Transcript:
Patti Harman (00:06):
Welcome to the DigIn Podcast. I'm Patti Harman, editor in chief of Digital Insurance, and today we're talking about insurtech startups, the challenges they face and what enterprising entrepreneurs should know before making the leap.
Starting your own business is a dream for many individuals and there are approximately 400 million small- to medium-sized businesses worldwide, accounting for approximately 90% of all firms globally. Launching a startup isn't easy and growing it into a successful enterprise involves a lot of effort and hard work, and probably a little bit of luck. Joining me today to share his story of starting an InsurTech and some of the lessons he learned along the way is Tim Hardcastle, CEO of Instanda. And Tim, I'm so glad you're here today.
Tim Hardcastle (00:57):
Thank you for having me, Patti. I'm really looking forward to the conversation with you.
Patti Harman (01:01):
So the insurance industry has seen a multitude of insurtech startups over the last two decades, and you started Instanda 10 years ago, and I was wondering if you could just share with our listeners what was it like to start a company then, and how has the business environment changed, especially in the InsurTech space since then?
Tim Hardcastle (01:25):
Well, it's a pleasure to be able to talk about this because I think for every founder that starts their own business, it's a very special moment when that decision's taken and you get going. But as every founder that has done it or will be able to do it, knows it's done at a time when you've got a set of prevailing norms around you about the environment in which you are trying to start your business. And for us it was quite special because when we started, as you say, 10 years ago, it coincided with I think what officially is termed the start of the InsurTech wave. It was attributed to 2015. So starting a company at the beginning of this InsurTech wave was very special. And in some respects it's really similar to what we're seeing now with AI, but it was just much smaller in scale.
(02:20):
It just happened to be within the insurance industry. And I think some of the big changes that we've seen over the last 10 years was when we were starting, there was a lot of hype, and this is similar to what we're seeing now, a lot of expectation around how these InsurTechs were going to change the industry. And then we've gone through a period where maybe that hype has calmed down a little bit. We've seen some disappointment, I think as a number of the InsurTechs perhaps haven't lived up to the promise or the expectation. And we're now kind of in this phase of a bit more of normalization where a lot of InsurTechs that have been adopted and they're being used with many insurance companies, the U.S. and Europe world over to drive value. I mean, some InsurTechs have even been acquired by some of the insurers and that just shows how much they like them. But I think the interesting thing is we've gone through this wave of hype, the disappointment, and then a normalization. And that's a pattern that applies I think to most technology-driven waves of change. And again, we're seeing that with AI in real time as well.
Patti Harman (03:30):
Yes, we have meet the InsurTech profiles that we do a lot, and it's always interesting to me to see who's coming along, what ideas they have and what the promise could be for the industry. And I was wondering, why did you decide to start the company and how did your perceptions at the start differ from the reality that you experienced? I think sometimes entrepreneurs think, oh, it's going to be this, this and this, and then the reality sometimes is just a little bit different.
Tim Hardcastle (04:03):
I think that's a great observation. I mean, we started the business, I'm a co-founder, so I was fortunate that I had someone else that was very much in the same way seeing the same pain points in the industry as we did. We spent a lot of time really digging into, I would call it a design philosophy, about how the technology should work because for the audience that doesn't know, it is standard as a policy administration system, it works in multiple markets. But when you think about going into that space into the policy administration, there's lots of very good companies that have been there for many years. So our approach was to really fundamentally change the way we thought about how the technology could be used. And that was very much centered around giving the power of change, if you like, on that technology to the business users that would be using it.
(04:58):
And that was never been done before, and that was part of the impetus to bring it to market. It was very unique. We were the only no code platform in the world at the time. Of course, now everything is no code, right? You just need an English prompt for AI. But at the time for policy administration systems, no one had ever thought of the ability that you could go into many of different markets, different languages, different product lines, and get the business users to be in control of the technology. So you can start to see when you're bringing something to market that is unique, it's special and it changes the game in terms of speed of change and cost of operations.
And that was a big fueling for us to say, Hey, this is the right thing to do. So naturally we had really high hopes of the industry saying, this is great, we've never had it before.
