How SafetyWing CEO Sondre Rasch grew to $34.1M revenue and 25K customers in 2024.

I started thinking about in 2017 ultimately launched in 2018 broke a million dollars in Revenue in 2019 now doing 24 million bucks in terms of run right up from 12 million just a year ago safety Wing is digital Nomad insurance right they go get it in an issue in Europe when you're traveling it's a 2K Bill they've got you protected they're hoping to build a global safety net right and really enable digital Nomads to thrive and flourish or wherever they are on the west rays of 35 million dollar series B in 2022 out of 195 million posts called a 16x multiple looking to scale today with their team up 60 as they keep trying to build that net yesterday is Sandra rash she's a CO he's the co-founder and CEO of safety wing and host of safety Wings building remotely podcasts take out on how to build and scale a remote company because educational background is in economics and computer science and previously it was a policy advisor for the government of Norway working on their social safety net he's also the co-founder of Super Side a platform for freelance designers all right it's Andre ready to take us to the top let's go I feel like I see that purple wavy Super Side logo all over the place when did you leave that company for safety wing uh so that was back in 20 2017-2018 uh but of course it's still run by my co-founder so I keep keep get some regular updates and you know it's a great company it's a great and they're doing really well so where did you discover the problem that you're now solving at safe doing was it at superside yeah 2016 right after work combination me and Friday uh you know we we both came from policy so we noticed that the Freelancers had this problem of income uncertainty and not having benefits so we looked into providing benefits for the Freelancers on the platform we find that we found that nobody offered us and we also realized why uh which is essentially that the internet labor market like you know it's Global goes across borders but all the infrastructure that supports the labor market kind of works as if it's local and so a lot of the infrastructure does just doesn't work right so it's like if you're hiring a freelancer from Guatemala they will not qualify for your social safety net obviously so uh so yes it has to be rebuilt in This Global digital way and that's what we set out to do interesting so you thought you said this is an opportunity you leave Super Side you launched between what year was that 20 2017 2017. okay and then I guess walk me through your first customers was the Super Side team or how did you land your first customers no it's funny it actually took me a couple of years to get to make the product so that supersite could use it so you know we started out and we're like I took my only experience which was making the Norwegian social safety net and the idea was let's make something like in region social safety net but available on the internet as a membership but we have to start somewhere so let's like make one little piece and then we kind of build out you know health retirement disability you know each part until we make a membership at the end so we you know we we talk to users and they essentially said okay Health was the top thing and then we we decided on this kind of influencer segment of remote work which are the digital nomads um and I knew that segment very well I was sort of part of it and uh so is certain Hans my co-founders so we made known that insurance uh and uh and that was our first customers uh that however didn't cover Home Country so it couldn't be used by supersize it was only when we two years later launched remote Health uh that we signed up you know where I discovered the problem and they're you know now one of our biggest customers interesting okay so so you're just to be clear you're selling any of the earliest the digital meds directly so one-off ten dollar a month plans are you selling big Enterprise packages to the operating company like the first thing you said it's it's a it's directly to the digital Nomads uh 40 45 a month uh plan on a subscription so they come to our website and they buy it and they have a subscription and that works kind of out of the gate and it's in 2020 that we made this company option where and that we did we actually did that but because we have so many requests to do it so a lot of companies reached out and said hey this is not my thing it's a global health insurance that looks cool I want to buy that for my Global team and then we said after we got that request a hundred times we said we we got to build it so we oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built the into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out I'll show you how you can access this in a second 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founderpath.com and hover over products click on get your evaluation here and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl again all that valuation data live right inside the platform I hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview how does someone listening right now might go man I'm a digital Nomad I totally understand I don't want to pay Blue Cross Blue Shield 600 bucks a month that only covers the us but I'm in Chile and I'm in Europe all the time how do I if I get a cut in Europe how do I go to Europe Hospital how does how do you solve that problem for 45 bucks a month well so we uh the US is an outlier on cost here so uh and everyone who comes from a U.S perspective always thinks that anything outside