Technology Insurance for Small Businesses

When operating a small business, one has to worry about keeping current with technology to connect with the appropriate target customers effectively. However, the world of technology moves at a very rapid pace. In just a few years, social networking and mobile devices have become critical to the success of any business. Most small businesses built their marketing and sales infrastructure (websites, ecommerce) with no real thought towards technology obsolescence. Keeping up with these technological changes can be expensive both in time and money. The cottage industry of web developers who have traditionally provided solutions have not helped the situation because they have built one-time custom solutions.

How does one insure against this risk of technological change? A small business owner has had to deal with insurance - liability, workman’s compensation, etc. But never before has someone had to worry about technology insurance.

How does one ensure against technology obsolescence? The answer is “platforms”. Some familiar examples of platforms are

1. Facebook: platform for social networking
   
2. Linkedin: platform for business networking
   
3. Yelp: platform for to search and recommend businesses
   
4. Ebay: platform for online marketplace
   
5. Quickbooks: platform for finance for small businesses
   

Small Businesses have already figured out the value of these platforms. They provide a service and continuously improve and upgrade with new capabilities. They were initially on desktop computers; with the pervasiveness of smartphones they incorporated mobile into their offering. As new devices come to the market they adapt their platform to deal with them. Overall, small business owners worry about the content – the platform provider takes care of insuring you against technology evolution.

Unfortunately, no such platform exists for the front-end sales and marketing function for a small business. All the current solutions (wordpress, wix, squarespace, shopify) continue to leave the burden of the end solution to the small business owner. With this in mind, we have founded a company called Ocoos to address this need. We don't know if we will be the predominant solution, but we do believe the right solution has these platform characteristics.