Allison Schneider: A Lens on Vouch The Startup For Tech Founders

On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Allison or Ally Schneider who heads up venture partnerships at Vouch, a US business insurance platform for startups. Vouch raised over $160 million in investment funding so far with well-renowned investors including Silicon Valley Bank, Index Ventures and Y Combinator. Ally talks to Sabine about the company’s business model and helps us understand how Vouch helps founders like you grow and scale in the right way.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The product and experience have been very manual traditionally, we’ve been able to build a digital-first experience for founders to be able to obtain business insurance. They can apply through our site in 7-10 minutes through our questionnaire, which asks specific questions about their business that gives them a customised quote in terms of what coverage and limits we recommend, and they can adjust those parameters to suit them and their coverage will go live at midnight on the same day. This not only reduces the time for the startup founders but also provides a very easy self-service experience for those that want it to be self-served.
• When you think of legacy risk classification systems, they tend to be very broad and vague. We break it down into 70 niche codes (from connected home devices to B2B SaaS, AI/machine learning) to get really granular and customised about the customer needs in their different types of companies. That goes into our underwriting algorithm to be able to say these are the coverages that make the most sense for your business in terms of where you are today as well as the ones you might like to look at as the business grows and scales in the future.
• We have 10 proprietary lines of covers. We’re in the process of becoming a full carrier, which gives us a lot more flexibility to go direct-to-consumers, to do more from a discounting and bundling perspective, and flexibility from a timing perspective as well as to put coverage in place and bound the risk quickly. We also take a really proactive approach to risk management as well.
• A founder has so many responsibilities, to their business and people too. There are things that founders are incredible at, and having business insurance expertise typically isn’t one of them – and nor should it. We think about our role as to how we can make this process as painless, easy, cost-effective and high quality, as we should be able to save these founders time and energy so that they can focus their time and effort on the things that are really important to their business

 

BEST MOMENTS

‘The energy that you get spending your days surrounded by the most amazing entrepreneurs and founders, talking with them through the most interesting problems that they’re solving: That doesn’t get old.’

‘I get asked if I’m a corporate or a startup person, I actually really enjoy both environments as long as I can collaborate with the other.’

‘When business insurance matters, it really matters. It’s an area where it’s really high importance but low awareness. We saw the opportunity to build really innovative products and services that are really geared towards these types of companies as we really want to fill that education gap too: or why business insurance is really important for founders.’

‘Our insurance advisors’ expertise set us apart in terms of how we engage with our customers or the startup founders effectively and directly. They understand the inner workings of how startups operate and what it means to be an eCommerce business vs a SaaS business... the milestones those companies go through and the risks they face.’

 

ABOUT THE GUEST

Allison Schneider is heading Venture Ecosystem Partnership at Vouch Insurance, she is relatively new to the InsurTech world with a background in corporate and startup collaborations. She started her career at IBM Waston on IBM's startup partnership programme, supporting startups that were building off IBM’s AI and machine learning APIs, offering them the technology, support and resources they needed to grow. Through that role, Alli fell in love with AI and machine learning, technology in general, and the possibilities and use cases of how these technologies can be utilised.

After IBM she spent some time at a venture-backed startup called x.ai building out their sales and business development practice, working with corporates from the other side of the table. She then went back into corporate, working at Principal, E*TRADE Ventures and Labs, leading the startup mission there while engaging and building bridges with FinTech and enterprise tech startups shaping proof of concepts, prototypes and commercial pilots.
https://www.vouch.us/ 

 

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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