Groundspeed, a leading intelligent data platform for commercial insurance carriers, today announced the appointment of Eric Kobe as the company’s new Chief Executive Officer. Kobe has been serving as Groundspeed’s COO since late 2020. The company has also brought on Marc Porupsky as Senior Vice President of Sales.
Groundspeed’s momentum in the P&C market is strong, with three more of the top 50 commercial carriers signing on as customers in the first few months of 2022. With Kobe’s appointment, the company’s founder and former CEO, Jeff Mason, has moved into an Executive Chairperson role. “In the past six years, Groundspeed has become the market leader in powering smarter and faster underwriting decisions. With our ongoing expansion, Eric is the perfect person to lead the company into the future. Eric has scaled our operations and go-to-market teams, has been instrumental in recruiting exceptional talent, and is committed to our customers.” says Mason. “I look forward to my continued role in advising management on strategy and serving on the board of directors.”
Kobe joined Groundspeed in September 2020 after four years at Affirm, where he scaled the strategy and operations team during the company’s growth from 100 to 900+ employees. Prior to that, Eric led Operations and Analytics at Wiser Solutions and started his career in management consulting. He holds an MBA from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and a BS in Systems Engineering and Economics from the University of Virginia.
“I’m excited to be taking on the CEO role at this pivotal time,” says Kobe. “Commercial insurance carriers are spending too much time processing submission documents into usable, structured data. Intelligent, human-in-the-loop automation can solve this, and the opportunity for Groundspeed to power smarter commercial underwriting is enormous. I look forward to bringing our technology to more carriers so that they can win more business and improve loss ratios.”
Marc Porupsky will lead the global sales organization at Groundspeed, having joined the company last month. Marc has been in insurance and software sales for 25 years, solving complex business problems for Fortune 500 companies and leading insurers in the U.S., and driving revenue growth for software companies. Prior to Groundspeed, Marc held sales leadership roles at Unqork, Pegasystems, and Oracle, where he scaled business lines and sales teams to increase new business and expand existing customer relationships. Marc holds a bachelor’s degree from University of Minnesota, Duluth.
About Groundspeed
Groundspeed is a leading intelligent data platform for commercial P&C insurance carriers. With Groundspeed, underwriters and business leaders can make faster, smarter decisions — winning more business and improving loss ratios. Our human-in-the-loop API delivers complete, accurate, and enriched risk data in hours. To learn more, visit www.groundspeed.com.
