7 Go-to-Market Lessons from Building a $13M Embedded Insurance Company

7 Go-to-Market Lessons from Building a $13M Embedded Insurance Company

Most founders chasing traditional enterprise sales cycles eventually hit the same wall: long procurement processes, endless customization requests, and deals that evaporate after months of work. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Harry Croydon, Co-Founder of MIC Global, an embedded microinsurance company that’s raised over $13 million, shared how his team navigated these challenges by completely rethinking their go-to-market approach.

Here are seven hard-won lessons from MIC Global’s journey that apply far beyond insurance.

Lesson 1: Runway Trumps Growth Every Single Time

Harry learned this lesson the hard way during the dot-com bubble, and it shaped every decision at MIC Global. The conventional wisdom says to move fast and grow quickly. Harry’s experience says otherwise.

“I think we had this idea then and I think it’s still the same is if things do take longer than you think, you know, they take a lot longer than you think they’re going to take,” Harry explains. “And kind of being there is more important than spending all the money quickly.”

This isn’t theoretical advice. In 2001, Harry’s team closed a funding round in June. Three months later, 9/11 happened. “The insurance industry after 911 ground to a halt for several months and any deal we had stopped, everything stopped, we had no income, nothing, all just ground to a halt because of 9 11.”

The principle: always assume your timeline is wrong and your runway is too short. Then double it. “You’ve got to kind of protect yourself from the unknown really all the time.”

Lesson 2: When Your Customers Want It But Your Partners Won’t Build It, Become the Partner

MIC Global started as a broker, attempting to connect customer demand with insurance company supply. They found real projects, real customers, real budgets. Then they spent nine months watching deals die.

“Despite having that work and despite having those projects and the clients wanting to do it took us a Long time to get those companies to basically say, no, they don’t want to do it,” Harry recalls about pitching major carriers like AIG and Munich Re.

The conventional pivot would be to find different customers or different partners. MIC Global did something bolder: they became an insurance company themselves.

“We decided that we ought to become an insurance company so that we could say yes to these things, and that’s what we did. So in 2020, we set up our first insurance entity and started to place insurance into that so that we could and then work with clients.”

This lesson applies beyond insurance. When distribution partners consistently reject good opportunities, consider whether you should become the partner, not find a new one.

Lesson 3: Multi-Channel Isn’t a Compromise, It’s a Competitive Advantage

Every growth advisor tells you to focus. Pick one channel. Master it. Scale it. Harry deliberately ignored this advice.

“What we’ve done is really focus on this global nature, hence MIC Global and also had a kind of a multi channel approach which is I think different to a lot of startups that we see,” he explains.

MIC Global sells direct, through brokers, and through insurance company partnerships simultaneously. This seems inefficient until you understand the insurance buying cycle.

“The hard part about insurance is really the decision making process around whichever channel you’re in. The decision making process can be quite long and challenging because of that,” Harry notes. When one channel stalls, others keep moving. When opportunities emerge, they have the infrastructure to capture them.

The lesson isn’t to spread yourself thin across every possible channel. It’s to recognize when your industry’s buying patterns demand multiple simultaneous approaches.

Lesson 4: Build for Global from Day One, Even If You’re Small

Most companies start local and expand internationally later. MIC Global made a counterintuitive bet: build global infrastructure first, even as a startup.

“We decided that we wanted to be, or we needed to be global in our founding, if you like,” Harry explains. The reasoning was simple: their customers were going global fast.

“If like a, say like an Uber or something like that, they can start in one country and then very quickly accelerate around the world and be in different countries. And we felt that there wasn’t an insurance solution to sort of service that sort of company.”

By establishing partnerships with insurers in India, Saudi Arabia, across the Middle East, America, and South America early, MIC Global created a network effect. When a platform company needs coverage across multiple markets, MIC Global is already there.

Lesson 5: Position Yourself Inside the Customer Journey, Not Adjacent to It

Harry draws a critical distinction between traditional program insurance and embedded insurance. It’s not about the product, it’s about placement.

“It’s allowing the customer to go on his journey to buy whatever product they’re looking at,” Harry explains, describing how insurance appears at the exact moment of need in the purchase flow.

He contrasts this with the old model: “You know, it’s all within that sort of flow to buy the insurance. Another one you see often is like a lost luggage insurance when you’re buying an airline ticket. You know, it comes in the flow. You don’t buy travel insurance kind of separately anymore.”

The broader principle: don’t make customers leave their workflow to use your product. Embed yourself where the need naturally occurs. This applies whether you’re selling insurance, data analytics, or dev tools.

Lesson 6: Long Sales Cycles Require Constant Relationship Management

Insurance sales can take six months to a year. MIC Global learned that closing the deal is only half the battle.

“You’ve got to keep very focused and keep, you know, you make sure that you’ve got client buy in all the time, you know, to make sure that you keep them on track as much as you on track,” Harry advises.

The challenge is that everything changes during extended procurement processes. Stakeholders leave. Priorities shift. Budgets get reallocated. “A lot of things change, you know, during a six months or a year long procurement process and you’ve got to be able to sort of keep the client managed along that route.”

This isn’t about being pushy. It’s about maintaining engagement and alignment throughout a process where momentum naturally dissipates.

Lesson 7: If You’re Building Tech for an Industry, Solve a Specific Problem or Become the Industry

Harry’s advice to insurtech founders is blunt: “Don’t do it.”

He elaborates with hard-earned wisdom: “Insurance companies, you know, they spend a lot of money on things, but you know, they take a long time to buy technology. This is why we aren’t an insurtech, we are an insurance company enabled by technology.”

The sales cycles are brutal. The customization demands are endless. “I built my first policy management system in 1999 and I haven’t really seen anything that’s much different. Despite everything that people say, even today, they’re all the same.”

If you’re determined to build in insurance, Harry’s advice is specific: build tools for concrete problems like hurricane or wildfire modeling. “Build something that is smart and clever for people really, you know, and understand the need. You need to find a need first.”

Or follow MIC Global’s path: don’t sell technology to the industry, become an industry player that happens to use great technology.

The Underlying Pattern

These seven lessons share a common thread: they all challenge conventional startup wisdom in favor of approaches that match market realities. Long runways over fast growth. Multiple channels over focused scaling. Global infrastructure before product-market fit.

These aren’t tactics you’ll find in most playbooks. They’re principles derived from actually building in a complex, slow-moving industry. And that’s precisely what makes them valuable.