Time flies, It's hard to believe how quickly this year has passed by.
As the year begins to draw to a close, I find myself reflecting on the past year while also eagerly planning the festive feast. This time of year is always intriguing for me. Business slows down, no major decisions are made, and email replies tend to be automated. But it's also a period of reflection and taking stock of the year that has passed.
So I’ll try to provide an overview of our year as an insurtech startup, I will attempt to summarize the progress and end with a conclusion that I'll share right now, though it was a decent year, there is certainly room for improvement.
When most people think of startups, they either think of a few hipster millennials having fun getting a bunch of customers and making a killing in no time, or lazy college students who don't want to work for a multinational and try to create products for non-existent markets every six months and disappear with VC money.
We do not fall into either stereotype. If only because, unfortunately, we did not scale at a pace that allowed us to throw the biggest end-of-the-year party, but we also did not burn our investors' money unnecessarily.
We put our thinking caps on, maybe a tad too tightly, this year was about building and creating.
We've been working behind the scenes, stirring the cauldron of creativity. We dabbled in new markets and whipped up some fresh products, not jumping on the AI bandwagon and dropping everything to focus on this technology. (Alright, we've cooked up something extra special, but you'll need to wait till next year for the reveal!) And we even sprinkled a bit of magic on our sales processes and website. Like a wizard's spell, but for insurance! This was necessary because, in my experience, being a start-up in the insurance market is both an advantage and a disadvantage. We recognized that we have to find a balance, we can be super creative and innovative but we also have to be professional and polished and our look has to reflect that.
Time was our toughest rival, making us wait for decisions, answers, and solutions. But we held our ground and learned some serious life lessons along the way, ones we'll be packing up and taking with us into the new year. We also learned that we can make fancy, personalized dashboards but in the end, everyone will ask for Excel sheets anyway. Noted, simple is the best.
Then there were physical changes. We moved to a new office and the team also changed. Teams are like jigsaw puzzles – sometimes you need to swap a few pieces to complete the picture. We welcomed new faces, bid farewell to some old pals, but the Insurwiz spirit remains stronger than ever. It's like a family reunion but with more spreadsheets and fewer embarrassing stories.
It was a great year for networking, we've had the pleasure of meeting talented professionals who are at the forefront of the insurance market. It's refreshing to see the level of openness and innovation among individuals in this old industry. We're thrilled to be part of such a vibrant community. If you were one of the awesome folks that we caught up with this year, we'd like to give you a virtual high-five!
So here we are in December, ahead of 2024, we're not closing anything, we've just slowed down a bit in these weeks, and then in January we'll pick up the pace again and continue with a refreshed mind.
Until then have a great holiday, see you next year!
