Innovation

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STEVE WHITELOCK: Welcome to episode one of the Partnerships podcast in association with Aviva and Insuretech UK. My name is Steve Whitelock, group innovation business partner here at Aviva, and I'm delighted to say that I'm joined today by Melissa Collett from Insuretech UK, who's joining me as a co-host.

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MELISSA COLLETT: Thank you for inviting me.

STEVE WHITELOCK: No it's lovely to have you here, joining us today. Perhaps we could just to start off, just give us a little bit of insight into what was going on to Insurtech UK at the moment.

MELISSA COLLETT: Sure. So Insurtech UK is a trade association for insurtechs. We have over 140 insurtechs and 40 insurers and partners in our membership, and we exist to help our members to scale and to grow.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: Brilliant. And I think that's that's really, that really plays in nicely is what we're going to be talking about today. So today's episode is all about from Build to Buy. And what we're going to do is start exploring the question of why, partner, and to help us in that discussion. We're joined by two brilliant guests in the studio.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: We're joined by, Simon Randall, CEO of Pimloc, and we're joined by Paul Welsh, head of Group innovation here at Aviva. Welcome to both.

Paul Welsh: Hi.

STEVE WHITELOCK: How are you?

PAUL WELSH: Very good. Thank you. Thank you for inviting us in.

STEVE WHITELOCK: No, it's great to have you. Simon perhaps I could come to you first. It'd be really good, I think, to hear just a little bit about the Pimloc story and how that journey has, I guess, found you now working with an insurer yourself.

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SIMON RANDALL: Yeah. Very happy to tell the story. And very good to have you here. The, So, yeah, I run a company called Pimlock. We are a privacy and intelligence platform, so we help public and private organizations manage personal and sensitive data and images, video and now audio. And as you know, everyone's been building out cameras across lots of different estates and businesses on the police forces and body worn cameras, drones, dash cams.

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SIMON RANDALL: Everybody's got a smartphone. And all that video that's been captured is now appearing in lots of people's kind of work streams and processes, workflows. We have a solution that allows, you know, a range of different sectors to manage that video so that either they can supply it to individuals, they can run models on it, they can store it, they can use it, they can share it and collaborate with it.

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SIMON RANDALL: Yeah. And we've been providing that into public safety kind of policing. District attorneys, legal, into schools, transport networks, health care environments. You know, lots of places where there's lots of very sensitive data. Incident happens, and they have to kind of take the video and do something with it. And we've had a hypothesis for a while that that video is going to start to make its way into the claims process because, you know, if something happens at work, there's an incident, something happens on the street, something happens in a bar or restaurant or supermarket.

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SIMON RANDALL: There's now video footage of that event. And so as, as more and more video starts to make its way into the claims process, providing tools that allow those teams to very quickly and efficiently be able to anonymize that data. So anonymize everything except for the person that was involved in the claim, so that you can manage your privacy and compliance risk, but more importantly, so you can use the video.

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SIMON RANDALL: Because actually it's very good evidence of what happened.

PAUL WELSH: Exactly.

SIMON RANDALL: And so the, you know, in the past, there's been very complicated videos with lots of people in environments where the cameras are moving, where it's just not possible manually to redact those, and therefore they wouldn't have been able to be used. And so our mission is to make that video usable.

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SIMON RANDALL: Sorry, a very long answer to your initial question, but that's what we do.

STEVE WHITELOCK: Yeah. And I'm going to geek out a little bit here because I, I actually wrote a university assignment last year about the involvement of tech in particular AI and the impact that can have on the insurance industry. And I think that as you've articulated there, you know, we're seeing more and more cameras everywhere, even from the humble doorbell right, right way through to police body worn cameras and CCTV.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: So it's, it's a world that's continuing to evolve. So it's really interesting to hear how you've you've kind of your company has been built around that and how you, you know, tackling that going forward.

SIMON RANDALL: And actually your claims teams have a very hard job because in some sectors, like if it's a school, it tends to be CCTV.

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SIMON RANDALL: So fixed camera, kind of a fixed scene because it's inside a school environment. Children moving around. If you're on a bus, fixed camera inside a bus, very similar environment. Your claims teams get videos from everywhere so it could be a ring doorbell, it could be a dashcam from a car, could be CCTV from a, you know, a million different environments.

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SIMON RANDALL: And they have to have systems that allow them to very quickly process those. And whilst it sounds simple, the technical implications of being able to do detection and tracking those environments is quite tricky. And so that's kind of where we come in.

STEVE WHITELOCK: Brilliant.

MELISSA COLLETT: That makes a lot of sense. I mean, the complexity of it does seem enormous.

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MELISSA COLLETT: I guess I'm I'm really interested to hear from Paul.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah.

MELISSA COLLETT: Well, why should insurance companies develop, you know, these partnerships, instead of developing this kind of technology in-house?

PAUL WELSH: Yeah, sure. And, you know, let's think about what an insurer does in that the vast array of activity that happens that's going on. We always have to make quick decisions about, do we build this ourselves?

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PAUL WELSH: Do we buy? And obviously there are things that we really would want to invest in. And that's our kind of jewel in the crown. So things like pricing, underwriting, our customer experience is really important and we need control over that. And we need to be able to design it the way we want. But I think, I kind of think about this.