(05:50):
Let's have that please. But the reality was, yeah, this is an amazing idea. It's very cool. We understand, I love the demo, but ultimately the adoption from the insurance industry, both carriers and MGAs alike, was much slower than we accepted, expected, sorry. And there were reasons for that. And those reasons actually still remain today in some respects. So I suppose the reality wake up call, if you like, is it just took us longer and more money than we expected to get market adoption. But the impetus was there from day one. And happy to say it's never changed, but the reality is it takes a long while for the industry to adopt new ideas, particularly when they're radically different, which is what ours was
Patti Harman (06:35):
Very true. And I will say I've been covering the industry for about 30 years now, and I am seeing, I think the pandemic was a huge game changer for them because they almost had to change overnight. And so their willingness to adopt new technologies I think kind of changed with that particular event. Now you mentioned funding and that is a huge aspect of any startup enterprise. What kinds of funding are generally available for new businesses and are there pros and cons to each of them?
Tim Hardcastle (07:12):
Yeah, I mean you're right. Funding to get a business going, particularly I would say one that is the proposition is centered on software technology, the IPS bound up in technology build, then building that technology, that software solution, takes a long time. It's less time now than perhaps you could argue it was 10 years ago for different reasons. But you need a lot of patience from your funding partners and you need quite a bit of money. I don't think it's very different in the U.S, the U.K., Europe, but essentially, you can go through various stages of setting your business up. I think that's got changed in the last 10 years. You obviously need to be making sure you've got something that's really going to work well in the market and it's got a differentiation to it. So you talk to your friends and your family and you see how convinced you can make them and if they want to help you, they should.
(08:07):
Then once you get a little bit along the lines, you get maybe a little bit of revenue, you can go to some seed fund round providers and then from there, if you keep doing well, you'd go to series A when you get to a certain stage, series B and so on. So that model I think is pretty consistent in most major markets. There are a few opportunities for state assistance, government grants, but I think it's a bit limited. And of course really conventional funding models that bigger companies can enjoy. Term loans and other things like that are really non-existent for startups. So they just don't work unless you've got a lot of personal collateral and assets that you're happy to be putting a park against them. And I would say overall, I think the U.S. is blessed. It's one of the best markets in the world to have a much more understanding funding community.
(09:00):
I mean the UK is not bad, but it's not as benign and as helpful, I don't think as the U.S. But we took a conscious decision to again do things a bit differently in that we believed behind our idea as you heard. And so we bootstrapped for five years to build the value ahead of a fundraise. And we did that for a couple of reasons. We wanted to make sure that we knew the model was really getting traction in the market and then we didn't want to raise too early because when you do that and then you do your successive raises as founders, you'll end up becoming pretty much diluted down to be a small investor at the end of the day, and yet you are the one with the idea and you're the one with the sweat capital that you're putting in. So we left ours to a later stage so that we'd have more participation in the business as it did subsequent rounds, but that was a very more risky decision. It meant more personal equity to be put in, but it was the one that was right for us at the time.
Patti Harman (10:00):
And it's important to find the process or the funding that will work best for your business and your enterprise. I think I've spoken to a number of venture capitalists over the last year or so, and it was interesting to me to hear their perspective and what they're looking for. And I was wondering, have the expectations or strategies of companies funding InsurTechs changed over the last three to five years? And if so, what does that look like now? Has the amount that they're willing to invest, has that changed? Are there other aspects of the process that are important to them? What are they looking for?
Tim Hardcastle (10:41):
Yeah, you touched on a really good point and we maybe not have time today, but I think venture capital is a hugely important source of funding, but it's quite short term. It wants returns within a relatively narrow window and it wants quite good returns on that money. And when you're selling software in a B2B environment, the sales cycles are typically very long. And I think what happened several years ago is VCs moved into the InsurTech space in this B2B environment and funded businesses, but probably had unrealistic expectations about how quickly those companies could generate stellar growth and the returns of VCs wanted. But I think, happily, we had an adjustment in 2022. You probably remember there was a valuation collapse in a number of the InsurTechs, and I think that was about the market adjusting in terms of expectations of what InsurTechs should be delivering. So there's been a much bigger focus on profitability rather than just purely on revenue growth and then applying a to that for valuation purposes.
