Meet our Premium Member Felix Huemer – Co-Founder & CEO of Helvengo

Please tell us about Helvengo.

Helvengo was founded in 2020 to re-think insurance by leveraging the most recent data and technology capabilities for better risk assessment and products which have the power to reduce or prevent claims. We are able to achieve these ambitious goals as we’ve created a user- and data-centric ecosystem which connects insurance carriers with data providers, high quality distribution partners, claims handling experts as well as other critical services. All stakeholders are united on our insurance platform which enables seamless processes and operations across different teams. Our user-centric platform combines state-of-the-art backend functionalities with different portals and frontends for insurers, underwriters, distribution partners, service teams and end-customers.

Our team of 17 does not only consist of software developers. We have insurance experts, data analysts and product developers on board who design insurance products that use real-time data to allow for more qualified underwriting decisions, or sensor technology that is able to reduce or prevent claims, both to save policyholders time and effort.

Tell us more about your plans for 2023. What is your long-term vision?

When we went live in Switzerland, in the year 2021, we started in the small commercial insurance space. During the many conversations we had with our carrier partners, we learned that our value proposition had the potential to have so many more use cases in other lines of business. As such, we’ve decided to expand our offering at the end of last year for other types of insurance products. 

This was accompanied by a major transformation of our platform. The new release allows us to develop and administer products for a wide range of organizations and insured objects. In addition, we entered the German market last year and increased our Portuguese engineering team.

For this year, we are very happy to see all of our past efforts coming together. We are currently working on the launch of a completely reimagined building insurance product for the German market, making IoT sensor technology an integral part of our insurance offering. We are convinced that this IoT-based building insurance product and its associated services will change the market in the long term, ensuring that building risks remain insurable and affordable thanks to technology – despite the increasing number of climate-related claims.

Our vision is to mitigate insurable risks sustainably through technology. In achieving this, we can help to ensure that insurance does not become the privilege of the rich, despite climate change and price increases, and that society in general becomes more resilient.

What has been the biggest success that you have achieved in your startup?

Of course, we could now point out that Helvengo raised the largest seed financing round in Switzerland and the third-largest seed round in Europe in the Insurtech sector last year. That was certainly a great success for the team.

However, it is even more fulfilling when you have the chance to work on projects where you realize that you truly have the potential to break down existing structures and change an industry – together with people from various fields. In our current building project, for example, we managed to bring together a diverse team (consisting of developers, industrial engineers, insurance and sales experts), from four different companies with different cultures (from tech startups to established mid-sized companies, to large reinsurers), all motivated to work towards a common goal. We are sure that this will be Helvengo’s biggest success so far.

If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently? What are your biggest learnings?

Looking back, it’s always easy to say what could have been done differently. The most important thing is not to get frustrated too quickly and to learn from your mistakes. Generally speaking, things are often not as trivial as they initially seem and not every idea that you consider to be excellent actually works out in reality the way you thought it would. One example is our pilot to go into direct customer acquisition. Online customer acquisition in the insurance business can be very costly, especially if your brand has no recognition in the broader consumer base.

What motivates you to continue your business every day?

The people I have the privilege to work with and entrepreneurship itself. From a bird’s eye view, building a startup is and remains an extremely exciting endeavour. The opportunity to build a scalable company that has the potential to change the industry for the better in a sustainable way motivates and energizes us.

One piece of advice for someone just starting out with their startup?

Resilience! Building a successful company usually requires many years of hard work. Be open to learn from the market, validate your idea and even make peace with an idea not working out as planned. Sticking to your ‘why’ but remaining flexible on the ‘how’ needs to be your mantra, especially in the first years.

What does being a member of the Swiss Startup Association mean to you?

Entrepreneurial success is often related to being in the right place at the right time and contacting the right people. Networks help enormously in this regard. For me, being a member of the Swiss Startup Association is a piece of the puzzle that supports the development of a network. Especially in startups, it’s important to make yourself heard and get inspiration from peers – this is why SSA is important.

Have you ever visited the events of the Swiss Startup Association? If yes, which ones? Would you recommend them? 

I joined the Founders Academy before founding Helvengo. I’d love to participate in more events in the future again.

 

Find Felix on LinkedIn.