The following interview is a conversation we had with Nyasha Gutsa, CEO of Billy, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $4 Million Raised to Build the Future of Construction Insurance.
Nyasha Gutsa
Yeah, you got it right. And thanks for having me here, Brett. Awesome.
Brett
Good to hear and excited to have you here. So, before we begin talking about what you’re building, let’s start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background.
Nyasha Gutsa
Absolutely. So the name Yasha means grace. I was born and raised in Zimbabwe and came to school here in New York around 2005, and I studied accounting. Somehow ended up working in construction, mostly because there was a recession after I graduated, and those are the only jobs you could get. But it wasn’t working in an office. It was as a laborer, working outside. So just doing manual labor. Eventually got promoted to becoming a plan room clerk, so graduated to the office, and then from there worked my way up all the way to becoming project accountant. I have a construction tech background as one of their early employees at Procorp, which is a construction management platform that’s used by most commercial contractors in the US. And really loved working there, building financial software for construction companies. And after I left, I decided to pursue a childhood dream that I had, which was wanted to be a pilot.
Nyasha Gutsa
And so I went to try it, but realized quickly that it wasn’t something that I wanted to do. So I went back to software, but this time starting your own business and taking a bet on yourself. And that’s pretty much my background. Construction software guy who flies airplanes.
Brett
I love it. And look back at your childhood when you were growing up in Zimbabwe. Was your goal to eventually move to the United States and live in the US. Or when did that really develop for you?
Nyasha Gutsa
I never had a goal to move and live in the United States because my parents could not afford to do that. They could barely afford to send me to high school. So it didn’t have the fortunate events of dreaming that big to say, okay, when I grow up, I want to move to the US. And start a business. It’s more of something that fell in my lap, to be quite frank about it. I had a pen pal who wrote a letter to this boys school that I was going to Cold Prince Edward and imagine 600 boys laughing at the idea of having a pen pal from the US. And I was like, no, I’m going to just take a chance on this, and sent a letter and kaboom, it changed my life. Here I am in front of you.
Brett
Wow, that’s incredible. And how old were you when that started?
Nyasha Gutsa
I was twelve turning 13.
Brett
Wow. And how old when you moved?
Nyasha Gutsa
I was 16, turning 17 when I moved to the US.
Brett
Wow. And what was going through your brain then? So you fly into the US. What’s going through your mind as you touch down there?
Nyasha Gutsa
Well, the first time I came to the US. To visit this panpal was the very same year that I started writing letters to them, their family of means. So it wasn’t coming into a normal family is what I gathered. And the first time I got to the house, the son’s closet was bigger than the size of my parents house. Like the dad comes to home in a helicopter. So very different from what I knew. It felt like you’re in a movie, but it wasn’t. It was just another family that is well off here in New York, and their son was just interested in meeting people across the world. And his way of doing it was just exchanging letters with people. I happened to really suck at English, so I used that as an opportunity to get better at speaking and writing English. And it changed my life.
Nyasha Gutsa
But I had no idea that I would eventually move here, go to school and start my own business, for example.
Brett
Wow. I’m always fascinated by these chance encounters that can just completely change the trajectory of someone’s life. One that I read about years ago, which has always fascinated me, is Jack Ma from Alibaba. And in a book about him, they were talking about how he was living in a village in China when he was a little boy and he wanted to learn English, so he’d go and hang around the hotel where foreigners would come. And he happened to meet a young boy there who became his friend and then he became a pen pal with that kid’s father. And then all of that led to Jack Ma having this kind of tie to the western world, getting outside of China and all of that is essentially was the foundation for what became Alibaba. And it was that one chance encounter changed everything. It sounds like you’ve had something very similar, which is just so cool and awesome to hear.
Nyasha Gutsa
Absolutely.
Brett
Yeah.
Nyasha Gutsa
I love stories like that. I can relate to that as much.
Brett
Yeah, it sounds like it. So a couple of other things we like to ask just to better understand who you are as a founder and as a leader. Is there a specific CEO and founder that you’re following right now and really look up to, and if so, who is it and why?
Nyasha Gutsa
Yeah, I like, tope our tona. So he is the CEO and founder of Calendly. So the tool that we use to schedule this podcast, he founded Calendly, and the reason why I follow him is I’m proud of my African roots. So he’s a founder, was born in Lagos, Nigeria, came here. He has a company that schedules most of the meetings that people pass around every day, like, in their emails. And part of that is primarily because I’m black too. So I look up to him that look like a black man from Africa can start a very successful company that has an impact on as many people. So I can also do the same thing, and that’s the reason why I look up to him as well. Nice.
Brett
I love that. And I can’t really think of any other tool that adds more value to my life for such a low cost than calendar. Like, I think it’s $10 a month or something like that, and the amount of hours and just, like, manual tasks that it saves me is really crazy.
