zstiefler

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Jun 3

Investor Cofounder, Bungalow Insurance (Sold)

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Comment · 6 years ago

This reminds me of the paradox / thought exercise of The Ship of Theseus: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Comment · 7 years ago

This reminds me of what vineyards did during the prohibition, selling “grape bricks” and explicitly instructing people to NOT dissolve in water and let sit for 21 days or it would turn into wine.

https://vinepair.com/wine-blog/how-wine-bricks-saved-the-u-s...

Comment · 9 years ago

This is also why carriers like agents so much. Agents effectively act as a first screen for carriers that allows carriers to turn away customers in a way that they can't legally do through their policies. Ie "encouraging" agents to send business from certain neighborhoods to other carriers or agents.

This is a discriminatory practice but every carrier does it because it's a way to circumvent the public nature of their filings, and it's another hurdle that startups will need to overcome, particularly if they're doing online distribution where adverse selection is a more pronounced risk.

Comment · 9 years ago

Agree 100%. I suspect a lot of this came back to their investors demanding exponential growth.

Comment · 9 years ago

While much of what Aaron wrote is spot on, one thing missing is the importance of distribution. This a challenge for any startup, but is more pronounced in a regulated industry like insurance with largely homogenized products and with serious restrictions on how you can legally distribute your product (see Zenefits).

If you consider how most people and small businesses buy insurance, they typically make purchasing decisions one a year at most. As such, you need to get in front of them at the exact moment they want to purchase. GEICO and Progressive have done this really well, but have effectively bid up the cost of online advertising to make it prohibitively expensive. This is also why agents are such a powerful force in the industry (and because they effectively provide carriers with an initial underwriting screen which they don't need to file publicly).

It's important to get the product right, and there are many flaws with most P&C insurance today (chief among them that the forms haven't really changed in the past few decades), but I'd encourage any entrepreneurs to make sure they have an answer on distribution before spending time on product.

Disclosure: I've spent a lot of time looking at this as founder of a P&C insurance startup a few years ago.

Comment · 11 years ago

Bungalow || http://www.bungalowinsurance.com || Philadelphia, PA and New York, NY

Buying insurance today sucks. Customer satisfaction rates in insurance are lowest of any industry except cable. At Bungalow, we’re using data and design to deliver the first great customer experience in insurance.

Come work at Bungalow and help us build a modern alternative to insurance incumbents.

We're hiring a lead backend engineer, a lead frontend engineer, designer(s), growth marketer(s), and customer success representative(s).

More information about our available positions: https://angel.co/bungalow-insurance/jobs

We’re still a small team of intellectually curious people trying to make waves in a big industry, so even if you don’t see the position you’re looking for, email us: [email protected]. We'd love to talk to you.

Comment · 11 years ago

Bungalow || http://www.bungalowinsurance.com || Philadelphia, PA and New York, NY || ONSITE

Come work at Bungalow and help us build a modern alternative to insurance incumbents.

Available positions:

* CTO (drive the technical and strategic direction of the company going forward)

* Designer (design is the most important piece of our company)

* Growth marketer (building a brand in insurance is the toughest marketing challenge in the world)

* Customer service (a focus on customer satisfaction differentiates us from conventional insurance companies)

To apply, please email us at [email protected].

Comment · 11 years ago

Xendit — Venmo for Southeast Asia

Xfers — PayPal for Southeast Asia

Seems like a direct conflict?

Comment · 11 years ago

One interesting addition would be the ability to "short" companies who you think are overvalued.

Comment · 11 years ago

For anyone interested in homebrewing, I strongly recommend reading Jim Palmer's How To Brew [0]. It's available for free online and does a great job explaining the basics of brewing, while also including details about the chemistry behind what happens during the brewing process. It's much easier to brew an ale than making the lambics described in this article.

[0] http://www.howtobrew.com/

Comment · 12 years ago

This seems like a no-brainer for Google.

In fact, I would expect them to offer own insurance directly in the near future, for several reasons. First, insurance is one of the big practical hurdles facing their self-driving cars – in an accident, who is at fault? By offering their own product they can potentially circumvent this hurdle. Second, if they begin to offer homeowners insurance, they can tie their rates directly to Nest data, which should allow them to offer more competitive rates and more accurate pricing, similar to what Progressive has done with Snapshot [0]. And lastly, this obviously gives Google access to more, and potentially better, personal data.

[0] http://www.progressive.com/auto/snapshot/

Comment · 12 years ago

Interesting how many of these are founders. Seems like way more than in recent years. Startups have really hit the mainstream.