categories
HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
entrepreneur journeys
Building a Fast Growth, Cutting-Edge Insurance Brokerage: Karn Saroya, CEO of Cover (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: Can you explain to me how this works? Is this a completely online process? Are people making full decisions online or at some point, somebody on the phone is talking to the customers? Karn Saroya: The average basket size at Cover is $1,700. That can be a meaningful part of somebody’s after-tax income.
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Neil Vaswani, CEO of Corestream (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: These are large enterprises? Neil Vaswani: All sizes. ADP typically plays in the middle market. The business unit that we’re partnered with has a sweet spot of 1,000 to 10,000, but really, 3,000 to 7,000 is where most of the groups come in. Thus began the next part of our journey – third
Building a Fast Growth, Cutting-Edge Insurance Brokerage: Karn Saroya, CEO of Cover (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: You raised $3.1 million. You finished Y Combinator and you’re walking out with a great network. What happens next? Karn Saroya: From there on, it was about proving out the model and removing dependencies. When we left Y Combinator, we were a lead generation business. All we wanted to show was that significant
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Neil Vaswani, CEO of Corestream (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: The point at which it makes sense to take a lot more money is if you know that if you put in $10, you’re going to make $100. There are certain companies that figure out the product-market fit and the customer acquisition strategy. If it’s something that will yield a deterministic return on
Building a Fast Growth, Cutting-Edge Insurance Brokerage: Karn Saroya, CEO of Cover (Part 5)
Karn Saroya: When it comes to segmentation, it’s exactly what you would expect. 80% of our customers are under the age of 35. A quarter of those are homeowners. We tend to get the types of folks who are accumulating assets over time. They may start with getting an auto insurance policy but very quickly
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Neil Vaswani, CEO of Corestream (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: How many enterprise clients got you to 75,000 end users? Neil Vaswani: Maybe 10. Sramana Mitra: What kind of average deal sizes were you closing? Neil Vaswani: We had some big ones that were 20,000 to 30,000 employees. On average, it was something like 6,000 to 7,000 employees. We had 75,000 end users
Building a Fast Growth, Cutting-Edge Insurance Brokerage: Karn Saroya, CEO of Cover (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: There’s some reason why you were drawn to insurance? Why insurance? Karn Saroya: When we were running Stylekick, we worked with some insurance brokers. One day, I walked into one of their offices. This was in Toronto in the financial district. They had multiple floors wedged between investment banks, consulting firms, and private
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Neil Vaswani, CEO of Corestream (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: How did you get it off the ground? You said you raised money right away? Neil Vaswani: Yes. My co-founder and I wrote up a two-page executive summary. We started spamming VCs. We got some calls back. Sramana Mitra: What year was this happening? Neil Vaswani: This is 2005. Not exactly the best