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PAUL WELSH: It's a bit like baking a cake, right? So if you bake a cake yourself, you've got full control over all the ingredients. You can put whatever you want into it. You can design it however you want. But do you know what? It takes quite a lot of effort and, you know, often costs more. Weirdly, these days.

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PAUL WELSH: And, you know, these things can go wrong. You know, you can come out and end up with a pancake rather than it a cake. So I kind of think a partnership is really a bit like going to a bakery where, you know, that hard work has been done already in the ingredients, and you can think more about the innovation.

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PAUL WELSH: You can think about how that's going to work with your customer experience, eating of the cake rather than the kind of core ingredients. But, it's a hard balance always. And I think for us as insurers, really focusing our build efforts on our, our real competitive advantage areas and then getting help, and understanding where people have developed real, real solutions to to help build those those out.

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MELISSA COLLETT: I love that cake analogy. I wish I could outsource that cake baking.

PAUL WELSH: It's right. Because, you know, there are events where only a, homemade cake is going to do right? But, you know, sometimes colin the caterpillar does a great job.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: He really does.

MELISSA COLLETT: Do you like being likened to colin the caterpillar?

SIMON RANDALL: I mean, I'm quite happy, like.

PAUL WELSH: Exactly.

SIMON RANDALL: I think, you know, analogies aside, what? We could be the cherry. We could be the jam. we like.

MELISSA COLLETT: Yeah. I mean, I think it'd be interesting, though, to sort of ask you a similar question from the other perspective, you know, what's the why should you consider, you know, partnering with insurance companies, instead of going it independently?

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SIMON RANDALL: I mean, we have a very it's a very similar to way you've articulate we have a very similar challenge, albeit a slightly smaller business. You know, prioritizing what the team work on all the time is very important for us. And so being very clear about where our core IP is. And so we focus very, very heavily on solving the problem of how do we build a system that's performant across all the video types, basically, and that means that we then have a really good advantage that we can take that into lots of different sectors, because unfortunately, the video challenge sits quite horizontally, most at different industries.

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SIMON RANDALL: And so because we've been very clear about where we're adding value, that means that we can partner with, you know, Aviva, who you know, we don't understand risk and we don't understand insurance pricing. But we do understand video.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah.

SIMON RANDALL: And so we can provide very specialist tools into the teams that need them.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah.

SIMON RANDALL: And leave you guys to worry about, you know the insurance side of the business.

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SIMON RANDALL: So yeah. Yeah we there's very similar parallels in our other sectors actually where you know in the police for example, they can focus on their operational needs and we can provide them tools to free up time when they're managing the video. And so, you know, it's very much about just finding where our core IP sits and making sure that we can slot that into the other businesses.

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SIMON RANDALL: And the good thing is that it's not, you know, we're not competing with your internal teams because you know, they've got other things to worry about. Like you know how to price new insurance out of risks or you it turns out the global market is quite uncertain at the moment. And I imagine risks are quite tricky.

PAUL WELSH: Yes, focusing those teams on the things that are kind of really core is is really important.

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PAUL WELSH: And if you think about the use case that we've got, you know, working with yourself, which is the video redaction, you know, with teams doing that manually first of all, and it's not that it's a, it's an important problem for that team. And, and you know, it's degrades the efficiency of the team. But actually is it something that we'd be able to prioritize for an internal build versus, you know, relaunching our app?

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PAUL WELSH: It's never going to get there. So, you know, partnering with with people have really solve that problem across other markets that can have a ready made solution that comes in really, really helps build efficiency into that team. You do lots of that, you improve efficiency, and there's lots of little touch points across piece.

SIMON RANDALL: Yeah. Yeah. So you know what we've what we found is it's very easy to build a mediocre product.

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SIMON RANDALL: But the challenge is that mediocre actually ends up taking you more manual time. And so we use automation and we also have an application for review. But that automation has to be so good across all video types in order to genuinely save time for the end users. And so to your point, you know, you could very easily burn two years trying to get something.

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PAUL WELSH: Exactly. Yeah.

SIMON RANDALL: To get to the conclusion that, oh, turns out it's quite tricky.

PAUL WELSH: Yes.

SIMON RANDALL: And actually, if that's not your focus, you're never going to get something that's going to be good enough. And so in those kind of other areas, I think, you know, being able to partner is great.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah.

SIMON RANDALL: And you know, the fact that we've been able to partner with you guys to bring the solution into your teams is fantastic.

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SIMON RANDALL: And now we've seen and we did the initial kind of six month, six month trial. And now we're fully deployed. And actually we're getting really good feedback from the teams. We're saving time. And we're now starting to find that there's additional use cases alongside it where actually, if you could anonymize video, you can use it for a bunch of other things and you can collaborate with it.

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SIMON RANDALL: And so yeah, it's very exciting.

MELISSA COLLETT: We talked earlier about you being an insurtech potentially.

SIMON RANDALL: Yeah.

MELISSA COLLETT: I mean, do you see yourself going and focusing more and more on insurance? And, you know, what are the interesting challenges thrown up by the insurance sector?

SIMON RANDALL: Yeah. So I think I think as I kind of mentioned earlier, one of the one of the unique challenges that the claims guys have is they can get video, images, video, audio, text from anywhere.

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SIMON RANDALL: Because, you know, especially in general insurance, the video content that's being captured everywhere is quite diverse. And so it could go all the way from a, you know, a small portrait smartphone video to a wide angle dash cam video going down the motorway to some video footage in a cafe. And so having systems that are good enough to process all that's very interesting.

