Three million homes are damaged by natural disasters in the US every year — and with a billion-dollar storm hitting roughly every ten days, that number is only growing. But the system for repairing affected homes is stuck in the past, with mountains of paperwork, fragmented funding, and rampant fraud leaving vulnerable homeowners stranded.
This week on Everybody in the Pool, Molly sits down with Susan Hunt Stevens, the founder and CEO of Tessi, a platform working to fix what she calls the “broken post-disaster home repair system.” Tessi brings homeowners, vetted contractors, insurers, government programs, and other funders onto a single platform that uses AI-driven damage assessments to quickly evaluate a home in the wake of a disaster.
We talk about:
- How Tessi uses AI and aerial imagery to generate damage assessments within 24 hours
- How the surge in natural disasters has made homeowners increasingly vulnerable to contractor fraud
- Why only 4% of homeowners affected by flooding and hurricanes are actually covered by insurance
- How homeowners can use disaster repair as an opportunity to implement climate-adaptive upgrades
- Tessi’s role in a complicated ecosystem where any repair might be funded by a patchwork of insurance, personal savings, home equity loans, government aid, and even GoFundMe
- How Tessi is partnering with volunteer disaster relief organizations to serve socially vulnerable homeowners who fall outside the paid system
- Tessi’s goal of serving 1 million homes within 5 years
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