{"id":39126,"date":"2018-11-19T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T11:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/?p=39126"},"modified":"2021-04-23T17:03:42","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T21:03:42","slug":"jennifer-fitzgerald-policygenius-didnt-rejection-sexism-stop-building-130-million-insurance-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/jennifer-fitzgerald-policygenius-didnt-rejection-sexism-stop-building-130-million-insurance-startup\/","title":{"rendered":"This Founder Didn\u2019t Let Rejection or Sexism Stop Her From Building a $130 Million Insurance Startup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: This is part of What She Learned, a new interview series with\u00a0successful\u00a0women entrepreneurs<\/a>\u00a0about their journeys and the lessons they learned along the way.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Jennifer
Jennifer Fitzgerald, co-founder of Policygenius, is unassuming in manner but obviously driven. (Credit: Courtesy of the company.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s clear that Jennifer Fitzgerald<\/a>, co-founder of Policygenius<\/a>, a buzzy new insurance platform aimed at millennials, isn\u2019t afraid of shaking up a traditionally stodgy industry.<\/p>\n

When I arrive at her startup\u2019s Insta-worthy new office space in New York\u2019s Flatiron district, I\u2019m greeted by a friendly one-eyed dog name Wink. A receptionist in skinny jeans and an oversized sweater directs me to a shiny white kiosk, where I tap out my name and click a few boxes. I\u2019m puzzling over whether I\u2019ve just ordered a latt\u00e9 or signed a non-disclosure agreement (turns out, the latter) when the company\u2019s enthusiastic media relations manager, Brooke Niemeyer, who wears a rockabilly headband — bounds over. She escorts me to the Stanley Kubrick conference room, where Fitzgerald and I will chat over apple-flavored seltzer water.<\/p>\n

Fitzgerald, dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, is the CEO of a 4-year-old venture that\u2019s raised about $60 million in financing and was recently valued at $130 million<\/a>. The hipster ethos of her office — I spot a worker with a poop emoji sculpture on his desk — reflects the company\u2019s calculated strategy to appeal to an iPhone-addicted demographic that doesn\u2019t have the time (or inclination) to meet face-to-face with an agent to buy life, auto, renters, health or pet insurance. Fitzgerald, who is unassuming in manner but obviously driven, gets right to the point. \u00a0\u201cWhen somebody thinks about insurance or financial protection,\u201d she says, \u201cI want them to think of Policygenius, and not Allstate or Northwestern Mutual.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an ambitious goal to disrupt an old, regulated, messy industry like insurance — and Fitzgerald claims (rightfully so) to be a pioneer in what is now called \u201cinsuretech.\u201d The term applies to startups using technology to modernize insurance. Five years ago, when she and Francois de Lame quit their jobs at management consulting firm Mckinsey to build out their concept for Policygenius as an Expedia-like platform for one-stop policy shopping, \u201cnobody was really thinking about insurance,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd now it\u2019s a big thing.\u201d In fact, an annual InsureTech Connect<\/a> conference, held this past October in Las Vegas, now attracts some 6,000 attendees.<\/p>\n

[Related:\u00a0Donna Karan Opens Up About Fashion, Failure and the Force That Drives Her]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

While at McKinsey, Fitzgerald and de Lame noticed a pattern: Their clients who were old-school insurers consistently struggled with how to engage with digital-native customers. Research<\/a> indicates that young consumers — unlike Baby Boomers or older generations — are OK with buying insurance online and in fact, want to comparison-shop policies via the Internet. It was a \u201clight bulb moment,\u201d says Fitzgerald. Confident that their idea for a digital marketplace would work, Fitzgerald and de Lame exchanged steady corporate paychecks for the high-stress stakes of startup life, and set about raising money.<\/p>\n

An Uphill Climb<\/h5>\n

When I first shake hands with Fitzgerald inside the glass-walled conference room, I\u2019m surprised how different she looks from the photos I\u2019ve seen splashed across Inc., Forbes and the New York Business Journal. I think it might be the rather dramatic highlights streaked across her brunette bob. \u201cThese are new-ish,\u201d she confirms. \u201cI\u2019m very lazy [about salon visits], but you\u2019re just catching me very shortly after a hair appointment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that Fitzgerald doesn\u2019t look like your typical tech-bro entrepreneur — or for that matter, someone in insurance — made it tough for Policygenius to win early-stage capital. \u201cInvestors didn’t get it,\u201d Fitzgerald says. \u201cWe didn’t look like your typical co-founder team.\u201d De Lame is a white guy originally from South Africa, who likes cricket<\/a>. \u201cWe had one man, one woman, both of us ex-consultants, neither of us software engineers — we basically had every strike against us.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a frustrating 4 months, during which they fruitlessly pitched over 100 investors, Fitzgerald and de Lame decided to change tack. Appealing to friends and family, they raised $750,000 in early seed money — less than their goal of $1 million, but enough to keep them and a small team afloat for 18 months.<\/p>\n

