sai vishnubhatla
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Jeff Wharton: [00:00:00] All right, , Cy, welcome to the show, man. Thanks so much for joining. I'm really excited to have you on. There is a lot of stuff I want to cover with you, but thanks for coming on first and foremost.

Sai Vishnubhatla: Oh, first of all, thank you. Thank you so much, Jeff. This is exciting to be part of an amazing podcast like this and talking to folks like yourself, who've had so much of experience interviewing other product leaders and technology leaders would love to learn from you and contribute whatever I've learned.

Jeff Wharton: Well, that's the fun part. We get to talk to a lot of product leaders and hopefully share some interesting stories some good wisdom and maybe even some warning stories now and again you know, first of all I, you got, you have an interesting background. I think the first one I've seen who you, you know, you took a test or a series of tests called the CFA that I had a roommate in post college who went through his CFA and it was probably the worst couple of years of my life living with him let alone him.

But how do you know, how do you go from. A hardcore finance exam or series of exams like that. Get your CFA [00:01:00] to being a product leader. Can you walk us through just real quick? Like, what was your path into product here? 

Sai Vishnubhatla: Absolutely, Jeff. So just a warning. Not everyone is smart or we make smart decisions in life. So it could be one of those. But like, anyway, thank you. Thank you for that question. I started my career as a software engineer at Microsoft. Just a quick tidbit. I was, we worked on the first version of the Office 360 as a Skunk Works project.

A bunch of us, we were sitting in a conference room working on it, just it's an exciting time when nobody knew what cloud was or what serverless actually did, but now it's like ubiquitous. It's all over the place. So after, after my engineering, one of my, one of my leaders, engineering leaders identified this fact that, hey, you have a lot of analytical skills.

You have an ability to take a problem Add data to it and create a framework out of it And he said this is what management consulting or [00:02:00] product management is all about Why don't you try your luck there? You know, it should be a great option. So Then I went on to get my master's and I joined yahoo.

That was my first job as a product job I ran the finance the yahoo finance pages. So the yahoo finance pages it was in the 2007 2008 era where Yahoo wanted to get into the stock trading kind of a thing. So that's where my interest in the CFA, in general understanding I didn't want to be an accountant, period.

So, but what else was the best next thing was the CFA. And CFA seemed like an extremely challenging exam. It was very math oriented. I'm just a, I love math in general, and I also took I also graduated in my grad school. I mean, I took finance as a minor, so I was excited about it. I got introduced to it nothing that I wanted to get into the hedge funds or the mutual funds thing.

It was just out of [00:03:00] curiosity to have a complete knowledge of the financial background, the ability to read a balance sheet, ability to analyze how stock trading actually happens. That got me interested, but as you said, yes, it's a series of exams. The typical time period people take is about three years because it's not always easy, but you could do it in as short like as little as 18 months, but anyway, so my product entry was with yahoo, and I went after that I went back to business school Then joined McKinsey for a year worked at McKinsey.

McKinsey's training actually really led a solid foundation, laid a solid foundation for for product management. The CFA education gave me the raw skills to be a finance guy. The Microsoft experience made me like, I think I use the word dangerous enough to actually be, to know what happens under the hood as a product manager.

But I think the Yahoo and McKinsey experience is like exactly what I just what I mentioned earlier is. Take a problem, a loosely defined problem, [00:04:00] put that into a framework, add data to it, and come out with insights. And if you put the insights in fancy PowerPoints, you become a management consultant. You take that and make it a real product, you're a product. So,

Jeff Wharton: that's the new 

definition right there. I love it. We're going to, we're going to print that somewhere.

Sai Vishnubhatla: So yeah, and then I continued being in the regulated industry. I wanted, I loved the challenge. A lot of people said, why not the fang? Why not the big companies? But I had a calling in me, I think, I guess, is the regulated industry was begging. This was 2012, 2013. Everybody was talking about insure tech, fintech disruption.

We, they were using antiquated technology, antiquated way of non customer centric solutions. They were building technology, but they didn't have the customer at the center. So I saw an opportunity there. And I joined a big insurance organization where I was the one who [00:05:00] introduced the discipline of tech product management.

