[Raised $30 million] Ep.49 - The First 100 with Matheus Riolfi, the founder of Tint | Embedded Insurance | Warm Introduction | Sales Playbook

Matheus Riolfi is the founder of Tint, which empowers tech platforms to sell more by embedding unique insurance products that protect their end-users. Tint has raised $30 million to date from notable investors such as QED Investors, Nyca, Deciens, Y Combinator, and Webb Investment Network.

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Transcript

00:00
Let's do it!

00:02
Let's do it!

00:03
Broadcasting, from around the world, you're listening to the First 100, a podcast on how

00:09
founders acquired their first 100 paying customers.

00:14
Here's your host, Hadi Radwan.

00:21
Good to have you on the show, Matteos.

00:23
How are you doing today?

00:24
Hi, Harry. I'm doing good.

00:26
How are you?

00:27
I'm amazing.

00:28
Thank you for being part of our podcast.

00:30
I'll give a quick introduction for our listeners.

00:33
Matteos Rialfi is the founder of Tint,

00:36
which empowers tech platforms to sell more

00:40
by embedding unique insurance products

00:42
in their customer flow.

00:44
Tint has raised 30 million to date

00:46
from notable investors such as QED investors,

00:51
and Web Investment Network.

00:54
Take us back to the founding of How Moment.

00:56
How did TENT come to your fruition?

01:00
Yeah, so before Micro Founder and I started TENT,

01:03
we worked at a company called Turo,

01:06
which is the leading company in peer-to-peer car sharing.

01:10
So basically it's like Airbnb for cars.

01:12
You can rent out your car to your neighbor,

01:14
or pretty much everybody, or anybody in the world.

01:17
And Turo was doing something that was radically new,

01:21
broke every single logic of insurance, which is this idea that now you can drive anybody's car,

01:27
but insurance used to follow the car, like, and then it's legal to have a car on the road without

01:33
the liability part of the policy. So in short, we had to create a completely new insurance category

01:38
to exist. And both Michael Fander and I were early employees, and we've been through this journey.

01:44
I was leading the international expansion, so doing the same in different countries. I lived

01:51
setting up Turo and the insurance frameworks in the UK.

01:56
Michael founder was the head of data science.

01:58
So he was building the models, the data part

02:00
that kind of powers the insurance offerings

02:04
that Turo was having.

02:06
And we saw two things.

02:07
We saw huge opportunity because we saw that like

02:10
there was Turo, this tech company was creating

02:13
a known insurance category.

02:15
And we looked around and we saw that happening

02:17
in our Airbnb, Apple, if you think about Apple care,

02:21
like many other great tech companies were creating their own insurance and

02:26
protection products, but we also experienced how hard it was. It was

02:30
extremely complicated to do that without help and there was our inspiration to

02:34
start Tint, so the product we wish existed when we were at Turo. Amazing story.

02:39
So technically is your company Tint a licensed insure tech or are you using

02:46
the technology to create embedded products by partnering with other

02:51
carriers that wants to sell it to your partners?

02:54
We are technically a broker and a captive manager with play a few

03:00
roles, but we are not an insurance company. We're not an underwriter.

03:03
We see ourselves as basically the combination of two things.

03:07
Our technology stack, so we have all the core insurance

03:11
systems, policy admin claims, whatever you need. So our customers don't need to

03:15
write a lot of code on their side. And we also connect them with insurance

03:21
a reassure so we provide them the kind of financial capacity as well.

03:26
And the last role we play is we provide them back office compliance kind of like services

03:32
that they need to operate.

03:33
So from that perspective, we're end to end, but we focus on the connectivity, not as a

03:39
carrier.

03:40
Amazing.

03:41
What has been the hardest problem for you when you're building a B2B ensure tech?

03:47
I think the hardest part is that ensure tech requires a lot of pieces.

03:51
we play at least three roles, right? The software, the compliance back end, and back office, I say,

03:58
and the risk cap of the broker, the matchmaking side of things. And it's a lot. But we see that as

04:05
an opportunity because the way we are thinking about ourselves is that embedded insurance,

04:10
it's really reinventing insurance. Because let's say Airbnb is now the one thinking about those

04:15
products selling, it completely changes the industry, changes where the players, what they do,

04:21
exists. And what we do, in a simple way is to write this infrastructure, write this product,

04:28
it's going to power this new value chain to operate. But that's a challenge. We need to

04:33
build a lot of pieces, right? So that our solution is complete. Thank you for sharing this journey.

04:40
Can you take us back to your first client? How did you convince them to join TENT?

04:46
Yeah, our first client was a company called Outdoorsy.

