Company Overview:
Roy Mill, Co-Founder & CEO at Joshu helps insurance products owners configure, launch and update their products without coding through their insurance product development and distribution platform. Designed for insurance professionals and packed with features accelerating product setup, Joshu’s portals and Underwriter Desk come out of the box and support the full lifecycle of a policy.
Founded by technology experts experienced in selling insurance online, Joshu was purpose-built to give insurance professionals the tools they need to harness digital distribution and win new markets faster.
Can you tell us a little about your background before starting your company?
I am a software developer that became interested in economics and social sciences. After graduate school I became a product manager and directed a team of product managers at Ancestry.com. Then I joined a cyber insurance startup to lead product management and fell in love with insurance technology (weird, I know). That’s what brought my co-founder and me to start Joshu.
How did you start your company? What were the first steps you took to get it off the ground and how did you identify the need for your product/service in the market?
We left At-Bay just before COVID hit. We know firsthand the pain of launching insurance products for digital underwriting and distribution, as we struggled to keep up with the needs of the “business”, given the tools that we had. So we wanted to build a new framework and a platform for how to launch insurance products without developers in the loop. COVID slowed funding, but we closed our Seed Round and made our first hire in February of 2021.
What innovations or unique features set your company apart from others in the industry?
Joshu enables non-technical insurance professionals to launch insurance products end-to-end, without a single developer involved. We’ve done it again and again, and we are able to support very different lines of business. We found a way to “containerize” insurance products, letting our clients turn insurance product specs into full underwriting and distribution operations in the shortest amount of time and the widest flexibility. The platform’s API-first architecture provides flexibility both for insurers who want ultra modern technology, and for insurers with older environments seeking a realistic path to migrate outdated and/or homegrown systems.
What has been the most effective strategy for scaling your business?
For the business as a whole, the product is our biggest enabler of scale. While other Policy Admin Systems require significant hand-holding and professional services, ours are very limited and many of our customers are “self-driving,” meaning we can sustain many clients with very limited professional services.
For our go-to-market growth, word-of-mouth has been the best channel. We’re here for the long haul and we will tell you what we can and can’t do, building trust with our prospects, clients, and the industry.
Looking ahead, what are your goals for the future of your company?
More products launched, more premiums generated, more risk transferred and a more resilient economy and society. If we can enable that, we’ve delivered on our mission.