They had an insurance product management, and then that led to Blackboard, which is actually AIG startup, and then AssuranceIQ. I left AIG to join AssuranceIQ, AssuranceIQ was acquired by Prudential, I left Prudential to join Hippo, that's where I am today. Uh, Yeah that's, that's not so brief background of mine.

Absolutely.

Jeff Wharton: road from taking the CFA test to uh, HIPPO insurance. And as a brief aside of that, it's funny. I get a lot of people who, when I talk to kind of more junior people and they ask, you know, what's important to learn or, you know, what did you take away from college?

I went to business school as well. Um, and I think the major thing I use to this day that I'll tell people to learn is accounting. I went to school for 

marketing. I did not focus on finance. I was always going to be in marketing. Never had a goal of being in finance, but accounting is probably the thing that if you know one thing from school, it's learn how to read a balance sheet, learn how to

know about debits and credits, and that will take you farther than almost anything else.

The rest is figure out a [00:06:00] user, right? And how do you solve that user problem?

Sai Vishnubhatla: Absolutely, Jeff. I mean, I just want to add to that, what you just said is I know what the debits and credits are. If you know, you know where the customer's coming from. You want to know why the product is a good fit or not. It's an extension. Why would a customer invest? Where does it really help and how can you help?

How can you price it better? And one of the important things for you as a product manager, as you grow in your business, Product career is just not making amazing and slick looking products. Also making sure that fits into the customer's price point. That's why a lot of product leaders make good general managers and good CEOs is my mind.

Jeff Wharton: And I think in a little bit, we'll talk about place. You had PNL oversight, 

but first first, I'd love to talk about, you know, hippo you know, kind of start from the let's start from the end and work our way back. But you know, you're there. And 1 thing that you talked about that I was reading from other places.

[00:07:00] You've talked that I. I've honestly rarely have ever seen before and I really want to get your insight on this is obviously there's a ton of compliance and insurance. You talked a lot about this, but you come from the point of view that all that compliance and regulation are actually focused on protecting customers and it helps you. It's an incentive for product people to be more customer centric.

Sai Vishnubhatla: absolutely.

Jeff Wharton: How like how does that work is I think everyone's had the nightmare, you know experience with some kind of highly regulated product But how explain to me how this is working now because I desperately want to know this

Sai Vishnubhatla: Absolutely. I think that's a, that's well, I am guilty of saying that. And I feel that I have the right, I have the responsibility to defend that statement. I, 

Jeff Wharton: I love it though. Don't get me wrong. I think it's 

Sai Vishnubhatla: Yeah no, no, no, absolutely. Absolutely. 

I stand by it. The fact that is. Every compliance need that actually has ever come, let it be the 2008 [00:08:00] market crash, the Basel data, the GDPR data requirements, like you name it, this is what you hear in the market, right?

Like it's, I've never worked on any of that, but still. It's, they have had some significant financial scam or they're, unfortunately, the customers had to were the victims of whatever, financial fraud or a data fraud or identity theft or whatever. Most of these regulations have come as a result of organizations not paying enough attention to either the needs and wants of customers or not being customer centric enough.

And of course the governments and the authorities trying to put some things in place. Yes. Is it an impediment? Yes. In a way it is an impediment, but what it makes as a result is it makes us work more harder and more creative as product managers. How do you circumvent in a way that's still legal?

It still does not [00:09:00] break the regulation and have that healthy respect towards the fact that, Hey, someone's watching it. Hey, you cannot do that. Because it will hurt your customer in a certain way. A simple example could be, there are so many rules and regulations that you have to take in an insurance industry that we get claims from people who don't even have a HIPAA. We get calls. But as a rule, as an organization, we are supposed to take that. We have to log it. You might say, oh my god, that uses waste data, the waste resources but still, you never know. It could be a third party. trying to call you saying that my neighbor's basketball hoop fell on my side of the wall.

It damaged my, like, it could be anything. The neighbor could be having the HIPAA policy. I might not be. So there are so many ifs and buts. So we cannot reject what we call as an FNL, the first notice of loss, even though [00:10:00] that person doesn't even have a policy. We still have to listen, still take it, still log it and just.

