Scouting for Growth Florian Graillot: Astorya.vc ... Europe’s Early-Stage InsurTech Investor
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Florian Graillot, an investor and co-founder of Astorya.vc or Astorya. Astorya invests in Seed InsurTech startups across Europe. In this conversation the pair cover topics including who he is, why he started Astorya and how he sees the world of corporate venturing today and tomorrow.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There is a trend beginning where there is direct competition between Tier 1 insurance players and reinsurance companies working directly with InsurTech startups able to bypass specific insurance providers across the value chain. The latter has a massive impact on how the market is being restructured behind the scenes.
- Florian built Astorya with co-founder Jan Kastory because he saw a gap in the market. As an investor, Florian shares that Astorya’s focus is investing in entrepreneurs first, utilising his team’s financial and entrepreneurial background. Because of this context, it makes sense that Astorya attracts great tech entrepreneurs. At Astorya, Florian states "we understand how to grow businesses as we do just that ourselves every day."
- FinTech investors only commit 10% of their time to InsurTech. Astorya only does InsurTech explains Florian, meaning that 100% of Astorya’s time is dedicated to insurance tech ventures. And this is why Astorya’s limited partners invested in the firm. The Limited Partners know that the Astorya team will spend 100% of its time on the InsurTech topic every single day of the week.
- Don’t be afraid of what you read in the newspapers. There are still a lot of opportunities to address in InsurTech, not everything has been done yet. The full insurance value chain needs to be unbundled, re-bundled and revamped and InsurTech startups can address this in numbers. We already have a few unicorns within the InsurTech space. Don’t forget that technology is a means to an end but without it, it becomes tougher and tougher to succeed in any industry. Today, technology becomes your competitive edge over traditional insurance companies.
BEST MOMENTS
‘InsurTech is way broader than just insurance. It can be connected to almost any industry.’
‘Tech investment is in my DNA, insurance is much more opportunistic.’
‘There’s always somebody who is managing more money than you. It’s not about money, it’s about the industry, focus, understanding and capacity to accelerate go-to-market strategies, especially around software or B2B technologies.’
‘It may be very easy to raise money at the very beginning of the startup journey, or when you are big enough to attract a huge round from private equity investors, but when you are in the middle, it’s still challenging. I believe that both entrepreneurs and corporates should keep that in mind.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Florian Graillot is a founding partner and VC investor at Astorya.vc where he invests in early-stage tech startups in Europe. His main focus is to identify, evaluate and invest in the growth ventures that utilise the next generation of customer-centric technologies that will reinvent insurance. His skills include investment, financial modelling, entrepreneurship, business development, and strategy.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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