(11:55):
And I think that's now permeated, those expectations have been level set. So I think the funders and the founders now are much more lined up. We deliberately took a move not to take VC money in 2022. We took growth equity money for the reasons I just said earlier, which was about it's more patient form of capital. It gives you the time to nurse these long sales cycles that we're in. And I think the other dimension of this as well, which we probably should touch on, is that we as an InsurTech are very much around the positioning of enabling the industry to do better, right? With a low TCO and high levels of agility for a policy administration system, we are there to help them just do so much better, get the right propositions out, reduce their cost to operate, et cetera. Whereas the challenges, the InsurTech challenges, the ones that came into the market some years ago and said, Hey, we think we can do a better job than the insurance companies can.
(12:57):
I think we would say that a lot of funding went into them, a lot of excitement and hype as I said earlier. But I think overall, I think we'd have to say that the results of those challenges have been disappointing in aggregate. I don't think they have made the dent in the industry that they claimed they would, a small number have been pretty successful, but the large majority have not. So I think the funding environment has also accepted that and recognized that the enabling of the industry is a better play than the replacement of the industry through InsurTech offerings.
Patti Harman (13:31):
Yes, I would agree with that. And it's important to kind of level set so that everybody has the same expectations and knows that this is going to be, in many cases, a long-term investment. Things don't happen overnight for sure. Can you walk us through the steps a team goes through as they launch a new business? And I realize that it depends on the product and the type of business that you're trying to launch, but I'm guessing it starts with an idea or let's solve this pain point, and then maybe some product research and development, and definitely a competitive analysis. You need to know who is in the market, what they're doing, who's using their product, whatever. And then we've talked about funding, executing the product, even hiring your team to help you grow the business and that sort of thing. So what does that process look like in reality?
Tim Hardcastle (14:33):
Well, it's a really great point to explore because I think it varies, right? I think there's some challenges. For example, if you've been in an industry for a long time, you get to know that industry really well, you see some of the challenges, but almost you get immersed into the industry. You are interwoven with the industry too deeply and therefore it's difficult to rise up, take an objective and genuinely insight driven perspective. I think it's difficult to do that. So you have the advantage of knowing the industry, but if you spend too long in it, you almost get caught up in it, if you see what I mean. Conversely, if you're outside of the industry, your perception of what the problems are and how to solve them are probably run the risk of not being well-informed. So as a founder, I think it's quite a challenge.
(15:25):
I mean, I was fortunate because I had worked in several other industries before I was headhunted into insurance, and I think that gave me a much broader perspective and a much greater propensity to be able to get the insights that were needed to figure out how to solve some of these problems that I was seeing as a technology leader at the time. So I think that's an interesting dynamic about the benefit of being in the industry versus the downsides of being outside the industry. But if you're outside the industry, you're definitely going to have, let's say a more fresh different take on the problems. I think the other dimension then is when you're starting and getting your startup going, it also depends on what pain points you're solving. So there are some startups that have said there's just this one pain point that we see. It's very easy to explain and we're going to solve to that and we think we've got the best thing for it and we can just go fast and bring it to market and get as many companies on board as we can.
(16:31):
So that simple use case, driving up the growth very rapidly is another part of the starting up framework and thinking you need to do, whereas what we were trying to do, which is different, we were trying to solve a very complex problem. I mean the policy administration system is not a simple thing. So the complex problem to solve in terms of how you make it better, and that takes a different approach, right? Because as you touched on, it's like the scaling will take longer, the adoption will take longer. So I would say in summary, there's multiple dimensions is like how well the industry versus not being too immersed. Is the problem easy to solve or complex? And I think these things are really quite important considerations you need to give when you are thinking about the thing you want to bring to market. And so I think being able to take these sets of insights, refine the idea and then start building the technology is going to have different roadmaps depending on how big a problem you're trying to take on and solve. And that was the case for us. We took on a very big problem, so it was quite challenging to solve to that.
