The following interview is a conversation we had with Stacy Edgar, CEO and co-founder of Venteur, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: 7.6 Million Raised to Build the Future of Health Insurance.
Stacy Edgar
Thanks for having me.
Brett
Not a problem. I’m super excited for our conversation. I would love to begin with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background.
Stacy Edgar
Sure. Well, my name is Stacey. I’m the CEO of Venteur, and we are building a new model of health insurance, one that is more personalized, more accessible, and more affordable. And the reason, actually, why we got into this, I co founded the company with my brother, and the problem we’re hoping to solve for all Americans is health insurance affordability. We ourselves, as a family, face this our whole lives growing up. And I come from a family of entrepreneurs. And the first year of my parents business, my dad got really sick. And luckily he wasn’t supposed to live until 40, but he’s still here today. He’s 70 years old. And when we think back as a family, what made the difference? The ability to choose your parent and be proactive was a lifesaver for our family in what we’re building through Fedor.
Stacy Edgar
That’s what we hope to bring to the whole market.
Brett
Take us back to those early conversations, and then maybe just the early days. So I see the company was founded in late 2020. What were those early conversations like?
Stacy Edgar
Sure. Funny enough. So were found in November 2020, although we really got our start in 2021. And we started off with just thinking about asking the question, how do you choose what’s the best health insurance for you and your family? And that actually, the first piece of tech we built was decision support technology in an AI model to help people to make that really difficult decision in their lives that has so much financial ramification that then bubbled into what we’re really obsessed with is how do people shop for health insurance? Why do they pick the plans they do? And how do we make it more joyful? But what we had really experienced was my co founder and I both start businesses in the past and buy health insurance for ourselves and employees was so painful. It’s part of our origin story, to be honest.
Stacy Edgar
We got so frustrated with it, we left careers in other industries to solve this problem. And so like the early days of NCorp were all about how do people help buy health insurance? How do we make the process more joyful and more clear? And I think we’re still answering those questions today, but that’s where we started of just how do we make this better for businesses and their employees.
Brett
Why is it so bad? I’m sure you dug into the problem. Is there like an obvious reason why it sucks so bad?
Stacy Edgar
I think it sucks by design, to be honest, because the whole system is built on somebody else telling you that they know better than you. Like, whether that’s HR or a broker. And, you know, like, I don’t think they mean ill will, but I think it comes down to the fact that we have employer sponsored healthcare to begin with. And in that model, what you’re basically trusting your boss to do, or your company to do is make one of the biggest financial decisions for you and your family. And just to put that into context, medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in America, which means that every employer in America really should be held accountable and be paying attention to this issue because they’re the ones often making the decisions that land families into this situation.
Stacy Edgar
So I think it’s kind of structural by design, on accident. But we also often hear families say, I feel like I’m reasonably educated, and yet I can’t understand this. And I think sometimes the industry players get too much into the legalese and that’s we’re trying to make things a little more human and be able to say, like, you know, actually this isn’t rocket science, you can understand it and it’s not that bad. So I don’t know, I think it’s two ways, structural and kind of getting into insurance target.
Brett
Can you help us visualize what it looks like then if we’re a customer? So let’s talk first on kind of the business sides. If we’re the business making the decision to work with you, let’s talk about that then. Let’s talk through on the employee side what they experience and what they see.
Stacy Edgar
Yeah. So if you are a business, what we offer is we help you. Instead of needing to do a group health insurance plan to set a cash stipend that’s happens to be pre tax for both you and your employees and get out of the business of choosing health insurance for your employees. We’ve built admin platform that sinks into your payroll to make this easy and quick for you. And then what we have for your employees is a marketplace with AI embedded into it that helps them to decide what plan to pick and how to spend that money. And they don’t have to spend all of the money on health insurance. That’s also the cool part. They can decide there’s a mix of health insurance plus cash that they could do.
Stacy Edgar
And we’ve actually seen some employees use the cash to pay for their whole year of medical expenses, which is pretty cool. So, yeah, that’s what you get when you work with us.
Brett
Trey, what are those sales conversations like? If someone’s saying no, why would they say no? Because it seems like such a no brainer.
Stacy Edgar
I think what I’ve learned over the three years that we’ve been building mentor is health insurance is really scary. And there’s a lot of fear and emotion, and there’s a kind of a saying, you don’t get fired for hiring blue cross blue shield. So it’s easy to want to stay with the status quo. And I think that it’s taken a little while for us, it’s a huge amount of trust for an employer to adopt this models. Even still, we do have over 200 companies that work with us today of some are in the thousands, some are small startups of one or two employees. So it’s a big range. It just takes a bit of a leap of faith and change management as well. So I think that’s the number one reason of like, okay, am I ready for this?