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SIMON RANDALL: And so that but at the moment we're working very much in the post-event incident. So something bad happens. There's a claim, videos pulled, it's put into the claim, it's put through the workflow process and goes through. We're also starting to discuss some use cases where people are looking to deploy live cameras into certain environments so that they can live, monitor and see what's happening, to try and avoid the instance happening in the first place.

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MELISSA COLLETT: Prevent the loss from occurring.

SIMON RANDALL: Correct.

MELISSA COLLETT: And mitigate risk.

SIMON RANDALL: And if you can, if you can suddenly make live video feeds anonymized and streamed to a team who can evaluate an environment be it in a restaurant or a hotel or somewhere and say, actually, I can see there's some risk here. I can see this in patterns of behavior here, but on anonymized data, again, you can start to help your customers avoid those risks in the first place.

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SIMON RANDALL: And so rather than being a kind of a reactive and again, I don't understand pricing or risk, but being in a react rather than being in a reactive position, you can then start to understand, how can I work with our customers to mean that they actually claim less and there's less incidents, and that employees are happier and less things happen.

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SIMON RANDALL: And so I think over time, moving more on to that proactive side, it's going to be really interesting. Because I think the more you know, you can make use of all this data that's now available, the better. But in order to use it, you need really strong privacy controls to start with so that you can make it available to the business.

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MELISSA COLLETT: I feel like there's an opportunity here for AI. You mentioned that earlier.

STEVE WHITELOCK: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, AI is, you know, the world of AI is expanding rapidly, isn't it? And, you know, it's, it's certainly becoming more on everybody's radar, I think. And, that's going to shift the landscape, I guess, again, going forward in terms of how products evolve and develop.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: And I guess a question to you, Paul. Flowing through from that, where the world is evolving and changing, we've talked about, you know, partnering with Pimloc at Aviva. It's great. How from within Aviva, you know, parts of the business looking at partnerships now, I know within the innovation team, we have a really strong focus on partnerships and working outside of the business to bring really exciting founders and tech in.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: But how is the how is that being received at Aviva and how are you seeing that journey evolve?

PAUL WELSH: Yeah, absolutely.

STEVE WHITELOCK: Over time.

PAUL WELSH: I think I think it's really interesting. And, you know, being able to introduce partnerships and external solutions into the organization has a huge benefit both on the culture of the organization, but also the way people think and and open up when I say really think Aviva really has its head up and is noticing what's out there and really speaking how that's how really thinking about how we can combine solutions and work with partners to create real collaborative, you know, solutions that are right for our customers.

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PAUL WELSH: Really good examples. I mean, we talked a little bit about those use cases that you just discovered. I think that's where the real power comes in, when you can work with an organization that does have that skill set, real understanding, and can actually work with a technology or solution provider that is an expert in that space, and you bring those two things together, the customer understanding, the risk understanding, the technology understanding.

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PAUL WELSH: And you can start to really uncover those use cases that maybe are not standard patterns are not going on. And I think, you know what? We're starting to establish that with you. We're starting to establish that with other partners as well. And I think that's where we're we get a real power. A power from the two parts coming together.

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SIMON RANDALL: Yeah. Actually, from our side, we've, we've engaged with a lot of kind of innovation groups.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah.

SIMON RANDALL: Kind of large corporates. And a lot of the time you have a very good initial discussion with the innovation team. And then it takes about a month to work out they're completely disconnected, disconnected from the operational side of the business. And then you have to go have all those conversations again.

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SIMON RANDALL: Whereas actually with Aviva, even in that first meeting, it was very clear that the innovation team had a very good understanding of the operational challenges and the teams.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah.

SIMON RANDALL: And then very quickly we were able to say, oh, okay, here's these teams, which I think have a real burning need for this right now. Let's get the product into them.

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SIMON RANDALL: And actually that that process flowed through really well. And that's a really good thing. And so I think having the innovation teams very well connected and hardwired into the business operationally means you don't waste time in what they kind of, you know, kind of innovation theater for a few months and actually it's much more about how do we go solve a problem for a team that's using this stuff every day.

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MELISSA COLLETT: A lot of our insurtech talk about the slow no.

SIMON RANDALL: Yeah,

PAUL WELSH: We're working really hard to to to remove that and to create these processes where, you know, we can really establish quickly. Is there a problem that that solved is, you know, is this burning for for the business right now? And is this solution right. And then how quickly do we get into a a test and learn pattern.

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PAUL WELSH: Right. So then we can get something up and running, improve it in the lightest way possible. And then we can really establish value and bring that business case to the floor. And that helps us get to a scale position. As you said, we, we did a six month pilot with Pimloc. And quite quickly we've seen the value and that's turned into a longer term relationship.

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SIMON RANDALL: Yeah. A slow no is the worst thing. Yes. Basically. Yeah. That's what that's what kills businesses basically. And that's also what stops people in engaging with certain sectors. Because if the sales cycle is long and there's a good chance that it's going to drop off, then people will back off and go to other sectors. So yeah. Yeah.

STEVE WHITELOCK: And I guess I guess.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: Melissa. From your perspective of Insurtech UK, kind of looking across both parts of it, how have you seen that evolve from a have you seen partnerships developing more broadly? I guess over the last couple of years?

MELISSA COLLETT: Oh, definitely. Because, initially, insurtech was all about disrupting and competing with incumbents. But it's moved really towards a situation most, insurtechs are collaborating and partnering.

