The following interview is a conversation we had with Martin Einemo, CEO and Co-Founder of Insurely, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: €22 Million Raised to Power the Future of Open Insurance

Martin Einemo
Hi Brett, nice to meet you today. 

Brett
Yeah, you as well. And thanks again. So to kick things off, could we just start with a quick high level summary of who you are and a bit more about your background? 

Martin Einemo
Yeah, sure. I’m Martin. I’ve spent basically my whole career in the insurance industry. It’s almost ten years now. Time flies when you are spending time in such a fun topic of insurance. I do live in Stockholm where we have our headquarters, and actually for four years ago, I founded Insurely with my three co-founders. We kind of founded that on the backbone of customer frustration in the insurance industry. But know, there’s a tech legacy in the insurance industry that needs to be know. Early in my career I worked as management consultant. I did work as an early employee in a startup here in Holland. So I’ve seen most of it in the insurance industry and I’m happy to kind of transform it as well. 

Brett
And I was doing research before the interview and watched a YouTube video of you when you were at ENY with some of your colleagues. What was that experience like working at Ernst Young? And if you had to choose one big takeaway from your time there, what would it be? 

Martin Einemo
I think that time was a great school for me to learn how to speak and interact with different stakeholders and actually learn how insurance companies, banks and other financial services actually approach different problems in different layers. I think there is the strategic part of a problem which I was heavily involved in, but it’s also kind of a disconnect within the strategic layer, like a management group to the actual people doing the solution of the problem. And since I’ve been previously working in both operations and also like in a management, I had this kind of ability to switch from speaking with people in operations and the management and getting them to understand each other. So I think it was quite interesting because you saw a lot of issues, you saw a lot of miscommunications, you saw a lot of industry failures and you saw a lot of solutions as well. 

Martin Einemo
And I think it was a great school and you got a lot of inspiration. To be honest, it’s almost like being an entrepreneur but with a big brand, big salary, to be honest, without the pressure of having a budget and a PNL and actually risking losing your job if you don’t deliver. So it’s really the same thing but different, right? 

Brett
Yeah, I love that. Now talk to me about March 2019. So that’s when you left and founded your own company, what was going through your head at that time? And what were those conversations like with your friends, family and colleagues? Were they thinking, Martin’s lost it, he’s crazy, or were they just expecting this would eventually happen and everyone kind of knew that you were eventually going to start your own company? 

Martin Einemo
Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I think that from a professional point of view, I and my co-founders saw that. Again, there is a lot of consumer issues in the insurance industry. We saw that consumers are not aware of their insurance policies, they don’t know what they’re paying for, and they actually don’t know their renewal date. And I must admit to this day, I don’t know my renewal dates on my insurance policies. And I guess you don’t do that either, or that’s the qualified guest, because no one knows it. So the idea actually started by us founders asking our friends and family, do you know anything about your insurance policies? And we had a little bit of obsession of the consumer interaction with their insurance companies. And maybe that was perceived as quite strange, to be honest. And I guess people asked me, why are you so curious about my insurance letters that I get every year from my employer, for example. 

Martin Einemo
But what we really wanted to distill was to get the answer that we essentially got I have no idea what I’m paying for, I don’t know how to use my insurance policy, and I have absolutely no idea if I have the right protection for my family. So a little bit of obsession in the insurance industry. However, if you ask my friends and family if they ever saw me being an entrepreneur, they would say yes, absolutely. I think even since my first job in Holland where I worked as employee number, I think it was number four in a startup, I really was bitten by the idea of the Kind know lean Startup and build, test, learn and find out users, speak with investors and board members and do everything. And I really like that kind of path. And I think the EY experience was just a stepping stone to get there and do another school, to be honest. 

Brett
And a couple of other questions that we’d like to ask, really just to better understand what makes you tick as a Founder. First one is what Founder or CEO do you admire the most and what do you admire about Know? 

Martin Einemo
This is a question I get a lot of times that I never have a good answer. I actually don’t admire any specific Founder or CEO. It’s not like personal cult to me but I can tell you what kind of personalities I do admire at a CEO or a Co-Founder. It’s more about people who do what it takes, are not the most important thing for them is not to be seen or visible or scale the company as fast as possible. I admire the people that have that grit and make the things work and actually work for their consumers for example, not the ones that are seen in newspapers or raise the most capitals. The ones that are actually fighting in the more silent terms if you know what I mean. 