Patti Harman (17:46):
What are some of the challenges then that entrepreneurs may not consider before launching their company? I love how you said you can be someone who's immersed in the industry and sees it from one perspective or you can be someone outside of it. And I'm thinking the perfect blend is if you have people on your team who have both that outside perspective as well as knowing the industry itself. But are there other challenges maybe that entrepreneurs may not consider before they launch a company?
Tim Hardcastle (18:18):
I think if, let's say you, you've had a history of corporate executive middle management roles and you see a pain point as we've discussed, and then you decide you feel so good about it and passionate that you want to start the business to get going. It's very different from being inside a corporate to then spinning out and building your own business. And the thing that many founders will not appreciate is the speed of market adoption within the insurance industry is not going to change just because you've got a really super cool idea that you're all very passionate about. I guess one of the big challenges that people will have is being inside the industry and in a corporation and then coming out of it and selling back into it is quite a mental reframing. And you have to recognize speed of a market adoption is going to be slow unless you're solving a very simple pain point and your speed of adoption might go faster, but then it's also probably going to be less defensible and other competitors can come in and do what you are doing.
(19:29):
So that's definitely one of the challenge points, and I think it equally applies for people that come into the industry and think they've got a cool idea and they can solve something, then I think they probably will not be prepared for the speed of adoption. And then the other things, obviously when you're starting a business, cash reserves and runway is one of the key things in the early years, how you've raised money, who you raise it from as we explored, making sure you match the capital to the kind of product or service you're offering is really, really important. And also as we were going through our process, it's very difficult to determine how much money you need. Often you can ask for too little, sometimes you can ask for too much. It's a very hard balance to strike. So these are the market adoption. The funding are generally the key things to get right. Otherwise you can have a super cool idea, but you get one of those two things wrong and you run out UNE or you don't raise the right amount and you'll be unfortunately one of the casualties, many casualties that have happened as you're building business, it's not an easy thing to do.
Patti Harman (20:35):
There's a saying, hindsight is 20/20. So I'm wondering, were there any mistakes that maybe you made early on that if you had the chance to redo them, you might change it the second time around. And we look at things differently and our lens is different once we've been through an experience. So I'm wondering if there's anything you're like, oh, if I had only known that back then, these five things would've been so much easier.
Tim Hardcastle (21:06):
Easier. Well, we've made great progress in the last 10 years, so I'm pleased to say we've got more things right than wrong, otherwise we wouldn't be here. But yeah, I think we can zero in on one particular area. I think that we definitely made mistakes and predominantly it's around people and hiring. I think we had to go through a bit of a transition in terms of we knew we were thinking very differently. We had this very unique proposition we were bringing to market. We knew it was something that even the insurance industry had not asked for. It was radically different. So we knew it was going to take time and we thought it was such a smart idea and way of working, and we were genuinely so stoked by it and excited about it. We just assumed, and this is the very what they said about and the assumptions you made, and we thought everyone else that had been in the industry if we were hiring or what would see it as for what it was, is this amazing idea and they'll be as excited and invested as we were.
(22:11):
And of course that's not true. You just fight. It's very hard to find people that are going to be with you in the same psychologically invested way. So it's impossible to get, I think not impossible, very difficult to find founder mindset outside of the founders. So I think we made a number of hires that people do a great job of selling themselves through interviews, and sometimes you can drink the Kool-Aid and get convinced that they really do think the same way as you do, only for that to turn out to be not the case. And I think the hiring mistakes we made were probably looking back on the single biggest series of a few failures that were made. And happily, we didn't make tens and tens of mistakes but made a number of critical mistakes and that held us back. We probably would've progressed further and faster if we'd made the right hiring decision. So I think that's the biggest lesson I've got to look back on.
Patti Harman (23:09):
I think that's a lesson that anybody who is in management anywhere has to learn. You learn how to assess people, how to hear and read between the lines, and it's just a learning process. And I don't think that anyone is born just automatically knowing all of that or how to discern the right person, that sort of thing. So we're going to take a short break now. We'll be back in just a few minutes.
Welcome back to the Dig podcast. We're chatting with Tim Hardcastle of Instanda about the lessons he learned when launching his InsurTech. So we talked about some of the lessons that you learned. What were some of the most important steps that you took that really made a difference in your success?