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MELISSA COLLETT: And so, our members really want to meet companies like Aviva who are willing to embrace the technology, willing to pilot things and, you know, willing to not do this performative, type of activity but actually come with a problem and then, you know, look for a partner to provide a solution. And I think this is a great story to share with the wider community.

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MELISSA COLLETT: And we'd love to, you know, get you more involved as a, a company providing these insurance solutions, through tech, you know, to say, you know, this is we've got more where that came from.

SIMON RANDALL: Yeah.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah, absolutely.

STEVE WHITELOCK: And I think that's a, that's a really nice way, I guess, to to lead into a final question really about, you know, we're obviously doing stuff in the here and now with eye on the future.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: The world is evolving where we're not sure where it's going to take you from a tech perspective.. You know, what do both of you see is kind of the long term strategic benefits and values that partnerships can bring for both of you actually.

SIMON RANDALL: So we have a very good understanding of kind of the multimodal landscape. Actually, what we lack is the the real deep understanding of what the burning problems are that the teams every day.

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SIMON RANDALL: What's great now is because we have active teams using the products, and we're having discussions very regularly. We're now starting to understand because we're solving a, a small part of the workflow problem. But actually, you know, how do you find the video, how do you manage it? What do you do with it what happens to it afterwards? How do you know who's looked.

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SIMON RANDALL: And so there's a much broader workflow that we can then start to work with you on. And certainly on the more I'd say proactive side, starting to have some conversations around, well, how how could we help empower you to be on the front foot for some of these risks and claims? How can we use live video? How can we use life sensing?

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SIMON RANDALL: So getting, you know, the fact that we have a a really good product in the here and now means it's much easier to have some of those more speculative conversations, which normally may be a slow no. But the fact that we have, you know, an existing relationship means you can manage some more experimental conversations.

PAUL WELSH: Yep.

SIMON RANDALL: Whereas without the existing business, it would be very hard to do that.

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PAUL WELSH: I think that brings me on to a point I would make, which is around agility as well. You know, partnering with a smaller organization which is more nimble can make changes very quickly, doesn't have to think about the whole system means that you can actually try things out quickly at lower cost. And then scale where you find the value, which is harder to do when you're doing that in the core of an organization where you do need to think of the, the impacts around the piece and the resource, etc..

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PAUL WELSH: So I think with partnership where we often do things, an experimental basis for short term, maybe unconnected, and then integrate later when we've got confidence on the solution and the scalability of it.

SIMON RANDALL: Yeah, we see that in a range of sectors actually, where we have end user teams will use our end solution directly. And then once we're embedded, we then look at integrating into existing, you know, in your instances be it claims management system exactly like many other digital evidence management or content management.

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SIMON RANDALL: Those sorts of things.

STEVE WHITELOCK: So brilliant. And I think that that's a really good way to kind of wrap things up, because we've talked here today about, you know, how important that sort of journey is from, you know, avoiding some of the slow no's. Right? But actually, what the longer term benefits are, particularly with tech evolving and the fact that, you know, partners can bring an external lens into the business.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: And likewise, a company like Aviva can share what's going on more broadly across the landscape. So look, time flies when you're having fun. That's what we've, and we've reached the end today. That brings us to the end of episode one of the Partnerships podcast. I just want to say a massive thank you to Paul, massive thank you, Simon as well.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: And a massive thank you to Melissa my co-host. Thank you so much for coming in and joining us today. I hope you enjoyed today. Do join us again for the next episode. Thank you very much.

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Harriet

Welcome to episode two of the Partnerships podcast in association with Aviva and insurtech UK. My name's Harriet Granville Jones, group innovation manager here at Aviva. And in today's episode, we're going to be exploring the topic of pitching B2B.

 

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Harriet

I'm delighted to be joined in the studio today by Claire Mongeau, investor at Founders Factory, and by Arslan Hannani, group innovation officer here at Aviva. Welcome both. 

 

Claire

Thank you. Very, very happy to be here. I'm happy to be here. 

 

Harriet 

Good, good. So today we're talking obviously about pitching B2B. So, Claire, you must see thousands of pitches in your role.

 

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Harriet

Firstly, can you explain a little bit about what Founders Factory is and then what is a great pitch? 

 

Claire

Yeah. So Founders Factory is an early stage investor, an accelerator program. So, have been around for about ten years and invested in more than 400 plus companies to date. And the way that we operate is we partner with incredible corporates such as Aviva, to identify what are some really exciting up and coming trends in, the, in the markets, in the fields of insurance or wealth.

 

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Claire

And then we go out and find really incredible founders and startups to invest in. And our investment is not just cash, but we also have, a six month program that allows us to provide extra hands on support to the companies and also gives them access to the brilliant minds of Aviva and other corporate partners to help unlock that kind of unfair advantage.

 

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Claire

So yes, I see, thousands of pitches, in my day to day from, entrepreneurs pitching to ask for money, but then also from entrepreneurs preparing to pitch to potential clients. So I think the, the best pitches that I see in general are the ones that tell an amazing story. So these are the entrepreneurs that can really come in and, tell, a vision or tell a narrative that identifies a really clear problem that people can understand and resonate with.