04:51
RV, so very similar to what we're doing at Turo. And our story with them was very similar,

04:58
I'd say, to a lot of B2B founders. We knew the space very well because we were both from Turo.

05:05
We have a contact from Turo who moved to Aldorsian and was running insurance and claims for them.

05:12
So we already had somewhat a trust relationship. So that got ourselves the opportunity to

05:21
back in 2019, 18 or 19.

05:25
So we didn't have all the components of our product,

05:28
but our first module, if you think about it,

05:31
was what we sold to them.

05:32
And we implemented the results, so it's great.

05:35
And then we started.

05:36
And then from there, they were our kind of flagship customers

05:39
to move into all the companies in the same space,

05:42
in the kind of vehicle sharing or peer-to-peer space.

05:46
And we grew, we focused on that for some time,

05:49
until we expanded to other verticals.

05:51
Now we have customers in shipping, companies like Dio in the HR space.

05:57
We have companies in the crypto space.

06:00
Now we're like a multi vertical company, but I'd say in the early days what we did was

06:06
really focus where we had domain expertise and connections.

06:10
Great.

06:11
Very interestingly for me, it looks like when you land a partner like this, you have done

06:16
something extremely right.

06:17
So if you were to write the playbook of getting clients like outdoorsy,

06:21
neighbor, deal, which are some notable and big clients. What would be the playbook in that case,

06:28
especially when the sales cycle is long, and it's not their core, and insurance is not their core

06:35
revenue stream? How can you close such big names? The playbook would be, I'd say, the same, like an

06:44
expanded version of what I just said for outdoors, which is like try to leverage your domain expertise,

06:51
Those matter a lot in the early days because again,

06:55
at some point you build trust in your brand through the customers you have,

07:00
through the product, right?

07:02
But in the early days,

07:04
it's all about the personal relationships,

07:06
it's all about them trusting that you will be able to solve something that they have.

07:11
That's what we did.

07:13
So, Dio, for example, was a connection through Y Combinator.

07:17
That's one of the main advantages of Y Combinator and Y.

07:20
We went the first place.

07:21
like you have a network of amazing founders and companies

07:25
that they still gonna be like customers

07:28
that will want a lot from you

07:30
because they are all fast growth and exciting startups

07:33
but it gives you the foot of the door

07:35
when you can start having this conversation,

07:37
start building the trust

07:39
and you have somewhat a stamp, right?

07:41
That can tell to the other founders in the community

07:44
that like, okay, they have passed a certain screening

07:47
from to be the OIC community.

07:50
So I would say the playbook

07:51
exactly the same. Start with what you know, ideally with a product and service that you

07:56
used before in your past life or problem that you experienced in your past life and then

08:02
try to sell that first within your immediate network and then expand from there.

08:09
Do you have any advice for founders who probably don't have access to warm leads and they want

08:15
to build their momentum, let's say? Would there be any advice that you would give that

08:21
start at least.

08:23
I think if you don't have the access,

08:26
I'm originally from Brazil.

08:28
I moved to the US 12 years ago.

08:31
I didn't have networks here either.

08:33
I had to definitely start from scratch.

08:36
I'd say my advice,

08:39
what I did was you work for a company,

08:42
like I did for two or four years.

08:44
So I will build that network,

08:46
I'll build the domain expertise,

08:48
and then do my company.

08:49
So that'll be advice number one.

08:51
If you already want an advice for fathers who are already in their businesses and trying

08:56
to hustle, then it is about hustling.

09:00
It is about the numbers game, right?

09:03
Trying to reach out to as many companies as possible, to reach out to them on LinkedIn,

09:08
go to conferences.

09:09
Like, you'll be surprised with the amount of people that if they get the right message

09:14
at the right time, they will help, right?

09:16
Especially, go focus in earlier stage companies where an ideally the founder has a lot of

09:21
a little bit more empathy he or she want me maybe to pay some for their ways but I'd say

09:28
they will be more like a volume game I would say.

09:31
Well if you have some connections through your personal networks, schools or whatever

09:35
you can leverage then I think it becomes more like a targeted approach.

09:40
What have you been so far the most proud of and building Tint?

09:45
Well I think we would have been the most proud of as helping our customers protecting their

09:51
users, we're typically people, right? So we're now going through one of the biggest shocks in

09:58
the venture industry, the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, and I think it's a story, this is

10:02
too breaking, but you can see now, like, everybody's seeing why thinking about downside scenarios is

10:09
important, right? There has been a lot of conversation about the assured part of the pod is the

10:13
uninsured part. Nobody likes you think about those things, but whenever you need, like,

10:21
available to you.