Nyasha Gutsa
Yeah. Can you imagine a world without calendar schedules? What would you have to do to schedule all these meetings that you have daily?
Brett
It feels barbaric when I exchange emails with someone and they don’t have a calendar link or a similar tool. It’s like such a hassle. There’s like five emails back and forth as opposed to just clicking a link. So definitely a value added product there. And that’s the first time I’ve heard Calendar mentioned on the show. But I feel like they should get a lot more recognition because they’re growing like crazy right now. Right?
Nyasha Gutsa
Yeah, absolutely. They are one of those companies where it’s stuck with people working from home and they needed to use the calendar tool. And what’s nice about it is that it can be embedded into many other workflows. So you can add it to a typeworm, for example, which is like, an absolute amazing thing. I’ve seen it even embedded in apps where you apply for mortgages, for example, or tax apps. Right. Like, where you want to schedule time with a tax professional. And it’s powered by calendar, which is pretty cool.
Brett
Totally love it.
Nyasha Gutsa
Nice.
Brett
And what about books? Is there a specific book that’s had the greatest impact on you or had a major impact on you as a founder? And this can be a business book or it can just be a personal book that’s really shaped how you think?
Nyasha Gutsa
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ll start off with authors, for example. So the thing that I’m actually scared of is failing. And when I left Procore, I happened to meet this lady on a flight heading down to the Philippines. We sat next to each other, and her name is Brene Brown, and she was telling me that I’m heading out to go give her a speech somewhere, and she told me about her book called Darren Gray. So I think that’s the book that’s had the most massive impact because at one point I was actually scared of doing what I do now, which is take a bet on yourself. And so the impact it had was it’s only the person who’s inside the arena, in this case me, who knows what it’s like to run, start a business. All the fears that you do have, the most important thing that you just need to realize is that at least you gave it a shot.
Nyasha Gutsa
And don’t really worry about all the spectators that are sitting outside of their arena and what they do say the most important thing is the person who’s inside their arena who’s at least taken the chance on themselves. So that has stuck with me because fear of failure has just been one of the things that I honestly still am scared of. But just being able to take a chance and do something that you always wanted to do was something I learned from this book, Daring Greatly.
Brett
I love it, man. You’re a man of chance encounters. So I love that you were next to her on a plane and that’s how you found the book.
Nyasha Gutsa
Correct.
Brett
Wow, that’s amazing.
Nyasha Gutsa
Awesome.
Brett
Well, let’s switch gears now and talk about what you’re building at Billy. So can you share with me just a bit about the origin story behind the company and then a bit more about what you guys do?
Nyasha Gutsa
Yeah, absolutely. So originally we started off the company trying to solve for construction payments, something that I was originally really passionate about. But then we quickly realized that, well, the sales process of trying to sell such software to construction companies is a bit difficult. And two, the willingness to pay from contractors just isn’t there. And three, it wasn’t going to be a big business because there are any companies that facilitate payments, such as Stripe IDN, for example. So really you’re just making margins on top of their infrastructure. And lastly, we noticed that construction companies are less willing to go towards electronic payments, especially for really large amounts. They prefer checks. And the reason why they prefer checks is because they are able to hold that money as leverage to the person who’s getting paid. Essentially, they need to submit two documents to get paid each time for construction companies.
Nyasha Gutsa
So there’s something called a lien waiver, which is basically saying, I was paid last time and I’m not going to lien the property because I was paid on time. And another document is insurance certificates. So if you don’t have any of those two, you’re not getting paid. And so hence the idea of, well, why don’t we go ahead and solve for insurance? Because insurance is just a really big dirty word for any business. It’s hard to get. You still have to go to a broker, but you have to fill out many different forms. And then if you work in construction or manufacturing industries, every contract that you sign with a customer, every project that you do, you have to go to your broker and get this document known as a certificate of insurance, because you have to modify your insurance to add those interested parties.
Nyasha Gutsa
So the owner of the house and also the lender, if they have one, So there was no real workflow tool for construction specific businesses. So we decided to solve that problem because my co founder Grant is also a contractor and he was just storing all those things in a manila folder despite using the software that we built at Procore. So just made me realize that problem hasn’t really been solved. And the way in which businesses manage their insurance is still horse and buggy, as I like to call it. So if I ask you a question like, hey, Brett, how do you manage your insurance? You’re probably going to say, I stole my insurance in Gmail. It’s in a folder, it’s with my mom, or I got a call in Jake from State Farm. So we’re trying to change that to just provide you with one single place where every business can interact with their insurance with hope that we can make it easy for you to access coverage and also connect you to the insurance carrier in the event that you need to use your insurance.
Brett
Nice. Wow. I love that. That’s super cool. And where are you seeing the most traction right now in terms of market and what kind of traction have you seen that you’re okay with sharing?
