In this interview, Charles Merritt, CEO and Co-Founder of Buddy, shares his insights on what it’s like starting from zero and creating on-demand insurance for the modern day adventurer. With a real passion and understanding of the outdoor life, Buddy provides its customers with fast and light solutions so that nothing holds them back.
Keep reading to learn how Charles and Buddy are working to provide the right coverage for the lifestyle athlete so that anyone can fearlessly enjoy an active and outdoor life.
What problem did you set out to solve when founding Buddy?
Our team is made up of people who love to pursue all kinds of outdoor activities. Our founders alone have gear closets that can outfit a small expedition, and my co-founder Jay has a story for every type of outdoor adventures you can think of.
A few years ago, our friends—who we bike, climb, and paddle with—started to send us GoFundMe campaigns after they had an injury. When we tried to figure out why this was happening, we realized that a few macro trends were finally reaching the tipping point, and enough people were now on a high-deductible health insurance plan that an unexpected trip to the ER has a 1 in 2 chance of putting someone in dire financial straits.
We decided to put our heads together and combined our professional experience in online travel, insurance, programming, and marketing to get to work. Because we spend our fair share of time living out of backpacks and trying to set personal bests, we know that the best gear is fast and light, so it was important that our product was designed with those same ethics.
Buddy offers its customers insurance in a matter of minutes and on demand. How have you been able to expedite the insurance process? And what challenges has it induced?
For us, there were two obvious places to tackle to make this kind of on-demand product happen.
First, we started from zero when it came to designing our tech. We’re not bound by legacy systems or large IT infrastructure. We get to use modern best practices for data transfer and storage, which means not only can we quickly handle all of the backend tasks of policy, premium, and customer management, but we can also tailor our architecture to modern customer interfaces in web, mobile, and messaging.
Second, we have awesome partners. Working with the group of folks that we’ve come to know at Lloyd’s of London and State National has definitely changed some of my pre-conceived notions of established players’ willingness to experiment. I think that we’re seeing this broadly across the industry, and I’m lucky that we found the right combination of people who could be a part of our journey.
The challenges have also been real. It’s definitely good to be the first at what we do, but it also means that I get to spend a little extra time explaining that, “No, you don’t need an annual plan!” Our customers are awesome and adventurous, so we tend to connect quickly, which is great.
