Guidewire Earns “Silicon Valley Six” Spot

Guidewire, a provider of variety of insurance-related software products, including claims, policy administration and other integrated systems, has been nominated to the Silicon Valley Six, a ranking of venture capitalists and others made by Reuters of the hottest privately held companies with annual revenue of more than $100 million.  

Already an Insurance Networking News’ Vanguards in Insurance Practices’ 2009 two-time award winner, the company writes the core software for property/casualty insurance companies, replacing decades-old installations that use COBOL language.

Founded in 2002, Guidewire does for insurance what Oracle and SAP do for enterprise software. Guidewire's applications run on the Web, both as an intranet for internal company use and as an Internet for consumers and claims adjusters. It is designed to handle underwriting, claims and billing, reports Reuters.

"We've just had our best year ever by far," said CEO John Raguin. He said the company, whose 70 customers include Geico, AAA and Tokio Marine Nichido Fire, grew by more than 40% in the latest fiscal year.

The other five companies that earned a spot on the “Silicon Valley Six” include social networking giant LinkedIn; Solyndra, a clean tech company that makes solar electric installations for commercial rooftops; Zynga, which has grown over the past two years to become the largest casual online gaming company in the world; Silver Spring, a clean tech company that provisions "smart grid" utilities networks; and LiveOps, which operates call centers using cloud computing.