Evry Health
Winter 2018AcquiredBetter health insurance for mid-size companies
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Explore the risks and possibilities with a prompt for ChatGPT, Claude, or your agent.
Better health insurance for mid-size companies
Explore the risks and possibilities with a prompt for ChatGPT, Claude, or your agent.
Evry Health built a full-stack health insurer for mid-sized Texas employers. Founded in 2017 by Chris Gay, Jay Startz, and Mark Jamilkowski, it combined zero-dollar in-network visits, care teams, member rewards, direct provider contracts, and software-assisted insurance operations. The company joined YC in Winter 2018 but did not launch plans until late 2021.[1][2]
The four-year build created a real insurer and also defined its ceiling. Each new market required licenses, provider contracts, brokers, actuarial capital, and local operations. Evry could automate claims and care work, but it could not use software to skip insurance regulation or balance-sheet risk.
Globe Life agreed to acquire Evry in October 2023. Its SEC filing called the purchase price immaterial and gave no dollar figure. Evry kept operating, expanded its product, and remained led by Gay. The sale ended the independent venture phase while preserving the company under an insurer with more capital and distribution.[3]
Chris Gay came to health insurance through software, finance, and personal loss. After the University of Texas at Austin, he joined Goldman Sachs as a financial analyst, moved into its technology team, and later earned an MBA at Georgetown. In 2006 he founded MileMeter, which priced auto insurance by the mile. That company taught him how underwriting, policy administration, regulation, and code fit together.[4]
The motivation for Evry was less abstract. Gay told Authority Magazine, “I lost a good friend to a $200 decision.” His friend had type 1 diabetes, skipped a doctor visit to preserve money for tuition and books, and later died. Gay's wife and co-founders had their own stories of avoidable loss.[5]
Gay joined with Jay Startz and Mark Jamilkowski. Startz became chief operating officer. Jamilkowski brought more than three decades in healthcare and served as chief actuary and finance leader. Public sources do not explain how the three met, a gap that matters because their roles spanned the distinct crafts required to form an insurer: technology, operations, and actuarial control.
They incorporated Evry in 2017 and joined YC's Winter 2018 batch. The initial promise was aggressive: insurance for mid-sized employers with premiums 20% below traditional plans and more useful care. Yet the company stayed out of public view for almost four years. Insurance cannot launch as an unlicensed beta. Evry had to build a regulated carrier, configure benefits, contract providers, assemble a broker channel, and prepare claims and care operations before it could enroll members.
That slow preparation shaped the business. Gay later described the company as “a software company that owns an insurance company.”[6] Evry's differentiation came from owning the policy and medical-risk decisions, not from selling an app alongside an incumbent plan.
Evry sold fully insured employer health plans, not a navigation benefit layered on another carrier. For its primary in-network plan, a member paid no deductible and no copay for doctor visits, telehealth, mental-health visits, or covered prescriptions. A care team of clinicians and coordinators helped members choose providers and follow personal care plans. Rewards of up to $1,000 per plan year encouraged preventive care and participation.[5]
The member experience depended on a narrower network. Evry used claims data and provider-quality measures to select doctors, then contracted directly. CareJourney supplied provider cost and quality data inside Salesforce Health Cloud, where staff could evaluate networks, manage referrals, and support contracting.[14] The EPO design generally did not cover out-of-network care except emergencies, though a partner handled members traveling outside the area.
Behind the app, Evry combined purchased components with its own software. PLEXIS Quantum Choice handled core policy and claims administration. Evry connected that system to Salesforce, provider data, member services, and its own automation. Gay said the company automated roughly half of routine claims, care-coordination, and back-office tasks.[5]
The product also changed vendor economics. Evry contracted with Quit Genius, now Pelago, for digital addiction treatment and put the provider's fees at risk against clinical, engagement, satisfaction, and access measures. Gay said, “We've designed everything to be value-based from the ground up.”[10]
After the acquisition, the operating model kept advancing. Evry's Authoritative system linked documents to medical records and evidence guidelines for prior-authorization review. The company said the system reduced a typical review from about 30 minutes to five and helped lower denials from 7% in 2024 to 4% in 2025. Those figures are company-reported, but they show that Globe Life continued funding the product.[12]
Evry began with fully insured Texas employers of at least 100 workers and publicly targeted groups up to 2,000. These companies were large enough to use benefits brokers and care about employee experience, but often too small to self-insure with predictable claims risk. By 2026 the minimum had fallen to 51 employees.[9][13]
The broker was as important as the employer. Health-plan selection is infrequent, financially risky, and hard for employees to reverse midyear. In the launch discussion, Gay wrote, “For distribution, it took time to build trust with brokers.”[7] A better app could not bypass advisers who controlled the shortlist and carried reputational risk when recommending a young insurer.
