On Demand Economy
is Slice Lab’s Focus
The theory around building
a better mousetrap remains
solid. Find a problem, and create
a solution. Slice Labs saw gaps
in the insurance needs for those
operating in the on-demand,
peer-to-peer economy. Now they
plan to serve that market for the
second-to-second changes that
mark the world of on-demand
Companies such as Airbnb
and Uber developed platforms
that allow people to make mon-
ey as a taxi service or renting out
a home. Slice Labs plans to fill in
the insurance part of the equa-
tion. CEO Tim Attia and part-
ners Ernest Hursh and Stuart
Baserman saw a need for better
insurance coverage because it
is difficult to find insurance for
such a business model.
“If we wanted to reimagine
and improve the insurance pro-
cess, what better place to do it than
the new economy where there is
some open ground and we don’t
have to compete with companies
with billion-dollar ad spend, and
where some of the friction has
already been removed,” says Attia
(left), CEO of Slice Labs.
Platforms have improved
efficiency for someone offering
a service to buyers. Slice Labs set
out to find a way to provide the insurance because, as Attia explains,
“you can’t re-introduce friction
into a frictionless process.”
Need for Speed
It takes longer for an Uber driver
to get insurance than it takes to
sign up to actually become an
Uber driver. With that knowl-
edge, Attia knew it would be a
challenge for Slice from a tech-
nology perspective to develop
a solution to the problem. But
Slice has met that challenge by
developing a fully functional
insurance platform that will
remove the friction from the
process of buying an on-demand
policy; nothing like it has existed
prior to this, Attia claims.
Slice also needed to develop
their own product, with the
ability to issue the policy, man-
age the bills, and pay claims.
“We wanted to go after what
we felt was a growing need with a
gap,” says Attia. “Last October we
had three guys and a PowerPoint
presentation. We raised our seed
money and our focus now is to
get our first product into our first
jurisdiction and to continue to
work on our platform.”
Venture capital firms Horizon Ventures and XL Innovate,
were secured. In addition,
Munich Re has partnered with
Slice. Attia has never seen the
VC market so exciteed over
insurance.
“That’s a good thing, but it
still comes down to execution,”
he says. “You can talk, but you
need to execute. More people are
going to come out with innovative models for insurance. This
model works so we can innovate
on product and technology.
There also are ways to partner
with incumbents. We have a
better chance to innovate, and
the opportunity to innovate with
partners will mean even greater
capacity, but we don’t have the
capacity for two million properties or a million cars.”