Brett
Yeah, I love that. What about books? Are there any specific books that have had a major impact on you as a Founder? 

Martin Einemo
Yeah, for sure. Reflecting on my first job again, the founders of that company told me that your first job here is to read the book Lean Startup and I said Is this a joke? They say no, they were kind of practicing that very harsh to be honest. And I think that book made a lot of impact on me. I literally got one day to read it. So I read a summary online and I guess I kind of got that built test learned but they actually lived that philosophy quite well and I learned a lot of that and that impact indeed my kind of way of solving problems more quickly and it has helped me a lot in my career. So maybe a generic choice that actually that book started my whole startup career. 

Brett
Yeah, we hear that book quite often but it’s such a good book so it’s a fair call out. Now let’s switch gears here a little bit and let’s dive into the company. So we call this the elevator pitch. So it’s the high level pitch on the problem you solve, who you’re solving it for and really what that product does. So can you share with us that information? 

Martin Einemo
Yeah, sure. So working as a management consultant in the insurance industry for a couple of years we saw that the industry has two problems. One being the insurance industry has a lot of tech legacy and fails to deliver solutions that fits the market and the consumers. So the consumers are quite dissatisfied. The other problem that I spoke about before was that consumers are quite unaware about their insurance policies and if they have the right protection. So there is a huge information gap in the insurance industry not benefiting anyone in the industry to be honest. And during that time, back in 2018, 2019 we saw the open banking companies here in Sweden where we started the Tink, the Klarna, the trustees, et cetera and being quite successful on the backbone of the regulatory framework of open banking in Europe. So we thought that maybe data sharing in the insurance industry and the financial services industry without side of the payment is something to build on. 

Martin Einemo
So we kind of quickly, in 2000, I think it was 2018, we built our B, two C app, actually start as a B to C company, where consumers could get an insurance overview or insurance wallet app basically from us. They could actually connect to any insurance carrier out there. They could download their policies in real time within five or 10 seconds per carrier. We could help them to understand their insurance policies. And that went so well. We got a lot of users had a super low acquisition cost and we saw that we’re probably solving one of the two problems that we had. The consumers are getting more informed and that’s still our vision. However, after a while we realized that the B to C model is quite difficult to get with positive ROI and positive metrics. We saw that in order to scale this model and make enough revenue to actually finance ourselves, or we’re actually growing revenue at all, we saw that we need partnerships with the insurance industry for the distribution side. 

Martin Einemo
We need to pour in a lot of money in marketing, in PR, and we didn’t have that funding. So after a while we got some inbounds from the insurance and banking industry saying that this tech that you have built to get real time user policy data is very interesting for us. Since we have the brands, we have the distribution networks, we have the consumer already. Could we license this as a sauce model? At first we said not at all. We want to be the independent champion for the consumer good. And then we realized that maybe this is a quicker way to realize our vision to make the consumers more empowered and more informed when making choices about their financial well being. So we pivot on the company to be a B2B company and now we’re selling solutions to get real time data about your consumers insurance policies, light PNC, but also pension and savings. 

Martin Einemo
So as an insurance company, bank or asset manager, you can access your end consumers personal data around those products. 

Brett
So making pivots is always difficult and that’s something that I think every Founder obviously struggles with. So was that hard to make that decision to go from B to C to B? And what helped you really make that decision and ensure that it was done quickly? 

Martin Einemo
It was very hard, I think both our investors, ourselves and we had that very visionary view of what we wanted to create something else and something new in the insurance industry. But it was actually when we realized that this will be a mean to fulfill our vision rather than be something else in our vision, we saw that now we can actually leverage the insurance industry and the asset management and pension industry’s ability to attract customers with their brand to increase the probability to fulfill our vision. That was the kind of defining moment when we realized that over a couple of beers, me and the other founders. So before that were quite skeptical and we said, is it really worth it to have a company if you have to compromise on anything? And we realized that we don’t have to compromise, we can actually do things at once. 

