Leaky is a car insurance comparator for the US market (initially they’re starting out with California). As people fill in details about their car and their driving habits, they are able to see in real time how much would insurance cost them at different providers.
In August 2011 the company launched an earlier version of the webapp that used to scrape data from the websites of the insurance companies. They received cease and desist letters and they had to shut down their site 4 days after the launch. Since then, Leaky developed a predictor algorithm based on the public fillings that insurance companies are required to fill periodically. The new model is making predictions that are within 3 percent of the actual prices.
During the process of building the model the Leaky team discovered some interesting trivia facts about insurance costs, such as the fact that a divorce costs the same as getting a hybrid, or that driving with a suspended/revoked license has the same weight as vehicular manslaughter.
Leaky received initial seed funding as part of its participation in the YCombinator program. The company is located in San Francisco, California; it was originally founded in September 2010.