 

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Claire

And the investor side, it usually looks like, what is a vision of the future and a market opportunity? That, we agree with that we've also identified for clients. It's we really understand there's this massive pain point in our workflows, or it's a gap that we need to solve. And then they're really easily able to, in simple words, present a really good solution that fills that problem or fills that opportunity.

 

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Claire

And really, the best pitches are also ones that a can build some really good rapport with the audience. That can be that feels a little bit more like a conversation. And then also prevents presents again, a really simple solution to a problem that everyone can agree with. And, that's very cliche, but that's something that is pretty pretty tried and true.

 

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Harriet

As simple as that. 

 

Claire

Yes, easy as that. 

 

Harriet 

And, what are the, like, common mistakes that should be avoided when insurers are pitching to insurers? 

 

Claire

I think that, some of the biggest problems are one, again, not actually demonstrating that they really understand the problem. Insurance is very complicated. We love insurance, but there's a lot of really, a lot of intricacies, and a lot of, nuances that, are kind of in the insurance value chain.

 

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Claire

And so a founder, or an entrepreneur should really come in and show that they understand either from past experience, if there were a lot of customer interviews, that they that they really get it. Because a lot of times your entrepreneurs will come in and say something pretty, maybe surface, maybe high level, and that just really kind of loses, honestly, credibility at the early stage.

 

00:03:47:22 - 00:04:13:05

Claire

So you want to show we really understand the problem that you're working with. And then can also demonstrate that they have the, credibility, the experience and the networks that can again, really fill, fill that problem or fill that's, give the solution that answers, that problem. So again, I think, I think there's, a lot of issues, especially when pitching any kind of financial institution or regulated industry where it would be super high level and then also prevent present.

 

00:04:13:05 - 00:04:39:01

Claire

Their solution is pretty. Maybe I just said simplicity is important, but present something that's, so simple as to not actually address the real problems, in implementing solutions. So I think that's one thing that's really important. I think another thing is that, an entrepreneur, a founder should recognize that insurers and big decision makers have seen so many solutions, have probably also tried to build them and in themselves maybe already have.

 

00:04:39:06 - 00:05:05:09

Claire

And so showing that, you really understand the world and the competitive landscape of whatever tool you're bringing in and how it complements not just, other, startups out there, but also the work that might be going on internally. So it's really being able to show, like, I understand truly the world in which this decision maker, the insurer is working with, and they're actually bringing something to add into it, rather than just saying, oh, you know, we know it's hard to process claims.

 

00:05:05:09 - 00:05:26:03

Claire

We're going to solve all your claims processing problems and likely not. Right. I don't know if you have anything.

 

Arslan

No. It's I think you've summed it up so well. And the one I would, I would sort of double down on is the oversimplification, because, you know, there's a lot of people we have a lot of colleagues. For example, if you think about Aviva, like problems and opportunities are being identified all the time.

 

00:05:26:05 - 00:05:49:19

Arslan

Right. And we're not just sitting here. We're trying to solve them and we're we're identifying all the complexities. But a lot of startups will come in and be like, oh this thing can solve all these issues. And it's like potentially yes it could. But have you really thought about the intricacies of how and have you thought about how do we you know, as Aviva, we have 20 million customers in our three markets.

 

00:05:49:19 - 00:06:11:00

Arslan

So if you think about the scale at which we need to solve it, for it presents the next level of detail, the next level of complexity they need to work through. So yeah, the oversimplification sort of gets me sometimes, which is like actually, you know, startups should do their homework and really understand the nuances. And I think that helps with, with, with getting the pitch over the line, too.

 

00:06:11:00 - 00:06:34:24

Arslan

Because if you can present that, actually we understand the complexities, we understand the challenges that the corporate faces, and we are prepared and we have the perseverance and patience to go through that, that gives us a lot more confidence to say, actually, this team could potentially solve that thing. 

 

Claire

I think the the question that we often ask on the investment side is what is this founder's unique insight?

 

00:06:34:24 - 00:06:54:23

Claire

What is a startup's really unique insight on the problem space? On the solution space? And if they can answer that for us, and they can definitely answer that for their clients. And so being able to even in the first 30 minutes of meeting someone, of course, is difficult. But if you can show, I really understand, I have a really unique insight into how we can solve this, that maybe people have thought about before.

 

00:06:54:23 - 00:07:27:01

Claire

But, you know, I think I can bring something unique to the solution space that is really, really, really helpful. 

 

Harriet

So not to sidestep the complexities, but actually to to delve into it and show that they understand it. 

 

Arslan

And look, it's it's going to be impossible for every startup to understand the complexities of an organization, for example, as big as Aviva, right, with as many customers, but showing an appreciation for the complexity and not oversimplifying this, the solution and the challenge, I think that's the important bit, right?

 

00:07:27:03 - 00:07:48:01

Harriet

And so say that the pitch goes really, really well and they get that over the line. Fantastic. What are what's the some of the challenges that might arise when trying to secure the, the pilot or trying to get the pilot to launch and how can they be overcome? 

 

Arslan

Yeah. Look, I mean, from a, I can only speak to an Aviva perspective, right.

 

00:07:48:01 - 00:08:07:22

Arslan

It might be different for different corporates, but we set a really high bar and a pretty high standard of the things that we put in front of colleagues or for customers. Right. It's so that means there's a fair amount of checks and balances. That means that it can take time in certain situations. But we we're not shy about that, I think.