Tim Hardcastle (24:01):
I think the most important steps that we took early on, because whenever you're building an application as complicated as ours in a policy administration application, once you've made some critical design decisions about how that system's going to work and how it's architected, there is no going back. You make those decisions, the application is built, you take it to market, and there's a number of customers globally that use it. And then it's virtually impossible to then fundamentally change the shape of that in the future, particularly the further you go. And I think we're very smart in that we did two things around the design thinking of our technology. One was to say the inherent problem with the insurance industry for systems is there's so much variety, different product lines, different distribution models, different rating engines, different policy documentation is that diversity that is a problem for systems because systems historically can only be changed through code.
(25:12):
So let's separate away the change from the code. And that's where we came up with the no code environment. So you could accommodate any kind of different product rating documentation without having to change the code. And that gave us the power to then allow that technology to go out to the world basically, which is what we have the U.S., UK, Europe, Asia, et cetera. And not to have to have multiple different versions of the technology in the hands of customers. They're all on the same version of the code base. They just do their change, their differentiation on their products and their ratings through genuine and no-code configuration environment. That was a key design philosophy and we've stood by that and we maintained it. And we're the only company as far as we're aware. I'm sure many of your listeners might challenge this, but we're the only company in the world that has enabled the insurance industry sit on the same version of the codebase.
(26:06):
I mean, it's like Salesforce. So Salesforce invented it, but we've just done it for policy administration systems. And then the second thing through the design thinking that we did was that Instanda was designed to be part of an ecosystem. So it was by design thought about that it would be interacting with other technologies and other ways to get information in data in et cetera. And so we are very, very relaxed when we go into multiple different environments because so many insurers and MGAs have different systems that they want to use and we are very, very nice to interoperate with. And those two things were probably the hardest things to get right at the beginning. It meant that building the technology took us quite a bit of time and money because they were so different. But that's paid dividends as we now serve nearly a hundred clients globally and we're in multiple lines of insurance and we're happily supporting some very, very big companies now as well.
(27:09):
But we wouldn't have been able to do that if we hadn't done the design thinking the way I described earlier on. And that was when the industry is not asking you for that kind of approach, that's the lonely part of starting a business. You have to be fueled by an absolute unrelenting drive to do the thing that you think is right. And of course we did market validation and other bits and pieces to give us more impetus, but you as founders have to be absolutely driven and convinced that what you're doing is the right thing because betting the farm on it and we were, because no one gives you the thanks in the early days and the early years.
Patti Harman (27:50):
But that flexibility is so important and you were so insightful to recognize that because I know of other InsurTechs and products and it's like this is the product, this is what it is. And for lack of a better phrase, they don't play well with others. And that makes it really hard in terms of adoption because it is sort of an all or nothing type of thing. And within the insurance industry, you're right, carriers and even agents and brokers, everybody's at a different level technologically and they're using so many different programs and types of technology and everything. So I can understand where that would be hard, but I also see the wisdom in that decision too. And that leads to my next question, which is how important is it to have advisors with different areas of expertise as part of your team? We touched on this a little bit earlier, but I would think that's a pretty big deal for a company.
Tim Hardcastle (28:53):
Well, it is really interesting, Patti, you've touched on something that I hadn't quite appreciated actually, but it's quite profound, which is when we were designing, we'd had a lot of experience in and I had in other industries and other technologies, and we brought to the design process a level of humility, which was we had this determination and clear insight that we needed to design it in a certain way, but we had a bit of a humility, which was well, but we know that people in the industry know better than we do around how to do underwriting, about how to think about distribution. And so actually that humility was why the technology is as flexible as it is, how could we ever know the best way to do it? And that's why the technology is so flexible. And then it goes further than that is then we recognize and all the way through, we've always tried to take a inside out and outside in view on the industry and what's needed for it technologically.
(29:55):
So the inside out is we believe, given our experience and what we hear, that this is a great way to go forward. The outside in is let's validate and verify and make sure the view is 360. And the humility is being able to accept at times that that outside in view may be different from yours and maybe your view isn't quite right, and you need to adopt and adapt and that humility when you're going forward. It's such, again, a fine balance because you need to have utmost confidence in what you're doing, which can lead to arrogance if you're not careful. But you need to be able to hear and listen to the feedback from the market. And I think for the most part we got that right. But I do see and meet other founders sometimes and they don't quite get that balance. They're too far on the, "I know best and I'm going to do it this way and everyone else is wrong."
