High school dropout raises $17M after cold emailing Mark Cuban

Austin, Texas-based startup The Zebra announced it raised $17 million in venture funding, a nearly four-year journey from the day its then 15-year-old founder emailed Mark Cuban.

CEO Adam Lyons, who dropped out of high school in 2012 to start the insurance comparison company, emailed Cuban and other investors on a whim. Other backers include Floodgate, Ballast Point Ventures and Bahar Capital.

According to Fortune, 3.5 million people used The Zebra last year to choose insurance providers – about half of those purchasing it through the startup. The company faces some competition on the horizon from Google, which announced a similar product in March 2015.

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