 

00:08:07:22 - 00:08:32:09

Arslan

I think we do that because of the sense of responsibility and and, you know, the scale at which we operate. So I think often I've seen some startups lose patience. Right. And it's what I would challenge them with is like if you think about the scale at which we would want to do this, then have the appreciation for the checks and balances that is good for both us and for them.

 

00:08:32:14 - 00:08:57:00

Arslan

Right. And helps us make sure that we're doing the right thing and that we're going through the right processes. And it makes the startup, their product or their service, I think, a lot better, because if it can survive through a lot of these checks and balances and, and go through a couple of rounds of sort of investigating and thinking about it and due diligence, then the output should be better, right?

 

00:08:57:00 - 00:09:20:06

Arslan

And we should we should all have more confidence in him. 

 

Harriet

And Claire from your perspective, what other kind of characteristics are really promising in founders when they're trying to secure a pilot with a corporate?

 

Claire

Yeah. I think understanding the sales cycle and being able to, before even maybe the first sale or first pilot is done is, is is really, really important.

 

00:09:20:06 - 00:09:35:07

Claire

And that's one of the things we also look for, when we're talking to early stage Angel Pre-seed founders, you know, because the sales cycle and sales efficiency and onboarding time is something that people always underestimate.

 

00:09:35:07 - 00:09:49:13

Claire

that's that's fine. I did that myself when I was an entrepreneur. So I think it's it's one of those things that you know, before, before founders, reach any sort of pilot if they really understand, like, the first POC could take a year.

 

00:09:49:15 - 00:10:18:01

Claire

And getting to that could take six months. So how are we also fundraising? How are we allocating our resources appropriately? And then when they do get to a point of saying, great, we have an LOI, we're excited to potentially go into a pilot, maybe with an institution like Aviva. What we really like to see is, when founders are kind of mapping out, their first couple pilots as kind of a series of mini experiments or tests, to understand also what the onboarding and sales cycle looks like so that they're also learning along the way.

 

00:10:18:01 - 00:10:35:16

Claire

And then I can also mitigate some of the, I don't want to say frustration, but the challenges of how long, you know, potentially it might take are saying, like, okay, we're understanding that this time maybe, we didn't understand, in the sales process, how many stakeholders we need to get on board to implement successfully, like this aspect of pilot.

 

00:10:35:17 - 00:11:05:09

Claire

Now we know that we need to talk to this team, this team, this team and this team. Or we didn't understand that we need to go through, like, you know, this level of compliance of which I'm sure they would. But, you know, now we know we need to get that process done. And yeah, I mean, if if people have kind of planned and, are adjusting appropriately and that means when you do go through a POC and pilot, and if you've also set your metrics of what you're trying to learn out of that really well and aligned with the key stakeholders from the beginning, that means, I mean, insurance is all

 

00:11:05:09 - 00:11:36:24

Claire

about mitigating risk. But that means once you get through successful pilot, it's going to be hopefully pretty easy or you're there's going to be no surprises when you then want to go to a full enterprise kind of deployment. And so I, I think those are the things that we really look for, like an understanding around, it's a long process, but if it's done well and all the stakeholders are brought along on the journey, then you get that critical, move, shift from the from the pilot to the enterprise contract, which, yeah, is a dream.

 

00:11:37:01 - 00:11:59:12

Harriet

Exactly. And it is difficult because for a lot of these startups, they're in such small teams, obviously. But then when working with, corporate, it's not just one stakeholder you've got to get over the line for the pitch or the pilot. It's it's many. It could be all different teams. Arslan how do you align expectations with different stakeholders when going through the pitching or securing a pilot?

 

00:11:59:18 - 00:12:17:19

Arslan

Yeah. No, it's a it's a really interesting topic. And, you know, coming back to what you said Claire, like it's it's like let's just break this down into two parts. Right. But so there's obviously a procurement process which in some cases can be very fast. In some cases it can be a little slower. Depends on the situation, depends on the topic and so on.

 

00:12:17:21 - 00:12:37:17

Arslan

The other thing that can also be quite fast or quite slow is this sort of stakeholder alignment and sort of how aligned are the stars internally right from experience I've seen, for example, there's been scenarios where there's been some sort of, you know, like a cyber incident and then there's a capability gap identified and it all goes extremely quick.

 

00:12:37:19 - 00:13:06:00

Arslan

Right? Often, though, that is confused by actually the opportunity might not yet make sense for us. Right. There's a lot of startups out there that have some incredible ideas. And for some companies it's really good, but for others it may not be good or it may not be good enough. Yet. So I think it's really important not just to align the stakeholders, but understand what is it that they're trying to do, where is it that they're trying to go.

 

00:13:06:00 - 00:13:26:12

Arslan

So I would always say the startup ask a lot of questions. Like so often do I see, you know, people come up to me and just start pitching. And, you know, I was saying this to Harriet earlier, like, it reminds me of, like walking into a car showroom and the salesman is like, check out this 4x4. And I'm like, I don't know if you've asked me what kind of car I'm actually looking for, right?

 

00:13:26:12 - 00:13:47:17

Arslan

So have that patience and like, really ask a lot of questions, then tailor your approach, but also appreciate that maybe a great idea, but not the right idea for us right now. That may change tomorrow. That may change in six months. It may never change. But stay patient and like keep asking questions and see how we can fit it.

