Elon Musk famously commented in 2010 that “being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death…. ”.
With that rather daunting backdrop, what on earth gave us the appetite to set up Wrisk?
None of us could fail to spot the spectacular emergence of the challenger banks and the transformative effect they were having in delighting their customers with a radically different mobile banking experience. To that we said “where was the insurance equivalent?” With fintech moving so fast and with pressure on insurers to digitalise, we felt now was the time to push change in the insurance sector.
Overlay onto this the knock-on effects of AI and the continued power of the FAANGs, and we could see that the incumbents’ insurance products and delivery channels were overdue a major redesign. Or frankly a total reboot.
On the other hand, despite this tidal wave of change providing a glaring commercial opportunity, we could sense that the willingness of those in the insurance industry to jump from well-paid jobs into this nascent insurtech scene would be limited.
This all sounded like a perfect set of conditions in which to build Wrisk, but we agreed we’d only do it if we could build deep foundations for the business – build a high calibre team (engineers, design, insurance, marketing etc), and be supported by high quality investors and distribution partners.
That was the backdrop for the founders, but for the other early joiners, what was the reasoning behind their own Wrisk Appetite?
Roll forward to today and the Wrisk Appetite within the whole team is perhaps even stronger than when each person joined. In a later article called Wrisk Tolerance, I’ll pick up on some of the subsequent challenges they’ve faced and had to manage.