' compensation), the data you hold and the controls around it (cyber), and your industry — fintech and healthtech price higher than a B2B SaaS tool. Bundling cyber with Tech E&O, documenting controls such as MFA and tested backups, and buying just ahead of each trigger keep a program efficient. The startup insurance cost guide breaks the ranges down by policy and stage.

Startup insurance for tech companies

Technology startups carry the same six policies with a different emphasis: cyber and Tech E&O are usually written together because a software failure and a data incident are hard to separate, enterprise customers set the limits, and the product itself — SaaS, AI, fintech, healthtech or hardware — decides which exclusions and endorsements matter.

SaaS companies — uptime, customer data and contract-driven limits; read insurance for SaaS companies.
AI companies — model output, IP and training-data claims need Tech E&O and cyber wording that does not exclude them; read AI insurance.
Fintech — regulatory defense, funds-transfer fraud and partner-bank requirements; read fintech insurance.
Healthtech — HIPAA, PHI and business-associate agreements drive cyber limits; read healthtech insurance.
Hardware and IoT — product liability and recall join the stack once units ship; read hardware and IoT insurance.

Why work with an independent startup insurance broker

An independent broker reads the contract, lease or term sheet first, then places each policy with the carrier that fits rather than selling one carrier's package. For a startup that means the right limits before signature, certificates on the day the customer asks, and a program restructured at each round instead of auto-renewed.

More than 100 carriers

OnePark Risk has access to more than 100 major insurance carriers and excess lines carriers throughout the country, so each policy is placed where it fits rather than bundled by default.

Contract review before you sign

Send the insurance section of the lease, MSA or term sheet and we map each clause to a limit, endorsement or certificate before you commit to it.

Same-day certificates for standard requests

Once your policy is bound, standard certificate requests go out the same day; common additional-insured language is pre-staged so we respond in hours, not days.

Renewal stewardship

Each renewal is a program review — limits against new contracts, D&O against the latest round, EPLI against headcount — rather than an auto-renew.

Diligence support

When an investor, acquirer or enterprise customer asks for your insurance program, we assemble the summary, answer the questionnaire and coordinate the response. Read what a startup insurance broker does for the full process.

Bring the contract, the term sheet, or the renewal — we'll handle the rest. Send the document that is forcing the decision and we'll come back with the policies it actually requires, the limits that satisfy it, and quotes from the carriers that fit your stage.

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Licensed in New York, California, Delaware, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Nevada, Florida, Virginia, and Washington.

Startup insurance by location

Startup insurance is placed state by state: workers' compensation follows the employment law of the state your people work in, EPLI exposure differs by jurisdiction, and the carriers that write young companies vary by where you incorporate, lease and hire. These guides cover the states and metros where most of our startup clients operate.

New York startup insurance: the New York state guide.
California startup insurance: the California state guide.
Massachusetts startup insurance: the Massachusetts state guide.
Delaware startup insurance: for Delaware-incorporated companies.
Florida startup insurance: the Florida state guide.
New Jersey startup insurance: the New Jersey state guide.
Pennsylvania startup insurance: the Pennsylvania state guide.
Nevada startup insurance: the Nevada state guide.
Startup insurance in Boston: the Boston metro guide.
Startup insurance in New York City: the New York City guide.
Startup insurance in San Francisco: the San Francisco guide.
Startup insurance in the San Francisco Bay Area: the Bay Area guide, Silicon Valley included.
Startup insurance in Los Angeles: the Los Angeles guide.

Read the full guide on each program

Each policy on this page has its own guide with the coverage detail, the 2026 cost figures and the buying triggers, and the comparison pages set out how an independent review differs from a platform model. Start with the full startup guide, then read the program page that matches your next milestone.

