Assaf Wand, Hippo Insurance Co-Founder & CEO – Going Public on the NYSE, Reimagining Home Insurance, and Always Doing Right by the Customer
Assaf Wand, Hippo Insurance Co-Founder & CEO – Going Public on the NYSE, Reimagining Home Insurance, and Always Doing Right by the Customer
In this very first episode of the 21 Leaders podcast, Miguel Armaza sits down with Assaf Wand, Co-Founder and CEO of Hippo Insurance (NYSE: HIPO)
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In this very first episode of the 21 Leaders podcast, I sit down with Assaf Wand, Co-Founder and CEO of Hippo Insurance (NYSE: HIPO), a revolutionary home insurance company focused on making homes safer and better protected, harnessing the power of data and technology. Founded in 2015, Hippo recently went public on the New York Stock Exchange and has a current market cap ~$3B.
In this great conversation, Assaf and I discuss:
Why he’s “the worst employee ever” and entrepreneurship was the only career path that made sense for him
Disrupting the home insurance industry, a sector with a net promoter score of -49, and why over the last century incumbents forgot who is their actual customer
“We shifted the entire mindset to being a proactive company, as opposed to insurance which is reactive… We keep on monitors in your home on an ongoing basis, we use multiple data sources, we give IoT devices and all kinds of loss prevention hardware, and we have this service called Hippo homecare that helps our customers better take care of their homes.”
The importance of listening to your client, collecting feedback, and always doing the right thing by the customers
Lessons from his evolving leadership approach and the hardest decisions Assaf has ever made at Hippo
“The entire science of management is about leverage - it's about finding people that are stronger than you, with higher domain expertise, and letting them do what they need to do. Otherwise, you could never hire strong people.
The best analogy I found for when you start a company… it's like a Jazz band where everybody around us is improvising and doing everything, and over time it moves into a symphony. It needs to be coordinated, but you need a lot more order and you become the conductor as opposed to the main player.”
Key questions they ask themselves before making any important decision at Hippo
Taking the company public via SPAC and some hard lessons he’s learned as a public company CEO
“It wasn't the nicest and warmest reception, and it took me several weeks to refocus back on the customers, the company, and what we're building, as opposed to checking the stock price every five milliseconds… And you know, the stock market is going to be all over the place, but our job is to lower our heads and execute on the numbers and what we said, and, over time, I'm sure we're going to find the right investors who are going to join us for the long term.”
Reasons behind Tel-Aviv’s success as a hub for entrepreneurship and innovation… A lot more!
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Emerging Fintech Leaders
Going forward, we will also bring you a few exciting early-stage fintech companies doing amazing things. Have a startup we should include? Introduce us here!
Alinea Invest is a New York-based firm changing the way GenZ's invest their money. Alinea’s Stacks (bundles of diversified stocks aka ETFs) are like playlists for investing, making it easy and accessible for the next generation to invest responsibly in ideas, values, and companies they believe in for the long term. Fresh off of a $2.1M seed round from top-tier investors such as Y Combinator, Goodwater, and Harvard, Alinea is now primed to empower new investors worldwide.
Alinea Co-Founders: Eve Halimi and Anam Lakhami.
Koltin is a pre-seed insurtech startup out of Mexico focusing on affordable coverage and proactive care for the growing senior population in Latin America. The company aims to provide inclusive, affordable, and proactive insurance for people over 65 in the region. After launching beta earlier this year, Koltin is now accelerating its growth.
Koltin Co-Founders: Eduardo Ortiz Reynaga & Carmen Rosillo.
With its recently announced $3M raise, Oraan became the first female-founded Pakistani fintech to raise seed capital. The startup takes a novel, highly localized approach to expanding access to financial services for Pakistani women: the committee model. Under the framework of a rotating credit and savings association, clients contribute to a pool of money that is then distributed monthly. By interweaving Pakistan’s traditional informal economy and the growing need for savings capabilities, Oraan meets customers where they are.
Oraan Co-Founders: Halima Iqbal and Farwah Tapal.
Want to break onto the fintech scene with a feature in our newsletter? Introduce us to your startup here!
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Miguel Armaza is Host of the 21 Leaders Podcast, Author of the Fintech Leaders Newsletter, and Co-Founder of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas.