In this episode
Rory Holland interviews Maria Goy, the co-founder and CEO of Spot Insurance, discussing the innovative approach of embedded insurance in the adventure sports sector. They explore the challenges of the insurance industry, the impact of technology, and the real-life stories of individuals who have benefited from Spot’s services. Maria shares insights on the future of insurance, the importance of operational efficiency, and advice for aspiring entrepreneurs in the fintech space..
Key takeaways
- Technology plays a crucial role in modernizing insurance processes.
- The pandemic has shifted the insurance landscape significantly.
- Operational efficiency is key for startups in the current economic climate.
- Understanding healthcare coverage is essential for consumers.
- Spot aims to help customers live adventurous lives without financial worry.
Transcript
Rory Holland: Well, welcome to Mighty Finsights. I’m Rory Holland, and I’m joined by the beautiful Maria Goy.
Maria Goy: Thank you.
Rory Holland: So excited to have you here.
Maria Goy: Thanks for having me.
Rory Holland: Maria’s with Spot Insurance. I’m going to let you kind of describe it a bit, but it’s such a wonderful pleasure to talk to you. One, we’ve had some great off-camera conversations, so definitely want to pick those back up. You’re local to Austin, right?
Maria Goy: Yeah, local to Austin.
Rory Holland: How long have you been here?
Maria Goy: I’ve been here for seven years now. Gosh. Okay. Yeah, moved here from, it was kind of New York via Dallas. I bought a house, lived there for like 90 days in total over a year and then ended up selling and moving here. Founded, bought, met my husband, now husband, so never realized my whole life was waiting for me in Texas and Austin, but yeah.
Rory Holland: And did you go to college in New York or?
Maria Goy: No, I went to college on the west coast, UW. Yeah, University of Washington, go Huskies. Yeah, my dad was in the military, so we moved around a lot. But ended up settling in Seattle, just outside of Seattle, in Issaquah, before Microsoft was a big thing, so yeah.
Rory Holland: Any favorite places you’ve lived?
Maria Goy: Gosh, I feel like I’ve lived in so many places. I feel like everybody should live in New York at least once in their life. It’s such an incredible experience. I lived in Tokyo for a couple of years, and that was phenomenal. I mean, just such a different cultural experience across the board.
I lived in Europe and Oslo for a couple of years, and you just experience life so differently as a European, or living through the eyes of a European, you know, holidays, vacations, like the things that we kind of just don’t take as much here in the U.S. So yeah, I think just anywhere abroad has been really great, but I do consider LA to be my home.
Rory Holland: Los Angeles. OK.
Maria Goy: Yeah.
Rory Holland: And when did you live there last?
Maria Goy: I was working for Paramount Pictures. So I think the last time I lived there was 2015. Yeah. 2014.
Rory Holland: And you’ve been here for seven years, so you’ve been one that has seen a lot of growth.
Maria Goy: Yeah, but not as much as like, you know the Austin unicorns that have been here forever.
Rory Holland: There are still some of those. All right, well, let’s shift gears. So I wanted to jump into Spot insurance. Could you describe the type of work that you guys do?
Maria Goy: Yeah, so Spot is embedded in SureTech. We really focus on a B2B and B2C model, so embedded at the point of sale. So if you’re a skier, you go out and buy your icon pass, you’ll see it’s at the bottom of checkout.
You’ll add on to your icon pass that injury coverage if you injured skiing on any of the Altera properties or pass production, you get pregnant and you’re not able to use your pass any longer for the next season. And then trip insurance for destination. So if you book a trip out to Deer Valley as an example and for some reason can’t go, you’re covered with trip insurance.
And then we launched a new product last summer, Cancel for Any Reason, which is exactly as it sounds. You just don’t want to do something any longer and you cancel within 24 hours and you get up to X percent of your payment back just based off of what the partner has set.
Rory Holland: What’s so fun about meeting you in person today and the conversations we’ve had is I’ve used your product.
Maria Goy: I love hearing that.
