LFP099 – 6 Keys to Making Yourself a Partnerable Fintech with Jimmy Williams CEO Urban Jungle

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Next to no new Fintechs, and no Insuretechs see themselves as building the “full stack”. Rather for many, once one has a product the secret is successful partnering.

Jimmy Williams, CEO of Urban Jungle, an Insuretech for the renting generation has developed a succinct a methodology for partnering success and shares it on this show.

Urban Jungle also have some pretty heavy-hitting Fintech Grande Cheeses backing them so sound like they are onto something good.

Topics discussed on the show include:

  • how people discover particular podcasts
  • the benefits of oldskool media
  • driving from London to Capetown
  • rescuing 7 vicars at night in Uganda
  • making helpful friends early on in one’s career
  • founders of early Fintechs vs later Fintechs
  • Insurance is the most expensive keyword on Google – $54 per click :-O
  • you can’t give away insurance for free due to regulation
  • two flavours of advice (a) what startups can do that incumbents can’t, (b) golden rules that apply to all companies
  • 1. MOVE QUICKLY
  • Incumbent – eg 3 month internal approval process
  • important to refactor underlying process before one digitises; boil it down until a junior person can implement in an afternoon
  • Urban Jungle – get partners testing things with customers within a week; minimise cost of saying ‘yes
  • 2. BE OPEN TO PARTNER NEEDS
  • need to know what you will do and what you won’t – if you do everything then its more like consultancy than having a product
  • 3. BE DEVELOPER FRIENDLY
  • APIs etc
  • 4. BE AVAILABLE
  • need to provide human bandwidth at your end to fix problems when they arise – as they will
  • invest enough in the partnership to make it work..
  • 5. COMMERCIALLY AWARE
  • different market have different requirements, priorities
  • “its much more successful when we are important to our partner”
  • 6. SHARE LEARNING
  • what has worked well, what has not, each time round one starts with a larger body of experience
  • a shoutout for which kind of customer and partner Urban Jungle is looking for right now

And much much more 🙂

Share and enjoy!