Put it aside. So I'm just giving you an example, but this is mostly around how do we protect the data and the most valuable things that the customer really care about. It is their peace of mind, their joy of owning a home, the joy of owning a car the sense that they feel secure when there's a storm or a tornado is coming themselves and their family, their loved ones are all safe.

All these regulations are there in order for the organizations to actually keep the customer at the center. I hope I'm making sense because, you know, it's just a, it's just a very nuanced way of looking at it because end of the day, all the organizations are here to make profit. Somebody has to make, somebody has to make sure that no one's cutting corners.

I think that's, that was the intention of. Saying that I think regulations are here to make things more customer centric.

Jeff Wharton: No, I mean, I love the point of view, right? I think it's a fantastic one to hold is how do you [00:11:00] balance 

customer centricity? How do you roll out what the company needs to do? And that kind of, you know, I think that gets down to the next, you know, maybe the one click down, which is, it's a great view to have, but what does that look like org wise?

How are you, I mean, Hippo is not a small company. clearly you're not the only PM there. So what does the team look like that allows you to keep that customer centricity? And, you know, what does that look like end to end for customers? Like, how are you enabling your team to maintain that kind of focus?

Sai Vishnubhatla: I think the easiest way to explain this Jeff would be the way we are organized and the way we are organized is again, not to overuse the term, but very customer centric. Like the customers have a life cycle. The customer has to come into our lead flow. The customer has to be offered whatever What products will we have?

What incentives we have? What additional products that they can do? They can actually purchase and they can get themselves protected or their homes and their cars protected their their vehicles protected. And then how easily can they [00:12:00] do a checkout? Because insurance is not an easy, it's not as, it's not your Amazon cart, like one quick purchase.

It's a significant, it's a complicated product. It's a regulated product. And then you go through certain things as terms and conditions, you have to accept it because think about it, an insurance is nothing but a legal contract between an insurance carrier. And you as a customer, which actually assures you that God forbid something happens to my home or my car or myself, this company will pay me a certain compensation if that is actually a legitimate claim, right?

This is the contract. So there is a, there's a process of terms and conditions. The policy goes or the product goes into effect. And then we go through the cycle of a claim, God forbid, a claim, then a billing, and then there's a renewal. And in between, there's this concept of targeting and retargeting. And then renewal happens, then there's a new term, the customer becomes another.

As you know, it's a renewed [00:13:00] customer. So the teams are actually organized on this level. So we do have an acquisition and onboarding team. Then we have an offers team and a customer checkout and a payment organization. And then we have a claims product team that's just focused the claims experience.

And then we have a renewal team. So my product teams are organized. Our product teams are organized. across the life cycle of a policy or the life cycle of a customer and what does the customer need in between. So this is how they're organized. So just we are A, that keeps us customer focused. B, it also takes care of regulations because there are multiple regulations at every stage.

So for example, very simple example, the terms and conditions. Once you purchase a policy, you've got to sign them in seven days in most states. If you don't, actually your entire product becomes null and void. So this is a regulation. I mean, like, I mean, it's a contract, right? The contract had to be signed in a certain amount of time.

So, so I'm just [00:14:00] saying, like, yes, it has not always regulations are amazing, like you're going to lose business but what do you do then? You actually go after the customer. You have multiple ways of contacting the customer. Here's where the marketing teams comes in the picture here, where we actually send them like mobile messages, SMSs and try to get the customer on.

Okay. And things like that. So yeah, this is how we are organized. This is how we keep an eye on regulation here. We make sure that's all customer focused and customer 

Jeff Wharton: I got to ask here, is this, is that kind of a standard way that maybe a product team is set up in, in insurance companies like Hippo?

Or something you came to? Or was there another way before you got there?

Sai Vishnubhatla: there was definitely something, there were definitely something fundamentally different. 

When I say fundamentally different, it was like, let's throw number of bodies towards the biggest problem actually exists. It was not very focused on and was not very well organized in terms of Hey, do you, where is the, [00:15:00] how can you actually make sure that every piece of the puzzle, every piece of the policy life cycle items are actually addressed?

It was not like, you know, we focused a lot on, like, for example, if there is a phase, like before, before a company goes public, right? Naturally, there's a lot of focus on So you're more focused, all your resources are actually flowing towards growth related activities, which could be acquisition activities, marketing activities, getting new customers on.