Rory Holland: It was maybe three or four years ago, my son, if you’ve listened to our podcast, you’ve heard me talk a little bit about this, but he races motocross.
Same thing at the bottom of the registration. I was like, whoa, that’s interesting. I can get some form of medical coverage. God forbid I need it. But it was there and it was easy to access. That’s an example. I’m getting ready to buy an icon pass for a trip to Telluride, as we talked about off camera over the holidays.
But I suspect when I do that, I’ll see that same kind of experience. Is that right?
Maria Goy: Yeah, it’s either you can put it on your pass if you’re purchasing a pass or destination sale as well, just if you were going to Mammoth for the weekend and you just wanted it for the two days that you’re there.
Yeah, it’s awesome. And it’s a real passion point for me because when you think about what’s happened in this country with medical care, the number one leading cause of bankruptcy is medical debt. And so really trying to figure out how you help the gap.
Because even with medical coverage for myself, right, you look at that and you know, I still have a deductible of like $7,000, so being sure that we can help people cover that deductible or if they don’t have coverage at all, right? It’s been really important.
Rory Holland: Tell us something about your customer base, like that’s interesting. It feels like it almost adventure sports in some ways, but maybe otherwise, it’s just general travel.
Maria Goy: Yeah, we think about it more as sort of the active, experiential economy from that perspective. Our end customers tend to be much more on the active or adventurous side. It was an easier market to go into because it requires a lot less education, right? And education is really expensive when you think about going to a new startup.
So yeah, really focused on those customers. And ski has just been one that’s been a real hit for us because you’ve got such a wide range of demographic. And yeah, it’s just been awesome. It also enables us as a company to make sure that we’re putting our best foot forward and helping customers live their most adventurous lives. And same with everybody in the company. Most everyone in the company has been, at one point or another, some sort of athlete, which is awesome.
Rory Holland: Yeah, fun. Well, I love the market that you’re serving. I’m curious about, you mentioned InsurTech and in some ways InsurTech, fintech, like these are all different words that we use all under the financial services umbrella. But staying on the technology side, how have you used technology, would you say, to make this work?
Maria Goy: Yeah. It’s been such a journey. And I think tech has just shifted so much, even over the last seven years, if we’ve been building. So we’ve built a platform that enables us to integrate on the back end with any of our partners.
We can either go direct via API and take in the data and ingest and then have that sent over the carrier for filing of the claim. So really driving a digital experience for our customers. So God forbid your son ever needed to use it, you’d come into the Spot, get Spot portal and fill out all of your claim information digitally and that would get sent off versus sort of this old school legacy environment of, know, fill it out and go to UPS and have to fax it because nobody has a fax machine right at home.
And so that’s been really awesome. And then you’re starting to see other ways that technology is being used today when you think about sort of AI and automated chats and thinking about how do you continue to stay on top of where the industry is going from a tech perspective to continue servicing customers in the way that they want to be serviced, which I think is really important that unfortunately, think insurance companies play an important role, but because of sort of the legacy tech they’ve been built on, it’s really hard for them to actually meet a customer, like where they actually want to be serviced or how they want to be serviced.
Rory Holland: I think it’s so interesting. I remember where I was when I saw Spot for the first time, not knowing who you guys were, in line with several hundred other people. At that point, most of it was, it had been, like at a kiosk, meaning a kiosk, a human.
Like, so you’re standing at a window and you’re filling out paperwork. But they never ask questions about insurance, other than to say, we don’t cover this, so check this box, knowing that you’re taking all the risks. But then I remember the next year, suddenly, Spot was there, and it was all digitized, and it was on your phone. And so you scan a code, you go to registration, you could simply check a box, and whatever the cost was, I forget. But it wasn’t very much for that day’s protection.
And I knew a lot of people that took it. And as a matter of fact, at that particular event, someone did get injured. And from my recollection, they had accepted that. And so I’m curious, like, any story, like, do you have any stories of how you guys have made a difference or helped, or does that make it back up to you?