Stacy Edgar
And actually this year, that’s where we’re really excited. Some of the conversations we had last year or the year before, all of a sudden we’re starting to see them come to fruition. So maybe the sales cycle and sometimes takes longer because we got to earn that trust and rightfully so.
Brett
What’s that ICP look like for you today?
Stacy Edgar
We love working with small businesses, for sure. Sometimes this is the first time they’re able to offer health insurance or like a startup that is just getting started and, you know, like, has no idea to start. This usually a very low hanging fruit in terms of getting your employees really great benefits. Our second kind of class of ICP is healthcare systems. And the reason why we love working with healthcare systems is we usually see them win big, meaning we actually have a customer, if you can believe this or not, who saved $9 million by switching to this model, and that saved 175 jobs. And on top of that, they were able to upgrade the insurance plan for all of their employees.
Stacy Edgar
So that feels good when you’re saving a company big money like that and seeing the value so tangibly, both for the business and for the employee. We love that.
Brett
What do you call this model? Does it have a specific name for this approach?
Stacy Edgar
Sure. Yes. Legally, it’s called an ICRA, and that stands for individual coverage health reimbursement arrangement. But you can think of it really as personalized health insurance.
Brett
Are there any people who are against ICRA? Are there any ogs in the healthcare space? Established businesses? And they look at this and they say, whoa, whoa. We don’t want this change. We don’t want this disruption.
Stacy Edgar
Oh, of course, put into context, employers spend $1.6 trillion a year on health insurance premiums. So, yes, there’s a lot of people who, as this model takes off, will be eating into their book of business. But that said, though, in that book of business, we’re sometimes seeing 30, 40, 50% rate increases year over year, and it’s fueling like, it’s just not sustainable. So in my opinion, that old model deserves to be put out of business because it’s no longer serving the customer or consumers.
Brett
Yeah, just looking at it myself personally, my insurance went from like $450 a month to like $890 a month now, which is just insane. And that’s over the course of, I don’t know, maybe four or five years, something like that. But my use doesn’t make any sense. It’s insane.
Stacy Edgar
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And in actually a few states this year, under the ICR model, insurance rates went down, if you can believe that. They never hear that happening in healthcare. So this is definitely a way to bend the cost curve.
Brett
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Stacy Edgar
Sure. Well, you can definitely find us on Instagram and TikTok, we put out videos on iCRA, but also what we’re really excited about is helping people become more informed healthcare consumers, period. Whether it’s taking control of their healthcare finance through ICRAs or HSAs or any of the various instruments, or just understanding the terminology better, like a copay or deductible or coinsurance. There’s so much jargon. We do short skits and videos on both social media platforms to make it more fun and hopefully entertaining.
Brett
And then what does that look like? Is the idea that the individuals will then go to their employer and say, hey, how come we don’t have this?
Stacy Edgar
Yeah, I would say that, but I think it’s also for our existing customer base too, to like make sure that as we’re engaging them and just helping build a more active consumer base, there’s data out there that shows the more informed the consumer, the better their health does and better their finances do. So we see it also as public service, if you will, as well.
Brett
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What’s the go to market motion then look like? How are you acquiring, or how did you acquire these 200 customers that you have? Was it through TikTok?
Stacy Edgar
No, it is not through TikTok, but that would be funny. But there’s three really go to market motion that we have followed. First, we actually have been partnering with insurance carriers. So some of the industry incumbents who are more innovative and forward thinking and really care about the cost and the value that they’re delivering to end consumers, they’ve actually either white labeled us or co branded or our distribution partners for us and have introduced us to their existing client base as solutions. The second is any employee benefit tends to work with brokers, and we work with brokers today across the country. And then finally we do. We’re a partner to many of the startup accelerators. And like for example, we are a Techstars portfolio company and any of our fellow Techstars companies, we’re on the perks page and offer a discount.
Brett
What did you learn from Techstars?
Stacy Edgar
If there’s any takeaway, it’s the power of community. And the folks we met at Techstars are still some of, they become some of my closest friends and they’re still with us on this journey. So number one power of the community for sure.
Brett
Can you paint a picture for us of what the competitive landscape looks like today? And let’s obviously separate out the status quo, the existing market, let’s focus on the disruptors or the startups. What does that part of the market look like?
Stacy Edgar
Well, it’s just getting going, to be honest, there are a few folks who are also in our space, some who are maybe a year or two ahead of us, some who are just emerging, no longer the new kid on the block, but we’re not the first mover at all, either. So we’ve kind of benefited from others educating the market and kind of getting a few black eyes, unfortunately, to an implementation. And that’s where we’ve incorporated those lessons learned on product. And then in terms of the newcomers, we’re super excited to see it’s pretty early stages, like, less than a year old. But what we’re excited about is kind of that market validation that this model is picking up.
Brett
You mentioned black eyes there. What’s the biggest black eye that you got so far?
