Joseph D’Souza, CEO & Founder of ProNavigator, shares how his team is using AI to tackle one of the biggest challenges in insurance: information overload.
From 97 minutes on hold to a SaaS vision
In 2016, Joseph D’Souza found himself stuck on a 97-minute call with his insurance carrier just to get a simple policy question answered. Frustration mounted as he realized this wasn’t just one company’s quirk, but an industry-wide information bottleneck. “I started to kind of dig into that and what I saw was information overload, systemic across the insurance industry,” D’Souza recalls. That painful experience sparked the idea for ProNavigator, a software company dedicated to untangling insurance information woes.
Joseph D'Souza, CEO, Pronavigator
ProNavigator’s journey holds valuable lessons for SaaS leaders—especially those who started pre-AI boom—on how to position deep industry expertise at the center of their product strategy, and where to leverage platforms to accelerate innovation without losing focus.
Going narrow and deep instead of chasing the AI hype
Long before “AI-powered” became a buzzword, D’Souza was exploring how artificial intelligence could solve insurance-specific problems. “We were pretty early on in terms of looking at AI and how it could solve this,” he says, noting ProNavigator secured its .ai domain in 2018 and began building natural language processing models to understand the language of insurance.
The decision to go narrow and deep was intentional. “A lot of general AI tools look impressive in a demo, but they can be quite brittle in a regulated, domain-heavy industry like insurance. It wasn’t about chasing AI for the sake of it. It was: is AI the right tool to solve this real pain point of fragmented knowledge?”
That meant spending countless hours beside brokers, underwriters, and claims agents—watching how they searched for information, where they got stuck, and how to design solutions around their workflows.
You have to have that real connection with the user’s problem. That informs everything – how we structure the data, how we surface results, what features we need. It’s really hard to wing that level of specificity without understanding who you’re solving for.
-Joseph D’Souza, CEO, ProNavigator
When customers expect execution, not just information
Today’s enterprise buyers expect more than organized information. They want software that executes parts of the work—from drafting an email to pre-filling a claim form—directly inside their workflows. “I think the bar has shifted from ‘does this make us more efficient?’ to ‘is this driving a measurable business outcome?’” D’Souza says.
I think the bar has shifted from ‘does this make us more efficient?’ to ‘is this driving a measurable business outcome’?
-Joseph D’Souza, CEO, ProNavigator
In insurance, that expectation is heightened by a looming talent crunch as seasoned employees retire, taking decades of institutional knowledge with them. ProNavigator sees an opportunity to capture that knowledge and embed it into agentic workflows—automating repetitive steps so human experts can focus on high-value, empathetic client interactions. “How do we build a platform that doesn’t just help you find the document, but actually tells you what’s changed, shows you what you need to do next, and gets you back to serving the customer faster?” D’Souza asks.
Exploring platforms to accelerate without losing focus
Until now, ProNavigator’s product has been built entirely in-house using a full-stack engineering approach. That has preserved tight control over core functionality, but as the company scales, D’Souza is looking for ways to increase velocity without diverting his core team from their most critical work.
That exploration recently led ProNavigator to begin its journey with Launchpad, a low-code platform for creating AI-powered workflows and agents. While they have not yet built and shipped a full application with Launchpad, the team loves the model and is excited about the impact it can have on their growth and the value they deliver for customers.
We love the model. It gives us a way to look at net-new capabilities and ask: do we really need to build every foundational layer ourselves? Or could we get to value faster for customers by leveraging a platform that already has the scale, security, and compliance we need?
-Joseph D’Souza, CEO, ProNavigator
In this early phase, the focus is on experimenting—seeing how Launchpad’s framework might help ProNavigator bring new workflow automation concepts to life sooner than would be possible in the traditional build-from-scratch model. “It’s about getting to those items that might be three, four, or five on the priority list—the ones that could unlock real value—without taking our core team off the top one and two priorities,” D’Souza explains.
A new class of software: agentic AI as a differentiator
D’Souza believes agentic AI will define the next era of enterprise software. “Customers want systems that are thinking alongside their staff,” he says. “We’re going to see an entirely new class of enterprise software where execution is the product.”
For ProNavigator, the opportunity is to lead that transformation in insurance by pairing its deep domain expertise with emerging agentic capabilities. Launchpad is one of the tools they’re exploring to make that possible. “Our customers get excited about the possibilities—like an assistant that can draft an internal announcement when a policy change goes live, or generate recommendations based on what they’re working on,” D’Souza says.
Advice for SaaS leaders
D’Souza offers three takeaways for SaaS founders and product leaders navigating a similar inflection point:
1. Start with customer outcomes. “Focus on the outcome you’re trying to achieve for your customers and then work back from there.”
2. Double down on domain expertise. Your moat is how deeply you understand and integrate into your customer’s world.
3. Partner where it accelerates value. You don’t have to build every layer—especially those that platforms can deliver with scale and compliance built in.
ProNavigator is early in their Launchpad journey—but by starting now, they’re positioning themselves to move faster, focus their resources where they matter most, and explore entirely new ways to deliver measurable outcomes for customers. As D’Souza puts it: “Growth comes from focus. And the right partnerships can help you focus on what matters.”
Interested in starting your Launchpad journey? Sign up for Launchpad Explore for free and begin exploring a whole new, fast-paced universe of app design.