Hot off the press: 2019 Insurtech 100

Not the usual day for your fortnightly dose of Sø.Nws, but I’ve decided to change things up a little and try a new day for your favorite ever newsletter.

First up, something irrelevant but brilliant.

Last week I had a meeting with a super senior person in the Israeli insurance space. Her comment, this being her seventh trip to the UK, was:

“The one thing that always amazes me about the UK is just how much hair the men have on their heads”.

Love it. Who knew?

2019 Insurtech 100 hits the shelves (and inboxes)

This year we’ve once again partnered with Insurance Post to bring you the most in-depth and up-to-date benchmarking of tech companies across the world, with its exclusive ranking making it a one-of-a-kind report.

On the other side of the pond Elon Musk is hitting headlines once again with news that Tesla will be launching an insurance product. Despite no confirmation from Tesla itself, Musk says that the new insurance could be available for drivers of its electric vehicles before the end of May.

Sticking in the States, it’s not quite SpaceX, but Wing Aviation (of Google’s X Labs fame) has received the first FAA certification in the country for commercial carriage of goods. The company has been performing test flights, mostly in Australia, for years now, and recently started its first commercial flight operations in Canberra. Finland is another country it is looking to take-off in.

On the investment front, Swingvy has raised $7m in a Series A round led by Samsung Ventures, with Aviva Ventures, Bass Investments, Walden International, and Big Basin Capital also grabbing a piece of the action. The all-in-one HR cloud-based platform is really making ground in Asia and it has acquired more than 5,000 companies since it launched in 2016, with revenues almost quadrupling over the last year.

MS&AD Ventures have led the way on a $6m Series A round of funding for WorldCover, a really exciting business that is taking on climate insurance for smallholder farmers in Africa. This latest round of funding is going to help it roll out its products in India, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia as it looks to tap into a $163bn market.

Next up, Brightfox has raised $1.1m for its HR talent experience platform, with health insurer Oscar among the backers, and Spanish start-up Bdeo, a visual intelligence company, has raised $1m in funding from Big Sur Ventures and K Fund.

We get it’s hard to track the companies you’ve met. Even harder tracking the companies your colleagues have met. Layer in the notes you took, they took, the insights you picked up from the event you rocked up to, the pitch deck they were sent etc etc. It gets messy, quickly.

Whether your tracking the market for investments, partnership opportunities or competition, the one thing I’m certain of when creating a list of startups you like/have met with/are in negotiations with…

EXCEL IS NOT YOUR ANSWER.

On that note, nor is Powerpoint, Google Sheets or Trello. Even if you and your global team do have a monthly call to check-in.

I don’t want to go too heavy into selling your Sønr, other than to say you should be using it.

Over the past few months we’ve been working hard to move it beyond a market scanning tool to incorporate a load of features that help you manage market scanning at an operational level.

Next week I’m up in Manchester to help out with the latest instalment of the Hackathon at the 2019 BIBA Conference on 15th and 16th May.

If you’re going to be at the conference, make sure you give me a shout and we can grab a coffee or a beer. We will also be giving free two-day access to Sønr for all those participating in the Hackathon – just one more reason to get involved!

China Calling

Just one final thing before I sign off. Don’t forget to let me know if you are interested in our Tech Trends in China report coming out in the next couple of weeks and I can send over a copy.

Matt

No one is quite sure what’s happened to all the vowels but if you did want a market scanning and innovation consultancy to work with, we’re pretty excellent.

Our vision is to accelerate corporate innovation and entrepreneurship by providing intelligence on the trends, competitor playbooks and global disruptive tech, and to create new opportunities with ambitious organisations around the world.

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