Employer-sponsored insurance covers a large share of working-age Americans, but Evry's reachable market was constrained by state licenses, group size, geography, and network adequacy. Its 2022 expansion covered the Texas triangle of Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. Current marketing remains Texas-only.[9][13]
No public source gives Evry's member count, employer count, premium revenue, or medical-loss ratio. CB Insights reports $7.44 million in funding, which is modest for a risk-bearing carrier but still cannot be compared with undisclosed premium reserves or Globe Life investment.[15]
Evry competed with national carriers such as UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, Cigna, and Blue Cross Blue Shield plans; Texas systems and regional insurers; self-funded employer plans; and newer no-deductible products such as Curative. National carriers had broader networks, broker familiarity, claims history, and capital. Evry offered a simpler benefit design and more hands-on care.
Its defensible asset was not the interface. It was the combination of licensed risk, a selected network, plan rules, claims operations, and member support. That same bundle resisted fast geographic expansion. Every state or metro required new compliance work, actuarial pricing, broker education, and enough contracted providers to make the benefit credible.
Employers paid premiums for a fully insured plan, and Evry assumed medical risk. Premium income had to cover claims, provider payments, care teams, distribution, administration, reserves, and regulatory capital. Evry tried to lower the medical and operating cost enough to remove point-of-care charges while pricing premiums up to 20% below alternatives. That claim was never independently audited.[1]
The company used direct provider contracts, preventive-care incentives, care coordination, network selection, and at-risk vendor agreements to influence medical cost. Software reduced administrative labor but did not remove claims volatility. A few high-cost members or weak pricing assumptions can erase administrative savings in a small pool.
Evry did not disclose revenue, membership, medical-loss ratio, retention, or profitability. Globe Life's Form 10-Q called both the acquisition price and expected financial impact immaterial.[3] The filing establishes a small transaction relative to Globe Life, not the dollar proceeds or investor return.
Evry moved from a Dallas-Fort Worth launch to Texas's four largest metros within roughly seven months. It won NCQA accreditation, built a broker channel, put specialty vendors under outcome-based contracts, and became a licensed carrier serving employers.[9]
The acquisition supplied stronger evidence of strategic fit than of financial scale. Globe Life already invested in Evry, according to D CEO, then bought it less than two years after commercial launch. Gay remained in charge. By 2026, Evry still sold plans, lowered its employer-size threshold, introduced AI-supported prior authorization, and ranked 29th on the Longhorn 100 list of fast-growing University of Texas alumni businesses.[2]
Evry's strongest choice was owning the insurance policy. That allowed it to remove copays, select providers, pay vendors for outcomes, and redesign claims work. A navigation app could recommend care but could not rewrite benefits or assume risk.
Ownership also imposed a four-year delay between founding and launch. The team had to satisfy regulators, build reserves, create networks, configure a claims core, recruit brokers, and prepare clinical operations. Once live, each geographic expansion recreated much of that work. Software made the carrier more efficient; it did not turn a state-regulated risk pool into ordinary SaaS.
The team addressed the bottleneck with modular vendors and a concentrated market. PLEXIS supplied core administration, CareJourney supplied provider analytics, Salesforce organized care workflows, and digital clinics added specialty services. Evry concentrated on the Texas triangle. This produced a functioning insurer but kept the independent business small enough that Globe Life called the transaction immaterial.
Evry removed copays and deductibles by controlling plan design, steering members toward a selected network, and intervening in care. The member gained predictable access; the plan accepted network limits. In 2026, Globe Life's own benefit guide still warned that Evry's EPO plans did not cover out-of-network services except emergencies.[16]
The company tried to make restriction feel like support. Members received care coordinators, free virtual care, mental-health access, rewards, and referrals informed by provider-quality data. That is a coherent trade, but brokers and employers had to believe a young network would work for every employee. The trust burden slowed distribution and rewarded a parent with an established insurance brand.
Globe Life had already invested in Evry and operated from nearby McKinney. It brought a public insurer's assets, regulatory infrastructure, agents, employer relationships, and ability to fund claims volatility. Gay called the buyer “rocket fuel,” remained CEO, and continued expanding the product.[4]
The counterargument treats Evry as a straightforward acquisition success. The product survived, current operating evidence is strong, and the company appears to be growing. Yet the transaction ended independence after only two years of commercial availability, and Globe Life reported no material purchase price or financial contribution. The available evidence supports a strategic product acquisition more clearly than a venture-scale exit.
Many acquisitions absorb a brand and stop product work. Evry lowered the employer threshold, continued recruiting clinical leaders, partnered with Color for cancer care, and deployed Authoritative for prior authorization. The 2025 denial and review-time results suggest that Globe Life funded more work on the original thesis.
This continued operation changes the lesson. Evry's constraint was not an unwanted product. It was the cost and time required to make a local insurance model large. Joining an incumbent traded standalone upside for the balance sheet and institutional trust the model always needed.