 

00:13:47:19 - 00:14:08:21

Arslan

Another tip that I would always, sort of, I always give to startups is identify your champion pretty quickly. You know, it's a lot of it's a lot of navigation that needs to happen. There's a lot of stakeholders that need to be aligned. There's a business case that needs to be done. There's there's just a lot of different aspects of of really building a, you know, a long term healthy partnership.

 

00:14:08:23 - 00:14:30:19

Arslan

So having somebody internally that really champions you and can help build the case. Yeah. And help identify when the stars are more aligned or less aligned. Or how does this fit in with the priorities of where a business is trying to go or where strategy is trying to go? Having that person like it's very important. And I'd always suggest that for a startup, just give them all the materials to fight for your case.

 

00:14:30:19 - 00:14:55:04

Arslan

Give them all the all the all the information and all the all the PowerPoints and all the sort of the all the examples and all the case studies to help them make the case internally. Yeah. 

 

Harriet

And timing is obviously really, really critical. Claire, how do you manage the, the timing. How do you know when it's the right time for a startup to go into a partnership?

 

00:14:55:06 - 00:15:19:13

Claire

Great question. I think startups want to go into partnerships as quickly as possible because that's where they'll make their money. So, I think that, we when we're working with the startups through, kind of the accelerator, a lot of the work that, like myself and my colleagues do, is kind of help the companies become kind of enterprise ready.

 

00:15:19:19 - 00:15:37:24

Claire

And often it's not even quite enterprise ready, but it's getting them to the point where they're getting there, ready to be enterprise ready. So a lot of that is looking at, okay, usually the founders, have identified a good problem. They've identified a good solution. Then it's really looking out for the solution that they're building.

 

00:15:37:24 - 00:16:04:13

Claire

How good does it have to be to get the client to say, yeah, I'm going to pay for it because what's the risk of it going wrong? So in some things, you know, like if you're putting together, let's say, like, a marketing agent, to help service, you know, more specific, like gen Z clients, for example, the cost of reach, having your ad reach a millennial versus a Gen Z, that's like, not that big a deal.

 

00:16:04:16 - 00:16:33:09

Claire

So maybe the fidelity doesn't have to be as strong for that. If you're, let's say, a cyber company that's, protecting maybe Aviva's, you know, SME clients against cyber attacks, that has to be really, really, really good. So then I, we always kind of look at it, say, where actually is the product? How good is it actually, how well is it actually delivering on the promise that, you're saying it is and then what other checks and balances, are you putting in place to showcase that?

 

00:16:33:09 - 00:16:55:13

Claire

What other kind of like, regulations or compliances have you go through? Who have been your other clients? Maybe an insurer is not the best first client for you, because, again, it's all about making sure that, you're mitigating as much risk as possible. Maybe it's going through another channel or through a smaller potential clients to validate your solution before you bring it to a big enterprise client.

 

00:16:55:15 - 00:17:16:05

Claire

And so those are kind of a lot of the steps that we typically go through, like we need to have a really good use case, and you need to have excellent proof that it's going to work not just on a small scale, but also across maybe Aviva's 20 million customers, for example. So that's how, we kind of try to help the startups plan their, their product roadmap.

 

00:17:16:07 - 00:17:44:18

Claire

And so maybe that doesn't look like showing up to Arslan's office and pitching and saying, all right, let's do a pilot tomorrow. But maybe it's meeting and saying, okay, what would you need to know? What metrics would you need to see, to be able to say, yes, let's go into POC and then maybe it takes a year to build that out and build that case, but at the same time, to the stakeholder alignment point, if you're continuing to build that relationship throughout and show how you're learning and growing, then you also build, some of that internal championship.

 

00:17:44:20 - 00:18:08:21

Claire

But yeah, it's it's especially for regulated industries. The product just has to be really, really, really good. And you have to be able to prove it. 

 

Harriet

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're we're taking that that risk and we want to work with the startup we're trusting their expertise. So obviously it has to be accurate. From an insurer's perspective, how important is timing and what is the right timing when you're looking for start ups?

 

00:18:08:23 - 00:18:28:02

Arslan

I mean, it it changes like it depends on the situation. Right. Like we talked about a couple of example of how it can change. I think more than the timing. Like maybe again we break this down in two sort of parts. Right. Like one I've already mentioned it. We've put a pretty high bar on the type of product and the and the quality.

 

00:18:28:02 - 00:18:51:08

Arslan

So sometimes we see something where like that can be very interesting. If and these things. So sometimes it's a timing of like I want, I just want to see the startup develop a little bit more. Another six months, maybe it's proof points with a client, or maybe it's a different a different angle to their proposition or a different sort of, you know, added benefit, whatever.

 

00:18:51:10 - 00:19:10:00

Arslan

That pays plays a part. And then internally we have to think about, well, does this actually help us accelerate where we want it to go. Right. So it's just because it's a really good idea. If it doesn't fit with my strategy it's not going to. But as we all know strategies evolve and priorities change over time.

 

00:19:10:00 - 00:19:32:08

Arslan

So something that may not be relevant today could be relevant in 12 months time or in six months time. So who knows. So I think I wouldn't want to say that this is how you optimize for timing or this is how you shorten or lengthen, but I think it's important. What I would say to the startups is like, it's important to understand the different parts of timing, like there's an internal piece, there's an external piece, and then there's a startup piece of like, how mature are you?

 

00:19:32:09 - 00:19:58:02

Arslan

Where are you on that curve and what would again, thinking about that high bar that we set what would we want to see for you to to meet that criteria? 