That initial rejection was tough. I ask Fitzgerald what it was like, facing all those nos. She\u2019s a career-driven type who, by her own account, appears to have gone to top-ranked Columbia Law School for the hell of it (she had no interest in practicing law). The VC snubs were discouraging \u201cespecially coming from a path where I’d always been an overachiever,\u201d she says. \u201cYou’re led to believe that if you just work hard enough, things will happen. We were working our tails off, and it still wasn’t happening.\u201d She started to doubt herself.<\/p>\n

[Related:\u00a0Startup Founders Want to Quit When They Hit These 3 Rough Patches<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

Women, either because of socialization or innate behavior, tend to handle rejection worse than men. Did Fitzgerald struggle more than her male co-founder, I inquire? \u201cThat was certainly the case,\u201d Fitzgerald affirms. \u201cI took it more personally then he did. I internalized it a lot more than he did.\u201d It actually was helpful for her to watch how de Lame let rejection roll off his back. \u201cHe was like, \u2018Let’s go pitch again, see what we can do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She also dealt with sexism. In one memorable pitch, \u201cthe perspective investor kept directing his questions to my co-founder, not me, and it was just so out of the ordinary,\u201d says Fitzgerald, who has clearly chosen to laugh about the incident (she fills the room with an incredulous chuckle). She recently told Inc. magazine<\/a> about the encounter, calling it an \u201coh-shit-it’s-because-I’m-a woman\u201d moment. \u201cThankfully,\u201d she adds now, \u201cthat was atypical.\u201d<\/p>\n

After launching a first iteration of Policygenius, and signing up initial customers by reaching out to personal finance blogs, Fitzgerald and de Lame won their first investor: TX Zhuo, a former McKinsey consultant who was a managing partner at Karlin Ventures. \u201cIt was a relief because we were probably 2 weeks away from running out of cash,\u201d Fitzgerald says. \u201cHe actually had to advance us a million of it so we could make payroll.\u201d In total, they nabbed<\/a> a Series A round of $5.3 million. After that, it got easier — when it comes to investors, \u201cthere’s a little bit of a herd mentality,\u201d she says — and backers now include Steve Case\u2019s Revolution, among others.<\/p>\n

Kind of a Big Deal<\/h5>\n

These days, Fitzgerald is having something of a moment. In September, Quartz ranked her 44th on its \u201crising stars\u201d list<\/a> of nearly 250 female founders. Forbes has noted<\/a> that she\u2019s one of only five women in fintech (finance technology) to have raised over $50 million. CB Insights just named Policygenius to its Fintech 250 list.<\/p>\n

Yet, she still (by choice) doesn\u2019t have a private office. At Policygenius\u2019s brand new open-floor-plan headquarters, which its 140 employees moved into this past summer, Fitzgerald\u2019s desk is smack in the middle. There\u2019s a constant murmur of noise, and youthful employees who follow the \u201cstartup casual\u201d dress code — thick-rimmed glasses, cropped sweatshirts, pink hair, a few declarative tattoos — are clustered in stations around her desk.<\/p>\n

She sits a short distance from the company\u2019s \u201cLegend\u201d wall, which is covered with pin-up photos of staffers who have won the Michael Jackson Legend Award, sort of an alternate take on Employee-of-the-Month. The MJ award, I ask? \u201cIt\u2019s a very weird origin,\u201d she says. Policygenius\u2019s first office was a co-working space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — \u201clike a poor person’s WeWork [without] the cucumber water\u201d and there was a \u201creally gross\u201d red-and-black fake leather couch in the common area. \u201cIt kind of looked like Michael Jackson’s Thriller jacket,\u201d she says. \u201cI don’t know how that lead to us creating a Michael Jackson Legend Award, but there it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