Maria Goy: It does. And it’s always the piece that really keeps me going and I know the customer as well. I’ve had a lot of different interviews with customers over the years. I just remember one in particular woman who was a mountain biker and she had, and we have a video of it, it’s this crazy crash where she was jumping from one rock to another and ended up just missing it, slammed in, broke a ton of bones in her body. She didn’t have medical insurance. So she and her boyfriend were going through all of her expense items to be like, what can you actually cancel so that you can save money? Because she had now like $50,000 in medical bills.
And he comes across Spot, and he’s like, what’s this Spot thing? And she’s like, I can’t remember. So he goes and looks this up, and he’s like, holy shit, you have insurance. And she’s like, really? She’s like, this is the one thing that prevented me from going bankrupt.
That was such a great feeling to know we’re making such a big difference. And I spoke to another woman who was rock climbing and fell, and she’s a waitress and didn’t have insurance. And she’s like, this is the only reason I can still live in my apartment is I didn’t have to pay for these medical bills out of pocket.
So those types of stories make their way across, and it’s incredible to hear.
Rory Holland: Yeah. Boy, that’s got to be rewarding to hear that.
Maria Goy: It is. And you hear the stories, too, which are also really crushing and heartbreaking, of we’ve had a couple of folks pass as well.
And there’s a component of life insurance on ours and knowing that parents have been able to lean on that or spouses have been able to lean on that when they’ve lost their loved one. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s awesome to know that we’ve made a difference in those lives.
Rory Holland: Do you see this type of embedded insurance, how does that work with general coverage? And do you see, insurance is so expensive.
Maria Goy: It really is.
Rory Holland: In this country. A lot of people can’t afford it and more people than I’ve heard people talk about it more so the last couple years than I’ve ever heard, particularly in the adventure sports space. I’m surprised to hear how many don’t have coverage and are just almost rolling the dice. I’m curious what you think about how your solution and maybe similar solutions like it are working with for not just for those people, but in general with people that maybe don’t have the money or just have really low level coverage, medical coverage in general?
Maria Goy: Yeah. So interesting. We actually had a direct to consumer product. We have a handful of folks that are still on that policy. We ended up having to turn it off, but prior to COVID, we had actually launched a DEC policy. And that was really meant to be sort of a supplemental bridge for folks. If you have insurance, it served as sort of the delta for your out of pocket expenses or you’re deductible, right?
But as the pandemic really hit, a lot of folks were losing jobs, therefore losing coverage and started to enroll, which was awesome to see. But they were using that as a primary point of coverage, which is not how it was priced. So I think there’s a huge market for that and how you can think about having the right product out there for customers in the future. Because to your point, insurance has become incredibly expensive, and this probably dates me quite a bit, but I started my career back at Anderson Consulting and I remember having amazing health coverage, like $1,000 deductible, right?
And sort of 28 years later, right, in sort of my working history, you’ve seen how the burden of insurance has shifted from the employer to the employee. And I think that’s a big piece and I understand that to some extent, but it is created this, I think, a gap for Americans in our ability to get coverage and to your point, it is really expensive even when you think about Cobra and other options that are out there and the deductibles and the medication that people have to pay for.
Rory Holland: Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully policy changes as we were talking again, like kind of off camera about what the future looks like in this country. Hopefully some policy changes will help improve that. But curious, share some of the challenges like that you guys have faced. I mean, growing up in an InsurTech business, any business is tough enough, but in a category like insurance, it’s incredibly competitive. Probably some education was required at some level to the companies you’re selling it to and then how to embed it and get it in front of consumers. What are some of the challenges you faced?
Maria Goy: Yeah, mean, so many. I mean, it’s been awesome. It’s been such a ride. You think about where we started and the fundraising that had its own challenges and then scaling the business had its own challenges and then all of a sudden the pandemic hit, right? And that’s just not a challenge that anybody was expecting. And then, you know, the pandemic turns into the epidemic and then you have the Black Swan event followed of like the SVB bank collapse and like, what does that mean? And all of a sudden you’re sitting there and you’re like, “Wow, the company could actually fail and it had nothing to do with me. I just might not have money to continue to run it.” And it was kind of this existential moment of like, did I do everything that I could?
