Date: 11 March 2021 Author: FINTECH Circle This week’s Startup Focus is shining a spotlight on Nikolaus Sühr, the CEO and Co-Founder of Kasko.

How would you describe your business in one sentence?

KASKO enables insurers to design digital products and integrate into any distribution touchpoint 10x faster and cheaper than internal solutions.

Tell us why is your company a game changer for our industry?

KASKO is creating a central B2B marketplace where insures, distributors and third-party service providers can create and manage insurance products on a shared and API-accessible infrastructure, thus massively driving down the opportunity costs. We are doing to insurance transactions what VISA did for credit card payments.

What has been your biggest achievement so far?

It’s not a single achievement but the aggregate of having onboarded >40 insurers, >50 distributors, transacted >300k contracts in under 3 years with only 2,5m GBP in funding. In fact, we are 10-100x more capital efficient than other leading insurtechs who are acting as MGAs or full-stack insurers.

What has been the greatest challenge leading a startup?

Sales cycles. Convincing insurance customers or large distributors of insurance taking time. Initial sales cycles take 9-12 months, and this requires the financial resources (and cost control) to be patient.

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learnt from your fundraising journey?

So far, we have largely bootstrapped the business and are just preparing our Series A… So, I will be able to tell you more in a few months’ time.

Your advice for anyone starting out as an entrepreneur?

Do it for the right reasons. There are easier ways to be creative and make money than entrepreneurship. Be really excited about your product and market and focus on the journey rather than the financial return.

---

Nikolaus Sühr is the CEO and Co-Founder of KASKO, an InsurTech providing the fastest and most flexible platform for insurance companies to digitalise and scale their product offering. He has 10+ years of professional experience from strategy consulting, product management and sales. Prior to co-founding KASKO, he completed his studies at Cass Business School, one of the top three Business Schools for Insurance and Risk Management in the UK and held Business Development and Consulting roles in insurance management companies like Funk Gruppe, OCC and Zeb. He was named the Best InsurTech Founder of 2019, and KASKO the Best Scaleup, by EXECinsurtech. His LinkedIn community has over 11,000 followers.

---

Join KASKO and other innovative startups, entrepreneurs, business leaders and investors building the fintech world of tomorrow – find out how to become part of the FINTECH Circle startup community!  

---