Show HN: Lemonade – the world's first P2P insurance company • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 12:53 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #45

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...

Probably 20% (edit, now that I think of it, maybe up to 50%) of "hot new startups" I see posted to the front page of HN on a weekly basis are an existing business model with a slick web 2.0 front end, CSS/HTML5, etc, a marketing department run by generation Y and some mobile app developers.

I think of it as 20% of startups is an existing product made shitty.

Twitter? Blogging, but you can only write two sentences. That's shitty!

Vine? Video uploading, but you can only store a few seconds. That's shitty!

Snapchat? Chat, but your messages disappear after a few seconds. That's shitty!

Less is more, sometimes.

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

#132

Post by germanier » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 12:54 PM UTC

germanier wrote: post #115

allendoerfer wrote: post #2

How is this more "P2P" than other insurance companies are? Non-profit, yes, but the mechanism seems to be the same. There is still a central pot everybody pays into. I would like a non-profit that just pays back the spare money even more. I do not know how this would work with regulations. I guess in Germany this could be done through a "Genossenschaft", which Wikipedia tells me has an US equivalent called co-op. Wou…

The structure you describe is called "Versicherungsverein auf Gegenseitigkeit" in Germany. They are the oldest kind of insurance and still occupy a respectable portion of the market. Public social insurance is even more P2P than that as dues are calculated based on actual payouts. This is most pronounced in the mandatory worker's accident insurance where employers just pay their share (based on size and risk profile)…

The English term for that is "Mutual insurance" and they exist in almost any country.

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

#133

Post by buro9 » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 12:56 PM UTC

Not sure it's the first.

At least, I know of https://heyguevara.com/ is a P2P car insurance provider in the UK that is registered with the FSA and licensed to provide insurance products. They've been operating for a couple of years now.

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

#134

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 12:59 PM UTC

yules wrote: post #129

CamperBob2 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need more than my name to run a credit check. They need something they're not going to get, which is my SSN.

No need for an SSN to run a credit check. No one in their right mind would give an SSN.

Yeah I don't get this SSN thing:

- If it's so secret, why is it not called "password"? Why is it printed on your id card for anyone to see? Why do many organizations require it?

- If it's used in so many places, how is it expected to prove anything about your identity? It's identification (i.e. which row in the government's citizens database), not authentication.

Every employer wants my SSN. Every time I interact with the government, they want my SSN. It's in way too many places to be secret (like a PIN is), and besides, the government never told me it's secret. The government's info page about it and Wikipedia don't say anything about not giving it to anyone who asks for it.

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

#135

Post by splatcollision » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 12:59 PM UTC

sfrailsdev wrote: post #108

bigiain wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Shut up and take my money!!!

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

#136

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 1:12 PM UTC

nerdponx wrote: post #106

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…

> if my phone is damaged? Will I be forced to call

You might have a hard time doing that.

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

#137

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 1:14 PM UTC

gilsadis wrote: post #61

avitzurel wrote: post #54

I read some of the comments about the funnel and I set out to try it myself. There are 8 steps to get a quote 1. First and last name 2. Full address 3. question (renter/owner) 4. roomates/alarm 5. current owner of insurance? 6. Jewelry over 1000$? 7. email, birthday 8. Quote, which seems highly generic and could be done without 6 of the 7 previous steps. I can't even imagine the conversion rate from just checking it…

Valid points all, but if you were getting insurance from the traditional companies, you'd have to answer many more questions, or alternatively, pay for coverage you don't necessarily need. Our funnel tries to get you a personalized quote in minutes, so you pay for what you need. Most of the time this will be considerably lower than traditional carriers.

Just an idea: give a very general, estimated quote and refine it as people go to the next step. Then people that randomly browse are happy, and people who actually want to know their quote are happy.

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

#138

Post by gaius » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 1:27 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #117

gilsadis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. We like to say that Lemonade is the oldest new idea! I think that's what the sharing economy is all about, using technology to revive modes of social interaction that used to be commonplace.

What are you 'sharing' exactly? When did this word get redefined by corporations to mean charging a fee for a service?

Charging a fee for a service while sidestepping regulations and taxation. Also known as "disruption".

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

#139

Post by rm_-rf_slash » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 1:40 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #131

walrus01 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably 20% (edit, now that I think of it, maybe up to 50%) of "hot new startups" I see posted to the front page of HN on a weekly basis are an existing business model with a slick web 2.0 front end, CSS/HTML5, etc, a marketing department run by generation Y and some mobile app developers.

I think of it as 20% of startups is an existing product made shitty. Twitter? Blogging, but you can only write two sentences. That's shitty! Vine? Video uploading, but you can only store a few seconds. That's shitty! Snapchat? Chat, but your messages disappear after a few seconds. That's shitty! Less is more, sometimes.

Hacker News is a forum with very few additional features found on more popular sites like Reddit, and is significantly more narrow in topic scope and userbase.

That's...better. But it also depends on where you prefer to talk tech.

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

#140

Post by edc117 » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 1:45 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #137

gilsadis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valid points all, but if you were getting insurance from the traditional companies, you'd have to answer many more questions, or alternatively, pay for coverage you don't necessarily need. Our funnel tries to get you a personalized quote in minutes, so you pay for what you need. Most of the time this will be considerably lower than traditional carriers.

Just an idea: give a very general, estimated quote and refine it as people go to the next step. Then people that randomly browse are happy, and people who actually want to know their quote are happy.

It's a good idea, and as a random browser it'd make me happy, but people wouldn't be too thrilled if the price went up from the initial quote. Also if the initial is too high, it may scare some people off.