And so I think some of the challenges have been operating in, I guess I would say the most recent challenge has been operating in this economic climate, right, since the SVP collapse. Like, we’ve had to reposition ourselves in thinking about how do we focus on operational efficiency because this isn’t the startup world anymore where it’s a build a plan, figure out how you’re going to spend $20 million in 18 months and know you’re going to go back to market and like continue to raise, right? Like, we’ve looked at this as saying like how do we actually control more of our own destiny and not raise funds at all ever again unless we really want to, not because we need to. So that’s probably been the biggest challenge because that’s come with its own set of decisions that you have to make around people and care a lot about the team that we have and having to let really great people go because you need to focus on the business because it’s never personal, right? But the business is the business and you have a fiduciary responsibility.
So I think that’s been probably the biggest challenge we’re through in the last two years is just seeing what the pandemic and then the SVB collapse has done to the startup world. But frankly, I think it has been a positive because you’re seeing companies that are funded now based off of merit versus momentum. And I think it’s forced a lot of us founders to think about that differently and the use of capital and the importance of getting to profitability faster.
Rory Holland: Yeah, the whole adage of good comes from bad sometimes situations. You mentioned something that I’ve found to be true in the short period of time we’ve known each other today, that you have a heart for people. So I share that with you and the challenges of running and whether it’s an early stage, middle market, even a larger organization, when you have to make tough people decisions, it’s very, very difficult. Even when we make statements like, it’s a business decision, it’s about business. Sure it is, but everything we do is about people.
One, in the way that you’re serving your market and trying to make a positive difference and hearing those great pieces of feedback where you’ve actually really helped people. But two, those tough decisions are hard to make when you’re sitting in the leadership chair.
Maria Goy: Yeah, they are. And they’re lonely, right? Because how I would have to run a layoff would occur very differently to you on how you would going to lay off.
Our team at Spot has been so incredible. It’s made up of just the most resilient people I’ve ever worked with and people that have a real passion for the outdoor and adventure space, but also for our partners and for our customers. So letting people go over the last couple of years, as we’ve had to focus on some of our own internal operational efficiency, has been challenging because you’re letting really good humans go, people that are great at their job that has nothing to do with them. And such your point, like yes, it is a business decision, but like it definitely weighs pretty heavy.
Rory Holland: Yeah, yeah. Well, it sounds like you guys have been through a lot, it sounds like the future is bright for Spot and where you’re headed. So what is the, what’s next for Spot? Like what’s the future look like for you guys, would you say? And maybe the InsurTech industry from your perspective.
Maria Goy: Yeah, I think for Spot at least, you know, looking to continue to double down on our financial protection products.
So moving more into sort of the fintech space that Cancel for Any Reason, because that’s the real demand that our customers want. I think where insurance has historically struggled is like typically you have a bunch of products that, like insurance, companies want to sell versus like products that you as an end customer want to buy. And so really working in that sense of how do we continue to build and refine products that are that really service the end customers needs.
So that’s a big focus for us in the next 12 to 24 months. And then on the side of insurance, I think it’ll be really interesting to see how large language models impact the ability to service, especially from a claims perspective. Can you actually increase customer experience and satisfaction? Because one of the number one reasons for poor NPS scores in insurance is just the servicing of claims, like how long it takes.
And that’s pretty true for almost every type of insurance product that’s sold out there. So yeah, I think insurance will continue to be, for lack of better term, revolutionized, over the next 10 years as we look at how technology will play more of a role with some of the bigger carriers that are out there. And what does that mean for startups in helping them to accelerate some of that change?
