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How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

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Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#111

Post by klank »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #9
throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

I don't think there an ethical responsibility to worrying about your competitor's labor. That would lead to stagnation and it's own sort of ethical issues.

I don't think it's as easy as hand waving it away as "your competitor's labor". Your competitors labor is your community, it's people. I believe we all have an ethical responsibility to that.

For the points you brought up, why is stagnation for the purposes of upholding an ethical position a bad thing?

And yes, by definition, worrying about ethical responsibility would lead to ethical issues. That's the whole point.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#112

Post by verall »

johnobrien1010 wrote: post #15

Wanted to point to the startup the author seems to be running, which is to sell insurance somehow tied to Bitcoin: https://meanwhile.bm/ For the record, that strikes me as seriously improper. Life insurance is a heavily regulated offering intended to provide security to families. It is the opposite of bitcoin, which is a highly speculative investment asset. Those two things should not be mixed. Also, the fact that th…

I think it's actually tax avoidance disguised as life insurance:

> You can borrow Bitcoin against your policy, and the borrowed BTC adopts a cost basis at the time of the loan. So if BTC were to 10x after you fund your policy, you could borrow a Bitcoin from Meanwhile at the 10x higher cost basis—meaning you could sell that BTC immediately and not owe any capital gains tax on that 10x of appreciation

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#113

Post by lukan »

andrewflnr wrote: post #86
matwood wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point of a consultant is they have a lot of experience in a specific domain This is your mistake. The point of a consultant is to tell the business to do what the business was already planning to do anyway. This way the consultant takes the risk/blame of the decision. It's similar to the classic 'no one was ever fired for buying IBM' "I did what the McKinsey consultant told me" is CYA. The last piece is that si…

This is specifically addressed in the article. At minimum reality seems to be more complicated than this.

It usually is. But simple tropes sell well.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#114

Post by yodsanklai »

mannyv wrote: post #101
yodsanklai wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I thought. Having the partner present seems to be the right way of handling this. The company is responsible for employees well-being and shouldn't let a client bullying them.

Client bullying? Saying the works sucks isn't bullying, unless you didn't know you were incompetent.

We weren't in the meeting, but if the person cried, there's a possibility that the person was actually bullied. If the work sucks, it can be discussed outside of the meeting with the person's manager for instance. It's not because the person works for McKinsey and is an inexperienced ivy league graduate that it's ok to be mean.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#115

Post by Y_Y »

throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

Can we imagine a world where the claims are adjudicated by an uninterested party (as far as possible)? I don't want the insurance company to decide a contractual issue, that's ridiculous. At the moment they're kept honest by the law and by public opinion (which varies by country), but the principal-agent problem is too big to ignore.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#116

Post by antihipocrat »

jdbernard wrote: post #92
Oras wrote: post #5

> Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and automation/AI to serve them profitably. We plan to do with 100 people what Allianz and others do with 100,000. So 3 years at McKinsey taught OP the corporate BS. That paragraph doe…

Yes it does, it's just dressed up in corporate speak: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We think we can be bigger (more customers, more sales, more money) than all existing players. > We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and automation/AI to serve them pr…

Unless they are planning on sending AI powered robots to attend court cases and prepare submissions they're going to need to hire or retain at least 100 lawyers for an insurance company serving that many customers.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#117

Post by jjk7 »

throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

The AI: > if (claim) reject()

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#118

Post by justinrubek »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #57
matwood wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it's a misallocation of human capital which slows progress for all of society. We should be providing social safety nets for people, not fake jobs.

> We should be providing social safety nets for people, not fake jobs. I agree with you (except in classifying the genuine effort of my fellow people to be "fake jobs" just because a computer can do some of the work) and believe making a resilient, trustworthy, proven system for the former is a prerequisite to withdrawing the latter, to avoid suffering. Unfortunately for us, the barrier to the former is ideological i…

Nobody has classified genuine effort as fake. But what good is genuine effort when it can be done much more easily without it? There's no shame whatsoever in this. At least, I don't think we should add any to the situation.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#120

Post by sokoloff »

Y_Y wrote: post #115
throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

Can we imagine a world where the claims are adjudicated by an uninterested party (as far as possible)? I don't want the insurance company to decide a contractual issue, that's ridiculous. At the moment they're kept honest by the law and by public opinion (which varies by country), but the principal-agent problem is too big to ignore.

Life insurance claims seem fairly unambiguous to adjudicate.
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