10:23
And it's like what we do in, you know,

10:25
it's complicated technology is regulated, as you know,

10:29
as well as I do in the issue tech world,

10:31
but ultimately it's about protecting people, right?

10:34
So better, cheaper, more convenient ways

10:37
that people get to protect.

10:39
So one of our customers, you ship,

10:41
if you ship a car from one place to the other,

10:44
the car may get broken, right?

10:46
Like maybe get damaged.

10:48
And if that happens and they purchase

10:50
a protection from each ship,

10:51
have a very magical experience that you're taking care of. So how do we help more companies

10:57
to get that in front of their users better in a faster and cheaper way? Because ultimately,

11:06
the reason why insurance is so important is that things will go wrong. And when they do,

11:11
you better be covered.

11:13
That's great advice. Thank you for sharing it, Matias. If you go back now in time, knowing

11:21
funding, where would you have started to acquire your first customer? Would it be the same strategy

11:26
or would you have done something different? Same strategy because in the beginning we had some

11:32
funding but it wasn't too much. So paid marketing, things like that were not even an option for us

11:40
and that's good. It is good in the early days that you have very constrained resources because

11:51
or yet sustainable paths, which matters a lot.

11:55
Did matter at that time,

11:56
matters even more in the market today.

11:59
So yeah, I don't think we will have changes.

12:01
We'll go after our networks in places

12:04
where we have domain expertise

12:05
and we can intelligently talk about why we can,

12:09
even as an unproven company, we can solve the problem.

12:13
Do you place more, let's say,

12:16
effort on building a perfect product

12:19
or you prefer to build a product

12:20
that works well?

12:21
but you want to lend a customer first and then perfect it. Which approach did you go with?

12:27
My natural inclination is the latter. It's to try to move fast, lend a customer, then improve.

12:35
However, in the one complexity we deal with is that in a regulated industry, there is a minimum

12:42
bar you need to make. So that I think we try and like to be agile, but it's not always possible.

12:51
Again, we still try to apply the same.

12:54
We have a value in our company that's called compliant agility.

12:58
So it's still about moving fast, but understanding

13:01
that we need to do some compliance checks before.

13:05
Which of the B2C company in unregulated space

13:09
doesn't have to deal with that.

13:12
Amazing.

13:12
Thank you for that advice.

13:14
If we zag a little bit to Matthew as the person,

13:17
what is a principle that you live by that has served you well

13:21
in your life?

13:21
in your business?

13:22
Yeah, one of these, it happens to be another value that we have not by coincidence, but

13:28
is this idea of constructive candor?

13:32
Is the idea that like I strongly believe in transparency, I strongly believe in being

13:36
straight in business and personal life and telling the truth because if you really care

13:41
about someone, you tell the truth.

13:43
And even so hard thing to hear, that person will get better only if they can knowing what

13:50
they have to improve.

13:51
improving. But you got to do that in a constructive way. I also don't believe in just pointing

13:57
the facts and not helping because this is really not not great. So we have this idea

14:02
in our company, this principle of constructive candor, which is always be open, but always

14:08
be thinking about, okay, here are the things you should improve. But here's what I recommend

14:13
right now is pointing fingers.

14:16
If you were in a room with one of the CEOs of your competitors, what's the topic that

14:21
you would discuss with them? I think we'll discuss like how can we grow like you know

14:30
together in a sense because insurance is so big that like literally two trillion dollars of

14:37
premium of money flowing around every year and embedded insurance the entire category is just

14:42
so small has so much potential right people recognize as the one of the most promising

14:51
That's what we need is about how the tide would lift all the boats.

14:55
And that's what I'll be talking about.

14:58
There are plenty of niches to be carved out by all the different companies.

15:02
That's great.

15:03
Thank you for sharing it, Matthews.

15:05
One last question. What's next for Tint?

15:08
Well, Nexus continued like in the trajectory we are, like keep growing,

15:13
keep adding or keep helping great companies protect their customers.

15:21
And I think it feels strongly about us building a world where insurance will become a feature

15:29
and no longer a product where people don't have to think about it.

15:32
They are protected when things go wrong.

15:34
They have somewhere to go.

15:36
And that's really what we, not every day when we wake up, that's what we're thinking about.

15:41
Amazing.

15:42
Where can people reach you?

15:44
LinkedIn, I'm always there.

15:46
Like I like to joke.

15:47
There's probably just one Matheus Rioff in the world.

15:49
So if you type my name on the thing.

15:51
find me. You need to talk with me, I'm Matheus at team.ai in my email and I'm always happy

15:58
to help even if they are not prospects or anything related to a business.

16:04
Thank you Matheus for your time.

16:06
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

16:11
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16:14
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