[AUS][TECH][5] Seeking design cofounder for insurance startup.

My father is an insurance broker. He is forced to use software that I would describe as being actively hostile towards the user. His ability to increase his income is bottlenecked by how long it takes to use the software. I sat with him as he prepared a set of quotes for a prospect, which took him over an hour to do. A salesperson is forced to spend 70% of their time per week on monotonous administrative tasks on an outdated platform, when they could be building relationships, and promoting their business. This is sadly very common.

Current in use software solutions all look like they have all been modelled off Windows 95. The ones that look palpable are either backed by large underwriters or built upon a general CRM like SalesForce. This creates problems for brokers who are required to be independent, and means that the solutions they use rarely address their actual pain points. The software is otherwise incredibly clunky, lives within a closed ecosystem and costs insurance groups money by not surfacing opportunities which exist in the data they already have.

I want to solve this with a purpose built CRM for the insurance industry. Backed by a strong set of consumer experiences, the vision is for the CRM to graduate from being a mere CRUD interface to an active vessel for opportunity generation. The user should be empowered by the software, and ultimately be closer to their customers. An individual who has been in an accident shouldn’t have to wait for their broker to pick up the phone, they should be able to provide all the information the the broker to action asynchronously. A broker should not need to ask for the same information from their customers multiple times, it should be entered once and available always. The customer should set the terms of their engagement with a broker. A broker should be able to grow their income by leveraging their existing relationships with customers.

What about international solutions and others who have attempted to solve this problem? Good question. They are either localised to a specific region, do not have a meaningful product differentiator, leave the broker’s customer out of the equation, or a combination of the above.

About me: I have experience working as a developer for a few startups, and I am now a product manager for a CRM (in a different domain, don't worry). Given my technical background, I have been working on a MVP over the last few months and have made significant inroads. While dev is not my main sauce, I know enough to make the right trades offs so we can deliver value to customers. I believe execution is everything, and to learn we need to move fast. But also not at the expense of the team or users.

Where you come in: You love to delight users. Empathy is king. You are willing to understand their problems at business level as well as at the pure experience level. You could talk to customers and users all day if left to your own devices. You want to give people back hours every week, and help people like my father level up their businesses.

If you have design skills and find this interesting (well, as interesting as an insurance CRM could be), please hit me up.

I'm located in Brisbane currently.