Very little is actually paid, attention is actually paid towards the rest of the life cycle, right? Like, you know, you're not really focused on the infrastructures of the company and the infrastructure. How do you do a policy management services? How much do you invest in your claims?

Because. Once this customer becomes your customer they're there for a year and let's say they live in a tornado state and they live in a hurricane affected or a fire affected like wildfire affected area, naturally you're going to get the [00:16:00] claim. So these are all afterthoughts.

I'm not saying it was so disorganized, but it was more focused on growth. Naturally. So we were a growing startup. We were growing, but once we became more stable and once we started saying no. I call it now. We are no longer the Justin Bieber's. . So we are in the bigger league now, bigger league of singers.

So we have

actually, we, yeah, 

Yeah, exactly. You're Taylor Swift. I wanted to say that, but I was like, I don't want to offend the fans. So that's where you organize it. It wasn't always the case. And I wouldn't say every insurance company out there, at least I know a lot of insure tech startups.

And the larger insurance organization that I've come from, it was, it's always challenging to actually organize teams this way, but HIPPO just, it just happened at HIPPO because HIPPO is such a tech forward organization. It just believes that technology is the biggest driver to change this industry.

Jeff Wharton: Did you guys think about any other maybe structure there or [00:17:00] was that always kind of what you thought was where you wanted to move when you came in?

Sai Vishnubhatla: we did experiment with a couple of other structures as in like, you know, could we. Could we collapse certain verticals together? Could we just not do anything? Could we not even invest anything on claims? Could we just have claims be more like a technology and engineering problem rather than a product problem?

But, we did try . Then what we started realizing is we were losing focus on the customers. Again, I don't want to just keep harping on that. Claim is one time where the customer is most vulnerable.

They either have an accident on the road, the car is like damaged, they are in trouble, the roof is leaking, or roof is actually blown up, like for whatever reason, like hurricane or tornado, or part, there's actually a wildfire and part of their home is burnt up. 

So they're in the most vulnerable state, right? You know, you need that human touch. You need to be more customer focused during that time, the claim [00:18:00] or during the process of the claim. And think about it. The most valuable thing to you is damaged or is like destroyed, right? You would want to be, you would want to be in the loop of.

We cannot say that, okay, thank you for reporting us. We'll get back to you in four weeks. No, it cannot be that. So we need a more notification system. We want them to see where their claim is, who their claim is with. When can they expect a check and things like that? So it has to be more transparent. We said, no, we need a dedicated product leader.

We just need at least somebody at a director level can act, has to think about what the customer journey within the small gamut of claim is actually going to be. 

And I would say that I'm very proud of the fact that we built one of the best, or by far the most robust. internal claims system. We just built it from scratch.

The billion dollar companies out there whose business is just to build claim systems, we just randomly built it because we were, we wanted to address the real problems of that. 

Jeff Wharton: right. It [00:19:00] makes sense. So you think about I've been on the other side. I in college, the house I lived in, you know, caught fire and burned down. And you're not thinking about how are you managing your insurance provider? You're just thinking about how do I fix this gaping problem 

in my life right now? And so that's, heck, I would buy insurance from where you're running product, I guess. I love the view. I mean, it's, you keep coming back to it, but it's so important. I love the thought of how do you solve, you know, the problems are gonna move the business forward. And it's, 

Focus on the customer and figure out what's going to help them.

And obviously there's more to it than that, but that's a great, you know, centricity

Sai Vishnubhatla: And I'm going to bring your favorite back here, Jeff, is the regulation. And why do you need regulation now? I mean, I think because, think about it. If my objective as an organization is to make profit, I wouldn't pay you a coin. I'll find every possible way not to pay you a coin. But the vulnerability is something that, of the customer.

And I see that you lose being customer centric. And most importantly also, I also want to say this. Insurance as a product line, [00:20:00] as a business, has become extremely commoditized. So many providers out there, right? Like, you know, so many like the distribution is like completely, it used to be a very agent centric business before you'd call your local insurance agent, Mr.

John. And like, you know, John would actually place you with uh, I've had people tell me that like, you know, they sold more insurance policies in the congregation and churches, like, you know, that's good because people trust you.