 

Claire

And I think, because we we've talked about this a lot in companies we jointly invest in through founders factory. The big questions we're asking now is what where is the market evolving and what is the big opportunity around, you know, this particular problem in this particular solution?

 

00:19:58:04 - 00:20:24:06

Claire

What does what where do we believe that the market is going over the next five years? And then finally, should a startup be solving this problem? And if the answer is yes, because, you know, there's, new technology, new innovation coming out, there's new research, there's some really cool insights that, a startup can be able to derive about, about customers, about users in a way that they would a large institution can't or won't, which is great.

 

00:20:24:06 - 00:20:45:17

Claire

And then it's looking at, okay, now, why this startup? So I think from the investment side, it's also a question of, is your market super, super crowded? That means you have to be even that much more excellent. On top of the other solutions that are available, have, other financial institutions been developing their own solutions to solve this problem in-house.

 

00:20:45:17 - 00:21:06:23

Claire

Then again, you have to be better than, what the, enterprise has already spent maybe millions of pounds building. And if there's a gap, then amazing. Then maybe market wise, it is the right timing. And then it's kind of. Yeah. Looking at, what exactly then do you need to show to be able to be rolled out to 20 million clients?

 

00:21:07:00 - 00:21:35:16

Harriet

And it's tough. That's a lot of elements to consider and to try and, get both the insurtech and the insurer to, to understand. So it is difficult. 

 

Arslan

If, if I could, like it is difficult. But I think startups also have to realize like we are investing and creating the teams and the scenarios and the landing zones for them, you know, so a we have an innovation team, we have joint ventures and partnerships like with Founders Factory.

 

00:21:35:18 - 00:21:55:00

Arslan

So it's it may seem hard, but there are these there are various ways we're helping too to say because look at the in the long run, we want to have our finger on the pulse. We want to know what their latest technology or startup or the idea is and if it makes sense, like it will, it will be quite quick.

 

00:21:55:02 - 00:22:20:04

Arslan

But sometimes the slowness gets confused with that actually may not make sense for us right now. You know what I mean? But for sure, I'm very keen that we keep having partnerships like this. And and within our team, we have these ready made champions so that if we do find something that fits, we know exactly who can sort of champion that startup and sort of build a case around it and get it through us as quickly as possible.

 

00:22:20:06 - 00:22:58:03

Harriet

Absolutely. And so last question, what what are the the mutual benefits that partnerships like this can bring for insurers and insurtechs? Claire do you want to go?

 

Claire

Yeah. So I, used to be an entrepreneur, and now I'm an investor. And so I've sat on both sides of the table to really understand and see, what is the, unfair advantage, maybe, of being able to have a group of people have built companies before us, staffed around you, to, to help you not make the same mistakes as maybe they made.

 

00:22:58:05 - 00:23:24:14

Claire

That's what I tell a lot of founders I work with. I'm like, I did this. Don't do that. And then there's also, the benefit of having, a thought partner, like the different, great people, at Aviva to be able to help you, like, look under the hood, even if you have, you know, decades worth of experience, you know, within an insurer having an extra set of eyes or people who can say, okay, here's how things work within, you know, our ecosystem.

 

00:23:24:14 - 00:23:43:19

Claire

Here's how it works in the ecosystem at large and help you shape, kind of the strategy and the mandate. I think that's the real benefit because, you know, when you're an entrepreneur at the early stage, you're doing literally everything yourself, you and your co-founder, doing everything from planning, you know, what's the vision of insurance? Look like in the next ten years?

 

00:23:43:19 - 00:24:05:17

Claire

And you're also trying to figure out how to file your taxes. And it's it's so much. And so I think, you know, the benefit of, of partnerships like this is having people come together and say, okay, here's where is the most valuable, like, place to spend your time. Here's some, strategies that can help you reduce your cognitive load so you can really focus on those things.

 

00:24:05:17 - 00:24:37:16

Claire

And also here are some people who've, like, been there before, who love the sector that you're working in and can also help give you some new insights that make sure that you know, you you can skip maybe 6 to 12 months of trying to knock on doors or trying to ideate or find solutions to things. And so I think that's the really cool, value add of kind of the Founders Factory, Aviva Partnership for insurtechs and, and other companies especially, just giving, giving them that like insight.

 

00:24:37:18 - 00:24:58:02

Claire

That gives them a little bit more of an edge and cool people to work with. 

 

Arslan

I mean, I agree with everything you said. And just from an insurer's perspective, it's so great to know that sort of, you know, founders factory are sort of our eyes and ears, right? Like, they can they can see things that we may not always see and it just ups the quality.

 

00:24:58:04 - 00:25:20:03

Arslan

Right. Knowing that quality team that Founders Factory has, we know that actually this great idea is surrounded by a great set of people and a great set of people who know us, who've known us for like nine years. Yeah. As a partner, know many parts of our business, knows a lot of the stakeholders. So we we feel that much more comfortable when something's coming through Founders Factory.

 

00:25:20:03 - 00:25:41:09

Arslan

Because because of Claire, because of the team and just knowing how well they know us. So like, I think I think it's a fantastic partnership. 

 

Harriet

So it's already vetted. It's already we already know that it's got a good chance. Thank you so much, Claire. Thank you so much Arslan. And thank you so much for watching episode two of the partnerships podcast.

 

00:25:41:13 - 00:25:43:15

Harriet

Hope to see you again soon.