(30:51):
And then equally, if you are the end of the spectrum, I really dunno what to do, lemme tell me what to do. There's a spectrum and you've got to get, I think it's a fine line to tread, but I'd like to think so the advisory piece, we've always had advisors coming in and working with us in the company and right now, I'm fortunate to have an advisor that's a former CEO of a multinational insurance company. It had big operations in the U.S. and Europe and he's a very direct talking individual. So he challenges me on some of the things I do, which is good. It's good, right? I know everything. I think as long as you recognize that, then you'll be taking a good direction forward.
Patti Harman (31:32):
Yes. We talked a little bit about the hiring aspect for a company and that's really important. What advice or recommendations do you have for InsurTech leaders to keep in mind as they build their employee roster? And are there certain positions when you're a startup, there are so many different ways that you can go. Are there certain positions maybe that they should consider hiring for first?
Tim Hardcastle (31:59):
Well, my personal view is I think founders should be playing this lead sales role in the very early days, or they should be playing the lead architect software engineering role. And generally, founders would fit into outside business facing leaders or they'll be the leaders of the technology function. I think the founders should be starting off those functions in the early days. And so to hire people to do the most important thing, which is selling or building the technology, I think is the wrong thing to do in the early days. If you can't do either of those two things, then either because you're not passionate or you're clear on what you're selling or you're not technical enough, then I think that's a mistake, frankly. So those two roles are critical, I think for the founders to own in the very early days. And then you're into, as you scale, it's the rate at which you scale and how you bring people on board. But I'm really clear in my mind that founders should definitely own one of those two key functions and then as you progress, you can hire into the other one. If you're the technical guy or lady, then go and hire a lady to do the sales or a guy to do the sales and vice versa.
Patti Harman (33:08):
Okay. One of the big things I think that sometimes business leaders don't consider is the role of company culture and that even it plays a role for you as the leader. I think you established that, and I know of multinational companies where I know the CEO and I am acutely aware of what their culture is and why it's important and how it embodies everything that they do. So from your perspective, how important is it as a leader to define your company culture and then what are the factors that actually comprise it? And is that something that you keep in mind when you're hiring going forward?
Tim Hardcastle (33:53):
It's a thing that doesn't get talked about very much, so I'm really pleased you want to ask me about it. I think there are particular things that determine how successful a business is going to be. That does come back to the ability of the founder to maintain and espouse, as you say, what the business stands for, why it's happening, but through their behavior to be a role model was certainly a reference check, if you like, for the culture of the company. And I think it's really difficult for founders to do it because when you're setting a business up from scratch, it's an emotional rollercoaster that you're on. You've bet the farm, you're behind it, things don't always go to plan. There's some setbacks, there's some excitement, exciting times. And so you as an individual being able to maintain a level of consistency around your own personal behavior that's in line with a set of values, like how you treat people, what you expect them to be doing for you in terms of their interactions and transparency, I think it's really challenging.
(34:58):
And if you as an individual are not a robust, transparent, but even tempered person, I think you could create a very toxic culture quite early on. And then it's really, really difficult to unwind that. So I think that the wide twining of culture and the leader's role modeling I think is so important and it doesn't get talked about enough. And then as you scale a company into the tens and the hundreds, you're right, if you haven't set those foundational cultural building blocks, then again, it's really easy for that business to go skewing off to the left or the right because you haven't set the emotional framework in the right way for the cultures to be actually people buy into them, they see them happening, they see it consistent time and time again. I think the leader's role in establishing that, behaving the right way, and being the reference point is super critical. And then when you get that right, I mean one of the things that a lot of the clients that work with us give us as feedback, and this is really interesting, is they all say, we love the technology. We love the way it gives us the agility and puts the power in our hands, but equally, we love your people the way that you work with us.
