The Insurtech He Won’t Name — and the Trust That Comes From Showing Up Every Six Weeks

Nir Netzer trained as a CPA and started his career at Ernst & Young, but by 2014 had decided that auditing, however much he liked his colleagues, simply wasn’t the work he wanted to keep doing. He left to found what became two connected ventures: Equitech, a fintech consultancy, and the Israeli FinTech Association (branded FinTech Aviv), the conference and community arm. Seven years and more than 80 events later, the community has grown from a first meetup of 20 people in a bar to a network of roughly 35,000 members, working with close to 800 fintech companies in Israel.

About Nir Netzer

Nir Netzer is Founding Partner of Equitech, a fintech investment banking and advisory boutique, and of the Israeli FinTech Association (FinTech Aviv), which runs community events and international delegations for Israeli fintech and insurtech companies.

Fintech, Broadly Defined

Asked how “fintech” and “insurtech” relate in his world, Nir was explicit that he uses fintech as a deliberately broad umbrella — spanning blockchain solutions for financial services, capital markets and trading platforms, cybersecurity and identity/fraud tools for financial institutions, backend AI and big data infrastructure, and newer subcategories like proptech and regtech that keep emerging. Insurance, in his framing, sits naturally inside that broader category, and he pointed out that even beyond direct coverage, insurers are themselves major real estate investors — which is part of why proptech and insurtech increasingly intersect.

What Equitech Actually Does for Startups

Equitech’s consulting work spans go-to-market strategy, product-market fit, and — drawing directly on Nir’s EY background — rigorous compliance and market-validation work before a fintech or insurtech company enters a new, typically heavily regulated market. Beyond advisory work, Equitech and FinTech Aviv facilitate direct introductions to partners, clients, and investors, including staging Israeli delegations at international conferences and summits to showcase local startups on a global stage — work that moved fully virtual during the pandemic, though Nir was candid that video calls, however efficient, are no substitute for the in-person handshake and follow-up drink that actually build trust between people doing business together.

A Success Story He Won’t Fully Tell

Nir shared a detailed case study from around 2016-2017: a pension management startup presented at a FinTech Aviv event, describing a product that let people move and manage their pension funds through a simple mobile dashboard rather than the opaque, hard-to-track process most people default to. A Barclays representative in the audience, on the same panel discussing insurtech solutions, approached Nir afterward wanting an introduction — Equitech made the match, the company was accepted into Techstars’ accelerator program backed by Barclays, and it later received a 9 million shekel grant from Israel’s Innovation Authority. Consistent with the NDA obligations that come with running a network built on trust and confidentiality (Equitech works with well over 100 fintech startups under a range of signed agreements), Nir declined to name the company on the record, noting only that it’s identifiable with some digging for anyone motivated enough to look.

Investment Banking Should Start Earlier Than Founders Think

Asked when a startup should actually engage an investment banker, Nir pushed back on the common assumption that it’s a later-stage concern — in his view, even pre-seed companies can benefit from Equitech’s help on product validation and design, well before a formal raise. His pitch for engaging earlier rather than later centers on certainty and leverage: getting the best terms on valuation, anti-dilution provisions, and investor fit requires real preparation — not just a polished pitch deck, but the full package of materials, positioning, and readiness that lets a founder negotiate credibly with a sophisticated investor.

The SPAC Boom, and Its Effect on Insurtech Valuations

Nir spoke at length about the SPAC wave reshaping how fintech and insurtech companies were reaching public markets at the time of this recording. Unlike a traditional DCF-based private placement valuation grounded in historical performance, a SPAC merger lets a company be valued on its future vision and roadmap — which Nir noted directly inflates valuations, sometimes to levels critics call unrealistic, but which has become a powerful, legitimate tool nonetheless. Equitech built a dedicated “SPAC as a service” offering in direct response to investor demand, helping SPAC sponsors identify Israeli target companies matching a defined valuation range. He pointed to Payoneer, eToro, Pagaya, and Hippo as insurtech- and fintech-adjacent companies moving through SPAC processes around that time, and expected the trend to continue through 2021.

He also described a broader pandemic-driven wave of new insurance products he’d observed emerging through 2020: more sophisticated life insurance policies addressing pandemic-specific household risk, a rise in cyber insurance as remote work expanded exposure, growth in pet insurance, and expanded usage-based auto insurance reflecting the simple fact that far fewer people were driving.

Building Trust Through Repetition

Asked what actually holds a 35,000-person community together, Nir offered a personal analogy: the same social dynamic that builds trust among people who attend the same synagogue every Saturday — not necessarily through religious observance itself, but through the simple, repeated familiarity of seeing the same faces regularly. His community’s version of that repetition is FinTech Aviv’s cadence of events roughly every five to six weeks, building enough familiarity over time that people are willing to vouch for each other, refer clients, and do business on trust rather than cold credentials alone.

Advice: Binance Academy

For his closing recommendation, Nir — a self-described crypto enthusiast — pointed to Binance Academy’s educational tutorials as a genuinely useful resource for understanding the fast-expanding NFT space and executing a basic, secure Bitcoin transaction, framing crypto literacy as increasingly table stakes even for people outside the space professionally.

Key Takeaways

• Nir treats “fintech” as a deliberately broad umbrella spanning blockchain, capital markets, cybersecurity, backend AI, and proptech — with insurance sitting naturally inside it, partly because insurers are themselves major real estate investors alongside being risk carriers
• A single conference introduction — a pension-management startup presenting at a FinTech Aviv event, overheard by a Barclays representative — led directly to a Techstars acceleration and a 9 million shekel Israeli Innovation Authority grant, illustrating the concrete value of community-building work that’s often hard to quantify in advance
• Nir’s advice to founders: engage investment banking support well before a formal raise, even at pre-seed — the value isn’t just deal execution, it’s product validation, positioning, and readiness that directly affects the terms a founder can negotiate later
• SPACs fundamentally changed insurtech valuation logic during 2021, shifting from historical-performance-based DCF valuations to forward-looking, vision-based pricing — a dynamic Equitech turned into a dedicated “SPAC as a service” offering matching sponsors to Israeli target companies
• Nir’s trust-building analogy — repeated, familiar community gatherings functioning like a weekly synagogue congregation — reflects FinTech Aviv’s actual operating cadence: an event roughly every five to six weeks, sustained over seven years, credited as the real mechanism behind a 35,000-member community’s willingness to vouch for and do business with each other