Martin Einemo
So I think that was the kind of defining moment to the pivot, but it was difficult. Yes. 

Brett
And did you already have investors at that point in the company? 

Martin Einemo
We did have some early angel investors, quite early actually before when the company was just a paper product, we had the kind of first hundred lines of code. We did had digital investors, which were successful entrepreneurs here in Sweden, and they helped us with a small amount of cash. And I think what they helped us with the most was experience and actually pushing us to making this work and actually pushing to you need to get a first paying customer, you need to make this work for a small segment. You don’t have to build everything, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Since they’ve done that kind of journey, they helped us a lot to do the right compromises and invest in the right things, even though we didn’t have that much of capital. Like for example, the US silicon Valley angel funds is probably a little bit larger than the Swedish ones, for example. 

Brett
And did you have any investors who pushed back on the idea of moving to a B to B business model or did everyone just understand it and really get why you needed to make that change? 

Martin Einemo
I think quite the opposite, to be honest. I think everyone saw that capital is running out. We are getting some trackers in the market. If you’re in a few months get tens of thousands of users with a small budget, you’re doing something right and you get comments over email saying this is the best service that I ever seen and you’re solving a problem, right? And all investors saw that, but they all pushed us to say you need to come up with ideas how to capitalize on this. And so I think they actually helped us in that direction as well. However, I think the investors and ourselves, maybe we overestimated the ability to pay, I think pay for our first services, which were quite low quality, low scope. We were not kind of an enterprise grade company as we are today. So I think our first offering was ten times what we actually got in our first contract, which was kind of a learning as well. 

Martin Einemo
Now that contract is obviously more worth than in the beginning, but also this kind of quality towards delivery was one very important learning in that journey. 

Brett
This show is brought to you by Front Lines Media, a podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now, if you’re a Founder, you may be thinking, I don’t have time to host a podcast, I’ve got a company to build. Well, that’s exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. Now back today’s episode. And then as you went down that path of a B2B product, talk to us about those first paying customers. What was that like and how’d you acquire them? That’s obviously something that all founders struggle with is how do you get these big logos to trust you when you’re just a startup with a bold vision and a big idea? 

Martin Einemo
Yeah, I think you need to find similar profiles in your first customers. Right? So the first reason that we found our first customers was that we had a B to C app. And our first B2B customers were personally customers in our B to C app as well. So they saw how things were working, they saw how good were at execution on a quite limited scope, of course. So they actually were inbound our first two discussions that we had, and one of them was a mid sized insurance company in Sweden and the CEO there, she had been an entrepreneur for 50 years ago, herself being having funding from the top Swedish VCs for example. So she was very into that kind of, I want to transform the industry. I found you’re four people, I know that, but I really want to work with you. 

Martin Einemo
And that company was way too big for us to have as a first customer. But they eventually signed, they helped us to do a lot of It security cleanup, all these kind of penetration tests and they set a lot of kind of the right requirements on us being able to scale even faster afterwards. So we have her to thank for a lot of kind of business development. How should an offer look like? What do insurance companies and banks want to buy? The second company that we signed at the same time also was an inbound from a Swedish insurer tech company, basically being an MJ and selling insurance product. And they were super small and they were in the business of we want to do the best for our consumers. We really want to try new things. And I think our first fee to them was maybe like $200 per month. 

Martin Einemo
So it’s almost for free because they didn’t have any ability to pay and we didn’t have any ability to deliver. That has obviously increased significantly since. But I think that’s the kind of investment you need to do, like get into your customers needs and wants and issues and actually co create with them. And that’s how we succeeded to create the product. Market fit where we are today. 

Brett
And what about market category? What’s your view? Been there. What is your market category and are you creating a new one or is it transforming and reimagining an existing market category? 

Martin Einemo
We’re obviously in somewhere in shorttech or fintech but I’ve been actually struggling with that question a little bit and I do think we are first movers in the open finance space and we are creating a new category in that sense. We are building something new when it comes to data sharing for the insurance and pension and banking industry, which hasn’t been seen before. I know there is a few US companies trying to do this as well. However, in Europe we are the first movers and the only players so far doing that. I think investors and their likes has difficulties finding a label and kind of where to put us. 

