Delightful car insurance? “You’re either courageous or crazy….or both.”

Being an entrepreneur can be described as 1 part courage, 1 part determination, and at least 2 parts chutzpah for thinking you can do it better than what's out there. It can be daunting, exhausting, and even audacious towards incumbents. 

That being said, my determination had gotten me a meeting with one of the largest national insurance carriers, and my courage had carried me through the door. But as I stood in the elevator it hit me… I had to have the chutzpah to walk into their office, in their building, staffed by thousands of employees, backed by billions of dollars, and tell them that I have a better way to provide drivers a delightful car insurance experience. 

So I took a deep breath, and I strode forward into the meeting...

After pitching the idea for an all-digital, customer experience focused insurance company to them, along with our achievements, the senior manager looked me in the eye and said “Listen, you’re either courageous, or crazy.” His associate chimed in “or both.” As a veteran, I wear those words as a badge of honor, and use them to fuel our company’s drive forward. (Side-note: Don’t tell a vet they can’t do something, they’ll just work harder to accomplish it). 

You see, like many startups before it, PolicyPup pivoted to become an insurance company. In order to innovate, you have to challenge the status quo, even internally. Working from a Hawaiian themed cafe because we didn’t have money for an office at that time, I sat down with my Co-founder and she set a challenge for us; “What do we really want to improve within the car insurance journey?” 

The answer was everything; from the way a customer obtains car insurance, interacting with their policy, and to conveniently getting help when they need it the most. Every facet of the journey and experience is vital, but only 9% of insurtech startups are building new platforms from the ground up while the vast majority (91%) focus on making just a single element more efficient. These startups are gluing together a fallen glass cup while legacy carriers expect the broken glass to retain its original strength. We knew rather immediately that we needed to pivot and build a new insurance company, one with innovation, data, and customer experience at its very core.

Furthermore, drivers should love their insurance company. I know, today that sounds crazy, but tomorrow it won’t be. That’s why we started PolicyPup, as a car insurance company for people, by people. In my next post, I’ll provide a little insight on how we are making insurance delightful through telematics and human factor ergonomics, but for now I’ll leave you with our ethos… 

PolicyPup, because car insurance shouldn’t be “ruff.”

Thank you,

Alex Davis

CEO & Founder, PolicyPup