Rory Holland: Yeah, do you see any growth in the startup space related to like InsurTech and insurance, I know there’s a ton of them out there. I’m just curious if any particular category or any particular solutions that you’re seeing or you’re finding interesting. Maria Goy: I think there are a lot. I think right now, and this might just be where we’ve been in the last couple of years and seeing where the market is, so maybe ask me in 12 months and I might have a different answer. But I don’t know that insurance is a really strong area for venture back, being in the venture backed business, right?
Because when you think about venture-backed businesses, they’re typically looking for margins that are in the 70th percent. And from an insurance perspective, your margins are never going to be there because it’s regulated. It’s illegal to charge people 70%, right? So I think I’ll be curious to see what options come out. I think that there is more opportunities probably in the general fintech space. But I think insurance, we probably need to take a step back and understand the problem market fit a little better of what needs to be solved for and what that means.
So unless it’s something like solving for claims via a new AI tool, at some point, I think it’s gonna be a little bit hard because I’m not sure the margins are ever gonna really be there for a venture-backed business and especially as VCs are looking a lot harder at the deals that they’re doing versus just sort of blindly writing a check because the market’s so hot.
Rory Holland: And you said something merit versus momentum. I didn’t want to skip over that because we’ve been through enough business cycles, right, to know. Something you and I have been at this for a bit. So whether it was the late 90s, that cycle, you know, the 2008, 2009, the credit markets, at that point, my co-founder, buildingcredit.com, was some other great people. So we got to experience it firsthand, people suffering with credit. And then play it out the last decade plus, like lots of variety of different things.
I think it’s, my personal opinion is I think business is doing good in making a positive impact, whether they’re bootstrapped or they’re VC-backed or they’re P-backed or whatever their structure is. So many times I’ve seen in my career, it’s about driving growth at all costs. And I think that’s what you referred to with the momentum.
Maria Goy: Yeah, and it’s now no longer a growth at all cost, right? That’s just not sustainable. So I think what you’ll probably see is kind what you just touched on is I think you’ll see in the insurance and InsurTech space a lot more roll ups that are PE backed, which makes sense because you’re then bringing together a lot of different potential synergies of different InsurTechs or different brokers under a single umbrella, sort of what’s happening with PE and like the plumbing and HVAC space, right? I think you’re gonna see something very similar in the brokerage, the brokerage and InsureTech space over the next 36 months.
Rory Holland: Yeah, it’s difficult as this time is, I like the cycle of less on growth for growth’s sake and more on the merit and doing good, being diligent with the business and the financials, taking care of your team, taking care of your clients, all of these things that we take for granted.
Maria Goy: Totally.
Rory Holland: But obviously I see you guys doing that spot, it’s great to hear what you’re up to. A couple more questions. So what do you wish the world knew about Spot that they don’t know?
Maria Goy: Gosh. I wish the whole world knew about us. I think what I would want the world to know is that selling insurance is tough. Even getting businesses to care about insurance can have its own challenges.
But I think once you can shape the narrative with a partner like we have with Icon and sort of the difference that insurance can make in people’s lives. I think that’s important. I guess maybe this is a little less about knowing about Spot, but more general is I wish people understood more about what type of healthcare they have because people look at this and say, well, I don’t need Spot because I already have insurance.
Do you actually know what your deductible is? Do you know that maybe you’re skiing out at Crested Butte and you get injured and it’s a small out of network hospital that your insurance isn’t going to cover? So I wish people understood more about the type of coverage that they had because I think they’d understand the value of products like Spot and the meaningful difference it can make in their lives if they ever needed to utilize it.
Rory Holland: Yeah, that’s a great point. I’ve learned that hard way a couple of times with my kids and personally. I still like to think I’m 28 when I hit the ground and definitely not.
Another question I wanted to ask you is, one doesn’t just arrive in the fintech space, we kind of work our way into it. You came from a different background. You lived in different countries.
I’m curious. How did you start Spot? How did you get there?