Brett
It’s too difficult. 

Martin Einemo
So yes, I think we are creating a new category of open finance companies which will be fueled by the new open finance legislation that comes out on the EU side here in end of June. 

Brett
And can you talk us through that and what’s coming in June? 

Martin Einemo
Sure. So, if you take it from the start, I think the European Union has a vision of in the long term have a common data space for the European Union where companies and consumers can share data more freely, to unlock a lot of innovation and to create trust in the market of data sharing. I think GDPR was a great example of that, where you constituted the right to data portability, et cetera, and kind of data protection legislation that was a great foundation. However, now there’s been framework legislations about how can we share data in secure ways, what is the data mediary, et cetera. I think the first sector specific data sharing regulatory model you look at is finance because finance is such a big piece of your life. So the European Commission, which is the body actually writing the legislation or proposing legislation, are currently writing an open finance framework, which means it will be required from the insurance industry, the pension industry, the banks, to share, basically. 

Martin Einemo
All available data over APIs, not just payments data, which was the case with PST Two, which was the kind of embryo to start tribe data sharing. European Union. So there is kind of a great incentive from the EU to start with. Data sharing financial services is one piece of that. We will probably and hopefully see a legislation proposal here in end of June by the European Commission. I’m quite involved in that myself. I’m traveling to Brussels every now and then to meet and educate the legislators how this could look like in practice. Because again, we’re the only practical use case of this technology so far and we do have millions of users every year that use our services, European citizens. So we need some regulation to create that kind of trusted market. There will be a few years of negotiations in the European Parliament in order to kind of finalize the details, how should that look like, which data should be shared, et cetera. 

Martin Einemo
But I guess in like five years we will have something have strict requirements on insurance companies, banks and asset managers to actually share data over APIs in real time. If the consumer gives their consent to do so, of course then there will be requirements, how to use this data responsibly, et cetera. But I think this is one piece of the plan in the EU to create a lot more innovation. 

Brett
When we look at growth, are there any numbers or metrics that you can share that just highlight some of the traction and adoption that you’re seeing today? 

Martin Einemo
Absolutely. I think what I’m looking for when it comes to fulfilling our vision, it’s the usage of our services and how many people in all our markets are actually using our services. I think we’ve been kind of doing five X at least every year on that and I think so far I think or even last year 1 million customers only in Sweden used our solution, which is basically 10% of the population. But we are never seen in our implementations. We’re always quite label or API based, so not a lot of people maybe know that they have interacted with us. I think that’s an impressive number. And if you this year scale that into our seven different markets that we’re in, while some of them are even considerably lodge and Sweden, it gets to a point where you actually can see the fulfillment of your vision. 

Martin Einemo
A lot of people collecting their data, sharing it with new actors, they can actually compare and take better decisions. That’s the kind of KPIs that drives us going to be honest. On the backside of that, we are also charging for our services and we do have an average growth of our contracted arr with over 300% per year. And I think we have succeeded in attracting both the InsureTech startups and the fintech startups that is building kind of innovative solutions. Obviously the ACVs of those customers are quite low. We’re also attracted the incumbents, the large retail banks in Europe, et cetera, and very well known name. So I think we’re getting there and I think the most important thing for me might sound intuitive, the most important thing for me is not to increase our contracted arr as much as possible. The most important to me long term is to have as many people as possible using our services in as many markets as possible. 

Martin Einemo
That will lead to market dominance and that will lead to high arr fpms. 

Brett
And obviously there’s a lot of noise in the InsureTech space. What do you think you’ve gotten right and how are you able to rise above that noise and acquire customers like that? 

Martin Einemo
That’s a great question because I’ve seen the kind of rise and fall to some extent of the insured tech industry or the changes perhaps in the insurer tech industry. So I think the past five years where capital or ten years where capital was quite cheap, a lot of insured tech companies saw that these market failures between consumers, they’re not informed consumers in newer generations want more digital services, et cetera. They saw that opportunity and they created this kind of neo insurance distributions startups where you would be insurance broker, you would sell one or two products and you will do that quite digitally and everything will be in theory very efficient. We’ve seen a lot of those companies appearing in Europe and I think over the last five years they have been quite successful. But that’s on the backbone that their capital has been quite cheap. 

