Ignition Benefits
<!-- hacklab:yc-profile -- YC company profile The AI-Native Benefits Brokerage Ignition is an AI-native employee benefits brokerage for companies with under 200 employees. Healt…
About Ignition Benefits
YC company profile
The AI-Native Benefits Brokerage
Ignition is an AI-native employee benefits brokerage for companies with under 200 employees. Health insurance is one of the largest line items these companies carry, and employers absorb 15 to 40% rate increases year after year without ever seeing their own numbers. We have rebuilt the sales and back office to be AI-first. This market represents about $500B of market cap, and those businesses have not fundamentally changed in over 50 years. While scaling Plated, I wore every HR hat from doing payroll myself, to managing a PEO, to eventually hiring an employee benefits broker on our way to 1,500 employees. We wasted over $4M on benefits over 5 years, and I'm building Ignition to help companies under 200 employees avoid making my mistakes.
- YC batch: Fall 2026
- Founded: 2026
- Team size: 12
- Location: Los Angeles, CA
- Country: US
- Status: Active
- Industry: Fintech
- Stage: Early
- Tags: Health Insurance, Insurance, AI
- YC partner: Aaron Epstein
Founders
Nick Taranto — Founder/CEO
Founder at Ignition Benefits. Previously founded Plated, the first American meal kit company (sold to Albertsons for $300M in 2017). Former US Marine Corps. MBA from Harvard; BA from Dartmouth. While scaling Plated, I wore every HR hat from doing payroll myself, to managing a PEO, to eventually hiring an employee benefits broker on our way to 1,500 employees. We wasted over $4M on benefits over 5 years, and I'm building Ignition to help companies under 200 employees avoid making my mistakes.
Source: Y Combinator · Retrieved 2026-11-02. Company information is self-reported on YC.