of the US is like remarkably cheap and you know that's a whole little that's a whole little segment on its own like why that is uh just to drop the thing that I think is really missing from the debate that I've noticed making this product is that the medical provider networks in the US charge a very high price and internationally the medical provider networks have chart have no price but it's like a majority of the cost of an insurance but that's anyway that's one of the fun fact yeah like how do you use it I'm in Europe I'm using the us but I'm in Europe traveling I I cut my toe on the beach I need to go to the hospital and get stitches how do I use safe doing you just uh so typically these three students would be like this you would uh call or you know send us a message on on the in the chat and you know be directed between there by a hospital you know and Dave the hospital would bill us directly after uh nearby private hospitals so so that's that's typically how it would be in another situation where you don't reach out to us you would go there then they might not be able to bill us directly because some hospitals International are not able to so maybe then it would pay out of pocket and then you would go to a website and get the money transfer back to you after so those some people do that though isn't that like a bunch of work I mean do people actually do that yeah people that people do that I mean people use this whenever something happens I mean you you get your money back so why not I just I hear this whole time right I have to go in and like the bill at the hot you know the bill at the whatever for the medicine is a hundred bucks and they say oh well like we can't approve insurance today but just send the receipt to your safety wing and know but I'm like you know what I'm not gonna take the time to go to the safetying website and upload the receipt and try and fight to get a refund like how many how many of these have you processed in terms of G like total dollar volume over the past 30 days uh I don't have that numbered up of mind uh but I would say that you know here we're not unique compared to any other insurance company which is that you know the scenario you're describing it it is true right then I might not do that as well if I have something that is 50 or 100 maybe I can't even be bothered to to you know upload the receipt and get the the reimbursement but that's not I wouldn't that's not why I would have the the insurance because sometimes you have that thing that costs two thousand or maybe some sometimes the other thing that cost twenty thousand or maybe you can't get the treatment without having insurance or maybe you need to be evacuated to another hospital like it's the more serious things where you definitely you know would use the insurance and what that would be for that said though uh for that like just you know talking to a primary care physician for fifty dollars scenario we are making uh later this year uh hopefully we'll be ready something called like a safe Green Card uh so that you can pay then at the point of purchase with the safety win card so even if you're not referred there by us uh you don't have to pay out of pocket and uh that I think will improve the user experience and that sort of scenario you're describing yeah that makes a lot of sense now you start you said you started pricing back in 2017 at about 45 bucks a month have you edited that at all or is today the average customer paying 45 bucks a month today it's 45 bucks a month it was uh 35 uh when we started installation adjustments yeah yeah okay that makes a lot of sense so um you launch obviously the team plans I think you said it in 2020 you're now scaling today how many customers or how many seats how many folks are protected by safety win today uh active policies like last month is uh I thought 25 000. is that your main like uh I guess uh sort of okr metric for the companies or something else I'm not asking about that you actually care more about no that's about right so sometimes we count people and sometimes we call it Revenue uh but you know you know it's just one is the other times price so uh that's that's that and the other one is uh NPS you know one to ten would you recommend this to a friend now Sandra if I if I take 25 000 right policyholders at 45 bucks a month that would mean you're doing about 1.1 million a month in Revenue uh the the so we also have another product that is higher priced remote health insurance for remote teams and individuals um so like those 25 000 a section of those is paying a higher price point okay so you guys are doing more than more than a million a month in Revenue then yeah that's great that's quite as much yeah wow okay so about two million a month or 24 million run rate where were you exactly a year ago so we can calculate growth rate uh but we've doubled there's a 2022 versus 2021 I looked it up the other day that's 2x wow that's incredible I would think that a lot of your your growth would have come from people wanting to protect themselves from covet if they were traveling internationally and that that sort of died off but you've been able to maintain growth it sounds like yeah uh so I mean covert for us was a mixed blessing so one is we launched remote Health right before it was amazing and uh you know everyone switched to remote it accelerated the Advent of remote work by five years but two digital Nomads first it was very bad because a third of our customers evacuated and we we lost them so oh a huge drop and then but then come August in 2020 we had this massive growth 3x in five months