Stacy Edgar
I would say that our biggest fear is we see our biggest responsibility of taking care of employees, and so our biggest fear is failing that mission. And I would say that there is sometimes that you get into cases where the carrier or the provider end up doing something wrong and you get the black eye for it. I would also say that what we’ve learned is, like, you’re also part of a team’s HR process. So depending on how they’re hiring and also how they’re firing, especially that last part, how they’re firing consumers or how they’re firing employees, if, say, there’s kind of a messy separation because you’re handling the offboarding benefits and maybe cobra, you can get caught in the crossfire. And so that’s something we’ve learned to not to do to date.
Brett
What would you say is the most important decision you’ve made so far?
Stacy Edgar
I would say working with my brother and being a co founder. Right. Like, that relationship makes or breaks the company. That’s notorious. Right. And in this case, it was a long time coming. We’re very complimentary, 100%. We’re siblings. We fight, too. So some people were like, oh, you must have a great relationship. We do. But I think that’s also what’s made us stronger. I have a partner who I know I implicitly trust and who also I know will give it to me straight, even if I don’t want to hear it, which has been hugely helpful.
Brett
Do you have rules for, like, thanksgiving? Like, no talking about the company at the Thanksgiving table?
Stacy Edgar
Yes. I would say we have the informal board member mom who is, like, you know, part of the picture. Not literally, but, you know, like, sometimes. And, yeah, because it could take over every element of life. And I think that’s where making sure there’s space for family, space for friends, that’s something we’ve also learned we have to be very proactive about, given that we’re both siblings and co founders, we’re.
Brett
Somehow already two months into 2024. But if we take a look at your 2024 plan, what are those top priorities that you have and what’s keeping you up at night? When you think about hitting those priorities or achieving those priorities?
Stacy Edgar
Sure. Number one, serving existing customers well and helping them take advantage of the flexibility and personalization of all that this new model of healthcare offers, I would say, and then learning from them. But then beyond that, like every startup, you know, scale, that’s also the number tied thing. Tied, like keeping your current customers happy and then bringing the model to as many new companies as possible as well. I would say this is a really complex product and the only thing that keeps me up at night really is making sure that we’re scaling responsibly. We’ve been growing really fast that were maintaining quality and were maintaining our customer commitments as well.
Brett
Robert, as I mentioned there in the intro, you’ve raised over 7 million to date. What have you learned from that fundraising journey and the fundraising process?
Stacy Edgar
I would say in terms of the process, well, one, to run a process. And I think ive been really lucky to meet entrepreneurs, especially in the San Francisco area, who ended up becoming either angels or advisors, who you could kind of see firsthand how they did it. And it’s one thing to read about it in a blog or listen to it in a podcast, but to actually see it live and like, the amount of prep work that goes into it and the relationship building, and then to run a clean process. So you’re not spending 910 months fundraising, you’re doing it within a constrained time period so you can get back to building your business. So I would say that the power of having a good organization and good process and doing advanced work in both your materials, but also relationship building.
Brett
What about what excites you? What excites you most about the work you get to do every day?
Stacy Edgar
I think what excites me the most is the customer wins. Like, one thing we heard from a customer recently was their employees saying, I feel like I got a raise. And that makes me so happy because that’s the point. The point is to build a better health insurance system. And if we’re not doing that, we’re not delivering that, then there is no point to what we do. That’s when we should stop. So I guess having those customer wins and making employees happy.
Brett
Final question for you. Let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s the big picture vision here?
Stacy Edgar
What we would love to see is that there’s an evolution on the AI we have today, the platform we have today, instead of just the AI recommending what’s the best insurance that’s unique to you, that it’s pulling from all the healthcare services and market. And each person has a unique bundle of cash services and health insurance. And our fintech layer makes that seamless. And I know that may sound abstract, but think about like maybe the 25 year old who doesn’t need to have a mean isolating or the doctor maybe once or twice a year.
Stacy Edgar
That cash might mean they’re investing in wellness and things that keep them more preventive care and things that keep them healthier longer versus the person who is maybe having a family they can invest in prenatal or antenatal care or, yeah, so it just basically like you have that personalization and instead of a one size fits all model, you have something that is bespoke and really tailored to each persons individual needs and goals.
Brett
Amazing. Well, im definitely a fan. I love what you’re building. I love the problem that you’re solving. I love how you are solving the problem and ill be rooting for your success. Here we are up on time, so we’ll have to wrap here. Before we do, if there’s any founders that are listening in, they feel inspired and they just want to follow along with the journey. Where should they go?
Stacy Edgar
Sure, you can find me on social media, LinkedIn, Instagram, and also through our website, venteur.com.
Brett
Amazing. Stacey, thank you so much for taking the time. It’s been a lot of fun.
Stacy Edgar
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Brett
Keep in touch. This episode of category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for category visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
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