That was the model. The model has changed to an online specific model because now they don't know, they don't know who to go to. So it also becomes extremely , I wouldn't say the loyalty has reduced. But there's no incentive for the customer to actually be loyal to a company that their interface is just through a website.

There's no human involved in here. , it's so it becomes more important for us to be more customer centric in 

that case. 

Jeff Wharton: And that actually you know, how do you build loyalty in a world where there's no interactions? No,

Sai Vishnubhatla: Absolutely.

Jeff Wharton: You guys have a [00:21:00] hippo. You had an awesome feature. I think that really hits home on how you focus on this. How do you build loyalty in a world like this? And it, I don't want to steal your thunder. I also don't think I'll describe it as well as you, but basically for customers that were going to have high premium increases, you were willing to sell them to tell them about a different policy somewhere else that would work better for them.

Can you kind of talk about the, I guess, first of all, can you just describe Sure. Describe it. And then, but how did you walk into this idea?

Sai Vishnubhatla: it's very, very close to my heart. I mean, I think I'm the one who actually came up with this idea is like, let's do what is good for the customer. That could just mean that it could be a policy with us as HIPAA, or it could be a policy with a third party.

But what we want you is we'll still treat you as a customer. You are my customer. I take care of you. That doesn't mean that we were losing money because we were getting a commission of putting you on a different. So it's like a win situation, but the customer got what they wanted, right? Here's the point, right?

Being very focused on the [00:22:00] customer needs, the customer does not need the same coverage at 50 percent more cost, right? The customer needs the same coverage if their incentives is for the same coverage. Can I get something cheaper? Yes. Probably what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take you and place you with a different carrier.

And your relationship with me, which still becomes it's still it's still retained. It's, it becomes stronger because here's what I'm trying to convey to the customer is I am here to listen to your need and I'll do exactly What is actually the most appropriate and optimal solution for you, which will make the loyalty, I think, in general, the customer appreciation to go up customer.

There's a big trust that develops between the customer and the company right now, because, you know, they start believing the fact and which is actually true is, Hippo has got our needs at their focus and at their center. So I think this was, it was difficult.[00:23:00] 

It was easy to actually explain it, but it's a difficult thing because now we have to, the numbers have to make it right. The numbers have to make it right. But the good news was, once we started doing it with a bunch of, in an A B test environment, we started doing it with a bunch of customers. The amount of feedback that we got.

I was listening to some calls where the customers were getting emotional. They started crying. I said, why would you do that for us? And I was listening to these calls and they would say, yeah, my agents were like no, we want to do what is right for you. We don't really, we don't really mind losing, but we don't want to lose you as a customer, as a paying customer, but we want to make sure what is, we want to do what is right by you.

Jeff Wharton: Is it true that kind of the idea came from, you had a customer kind of complain who, who expected, you know, they expect after several years that policy was going to at least stay steady and got kind of a surprise uplift in cost and

Sai Vishnubhatla: Absolutely. So it was the fifth. It was one of the iconic calls that so we as product managers, we have we have a discipline I attributed our [00:24:00] CPO who was here and he installed. This is like, listen to the calls. Listen to what the customers are actually saying. 

It's actually gives you a good perspective on the products that you can build, which is amazing, actually.

So we do it as a discipline. Once in a month, everybody gets into a conference room And one of the calls that we listen to is the customers trying to say, like, I've been here for five years. So there was their fifth renewal and their cost went up more than 54%. So they were paying 2, 000. Now they're paying more than close to like five, 4, 300, 4, 500 or something like that.

It was like, it was more than 53. I mean, I'm just saying, I'm just using that term. Like, you know, it was like, then they started complaining about like, why does loyalty mean anything at all and things like that. And then we were like. What can we do in this scenario? I cannot do it because they live in a state that is highly prone to like hail and wind damage and things like that.

There is, it's not that we were trying to make more money off [00:25:00] of it. We were just trying to protect ourselves because you have to be very honest with you. Think about it. Insurance costs you 1200 to 2, 000 a year, but a roof replacement costs you 60, 000. So insurance companies also have to look at that. So cat losses can, can destroy an organization.

