Unfortunately - investors are humans, and so one of the harder things we do is to set aside our own experiences as biases to evaluate the opportunity in front of us.
While we try to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and understand the type of problem that could drive the solution that’s being pitched, it’s often easier to do so when we have a really deep understanding of the problem - which is easier when we’ve experienced it. Of course - this clearly means that the uniformity of the investors has held back critical investment in things like women’s health, technology solutions for the working class, or black and latino-specific problems and solutions. But, as someone who does more B2B investment than B2C, it can also hold me back from seeing explicit business problems as clearly as I should.
I’m bringing this up now because I’m in the middle of a new experience that’s opening my eyes to a new problem - one that hasn’t been fun. A few weeks ago, in the middle of getting a new layer on our roof, the roof caught on fire to the building where I live. Fortunately, it was caught quickly, everyone is safe, and with some repairs, our home will be good as new. My family wasn’t displaced from our home, but a couple of our neighbors were. My role? As an HOA board member, trying to get all of my neighbors back in their homes safely - and the roofing project completed as we wanted it to be.
The problem of course, is in the details of insurance. This is, in insurance parlance, a complex claim. There are three unit owners impacted directly - so three insurance providers there, plus three families who (understandably!) want back in their homes as quickly as possible. The HOA, which is responsible for the roof as a common element - with our own insurance, plus a property manager that we’ve hired to manage everything. And then of course there’s the contractor, and their insurance - who we believe are trying to do the right thing, but are understandably not as inclined to move quickly.
On top of the insurance directly - which comes with brokers and carriers, there’s the professionals who support the claim. Each party can hire a fire inspector, and an adjustor. There are multiple departments at the carrier to deal with - one that handles coverage, the other that handles adjudication of the claim, and certainly more behind the scenes. Presumably, there are lawyers - though fortunately, we haven’t had a direct need for those yet. There are rules in place - different teams get time to go through their steps. There’s lots of competent professionals - and as far as I can tell, this is all being handled via email and phone calls. It’s taking weeks, and we still can’t get started on the permanent repair.
And the actual people impacted, who have never gone through anything like this before? We barely know what’s going on at any given time. When will my neighbors be back in their homes? My only wish is for as soon as possible - but I don’t know - nobody does. What’s the next step in the process? It took 3 phone calls to get an answer.
Now - here’s the thing. I’ve been pitched plenty of insurance-related tools before. I recently spoke to someone about complex insurance claim analysis using LLMs. But until I was the one with the immediate pain, did I really understand the workflow challenge inside this business?
Now - this of course doesn’t reflect well on me as an investor. My job is to understand the problem, and tease out why it’s so difficult, and why your solution is the right one. But to flip it back to the founder for a moment - it’s your job to make that tangible for me. Recognize that the world you live and breathe is different from my experience, and you have to bring me along for the ride. Take the time, before you jump in to what you’re building, to paint a picture for me of what life looks like before your product makes it into the hand of users. Some of the best founders we talk to take a very complex business problem, break it down, examine all of the parts, and tell me that story in a concise way that immediately conveys why their solution has potential to quickly gain traction.
And if you’ve got a solution to getting my roof fixed faster - reach out, I’d love to hear about it.
