Naitiv was co-founded by three members of major ServiceNow partner Thirdera, which was acquired by Cognizant, along with an insurance industry expert as a way to bring agile AI capabilities initially to the insurance industry but eventually to a wide swath of the ServiceNow market.
The ServiceNow channel community as of Tuesday has a new member, one built by veterans of one of that vendor’s largest channel partners.
Denver-based Naitiv Tuesday officially came out of stealth not only as a new ServiceNow channel partner initially focused on the property and casualty insurance market, but one that has already acquired two of its peers.
Naitiv was founded by three former members of Thirdera, a major ServiceNow partner acquired in late 2023 by Cognizant, along with a former insurance industry executive.
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Naitiv CEO Jon Reynolds (photo) was Thirdera’s former senior vice president of global alliances, innovation, and corporate development. Naitiv Chief Operating Officer Chris Damon was Thirdera’s former senior vice president of global sales and offerings. David Cadoff, Naitiv’s senior vice president, was Thirdera’s former application management systems sales lead. Naitiv Managing Partner Bill Devine was an 18-plus-year veteran of insurance company Travelers.
The name “Naitiv” is metaphorical for AI-native, Reynolds told CRN.
“We purposely built the name that way,” he said. “We get up every morning and eat, sleep, and drink AI. AI is an important aspect in in how we go and execute and deliver not only the outcomes to our customers, but how we run our business internally as well.”
The ideal of starting Naitiv was born as Reynolds last summer took a long look at how the industry was adopting industry workflows in the face of the surge of AI.
“I spent a lot of time talking to ServiceNow, talking to former clients, talking to other luminaries in this ecosystem about what kind of partner could really be relevant,” he said. “It’s not only the push and surge into industry and customer workflow, but equally you’ve got AI everywhere landing on our doorsteps. And how do we rationalize all this? How do we make some real concerted efforts to modernize industry? And as we looked around, we felt that we needed a new firm and a new type of company to do that, and out of that, that’s where we created Naitiv.”
The goal was to bring people together who ran businesses and led organizations, which have dealt with those challenges firsthand, Reynolds said.
“We’re bringing that together with arguably one of the most experienced ServiceNow teams ever to be put together,” he said. “We knew we needed that kind of architectural experience, that type of business experience, and that AI-forward attitude and endeavor, bringing all that together and harnessing all that energy into one company. And that’s really what Naitiv was birthed from.”
Reynolds said his team decided to tackle the challenges with their own company rather than work through Cognizant because while a large systems integrator like Cognizant has massive resources and a treat collection of advisory capabilities, it may not move as fast.
“The challenge you run into is you also have large volumes of IP (intellectual property), of solutions, of allegiances to different technologies and partners, and an unwillingness, generally, to cannibalize that revenue, to pivot those customers to more modernized solutions,” he said.
Speed is key to building a business around AI, Reynolds said.
“We need to be fast,” he said. “We need to be agile. We need to work and operate at the same speed that technology is evolving in front of us, and we needed a firm that could represent that to our customers. For that reason, we decided to step away and create Naitiv.”
The founding of Naitiv, along with its two initial acquisitions, was funded by the co-founders with no outside investment, Reynolds said.
“We brought together a couple of other small-scale firms that were out there into the new founding entity,” he said. “If you look around the kitchen, there’s some really interesting ingredients that were there. We knew that we needed to round out the ingredient set to craft a really awesome dinner. And so we brought together a team of experts representing different skill sets that could come together to achieve and deliver the kinds of outcomes that we’re seeking to deliver in the market.”
The first, Inspira Systems, is an enterprise strategic portfolio (SPM) management and enterprise architecture-focused partner, Reynolds said.
“SPM and EA are very critical to the types of programmatic transformation that we want to drive to our to our customers,” he said. “When we are transforming a business, we need to make sure that that also translates to the IT observability on the systems that we are modernizing, and to the risk and governance the enterprise is responsible for to ensure the health and safety of the company overall. There are very few, if any, SPM and EA-specialized partners out there on the market.”
The second, Cloudworks, specializes in customer workflow, CRM, and CPQ (configure price quote), Reynolds said.
“Behind them as well is an incredible advisory group, Momentum Partners, long timers themselves in the tech-enabled industry segment,” he said. “Again, a great focus on the customer workflow capability stack together with just awesome reach deep into the BFSI (banking, financial services, and insurance) segment, with a lot of deep industry experience therein.”
Reynolds declined to discuss the cost of the acquisitions.
ServiceNow, with which Naitiv’s founders have had long relationships, has been very supportive of the solution provider, Reynolds said.
“I have great appreciation for how ServiceNow has to work with and treat small, independent boutiques to the strategic partnerships that they form with the largest global partners,” he said. “But I think all of us appreciate that we’re in an era right where exists the need for highly specialized, highly focused partners. We’re bringing in a very focused look at the P&C (property and casualty) insurance space and are really helping accelerate that marketplace for them.”
Devine brings to Naitiv a strong background in the P&C business.
“One of the great things about ServiceNow is the stats they shared with us is that the company is in over 95 percent of all insurance companies as a core application asset,” he said. “So wherever you go in insurance, ServiceNow is there in one form or another.”
Devine left Travelers in April of 2024 after over 18 years of leading large transformation efforts, strategy and innovation, and product management groups during the time the company was becoming a leader in the use of AI. He told CRN that after Travelers, he did some consulting during what he described as his “walkabout.”
During his time at Travelers, he met many ServiceNow-focused people at Cloud Sherpa, which was acquired by Accenture, who eventually were employed by the insurance company, Devine said. He also kept in touch with a former Travelers director who previously worked with Accenture who talked with him about ServiceNow, and is good friends with Nigel Walsh who is global head of insurance at ServiceNow.
“I started putting all these things together and seeing all these familiar names and faces all kind of congregating in the same space,” he said. “And what definitely drew me in that and some really cool commercials with Idris Elba talking about what ServiceNow is going to do for AI.”
Devine said his role at Naitiv is to make sure the company is building the offerings that meet the needs of the insurance industry.
“We’ve got a great, rounded team,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of sellers and things like that. I get to sit down with guys like Jon [Reynolds] and some of our really smart tech guys and look at how do we bring the right solutions to the market so that we catch the attention of people when they pick the phone up to have the conversation with us.”
As a channel partners engineer solutions for business, it takes a diversified skill set, Reynolds said.
“You have to have an ‘A-league’ business advisory,” he said. “You have to have deep understanding of the back-office systems where a lot of data reside and where legacy systems are going to continue to run and operate. You have to have great ServiceNow architectural expertise. You have to know how to tie those systems together and integrate them and then put really slick UX UI (user experience and user interface) over the top of all of that. And as we looked around, we didn’t see all of that brought together into one firm. What we’ve aimed to solve is how we bring this into one advisory capability that’s seamless in the eyes of our customers.”
While property and casualty insurance is the initial focus of Naitiv, that will change, Reynolds said.
“The architecture we are standing up is certainly extensible,” he said. “And we’ve got great reach into BFSI services next. So you’ll see us hunkering down in insurance from a business solution perspective. The way Naitiv has been put together, we’ve got an excellent core platform with architectural governance capabilities and the ability to service virtually any customer in this ecosystem. But where we’re initially driving and collaborating to make a major substantive impact will be insurance to start. But that’s our jumping off point.”