(36:20):
We feel like you're working with us as a partner to help us aspire and achieve our goals. And we love the fact that you are very transparent and straight up because in the software world, when you're starting a business, your utmost desire is to sell, to get the revenue, to keep the business funded, to keep going, and it can lead to behaviors where people might misrepresent or over promise. And we have never done that. And so we've always said, this is what we can do. This is how we are. If it's not quite right for you, then wait a little while or whatever. But we've never deviated from that. And that over the medium to long-term is part of our culture and it's paid off dividends. We get clients coming back to us, they bought from somebody else a year before and they just say, that company lied to us or they misrepresented or they overpromised and we're going to come back to you. You were always consistent. And that's a key part of a cultural behavior that we have in our company that I role model it. And if you don't get that right at the beginning, there's no way you're going to get it right in five years, 10 years in.
Patti Harman (37:29):
Yes. That's so true. And it's even true with the people that you hire who are managing the rest of your teams or different aspects of your teams. I distinctly remember two bosses that I had and I spent a lot of time behind the scenes kind of smoothing over things because they were rather volatile personalities. And that affects the business, it affects the perception of them, and it affects the perception of the business. And all of that kind of comes into play. So what were the top two or three lessons that you learned as part of launching in standup? Just things that you look back and you're like, wow, that was really great, or I'm glad that we did this way or this was an important aspect of the company.
Tim Hardcastle (38:23):
Yeah, the three lessons I guess I could talk about was the hiring process. We probably did not get that as fine-tuned as we should have done. And we talked about that earlier. So we made some hiring decisions, but the hiring process. So I think as you mentioned, how do you determine the attitudinal views of the people that you're bringing in? And were they going to be a fit for your culture and your environment? I think that's a key lesson that we learned a little bit later than we should have done because it has a lot of latency. You make the wrong decision, someone's in the business for six and nine months, you don't figure it out until then. So there's a latency issue with hiring the wrong people. Second lesson is, I heard the mantra when we were setting it out from some other founders, what's it called?
(39:09):
Fake it till you make it, which I think led some founders to say that they had certain capabilities or certain things that they could do, and we never did that. I think the insurance industry, I love it as an industry, it's a huge industry, but actually it's really a close knit industry. And if you can't deliver true results that generate benefits, people get to hear about it. So that fake it till you make it mantra, I'm not a fan of it. We never did. It meant we didn't get the sales that perhaps we could have done if we'd have been a bit more ambitious, but we always knew we could deliver on everything we sold. So that's one lesson. Don't get tempted too far into the faking it till you're making it. I don't think it's a good strategy. And thirdly, as we talked earlier, design matters in the medium to long term. So our architectural design, the way that we've thought about the philosophy of designing the platform is paying dividends now what you might call the medium term 10 years in. And if we'd have got that wrong or tried to shortcut it or not thought as profoundly and as deeply about the design of our technology, we wouldn't be as successful today as we are. So those are the three lessons I would take.
Patti Harman (40:27):
So we've covered a lot over the last half an hour or so. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you think is really important for our audience to know about launching a new business or an InsurTech or even working in this insurance industry?
Tim Hardcastle (40:42):
Well, I think the insurance industry is a great industry to work on, work in. It's actually very interesting in new ideas, and I think people genuinely are very supportive. It's just the adoption point, which is a corporate buying thing, is it a bit different? So I think it's a great industry to work in and it does great things, so I'm super happy to be in it. But I think the only thing I would maybe just bring to attention is when you're starting a business, you need to be prepared to sacrifice. It's a lonely journey. You're often an echo chamber for your own thoughts, and it can be a bit scary. And also, it's actually a family endeavor. So my partner, my wife and my children have probably, they've been on this journey with me, and I think you need to be prepared as a founder to recognize those things. It's going to be tough, exciting, rewarding, but at times lonely. And it is a family endeavor. It's not an individual endeavor.
Patti Harman (41:42):
That is so true. I completely agree with that. So thank you so much, Tim, for sharing your insights with our audience. Thank you for listening to the DigIn podcast. I produced this episode with audio production from Adnan Khan. Special thanks this week to Tim Hardcastle of Instanda for joining us. Please rate us, review us, and subscribe to our content at www dig-in.com/subscribe. From Digital Insurance, I'm Patti Harman, and thank you for listening.