KATHERINE CLAYTON - PEACHII INSURANCE
ON CO-FOUNDER SHAREHOLDER AGREEMENTS AND EQUITY SPLITS
What’s it like to completely pivot your business three times, before you even launch?
In this episode, we’re chatting with Katherine Clayton, the founder of new Insur-tech brand, Peachii Insurance. Peachii is insurance for the things you love; your fave pair of earrings, that brand-new watch, and your precious designer handbag. In January 2021, Katherine came up with the idea to make insurance relevant to the younger generation by offering convenient micro-insurance policies. She quickly brought on two co-founders, and together they’ve navigated many challenges.
The Peachii team are no strangers to a strategic pivot, having already changed tact three times. Their first pivot came when they pulled back on the amount of money they wanted to raise. Initially, they were seeking up to $2 million, but then they pulled back to preserve equity for future rounds and took just enough money to get going. Their second pivot came when ASIC changed insurance regulations meaning their original product, the one they’d been working on for months, was no longer able to be sold. Their third pivot came when they had to change their entire launch plan because their flagship product just wasn't ready. It’s been a wild ride, and they haven’t even gone live yet! Katherine is a shining example of just how resilient founders are, and this chat offers a peek behind the curtain of what it takes to launch a brand.
You’ll learn:
How they’re making insurance sexy and accessible to the younger generation
That their original fundraising aspiration was a $2M pre-seed round, and how they had to adjust their expectations and raise smaller cheques from angels instead
How they responded when government regulations changed meaning their original product was almost dead in the water (but how it’s actually worked out well in the end!)
How they approached the equity split with a three person co-founding team
The art of doing a deal, and how Katherine approaches selling
How she deals with investors who ghost her
What they’re doing in the lead up to launch!
We hope you enjoyed this conversation – for more podcast action follow us on Instagram @lady.brains, or sign up to our monthly newsletter at www.ladybrains.com
THE BITS YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS
“We’ve always had a very ambitious vision for how we wanted to come into the market. But you have a number of reality checks along the way. We went into this process thinking let’s go and raise $2 million, it’s gonna be amazing. And then we can do this. And we can do that. Then the venture capital world very quickly went ‘that’s not how it works, pet. There are other things that you need to do first.’ So we ended up fundraising for in a more iterative way, getting smaller amounts of money, hitting certain milestones moving along the journey towards launch. ”
“Sometimes you have to go like...we’re gonna die in a ditch over this [if we aren’t more flexible]. We prioritize, what are our ‘Do or Die’ things in terms of what we go to market with? And then where are we going to iterate. ”
“The first conversation you’ll have within a founding team is the equity share that’s the first deal you do. Not many people will talk about it... do we split it three ways? Is there a lead? Being able to have that conversation and come up with an equity split amongst founders, is one of the most challenging conversations and deals that you have to do it as part of being a new business. ”
“Initially, it can be frustrating, because you’re like oh my god, this person’s worth hundreds of billions of dollars, why aren’t they giving me money?’ But it’s all irrelevant. It’s all about you as an individual. It’s what they’ve got going on in their portfolio, what they’re interested in, where they can add value, their capacity, there are so many factors. So just remember that there is room for you to be successful in this ecosystem. You don’t you may not know exactly where your money is gonna come from, but you just have to keep going. ”
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