SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Camera Insurance as Beachhead to SaaS Play? 100 Customers Already.
24 Apr 2021
Chapter 1: How many customers does Insurious.us have currently?
So how many customers as of today? Today, we have about 100. 100, okay, that's great. So five weeks in, 100 customers, 14, but what is that, 1,400 bucks a month anymore, are they? Yeah, something like that, exactly.
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Chapter 2: What services does Insurious.us provide for equipment insurance?
Like Eric Wan, 18 months before he took Zoom public.
We got to grow faster. Minimum is 100% over the past several years.
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Hello, everyone. My guest today is Matt Sweetwood. He's a serial entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in tech startups as a tech startup founder. He's an internationally known professional speaker, author, coach, influencer. However, his greatest achievement is having raised five successful kiddos to adulthood as a single dad. He's a frequent national TV and publication contributor.
Matt Sweetwood, you ready to take us to the top?
I am. Let's go. Let's go. Fast, fast, fast.
I was going to say, five kids and now insurance. So your company's called Insurious.us. What's the business do?
We provide equipment insurance. It's simple as that. Think of your most valuable equipment like camera equipment, audiovisual equipment, anything that really is insurable and you take out of the home.
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Chapter 3: What inspired the founder to start an insurance company for photographers?
You have a unique advantage in that you were in the trenches running a camera shop. So that's an advantage. But who are the big players in this space and how do you beat them?
Well, you see, the way you beat them in this space is you provide the easiest access at the right price. So we have what we believe is the lowest cost policy and we have the easiest access. There's essentially no place you can go sign up and have a policy in about seven, eight minutes. Right. You don't have to speak to anybody. You just sign up basic information and you actually get the policy.
So you can buy in that policy really fast. So it's easy access and a very low cost and a very, very wide level of coverage. Those are our selling advantages.
Talking about Hiscox Insurance, they're obviously a big player in this space. They're spending a crap ton on Facebook ads. How do you compare head to head against them?
In our case, we're offering a more specialized insurance. Once again, they're offering all sorts of different products and it gets very confusing. And a lot of those will overlap with what you have. This is a very specific product. And as a result, the premium is going to be extremely low and extremely targeted.
And once again, if you dig into their policies, you'll find that they don't cover some of the things that we cover.
Interesting. Now, have you bootstrapped this company or have you raised?
We're just bootstrapping it for now. The beauty of this product is that we're able to run it with a very, very small staff. How many? We have tech expertise. We're actually running with five people right now. That's incredible. How many engineers? We actually have one engineer and one outside. So really five and a half. I have an outside. There's one outside tech person.
There's an inside tech person. I'm a tech person. And we have three co-founders and basically two other people working in the company. Why did you need three co-founders? Why couldn't you just do it yourself 100%? You know, I love that question. So my expertise is in tech marketing and, you know, in the electronics and equipment industry. The other partner is an insurance person.
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Chapter 4: How does Insurious.us handle customer claims and insurance processes?
I don't keep any receipts. It's all digital. Do I have to talk to your mom?
Apparently, I need to talk to your mom.
There are people listening right now going, I'm the same as Nathan.
I would never keep receipts. Most people have a receipt because you get an online, at least in today's world, most of the time you get an email receipt. People do save those. Yeah, if you're going to buy a retail place, a little more complicated, I'm anal retentive. So when I buy something expensive, you know, here's what I would say to you.
It's probably because you're a rich guy and you don't really care that much about the value of the camera and you can afford to replace it. But let me tell you, I know a lot of photographers who make a living off of this. or weekend warriors or whatever, or have $20,000 worth of equipment. And if that equipment is lost, they are out of luck.
They used to walk into my store all the time, literally in tears, right? Because they didn't do it. So if you can't afford it, you'll find the incentive to do it. Maybe for a guy like you, if you lose your GH5, you'll say, okay, I want the new model anyway. I'll go buy the new model. So it's a little bit of...
part of this, of the demand of the product, your demand for it, your need for it is not quite as high as someone who can't afford to replace it or is in fear of losing it. You're just not enough fear. That's really what it comes down to. I'm giving you my psychological analysis. You're just not in fear.
You call me rich. You say, I have no fear. I say, you're right. And so you're, I mean, it's exactly accurate right now. You know, Do I wish there was a way where if I did lose something, I could quickly push a button and get reimbursed for it? Yes. I'm just not convinced anything is that easy.
No, and you wouldn't want it to be that easy. Obviously, that wouldn't be a very good business model on our part.
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Chapter 5: What competitive advantages does Insurious.us have in the insurance market?
What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?
I wish I actually wish I didn't get married to my friend. No, I wish I actually didn't have kids so young. This is stupid wish because I'm now 50 and free. But I wish I traveled more. I didn't. I went, I graduated school early, went to graduate school, did all that stuff. I didn't do any traveling when I was young and didn't party and stuff like that. Got to do it now.
Insurius.us is really a disaster play here, right? They're not selling stuff or they're selling an insurance plan for photographers to cover their cameras. A hundred folks signed up so far at about $14 an average per month to call out $1,400 per month in revenue. Three co-founders, 33% split down the middle, five people total working on the business. Matt leading the way.
Matt, thanks for taking us to the top.
Thanks for having me. Great to be here.
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