due to introducing covet coverage which is kind of like your point there so uh if of course it was like a mixed bag it was like a roller coaster uh where in some cases things became suddenly amazing and then in some cases it was terrible and existential crisis and and then it was great again uh so yeah but you know over the long run what Kobe did was definitely accelerated promote work uh which is fundamentally good for us Sandra you launched in 2017 how many years did it take you to hit a million bucks in Forever do you remember uh we launched the 2018 so 2017 was just when I started tinkering with the idea was when we launched uh it was about a year a little over a year yeah so it's called 2019 and passing the million run right very cool what's growth look like I mean what do you do next right you've got a massive install base of 25 000 bucks you can focus on upselling them or you can focus on doubling the install base from 25k to 50K how do you think generally you know it's both of those so you know our vision is to build this global social safety net which is a massively more ambitious product and we definitely want to at some point upsell you know everyone a part of our Nomad users to be like hey how about this membership product which is price higher but you get like way more stuff yeah way better so you know that's that's what that's half of the answer and the other half but like in day to day a lot of it is just focused on you know improving small customer access improving you know the claims experience like we talked about and and scaling the growth of the channels the ambassador program uh platform API sets that makes tons of sense talking about capitalization every bootstrapped or raised we have raised so we've raised a total of 53 million dollars actually quite a bit uh through serious run so we raised we did Welcome nature in 2018. seed run three and a half 2019 um in 2020 series a 8 million and now in 2020 supposed to be uh 35 million sorry that was 35 million in 2020. winning 22. 20282 okay did you were you able to sort of get that done before evaluations compressed significantly you know I mean most people in the series be are selling like 10 of the company were you sort of in that same range yeah no uh no it was like it was it was more it was like I might as well say it I think the like Postman Revelation was like 195 I don't think I've said that anywhere else but that was what it was Sandra we love that come on we love we love breaking news break new data that's great would you do you have any issues today of people going my options are underwater because evaluations have compressed so much no no no we raced like things were already falling in April okay uh it was not like payday race it was it was like everyone was like looking people are canceling meetings it was already it was it hasn't fully taken the plunge but it was plungy environment it's the first one I've heard that word plunging environment that's good and look we keep impacted up with data right you're doing about a 12 million dollar run rate and the 195 post would be 16.2 X multiple I'd say that's fair that's not crazy no it was not a crazy multiple it was uh it was within normal like I remember when we started thinking about the fundraisers in 2021 I heard this from this so much where I was like okay 10x multiple and then someone was like no no it's 100x now yeah so it's insane it's crazy well no it sounds like you've done this in a very Capital efficient way but also not gotten crazy which is great um listen we're out of time here I guess before we wrap up with the famous five if people want to learn more about safety and where can they find you so if you're a nomad or you have a remote team and you want to offer them benefits you know go to safetwing.com um and definitely also check out the podcast building remotely where we're trying to build a knowledge base on how to build and scale the remote that's great and real quick team size today how many full-time UH 60 60 or how many engineers uh 20. that's great all right Famous Five here number one favorite book beginning of infinity by David Deutsch number two is there a CEO you're following or studying some ultimate open Arrow number three what's your favorite online tool for building safe doing uh probably team flow which unfortunately it's getting that's sold but uh it's our Virtual Office software number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night eight that's good and situation married single kids married uh uh with uh uh wife is just pregnant oh congratulations that's extremely exciting all right get on the way and how old are ya 36 last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. to go straight for the thing that I most wanted instead of like doing kind of like a learning path guys I started thinking about in 2017 ultimately launched in 2018 broke a million dollars in Revenue in 2019 now doing 24 million bucks in terms of run right up from 12 million just a year ago safety Wing is digital Nomad insurance right you go get it in an issue in Europe when you're traveling it's a 2K Bill they've got you protected they're hoping to build a global safety net right and really enable digital Nomads to thrive and flourish wherever they are in the world last raise a 35 million dollar series B in 2022 out of 195 million one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1 pm Central it's called Shark Tank for SAS we call it deal or bust one founder comes on three hungry buyers they try and do a deal live and the founder shares 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