Foxquilt’s Multi-Channel Playbook: How They Built Different GTM Strategies for Direct, Broker, and Enterprise Customers

When venture capitalists advised focusing on a single channel, Foxquilt saw a different opportunity. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, co-founding partner Mark Morissette revealed how they built a multi-channel strategy that now serves 8,000+ clients across direct-to-consumer, broker, and enterprise channels.

Starting with Direct-to-Consumer as a Laboratory

Rather than immediately pursuing all channels, Foxquilt used their direct-to-consumer channel as a testing ground. “Your first lab is getting closest to the customer, direct to consumer,” Mark explains. “What it does is that if you get your product resonating with that consumer, where they’re coming in and you’re basically getting end to end through the machine in the journey in less than 5 minutes to a layman.”

This approach provided crucial insights about customer needs and behaviors. As Mark notes, “What we really learned early on is that, well, this is dynamic in the sense they’re very proud and honest about telling us what their Persona is as a business. And we’re collecting really interesting data to ascertain what that rate and what that stitch together what that underwriting coverage should look like.”

Expanding to Broker Networks

The data and experience gained from direct-to-consumer informed their expansion into broker networks. Rather than seeing brokers as competition, Foxquilt positioned themselves as enablers. “Our business model is there to basically make their lives easier as well,” Mark explains. “Brokers and agents, we want to create product for them and we want to create customer journey experience for their customers that is going to create massive economic gains within their business.”

Building the Enterprise Channel

The enterprise channel emerged as a major opportunity when they identified a gap in the market. “When we really took office through these embedded enterprise channels, there just wasn’t any legacy carriers that could entertain opening up integrated environments and then customizing a tailor made offering for their program of liking kind subcontractors or ecommerce merchants,” Mark shares.

Technology as the Enabler

The key to managing multiple channels effectively was building their entire technology stack in-house. “It’s all ours. We’ve never used a third party vendor,” Mark emphasizes. This technological independence allowed them to customize their offering for different channels while maintaining consistency in core functionality.

Maintaining Product Consistency

Rather than creating separate products for each channel, Foxquilt built a flexible platform that could adapt to different distribution needs. As Mark explains, “We said it’s time to basically solve that embedded program solution, but basically create the vehicle, build an arsenal of products, and then gave a lot of self service functionality to a full omnichannel of clients.”

Results and Validation

The multi-channel strategy has paid off. Today, their embedded enterprise channel makes up “like half of our business,” according to Mark. They’re now “writing like a couple, almost a couple of million dollars a month in revenue” while maintaining strong underwriting fundamentals across all channels.

Key Lessons for Founders

Foxquilt’s experience offers several important lessons for founders considering multi-channel strategies:

1. Use your first channel as a laboratory to gather data and insights
2. Build technology that can support multiple channels from the ground up
3. Maintain product consistency while adapting to each channel’s needs
4. Look for opportunities where legacy players can’t effectively serve multiple channels
5. Don’t let limited capital force you into single-channel thinking

For founders building regulated products, Foxquilt’s journey shows that a multi-channel strategy can work if you have the right technology foundation and maintain discipline around core product experiences. As Mark puts it, “If you look at our original blueprint, 2016, I still hold the deck quite proudly… we have not pivoted one.” Sometimes, the best strategy is to stick to your original vision, even when conventional wisdom suggests otherwise.