First five weeks of the Lloyd’s Lab — finding our cruise mode.
Hi, it’s Yann CEO and Co-founder of Otonomi, sharing my experience in the Lloyd’s Lab in London.
The first half of the program in numbers:
Our KPIs are looking fantastic!
It’s been an incredible experience to be fully-immersed in the Lloyd’s of London markets, meeting insurance professionals and logistics experts in person, and it’s only the first half!
Now a bit of the cohort joyous spirit with our first Thursday “informal” drinks at the Lab with other startup fellows. The usual suspects called present: Marmalade, InsurX, Rosie, and Otonomi.
The rest of my team also crossed the Atlantic to join force: our data scientist, whose name coincidently is Lloyd arrives from home, in Brooklyn, with barely any sleep on the plane, but the excitement supersedes the fatigue.
Our official mentor GreenlightRe’s head of pricing and analytics Kagabo pays a visit from his office in Cayman, and stops by the Lab, to chat about strategy, capacity, loss ratios, distribution, and other beloved insurance lingo.
Another insightful meetup and panel at the CodeNode in the City for the monthly Instech event: *Making Payments Pay*. As a Wall Street veteran, one of the most glaring observations I always share with insurers is that digital payment solutions continue to be subpar in insurance and therefore should remain a strong area of focus.
At Otonomi, we do just that by providing comprehensive and frictionless end-to-end collateral funds management solutions for our clients and insurance partners!
Program midpoint — The trade show.
Five weeks of intense business development efforts, insurance meetings, distribution conversations, and other strategic undertakings culminate at the midpoint trade show, Otonomi co-hosts with the Lab and the other 11 talented startup co-founders.
Few hundred invited guests, with nearly 50% turnout, amongst which the top-tier insurance carriers, syndicates, brokers and managing agents. That was a blast!
The making-of: with Lizzie and one of Lloyd’s event planning executives.
Oof, I literally couldn’t keep up with the handshaking, constant 90" pitching, business cards swapping, goodies distribution to a very engaged crowd, to name a few: Aon, Marsh, Chubb, CJ Coleman, Instech, Everest, Axa… and many others!
Feedback from other cohort founders have remained off-the-chart in terms of “bizdev” opportunities, but really everyone is essentially setting up the tone for the last stretch leading to Demo Day on Wednesday July 6, 2022.
=> Stay tuned for full details on how to sign up and attend.
Barely recovered from the trade show craze, my data scientist and I are already beating the ground to another pitch session. This time we’re headed back to the mothership: meeting with the commodities and shipping team at Citigroup in Canary Wharf (CW).
It is absolutely fascinating how Otonomi’s products manage to intersect between fintech, insurtech, blockchain and the supply chain sectors bringing emerging technology in the mix. Very exciting conversation with the Citi’s team!
On the way back, we travel the brand new “Elizabeth” tube line from CW to Liverpool Street. Pristine design, schedule on the dots, comfortable and spacious cars, and the sound-proofing, oh lord the sound-proofing — New York could learn a thing or two on how they should manage their subway systems :)
Looking forward to the next 5 weeks.
Our work is far from finished, the second half of the program looks even more promising, with:
As always, stay well! We’ll talk soon!
-Team Otonomi.