While she was in law school, Fitzgerald took stand-up comedy courses with the Upright Citizens Brigade, and her quirky humor permeates the office. The small conference rooms scattered around the open floor plan are named after atypical \u201cgeniuses\u201d (her idea) — there\u2019s Betty White, Beyonc\u00e9, Oprah, Jeff Goldblum. I mention that Goldblum seems a somewhat strange choice. \u201cI think that was an inside joke from one of our teams,\u201d Fitzgerald admits. \u201cI was like, \u2018Guys, why?\u2019 I like Jeff Goldblum though.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her own personal conference room — which nobody else gets to use, except maybe de Lame — is the Gregg Popovich room. I search my brain for who that is. Fitzgerald helps me out. \u201cHe’s the head coach of the San Antonio Spurs,\u201d she says. A military brat, Fitzgerald lived in quite a few places before spending some formative years in Texas. She was awed by Popovich, but not because she plays basketball. \u201cI\u2019m very unathletic,\u201d she deadpans. Rather, \u201che\u2019s built probably the most successful sports organization, certainly in recent history, but I think of all time.\u201d I silently wonder how many female insurance startup CEOs have an NBA coach as a role model and decide Fitzgerald is probably unique.<\/p>\n

No Lemonade Stands<\/h5>\n

We\u2019re close to wrapping up our interview, so I ask Fitzgerald to provide a few pointers for aspiring women entrepreneurs. One is to not be intimidated by the unfamiliar. \u201cI didn’t run a lemonade stand as a kid, so this was a completely new path for me,\u201d she says, of entrepreneurship. For the past 2 years, to beef up her business-ownership skills, she has participated in a program called Venwise<\/a>, which assembles small groups or \u201cpods\u201d of CEOs in non-competitive industries for monthly boardroom-style discussions. \u201cI\u2019m the only woman,\u201d she says, but \u201cit’s super helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Related: Listen to our podcast<\/a> on women making an impact]<\/em><\/p>\n

Fitzgerald also makes it a habit to check out what other startups are doing, simply by being a consumer. She wakes up at 6 a.m. each morning and tries (sometimes successfully) to exercise at fitness-franchise startup Orangetheory. She orders lunch and dinner at the office using the meal delivery service Kettle Bell Kitchen, founded in 2013. And the seltzer she\u2019s been sipping throughout our meeting is Bubly, Pepsi\u2019s attempt to innovate in the soft-drink category. \u201cIt\u2019s helpful to learn about how new companies … think about the user experience,\u201d she says. \u201cThat’s a big thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Improving \u201cuser experience\u201d is why Policygenius has spent a good chunk of its budget making its site friendly in tone and helpful in terms of informative articles on personal finance, travel, raising kids, even how to make \u201cheavenly\u201d peanut butter cookies<\/a> for less than 25 cents each. Articles are loaded with links to where one can buy insurance on Policygenius\u2019s platform, plus searchable terms that help the site\u2019s content rank high in Google. When Fitzgerald tells me she has about 10 people dedicated to editorial content, I mention that\u2019s bigger than my news organization. \u201cAnd we’re growing it considerably,\u201d she adds. (Insert sad trombone noise here, on behalf of the entire media industry.)<\/p>\n

As we leave the Stanley Kubrick conference room — we would have been in Popovich, but there was jackhammering outside — Fitzgerald mentions the best advice she herself ever received: \u201cGet the people right.\u201d I ask her whether that means employees\u2019 talent, abilities or personality. \u201cAll of the above,\u201d she says. \u201cYou need to make sure that they’ve got the right skills, the will, especially in the early days when you’re all working long hours and sitting in the same room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Policygenius employees are still <\/i>sitting in the same room, albeit a football-field-sized one, complete with a cafeteria stocked with LaCroix and the requisite coconut water. As Fitzgerald herself escorts me to the front door, we pass rows of millennial staffers.<\/p>\n

Fitzgerald seems to have them all in mind when I ask her, what\u2019s your biggest success?<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the risk of sounding obvious,\u201d she says, \u201cit’s this.\u201d Five years ago, she couldn\u2019t have imagined the company would have grown to its current size. \u201cI usually am too busy to stop and reflect, and be like, \u2018Holy cow, look what we’ve done. We have all these people here,\u2019\u201d she says. On the odd occasion she does stop for a moment, \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018wow,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cIt’s very humbling.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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