Maria Goy: Yeah. I wonder that a lot myself, too, because I’m it’s my first startup.I’ve had a very operational background working for large companies, started Anderson Consulting, went to Paramount Pictures, Starbucks, MTV, and then was finally recruited to New York Life Insurance.
And I worked for a CIO there, Dave Castellani, he’s my sole boss. I literally would follow these guys to Mars to like start a coffee shop. But really just fell in love with insurance at New York Life. It just drank the blue Kool-Aid of the difference it could make in people’s lives. But as I kind of progressed through my journey there, one of my mentors there had recommended a book, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” And read that book and thought about sort of, what am I doing? I’ve identified so much of myself with my job and realized I do good for companies and negotiating contracts and bottom lines and mentoring folks. But like what good was I actually doing out there in the world outside of like, you know, volunteering?
And just had this idea of like how do you make insurance more affordable? Like something you said earlier, right, it’s really expensive and not a lot of folks can afford it. So at that time I was really focused on life insurance and insurance being something very much for the have and have nots.
And my uncle passed away. My aunt had to file for bankruptcy because they didn’t have life insurance and just really started to have this sort of passion around it and thought, why can’t you actually buy insurance on the spot when you need it most?
So I ended up at dinner when I moved here to Austin with a good friend of mine, her husband, who’s now my co-founder, was telling Matt about this. He’s like, if you could solve anything in the insurance space, what would it be? And kind of talked about this idea of spot.
Matt’s like a serial entrepreneur, would literally get you to give him $20 for your own shadow. He’s great at storytelling and narration. He went home, read everything he could about insurance for like 36 hours and called me and was like, “If you really want to do this, I’ll help fundraise.” And finally ended up somehow convincing me to like leave my very stable, comfortable job in a company that I really thought I was going to retire at to try and do something really good in the world.
So I sent him this like, I guess trifecta of things that happened all at once that kind of just like made sense and serendipitously and yeah, seven years later, here I am.
Rory Holland: The universe brought all that together. Yeah, that’s cool. That’s cool. Thanks for sharing that. So along a similar vein, final question. For your younger self or other folks that might be thinking, hearing this and thinking about getting into the space, what advice would you have for someone that might want to get into our space?
Maria Goy: Probably, I guess, probably goes back a little bit of reflection of where I am personally in life at the moment. Something we were talking about earlier this morning is whatever you’re doing, even passion projects starting a company, it’s still just a job.
And it’s so easy to lose yourself in the moment and you’ve got this one meeting or you’ve got that next fundraise or you’ve got an investor committee and something you and I were chatting about is you draw all these boundaries around yourself as you’re starting a company or you’re going into a new job. And that boundary line just gets crossed the one time and you’re okay with it. And all of sudden you look down and you’re not really sure where that boundary was and so you’re redrawing it. And by the time you get to sort of where we are later in our career and looking at multiple companies, you realize that boundary is like so close to you or on you, to what you said, that you’ve forgotten that it’s just dropped like all of a sudden like you’ve identified yourself with the work, the job, everything, and you’ve left very little room for yourself because you’ve given to everybody above you and everybody below you and everybody to the left and right of you.
And so I think I would tell my younger self to remember that it’s all still just a job and have fun with it. The highs are high and the lows are really low. And so if you surround yourself with people that can remind you of that, I think that you’ve been in a much better space for it.
Rory Holland: Wonderful. It’s been so nice to talk to you.
Maria Goy: Yeah.
Rory Holland: Thanks for for making time. You’re here in town, so we got to do it again soon.
Maria Goy: Yeah, for sure.
Rory Holland: Buy a coffee. Yeah, thanks again. So how do people find out about Spot?
Maria Goy: Getspot.com. Follow us on LinkedIn. @GetSpot on our social for Instagram as well. And then check us out on any of our amazing partners like Icon, USA BMX, USA Cycling.
Yeah, we’d love to help cover people wherever we can.
Rory Holland: Well, thank you so much, Maria Goy, founder, CEO of Spot. Thanks for being on.
Maria Goy: Yeah, thanks for having me.
