Life insurance. A product everyone needs but nobody wants to talk about, until the application hits you like a brick wall of bureaucracy and outdated systems that make a trip to the DMV look like a spa day. Back in 2016, Bestow was born not from whiteboard brainstorming or some VC think tank but from CEO Melbourne O'Banion’s personal nightmare trying to get covered. He and Jonathan Abelmann didn’t just slap a tech band-aid on a broken system, they built a full-stack platform to gut and rebuild it from the inside out.
Now headquartered in Dallas but operating remote-first with a lean team of 160–277, Bestow has been quietly leveling up from scrappy DTC upstart to the quiet storm behind the curtain powering major players like Nationwide, Transamerica, USAA, and Equitable. The DTC days are over, Bestow sold off its life insurance arm to Sammons Financial Group Companies in 2024 and went full enterprise. The company doesn’t chase customers anymore. It builds the infrastructure that insurers need to stay alive in a market that’s been allergic to innovation for decades.
Today, they dropped the mic: a $120M Series D round, co-led by Growth Equity at Penn at Goldman Sachs Alternatives and Smith Point Capital, LLC, paired with a $50M credit facility from TriplePoint Capital. That’s not pocket change. That’s deep-pocket conviction. And when Goldman not only co-leads but sends Ashwin Gupta to the boardroom, it’s because they see something most folks miss: a vertical SaaS sleeper rewriting the play, quietly, ruthlessly, effectively.
Bestow’s growth numbers are the kind you don’t argue with. Tripled ARR in 2024. 10x revenue growth in two years. A 245% spike in transactions. And somehow, a 100% customer retention rate in a space where churn is the default. They’re not just scaling. They’re compounding. And they’re doing it with a technical engine that can plug, play, and pay dividends, Protect API, algorithmic underwriting, real-time policy admin, no medical exams, no legacy bloat.
The platform’s already capable of handling face amounts up to $1.5M digitally. Now it’s expanding into annuities, hiring 50+ engineers and data scientists, and eyeing international markets where “digital life insurance” still sounds like science fiction. But it’s not fiction. It’s math, code, and timing.
Bestow doesn’t sell life insurance. It sells the infrastructure that makes it work in 2025, and it does it with margins that’d make a hedge fund blush. With valuation doubling since Series C, and the B2B SaaS flywheel humming on usage-based fees, the real story is this: legacy carriers are either getting on the Bestow train or getting left at the station.
Let’s connect and keep the momentum going across the tech ecosystem. Whether you’re a founder shaping the future, a leader driving change, a VC backing bold ideas, or an investor spotting the next big thing—together, we’re pushing boundaries. Proud to be building the future with you.
Let’s connect on LinkedIn and Twitter (X), and keep the conversation going.
Thank you, Vention. Without your support, none of this would be possible.