It's what we call as a loss ratio, a loss ratios have to be, as you know. So it's that putting that hat on, also putting the customer centric hat on, right? Like, you know, what can we do? And the natural solution was, let's do what the customer really wants and let's see what the reaction is. And the reaction was tremendous.

And. I would say we are doing pretty well there in terms of in terms of the customer preference for us. And yet we're not losing that customer. If you know what I mean is we still have a relationship. We are what is an insurance term called as still the agent of record for them. They're still their agent and we still have control over [00:26:00] what marketing we could do.

So we could always do third party marketing to them. We could still sell other non insurance based HIPAA products to them. So it just becomes an amazing it's an amazing story, but like, you know, it's also becomes an amazing opportunity for 

the customer to actually explore other products and other options.

Jeff Wharton: it's such a great example of customer centricity but, but protecting the business at the same time. Right. Cause 

you, you, have a customer who's going to get a big cost increase and you can offer them, you know, other policies that will help them, or they can take the increase for maybe increased coverage.

But it sounds like I remember reading, you had some people who took the new policy and were so thankful you brought it to them. Some people would just upsell themselves and pay more. And in both those cases, you're either getting a fee for selling the new policy or you're getting a higher premiums.

and the customer is happy either way. 

It's

Sai Vishnubhatla: Yes, I

Jeff Wharton: a great way to turn kind of negative feedback into something positive. And that's,

Sai Vishnubhatla: think. And I just want to add one last thing to it is knowing what the customer wants to have, like, you know, distilling what the [00:27:00] customer really wants. And I think customers are very open about it. Lately, the customers are very special. They're being very open and honest. They're saying, Nope, I'm here to, this is my budget.

This is how much I want to pay. I cannot pay anything. The moment you tell them that, hey, for 4, 000, 5, 000, 6, 000, Or if a 50 percent increase in your premium, can I add five or six or seven additional coverages that you had to go out? Let's say for the state of California mandates, you actually mandate you to get a fire wildfire policy.

Wildfire policy is something else California, San Francisco, Bay Area homes, you have to go get an earthquake. Earthquake is a fundamentally different policy. We could add all those coverages and make it a package for you. Now they see value. They just don't see the increase of the premium, but they see more value.

Jeff Wharton: it's funny because it sounds like such an insurance specific thing. But in reality, that's, you know, even SAS businesses or so many different things. It's how do you. You know, you don't always have to compete on prices. How do you add value 

to make the price [00:28:00] worth it? How do you package things together?

They're complimentary and one of 

Sai Vishnubhatla: is my challenge with my junior. Honestly, Jeff, it's my challenge with my junior PMs because they all do not want to be branded as insurance 

Jeff Wharton: right, but 

Sai Vishnubhatla: managers, right? 

Jeff Wharton: that's the exact way we think about it at log rocket and every software company I've ever been at is how do you know, that's not insurance. That's just good pricing and packaging.

Sai Vishnubhatla: Exactly. Yeah. And like, you know, just making sure. Yeah.

Jeff Wharton: Yeah, no, I absolutely love that story. It's such a, you know, one of those. I think I learned about it a couple weeks ago, and I've already told like three different people I know about this awesome kind of how do you turn something upside down and turn it into a positive?

I have one other thing I definitely want to talk about with you because you are a man of a very interesting background. And, you know, we covered, you did your CFA ended up in, in product insurance somehow.

Jeff Wharton: But at one point you were thinking about getting a PhD in behavioral economics as well. 

Sai Vishnubhatla: Yes, 

Jeff Wharton: did I catch that right? 

Sai Vishnubhatla: So yeah,

Jeff Wharton: and, but, 

Sai Vishnubhatla: is. 

Jeff Wharton: you kind of took a different [00:29:00] direction and well, I guess, first of all, how'd that happen? How did you, what happened with the PhD there?

Sai Vishnubhatla: So, University of Chicago, where I got my MBA is actually well known and one of the few universities are leading universities in the world that actually specializes in behavioral economics. My my professor Charles Taylor was actually awarded the Nobel Prize for his theory. And he was the one who taught me, and I got an A plus in his class, so

I'm very proud of him. 

