1. Tell us a bit about yourself / your co-founder(s)

Tom:

I come from a technology and insurance background, with experience in both building and delivering innovative insurance propositions across the globe. Today, I am the CEO of Bind, leading our business along with Daniel, delivering on our strategic priorities as a business and focused on the future of the insurance industry.

I’ve always been fascinated by new technologies, geography and economics. For me, understanding the interplay between these three factors and how technology can serve not only as a means of increasing productivity, but also as a conduit to improving sustainability, equality and access to information.

When I am not working you can find me making the most of the nature Switzerland has to offer, from skiing in the winter, hiking in the spring and taking advantage of the lakes in summer. I love art, particularly impressionism, travelling with my partner and cooking with friends and family.

Daniel:

I have been building startups since the age of 19 and have a self-taught computer science background that began its roots as a teenager, starting from building apps and websites to then becoming experienced in a broader and more full-stack spectrum, ranging from backend development, AI and more.

I find myself excelling at bridging the highly technical aspects of building a tech startup with the commercial / business side, which truly makes me appreciate that I caught onto computer science and started building startups from a young age.

I am driven by building innovative things together with a great people that can positively change lives and provide long-lasting value to the world. I am also an avid tennis lover, sports enthusiast and health focused.

2. The Thesis 

Institutions struggle to proactively connect customers with relevant insurance products, leading to missed opportunities for enhancing customer satisfaction and generating new revenue streams.

Advice is scarce, as brokers are actually good at understanding customer needs, but isn’t scalable nor catering to a digital self-serving solution.

3. What problem or opportunity do you address, and for which target customers?

Bind is AI-Powered insurance targeting that makes it easy for businesses to better understand and target customers with relevant insurance products at scale.

Bind essentially utilizises AI to make advice scalable, providing accurate and timely insurance product recommendations, effectively addressing customer needs and driving new revenue streams for businesses.

Target customers are insurance ecosystem players, banks, telcos, brokers, financial services and many other businesses.

4. Who are your competitors and what is your USP?

Our competitors are traditional insurance brokers and incumbent insurers and their tied agents. Agents and brokers understand individuals’ needs well, but the process is neither scalable nor aligned with the shifting of customer demands away from face to face interactions to seeking a digital light touch process.

5. What is your current stage and traction?

We have a signed commercial contract with a large insurance ecosystem player who have hundreds of millions of customers projecting over $9M USD in ARR from this contract alone and have many other partners in our pipeline.

6. What are your plans for the next 6-18 months and how can our network help?

Our immediate need of action is to finish raising our seed round. We have 40% of the round committed already but in need of a lead investor.

As mentioned, we have a signed commercial contract, projecting over $9M USD in ARR accessing upwards of 220M customers from this contract alone. With many other partners in our pipeline, raising this capital is crucial to mature our AI models and launch our technology at scale later this year.

Your network can help by putting us in touch with investors who can help us fill up this round, as well as access to potential commercial partners.

7. What’s on your bookshelf or podcast app? Your favourite place for a coffee or a drink?

Daniel:

I love to read and hear podcasts when I am on the move or doing something trivial. At the moment I am reading “Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don’t Have To” by David Sinclair, which explores the science behind ageing and presents groundbreaking research on how we can potentially slow down, stop, or even reverse the ageing process, arguing that ageing is a disease that can be treated.

Favourite place to go for coffee or a drink would be in the centre of Zurich at one of the rooftops with a stunning lake view.

Tom:

I love to read biographies. There’s something quite special and intimate about being able to read the stories of individuals’ lives and how they were developed both by their own actions and circumstances over time.  The two books which I am currently making my way through are “The Last Tycoons”, by William Cohan, which is a biography of the history of the Investment Bank Lazard and “Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World” by J. Doyne Farmer, a book focused on asserting that through the development of more sophisticated computer models to account for individual rationality, we can in turn progress our understanding of the economy.

My favourite place for a coffee is the Monocle café in Zurich, conveniently located around the corner from the office. For those who visit the City of London, I’d strongly recommend paying a visit to Rosslyn Coffee, which was my go to for the years I worked in The City.