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Show HN: Lemonade – the world's first P2P insurance company

lemonade.com

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Re: Show HN: Lemonade – the world's first P2P insurance company

#101

Post by kateho »

Jarwain wrote: post #89
mmanfrin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't sound right -- a claim should be paid out or denied based on the veracity of the claim, not on the profit motive of the company. Sure, a for-profit company has extra incentive to vet claims, but so does Lemonade (since they dont want to be swindled). Traditional insurance companies make their margins on the cash they have to hold on hand.

They're capitalizing on the lack of trust people have for typical insurance companies. Even though a claim "should be" paid out based on the veracity of the claim, I think there's a population that doesn't trust the insurance company to operate this way.

I'd agree with that. There's a general feeling that people are surprised when their insurance companies pay out/cover some big cost (like rot), rather than it just being part of life. That says something about how much we trust existing insurance companies.

Re: Show HN: Lemonade – the world's first P2P insurance company

#103

Post by bigiain »

walrus01 wrote: post #75
hueving wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is a perfect example of this.

ircd-hybrid or bust!

Yeah - aren't a good 20% of Silicon Valley startups just Unix commands reinvented (badly) as websites?

I'll by a beer for the first person to get to Unicorn status with an actual shell buitin (as opposed to all the SaaS companies that are just repackaged standard Linux/Unix distribution packages).

(Rushes off to register echo.io, pwd.io and logout.io...)

Re: Show HN: Lemonade – the world's first P2P insurance company

#104

Post by ravivyas »

Aren't all insurances in theory P2P? My naive understanding is that the insurance companies basically collect a lot of money from a large number on people, and then pay it out when needed? Basically, think of them as managers for the money. In addition they try to make the money work by placing bets on a lot of things and hope they make more than 1X.

Not trying to poke holes, but this sounds so interesting to me. This sounds similar to syndicates on the investment side.

Re: Show HN: Lemonade – the world's first P2P insurance company

#105

Post by [deleted] »

bigiain wrote: post #103
walrus01 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ircd-hybrid or bust!

Yeah - aren't a good 20% of Silicon Valley startups just Unix commands reinvented (badly) as websites? I'll by a beer for the first person to get to Unicorn status with an actual shell buitin (as opposed to all the SaaS companies that are just repackaged standard Linux/Unix distribution packages). (Rushes off to register echo.io, pwd.io and logout.io...)

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Lemonade – the world's first P2P insurance company

#106

Post by nerdponx »

I happen to have been looking for renters insurance recently. I signed up immediately after reading the insurance policy terms. They are about as generous as the terms offered by Liberty Mutual, but LM wanted to charge me more than 3x as much, and I had a strange and frustrating conversation with a LM agent that left a bad taste in my mouth. Charity or no charity, it's a great deal.

However I made two mistakes. First, I selected personal property coverage that was probably too low. Second, I used a throwaway e-mail address to get my quote. I see no option in the app to modify either one. As I put in a support request for each item on the website, it occurred to me that I am probably screwed if anything goes wrong with my policy or claim. Yes, I am aware that there is an emergency hotline. But what happens if I'm no longer in an emergency? Insurance payouts can take a long time -- am I supposed to only ever interact with the company through a little "Help" popup on their website while I'm waiting for my check?

I'm also wondering: why is the actual interface to the application only available in a mobile app? What happens if my phone is damaged? Will I be forced to call the emergency hotline for even minor administrative tasks until I get a new phone? Is it that hard in 2016 to support web and mobile simultaneously?

Finally, I am sick to death of patronizing "I'm your friend" interactions with applications. The whole idea of "Maya" the robot assistant is goofy. It feels like a grown-up version of Smarterchild, and I get the same uncomfortable feeling "interacting" with Maya that I do when I'm trying to explain to a cheerful robot on the phone what I'm calling about.

Re: Show HN: Lemonade – the world's first P2P insurance company

#107

Post by cbsmith »

omarish wrote: post #74
h4nkoslo wrote: post #25

This is wildly un-new. Mutual insurance companies have existed for literally hundreds of years. Oldest one I can find in 5 minutes dates to 1762, and if you include merchant insurance organizations, probably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Equitable_Life_Assurance_S...

Is that a bad thing? It just means that it's an existing market, done better. Your comment reminds me a lot of the first criticism of the iPod "less space than a jukebox" or the guy who berated Dropbox by calling it a dumb GUI to rsync.

It's a bad thing when someone pretends it is a new thing.

Re: Show HN: Lemonade – the world's first P2P insurance company

#108

Post by sfrailsdev »

bigiain wrote: post #103
walrus01 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ircd-hybrid or bust!

Yeah - aren't a good 20% of Silicon Valley startups just Unix commands reinvented (badly) as websites? I'll by a beer for the first person to get to Unicorn status with an actual shell buitin (as opposed to all the SaaS companies that are just repackaged standard Linux/Unix distribution packages). (Rushes off to register echo.io, pwd.io and logout.io...)

I'm off to found Ellis (ls), the company that displays current directory information, file creation information, and file ownership in an easy to use dashboard, but with websockets, Golang and React. Quick somebody give me a super new log structured merge tree db to use to store Ellis data.

Re: Show HN: Lemonade – the world's first P2P insurance company

#109

Post by sfrailsdev »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #91
gilsadis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. The reason we ask for your name first is because we want to create a more personal chat experience. We believe that buying insurance should not only be instant but also delightful.

Why is the chat necessary? Can't you just give a rough estimate based on zip? Show me a number, boom! done.

If it's simply checking one credit agency, you could let the user enter in a credit score from whatever credit agency you use to get a quote, but let the quote be contingent on their credit score exactly matching that.

Re: Show HN: Lemonade – the world's first P2P insurance company

#110

Post by xerophyte12932 »

So I tried out Maya and I just gotta say, great stuff! You ask for the bare minimum stuff, deduce the rest yourself, let the user play around with the numbers and give them an instant quote. Insurance is something a lot of people find intimidating and hard to approach as customers, and you have made it as simple as possible, explaining each item in an easy-to-understand way, letting the user know exactly what they signing up for, how much they are paying, and what they are getting.

Impressive! Good luck to you guys.

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