Chapter One

Tell us about how Insurmi was founded. What inspired you to create it?

Insurmi was founded after I encountered serious issues selling life insurance as an agent. When meeting with clients, I realized not many people understood how it worked, how much they needed, and what they needed to do to get the best coverage. They would ask me, "why is this such a painful process?" With enough of those kinds of questions thrown at me, I decided to leave the company I was working for and create Insurmi. Fast forward a year, and Insurmi is one of the fastest growing life insurance comparison sites on the internet! We improve the entire life insurance purchasing experience end-to-end by allowing shoppers to easily calculate how much life insurance coverage they need, compare policies from every insurer in the U.S., and instantly apply for coverage. The greatest thing about us - you don't need to speak with a salesperson to make a confident purchasing decision.

How did you balance school life (academia, social life, clubs, etc) with Insurmi and your other entrepreneurial activities?

Since I was fairly young, my family trained me well to balance out my activities, whatever they were at the time. Today, being a final-semester Senior at ASU and the CEO of startup, I've figured out a personal time-management system that keeps me on top of things professionally, while having down time to spend with my friends and family. Part of this system is rewards based, meaning if I complete a certain task for school or work, I'll reward myself with something small. It's kinda crazy, but it works for me!

How do you to effectively market Insurmi? How do you effectively distinguish yourself from your competitors?

Currently, we're marketing our platform through various online channels, primarily Google Adwords and Facebook. We choose to grab the "low-hanging fruit" early on to easily prove out our concept with ready-to-buy customers, while slowly ramping up our content marketing efforts that will drive business in the future. As for distinguishing ourselves from the competition, we have a couple major points of differentiation. First, we're not just another quote aggregator that resells consumer information to "salesy" agents. Instead, we're a full-service brokerage, which means we also take care of the entire application process for those that apply for a policy through us. Second, we're making life insurance better for consumers to understand with easy to understand coverage guides, unbiased advice, and smart planning tools. Finally, we aim to take a non-sales approach to insurance as a whole. We believe if we inspire consumers to protect their families with life insurance by giving them no-nonsense advice, they're more likely to take action (and buy).

Insurmi currently prioritizes life insurance and is partnered with some of the best US insurance companies. Do you plan to branch out to other type of insurances and/or services? How and when do you see Insurmi scaling in the near future?

Yes! We aim to be the brand consumers trust with their insurance needs, all insurance needs. Within the next year, we will be adding Auto, Disability, Travel, Pet and Health insurance to our platform, allowing us to be a true one-stop shop for everything insurance. By providing multiple products to consumers, we'll have the ability to make sure each user has the easy access to get the insurance they need! And way down the line, we plan on scaling to other high-potential international markets such as China & the EU.

How did you create Insurmi?

We used a variety of digital assets to build Insurmi, but we primarily run on Weebly's Content Management System. I would give you more nitty-gritty tech specs, but this question is best suited for our developers who know more!

Describe to us an example of your typical workday.

My typical workday can vary honestly. Since we're in our early days at Insurmi, I usually find myself tacking new problems everyday! I start out my day with a workout to get me energized for what's to come, work throughout the day on various tasks from marketing to strategy, and ending the day by doing anything not work-related like catching up on House of Cards. That's part of the balancing act I was talking about!

What are some of your biggest challenges while working on Insurmi (both the company and the product)?

As this is my first company, it feels like the challenges are never ending! I would say my biggest challenge early on while building our platform was figuring out the exact development stack we needed, and putting all those parts together. Keep in mind, I'm no coder. Also, building out our powerhouse team has proven to be a challenge. Getting everything running smoothly from an organizational structure standpoint is tough, especially for a financial services company with numerous compliance requirements.

What stage are you in your capital investing phase? Are you currently looking for more funding?

Currently, we're at the pre-funding stage, ramping up our traction and revenue numbers. Once we hit a certain point, hopefully within the next few months, we will start to raise a healthy Seed round!

You platform is free. How does Insurmi generate net revenue?

We generate revenue as an insurance broker. This means, for every policy we sell through our platform, we get paid a commission from the insurance companies we've partnered with.

How do you see Insurmi being major key player in the health tech industry within the next 10 years?

I see us being a major player in the life insurance-tech industry because we are the end-point to the consumer, which means we are the ones selling the policies of all major insurance companies in America. So, even if insurers change up their internal business models over the next 10 years, they'll still need digital marketplaces like Insurmi to distribute their products to consumers.

What are some exciting features we should expect from Insurmi in the next iteration of the product?

We have a couple features scheduled to be deployed in our next iteration, but the most exciting is our chatbot style robo-advisor. This new feature will help our users figure out their insurance needs in a more easy-to-understand, conversation-like interface.

What is the future of health insurance?

The future of life insurance is very exciting. We're seeing startups pop up all over the place that are tackling various issues across the value chain, and ultimately revolutionizing the space. I always say, those in the insurance industry will always have a market...that's until someone invents a time-machine and can go back in time to prevent something unfortunate from happening. I don't think that's happening anytime soon, so we're good!

Any advice for our future entrepreneurs?

I'd tell future entrepreneurs to look deep within themselves and really realize the potential of the human spirit. With enough persistence and drive, they can do anything, and that anything is possible. Just never, ever give up.

If you want your startup to be interviewed, please reach out to me at contact@taehongmin.com. Thanks!