Jeff Wharton: I,

Sai Vishnubhatla: behavioral economics is a very interesting topic, and I'll briefly tell you, like, is it combines how humans think about price, a product, and how they make their economic decisions, and their financial decisions, and what factors influence them. In your decision making.

This is the core, fundamental core of behavioral economics. Like, you know, how does economics behave like economic influence your behavior and how your [00:30:00] behavior influences your economical and financial decisions. I mean, you talked about CFA, you talked about working at product and insurance companies and MBA.

This was the culmination is what I thought, yes, you know, as I was destined to do something like I was destined to do something with. Financial decision making and helping people are coming up with a theory or something, but then I realized PhD takes you six years. And I was like,

it's a lot of work. But I have always been on the side, a big follower of the behavioral economics as a theory, as a, as in practice and I, I'll, I'll, uh, I'll explain more, Jeff, where I took the theory and made that into a reality.

Jeff Wharton: Yeah, please. Because I, I understand the trade off that I was, you know, early on going to be a double major in both business and computer science. And then I realized how much longer that was going to take for college and bailed on half of that. So I can I, I feel you're right there on how long a 

PhD 

can [00:31:00] take.

But you took the very probably intelligent path of, Yeah. Let's take some of this coursework and some of this learning and instead apply it to how do you build, you know, another company and how do you help in this case, assurance IQ, take it and kind of launch I think it was the link product.

And I guess, how did you apply this kind of idea of behavioral economics to, to what you guys did there? And ultimately, which helped take you guys to a big acquisition by Prudential.

Sai Vishnubhatla: absolutely. I think it was the idea behind and I, as I mentioned, the reason why my professor was awarded a PhD sorry, awarded a Nobel Prize, I apologize. Nobel Prize was his theory of. He just stated this in short and a very, very 30, 000 feet view. His view was people make financial decisions based on life events.

That's it. That was his statement. And of course, there was a theory and all that. And there's a reason they did a lot of research. But if you really think about it and double click on it, Jeff [00:32:00] that's what it, we make, we buy insurance products because we want to be secure. We want to secure things that we love, people that we love.

Right. We open a bank account for a certain reasons. We buy a home. We take a mortgage because we want to give, let's say a lot of people do that. We want to start a family or we want to give our kids a roof. There's so many reasons, the things that we do, what we do. Like, why do you open a 529? Like, there's a reason.

Like, why do you think, like, these thoughts are actually associated. And so my idea was, Okay. Okay, so if this guy can this, my, my professor, he can get a Nobel Prize, I can, we can make a product out So that's how it started. It's like life event based marketing, life event based product setting.

And what we ended up doing was creating this. amazing machine learning led, AI machine learning led, which I still have a patent on led path, where the customer would come, give [00:33:00] us their financial situation, their goals that they actually had, and we will track their goals and based on what they want it to be, their financial wellness is what we call it, is we'll give them a series of products.

So, for example, I'm getting married. I want to combine my finances with my spouse. We've got a product for you. You guys are thinking about buying a home. We've got the mortgage. You just had a child. You think your life is not very valuable. Oh, my God. I have a kid now. Life insurance. The kid is growing up.

Why 29? You are getting old 401k like, you know, you think about it like where do you want to be in 20 years and we'll give you a path. And at the end, it's We had a bunch of products and none of the products were ours. We would get products from Vanguard, fidelity, and all the financial products. And we'll give a catalog and we'll help you literally do a checkout, like the way Amazon will let you a checkout or Walmart do a checkout to you.

we, We'll enable that to you. So we wanted to make [00:34:00] buying a financial product very easy. And centered around your life event. This was the product. We launched it. We did pretty well in terms of the product idea. Took the life of its own. And then we had a bunch of. Certified financial planners on the other side.

Sai Vishnubhatla: And you asked me why CFA. This is where my CFA helped me again, because I was able to make those conversations with these guys and the board and the leaders and my CFPs, of course, certified financial planners, as to why you need this, why you don't need this. Doing the trade off. And when you are a PNL leader, you need to know you need to talk the financial lingo.

You need to be able to manage an effective PNL. So, yeah, I mean, that's the idea. That's how it came two years. And we got acquired by Prudential. And then I joined Prudential. We took this idea, which was very US centric. And then we started launching it with its own flavors in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil and Argentina.

