StartupBootcamp 2017 Demo Day: Our views

April 26, 2017 Chris Sandilands

StartupBootcamp, the startup accelerator, held the “Demo Day” for its 2017 InsurTech programme earlier this week in London. Ten startups and one “startup in residence” pitched to an audience of over 500 investors and insurance professionals.

The Demo Day marks the end of an intense three month programme, where startups work on their ideas under the mentorship of experienced professionals and investors.

Oxbow Partners was in attendance and we provide our view on what was on offer.

The pitches

Although the day was called “Demo Day”, we didn’t actually get to see or play with any actual products.  Instead, startups talked about their businesses and announced funding rounds or insurance partnerships.  Startups were in various stages, from pre-launch to post-funding expansion.  Below we summarise the business models presented:

Adapt Ready: A data analytics platform that uses machine learning to assess and analyse the threat of global events to an insurance portfolio.  The example provided was Volkswagen’s supply chain and its susceptibility to local political or meteorological events.

• Useful for: Commercial insurers with global clients
• Asking for: $1m in seed funding

Aerobotics: The company analyses aerial images of fields collected by drones to assess the health of crops as well as potential yields and problems.  The insight helps farmers and insurers alike. We thought this was a fantastic proposition.

• Useful for: Crop insurers
• Asking for: Industry partners

AIMO: AIMO uses 3D sensors and AI to analyse and score human movement during exercise, which can include rehabilitation.  The company assesses the user’s range of movement and makes recommendations on how to improve.  They are currently targeting gyms but see insurance as a big opportunity – data would be made available to insurers.

• Useful for: Health clubs, personal insurers with patients in rehabilitation
• Asking for: €600,000 in seed funding

Emerge: A machine learning startup that is developing proprietary models to ingest and interpret insurers’ datasets, leading to highly predictive output.  For example, their models predicted with 99% accuracy which policyholders would lapse their policy within two months in a recent trial with an insurer.  We covered Emerge in a recent Bitesize post during our data & analytics week.

• Useful for: Insurers trying to get better at data
• Asking for: Insurers to do trials, and consultants to promote them

Insure A Thing (now Laka): The company’s hypothesis is this: Insurers have high costs from trying to predict their claims costs in advance and charge customers a premium over their risk cost to pay for the uncertainty.  Why not turn insurance into an ex post model, where consumers contribute a monthly fee based on actual monthly claims costs, thereby cutting out significant operational and risk cost?

• Useful for: Consumers who want lower insurance premiums, likely the huge Takaful market
• Announced: Launch on 1 June 2017 and completion of their seed funding round

NuvaLaw: NuvaLaw is a platform to facilitate settlement of personal injury and motor damage claims.  The platform contains tools and services to make these processes cheaper and faster, and most importantly keep them out of court.

• Useful for: Personal lines insurers
• Asking for: £500,000 in seed funding

Port: Port simplifies compliance with GDPR (see our blog post) to allow information to be shared while allowing users to maintain control and privacy.

• Useful for: Insurers who have not implemented plans for dealing with GDPR
• Announced: Beta launch
• Asking for: £500,000 seed funding

Sharenjoy: Leisure and entertainment experience-based microinsurance targeted at millennials combined with a social networking platform centred around events.  Can’t make a concert because your train is delayed?  Not to worry—rather than returning money to party-goers as traditional event insurance does, Sharenjoy replaces the event with a similar experience.

• Useful for: Consumers
• Asking for: £200,000 in seed funding

Tikkr: An on-demand digital insurance platform which provides time-based coverage.  They assert that individuals only need specific coverage at specific times, such as on holiday or doing sports, so Tikkr provides only the coverage that is required.

• Useful for: Consumers
• Asking for: €300,000 seed funding and partnerships

TrackActive: TrackActive helps physiotherapists set exercises and patients to track their routine.  The app collects data from users to improve early intervention and prevention applications, reducing the time doctors spend with patients on exercises.  Information can be made available to insurers.

• Useful for: Physiotherapists and patients; workers’ compensation insurers
• Asking for: £500,000 in seed funding

The Oxbow Partners view

We feel that StartupBootcamp has moved in a good direction since last year’s cohort.

Startups were working on a healthy mix of personal and commercial insurance issues, as well as data and analytics.  Last year there was a heavy focus on personal lines.

That said, there were still a few startups that appear to have only peripheral relevance to insurance.  For several, insurance seemed to be a secondary focus of their business model, claiming benefits to insurers and policyholders alike when data was freely shared between the two.  We question to what extent consumers will, in reality, be happy to share personal data with insurers.

Overall, however, it was an impressive show by the StartupBootcamp team, filling a vast auditorium in the Docklands – we look forward to 2018.