What Insurance Does a Startup Need?: the six core coverages, their 2026 costs and their triggers.
Cyber Insurance for Startups: when a startup needs cyber, what it covers and what it costs.
Tech E&O Insurance: failed-services claims and how Tech E&O pairs with cyber.
D&O Insurance for Startups: why rounds and board seats drive D&O, and how to size it.
Insurance for SaaS Companies: the SaaS policy stack and contract-driven limits.
EPLI for Startups & Growing Teams: employment coverage that scales with headcount and states.
Insurance Requirements for Enterprise Contracts: the standard MSA insurance clauses, translated.
Cyber & Tech E&O Programs: cyber and Tech E&O programs for technology firms.
Tech E&O vs Cyber Liability: where the two policies overlap and when to combine them.
Corgi Insurance Review: a source-backed look at Corgi's published model.
Corgi Insurance Alternatives: buying models and the policy questions that matter.
OnePark Risk vs. Corgi: an independent review next to the platform model.

Startup insurance FAQ

What insurance does a startup need?

Almost every startup ends up with six core policies: general liability, cyber liability, Tech E&O (if you sell software or tech services), D&O, EPLI and workers' compensation. Each one comes online with a milestone, such as a first lease, enterprise customer, priced round or hire.

How much does startup insurance cost?

Vouch reports 2026 median annual premiums for startups of about $180 for general liability, $2,900 for cyber, $3,700 for Tech E&O, $4,300 for EPLI and $6,300 for D&O. A funded early-stage company carrying several of these typically spends in the low five figures a year.

When should a startup get insurance?

Get general liability and cyber (plus Tech E&O if you sell software) as soon as you sign a lease or a first customer contract. Add workers' comp and EPLI with your first employees, and D&O at your first priced round or independent director.

Is startup insurance legally required?

Workers' compensation is required in most states once you have employees. Most other startup policies are contractually required instead: landlords ask for general liability, enterprise customers for Tech E&O and cyber, and investors for D&O.

What's the difference between startup insurance and small business insurance?

The policies overlap, but startups face different triggers: investor-required D&O, enterprise MSAs that demand Tech E&O and cyber limits, and fast step-ups in limits between rounds. A small-business package (such as a BOP) rarely covers those.

Do I need a broker for startup insurance?

You don't have to use one, but an independent broker compares carriers for you, reviews contract requirements and negotiates policy wording. OnePark Risk has access to more than 100 major insurance carriers and excess lines carriers.

Which states does OnePark Risk serve?

OnePark Risk is licensed in New York, California, Delaware, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Nevada, Florida, Virginia and Washington.

How many insurance policies does a startup need?

Six core policies: general liability, cyber liability, technology errors & omissions (Tech E&O), directors & officers (D&O), employment practices liability (EPLI), and workers' compensation. You rarely buy all six at once. A basic policy set — general liability, cyber liability, and Tech E&O if you sell software or technology services — covers the exposures a startup has from day one and satisfies most first leases and customer contracts. The remaining core policies are additional coverage that a specific trigger brings online: employment practices liability and workers' compensation with your first employees (workers' compensation is a legal requirement in most states), and directors & officers with a priced round or an independent director. Beyond the core six, growth-stage companies add coverage such as commercial property, crime, fiduciary, and umbrella as leases, benefit plans, and larger contracts call for it.

When is workers' compensation required for a startup?

Workers' compensation is a legal requirement once you have employees under the applicable state law — most states require it from the first employee, some set a small-headcount threshold, and Texas leaves it optional for most private employers. The trigger is employment and the state your people work in, not your funding stage; customer contracts and leases often require it as well. It is priced as a rate per $100 of payroll, so cost scales with headcount and job classification rather than a flat premium.

Do I need D&O insurance at the seed stage?

Yes if you have closed a priced round, seated an outside investor or independent director, or carry co-founder dispute risk — the trigger is the round or the board seat, not the stage label. Investors and directors expect D&O before they take a seat because it protects their personal assets. A founder-only company on SAFEs with no board can usually wait; a smaller D&O program at seed is common and scales at Series A.

Your AI assistant can request this coverage

An AI agent or assistant acting for your business can request this coverage from OnePark: it uses the same browser forms a person does, and no MCP server, API key, or integration is required. The agent cannot bind coverage, and submitting a request does not guarantee carrier approval or a quote. Your business’s authorized representative approves any purchase in writing.

Business insurance for AI agents · Your AI assistant can now request business insurance from OnePark · How it works for agent builders

Sources

This material is general educational information, not legal, tax, or insurance advice. Coverage availability, policy terms, and regulatory requirements vary by state, carrier, and applicant.