Jeff Wharton: [00:35:00] it's such a smart trigger though for insurance because I remember I have two kids now, but we were having our first kid I remember I had a friend who actually came up and called it way before we told anyone because I told him Oh, I can't come out tonight. We have a you know, we're doing The physical exam for life insurance and his he just goes.

Oh, congrats. You're having a kid it's always stuck in my head. There's certain triggers like that, that operate like this and to operate the business like that. So smart.

Sai Vishnubhatla: It just opens up, it just opens up a Pandora's box, honestly, in terms of product offering, Jeff. Honestly, think about it. It's not limited to insurance. It's just, it just imagine, just like literally imagine we had a tie up with Walmart. People buying more Huggies diapers, we would target those guys because you're buying diapers.

It means you had a kid and we had 53 percent open rate of emails, 27 percent conversion. Especially that, that segment of a population.

Jeff Wharton: , I think back to how we sell product here and I continuously talk to our SDR team and our sales team, but you [00:36:00] cannot make someone buy who does not have the need right 

now. You can educate them all you want and you can make them ready for that purchase when they need it. But until they need it you're barking up the wrong tree.

But I love that you guys started from, you know, okay, let's just go out and find those triggers. And let's, you know, it's what, it's the dream of a SAS business is, you know, can we just find those triggers publicly available or get the data from a partner like Walmart? So is that the story? Can you went out to big retailers like Walmart and companies like that got that kind of, you know, how do you correlate

Sai Vishnubhatla: That was a very specific, that was a very specific campaign. So I was just saying something in a funny way. It's like, but it was not just that. We also worked a lot with like, AAA organizations and like, you know, offline, online. We worked with banks. Our biggest marketing strategy was. Go there. Nobody else was going.

So the problem is in general, Jeff is everybody wants to focus on the coast, like the East Coast of the West Coast. That's where the wealth is concentrated. But it's also a small piece of [00:37:00] pie. Everybody wants the same piece of pie. Nobody's talking about the expanded pie. Nobody talks about the flyby state.

So you do have the nurses in Nashville, the carpenters in Kentucky. By the way, these are all my archetypes and customer segments that I created. I'm very proud of them. uh, so we focused on those guys and we had to reduce our cap because acquiring these was difficult. So we went the online route. So it just became very easy. So we were serving those that nobody else was really focused on. So we created a niche for ourself, like, you know, And the product just took off.

I mean, think about it to your point earlier is we just educated the customer that you actually have a need just that you don't realize that you have.

Jeff Wharton: To fast forward to the end, I mean, by the end there, before you got bought by Prudential, my understanding is you were selling more Prudential product 

Sai Vishnubhatla: Yes, 

absolutely. through their direct channel.

Absolutely. Absolutely. That was one of the many reasons. That was the many reasons they stated that, Oh my God, you guys were [00:38:00] selling more Prudential products because Prudential offered a variety of products across annuities, investments, and insurance. So we were just like, we were killing it, like literally crushing the market there.

And they were like, I mean, guys, we could make you our direct channel, like literally.

Jeff Wharton: I love that. I mean, I gotta be honest. I think we gotta have you back on to talk to just this story alone Because this has been a blast to kind of go through all this and you know I don't think most people think insurance is fun. But when you think about it this way, It's a cool product that has a lot of nuance to it that it's not Easy and you you've thought about so many creative ways to kind of 

like you 

say keep the customer at the center But still protect the business Grow like you need to it's been an absolute joy talking with you, man.

I really appreciate you coming

Sai Vishnubhatla: Thank you, Jeff. I really appreciate it. The same feeling. By the way, don't forget, insurance is the original SAS product. It is a subscription model. You

pay an annual fee [00:39:00] for us to, on the promise. So you talk about this, the SAS product. Yes. I call it the original SAS product.

Jeff Wharton: yeah, it's old school sass. 

So there we go. All right. I love it. We'll leave it at that Sai, thank you so much, man. Appreciate you coming

on and uh, 

Sai Vishnubhatla: Jeff. I

really appreciate it. Thank 

you. 

Jeff Wharton: talk more about this. Have a good one,

buddy. 

Sai Vishnubhatla: Thank you so