Karn Saroya: Democratizing property insurance

Karn talked to us about the inefficiencies of the property insurance industry and explained how introducing things like financial transaction history and elements of behavioral data results in a better risk segmentation, fair prices, and in many cases - access to the insurance in general.

Karn also discusses how he left a career in finance for startups, and shares details of developing and selling StyleKick, a high-end fashion e-commerce business, to Shopify. Karn also details what made them decide to focus their efforts on young people and under-banked communities.

Karn shares his thoughts on building a diverse workplace and challenges that startups face during the hiring process. He also talks about building a business with his wife and how that influenced their fundraising process for Cover.

Greg Miaskiewicz:

So, one question that I've been meaning to ask you, you started a company with your wife.

How did investors react to that? Because I worked for a husband and wife team, I'll say personally, it

was somewhat chaotic, in the sense that there wasn't a standard amount of pushback that you would

expect, that like a professional level.

Karn Saroya:

Yeah. I hear that.

Greg Miaskiewicz:

Like one person would bend to the other's person in the fight without a normal discussion about pros

and cons, or things like that. That was a little chaotic from a managerial perspective. And then I know

the VCs, like probably discounted the valuation they could have gotten by like 20% or 30%. They got the,

you're married discount because it's a risk you might get divorced. This is 10 years ago. Their attitudes

might have changed. I know during the pandemic, a ton of couples started companies.

Karn Saroya:

Yeah, yeah. It's a fair set of questions. I think the context is I've been together with my partner for a very

long time. And we are now two businesses and an acquisition in. We do very, very different things. And I

trust her within her domain space. She trusts me within my domain space.

Having commingled professional and personal risk for so long, we're also probably experts now at

conflict resolution internally, and making sure that we're good at not making sure it spills over into

either context, either personal or professional. That being said, it's not perfect, right? And no one is.

We've gotten to a point where we're super functional and clearly have been doing this long enough and

well enough to get to where we're at today.