Nyasha Gutsa
Yeah, absolutely. So we purposely focused on partnering with Procore. So my previous employer, they are one of those construction management applications that has a really nice app marketplace, which I was also part of building during my time at Procore. So the idea there was, well, they already have really big base of customers, so we’re going to partner with them, do an integration, solve a problem that their software has and complement their software. And what we’re seeing are what I would call emerging to mid size construction companies. So those that do anywhere from 25 million to just over 250,000,000 and they work with anywhere from 500 to 750 subcontractors, that’s what we are seeing as our sweet spot for people that choose our software. Nice.
Brett
And is there like an AHA moment where you really get them just to understand the value of what you can bring?
Nyasha Gutsa
Yeah, just showing them how easy it is to get up and running. I’m a big fan of DocuSign software. So, for example, you can go and get up and running with DocuSign in just under five minutes. So this is exactly how we built Billy. So the integration with Procore is just as simple as log in with your Pro Corps and you’re integrated and start using the software right away. There’s no logins for the other people that have to submit documents because for contractors, that creates a lot of friction. So the big AHA moment for us was the end users, which are typically accountants and risk administrators, just seeing that the lease not a homework project where you buy enterprise software and there’s like a 90 day onboarding, you can be up and running in less than five minutes. Nice.
Brett
I love that. And as I’m sure you’ve seen, construction tech funding seems to be booming over the last couple of years. What are you doing to really rise above all that noise?
Nyasha Gutsa
To be very frank, it’s harder as a founder of color, and I’m pretty sure you might have read this recently, but over the last quarter, founders of color only raised just about 180,000,000. So if you compare that, for example, to Adam Newman, he raised more than that in one round. And frankly, there are homes that cost more than 180,000,000 in the country. So a is harder as a founder of color. So what are we doing to make ourselves stand out more? It’s mostly like how we differentiate ourselves as a digitized broker that’s able to shop with more than 30 insurance carriers on an API and save companies up to 40%. We customize our outreach to VCs, so I use a software called video ask. Helps me just like, show that I’m a human behind the business as well, that’s working hard to get funding for the business as well.
Brett
And that’s so awful and just depressing to hear that this is still the.
Nyasha Gutsa
Landscape when it comes to funding.
Brett
From your perspective as a founder, is this getting any better? I think with George Floyd in 2020, there was kind of a spotlight on some of these issues. Have you seen any changes from your perspective at all?
Nyasha Gutsa
To be honest, not quite per se. I think that people just retreated back to the norm after the George Floyd incident. And I have other founders too, out here in New York who sometimes wish that they whitewashed their company, including mine, where I think for founders of color or minorities, if you had a founder who’s white, I wonder if you’re able to raise more money. But this is just my opinion and.
Brett
What I do think yeah, wow, that’s awful. I do hope it does get better. And it seems like there’s some attention there. I feel like in TechCrunch, I keep reading about more kind of purpose driven funds that are focusing on hopefully addressing this problem. So I do hope that it improves and it has to improve because it’s really unacceptable for that to happen. So hope that does get better sooner rather than later.
Nyasha Gutsa
It will eventually. I’m optimistic about it. Nice.
Brett
Love that. All right, so two more questions for you before we wrap. What excites you most about the work you get to do every day?
Nyasha Gutsa
Yeah, so it’s the people, I believe that building a people first company allows you to build a forever business. And if you think about it as a flywheel at the top, is getting people engaged and excited about what they do every day. I think that’s my job, which is making sure everybody still believes in the mission that we’re trying to accomplish and they have everything that they need to solve the problem for the customer. If the employee shows up engaged and excited, they’re able to solve problems for us. And if they solve problems for us, it drives business. So I have a saying which is culture drives business, and business drives culture. And this is one of the things that I’m just really excited about every day. Nice.
Brett
I love it. And if we zoom out into the future, what’s the five year vision for the company?
Nyasha Gutsa
Yeah, we’d love to be the one stop shop for businesses to buy and access insurance. So think of it like kayak of business insurance, where you just go and you can compare insurance coverage in a couple of minutes. You can purchase it, you can hire or fire your broker if you want, but all powered by Billy. Nice.
Brett
I love it. Unfortunately, that’s all we’re going to have time to cover for today before we wrap. If people want to follow along with your journey, where’s the best place for them to go?
Nyasha Gutsa
Yeah. So you can follow me on Twitter or on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is just my name, nyasha Gutsa. And on Twitter, it’s also the same thing at Yasha Gutsa.
Brett
Amazing. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us. You have such an inspirational story, and I think it’s going to really inspire and motivate a lot of other founders out there. So thank you again and we look forward to seeing you execute on this vision.
Nyasha Gutsa
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
Brett
All right, let’s keep it Dutch.
Nyasha Gutsa
All right. Our channel.