Martin Einemo
So they could actually undercut prices using VC capital to gain market share in price sensitive segments. Those were first movers of our tech as well because we’re building enablers to the insurance industry, for example, we’re helping them to lower their acquisition costs, we’re helping them to solve their business problems, to retarget customers when their insurance is about to expire, for example. So they have been great champions to us, I think the last year. And the kind of market turbulence that we have seen have forced those companies to think more about profitability, which has led them to raise prices on their underlying insurance products, which has led to a lot of consumer churn. Which has led to less usage of our services for those companies and actually more usage of our services in the incumbents who have seen that. Hang on. These new insurance companies, they did something right with. 

Martin Einemo
Surely maybe we should also use their services to fast track our digitalization. So we’re kind of indifferent to who we sell to. We’re selling to the new insurance companies, the small ones, the intermediaries, the asset managers, the banks and the incumbent insurance industry, which traditionally is quite hard segments to sell to. It takes a lot of time. I think what we have done right is targeting a broad category of companies in different sizes. And I think the second thing that we have done right is to find two commercial use cases. Every customer that we have out there are getting a positive ROI on our services because their end consumers are more happy, they stay longer, they convert better, they get more data to use in underwriting and pricing. They can do retargeting based on, again, based on renewal dates, for example. There is so much value in for example insurance or pension data you can actually use that to sell more and sell better while the consumer are getting better informed choices, they’re more empowered and they’re actually more informed of what they bought leading also to operational efficiency such as less claims which are false because consumers doesn’t know what they had. 

Martin Einemo
Now they do. So they actually don’t claim as much and when they do, it’s actually accurate. So I think what we have done right is to focus on the commercial side of things, actually building services that will help our customers to succeed. 

Brett
And final couple of questions here based on your journey so far. Let’s say that I were starting an insure tech company today. What would be the number one piece of advice you’d have for me? 

Martin Einemo
That’s a great question. I think do your research before starting and think about the end user and kind of the long term profitability. As I said, I’ve seen a lot of insured tech companies, especially on the distribution side, focusing a little bit too short term. Maybe the innovation should not be just in digital services, it should also be in kind of terms and conditions, it should be in other parts of the value chain. And I think if you were started kind of an insurer, say without outside the distribution channels, you should probably look at what is the kind of infrastructure required to seal both the incumbents but also the insurer tech companies. I guess that’s the space we’re in. So I’m quite biased, but I actually think the first level of innovation was kind of on the front end. Now we’re in a phase where we see a lot of back end and infrastructure investments in the traditional industry but also in the Shortex. 

Martin Einemo
I think that’s a very nice place to be if you’re into kind of back end tech data, et cetera. 

Brett
And final question here, let’s zoom out into the future. So maybe three to five years from today, can you just paint a picture for what that high level vision for and truly is? 

Martin Einemo
That high level vision and target is to continue to be the European leader of open finance services. Hopefully we do have a regulatory framework to rely on, but even before that’s enforced, we will continue on our strategy to work with the largest accounts in Europe, the largest banks, insurance companies, asset managers and the largest fintechs in order to solidify our market position and be impossible to compete with. Second of all, I think I hope that we have at least ten X number of customers per year using our services. That’s something I really want to happen and I think we are live in most European markets and potentially looking at the US as well, but we’ll see the US is another type of challenge than Europe could be. 

Brett
Amazing. Well Martin, this conversation has been a lot of fun. I’ve really enjoyed it. If someone from our audience wants to get in touch with you, where’s the best place for them to go? 

Martin Einemo
I think just drop an email at Martin@inshonley.com or just find me on LinkedIn and Connect and we can have a chat. 

Brett
Amazing. Martin, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about what you’re building and share some of those lessons that you’ve learned along the way. Really appreciate it and wish you best of luck. 

Martin Einemo
Thank you so much. And thanks for interesting question and conversations. 

Brett
Yeah, no problem. Keep in touch. This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you on the next episode.