00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Matthew, it's so wonderful to be here with you today.
00:06 Thank you for having me.
00:07 It's super dope.
00:08 Let's start right now by you telling me
00:10 what exactly your company does.
00:12 So we build software for big buyers of insurance
00:15 to manage your insurance workflows.
00:17 So picture a company like Uber, Airbnb, Lyft.
00:21 You need to run, essentially, background checks
00:23 on all your drivers and all your hosts.
00:25 Every time there's a rental or a trip,
00:27 you need to have some sort of insurance policy
00:29 on one of those.
00:30 And if there's ever an accident or a claim filed,
00:32 you need somebody to manage it for you.
00:34 And so we build the software for companies
00:36 like that to essentially manage all of their insurance
00:39 workflows.
00:40 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:43 How did you come up with this idea?
00:45 So it goes back a number of years.
00:47 My brother and I started a company out of our dorm room
00:50 that would essentially let college students rent cars out
00:53 from one another.
00:55 And crazy enough, out of our dorm room,
00:58 we ended up launching it September 1, 2018.
01:01 It became a top 100 app on the App Store.
01:04 Members on more than 500 campuses in all 50 states.
01:07 It was really funny because people thought
01:09 it was this big company, and it was two kids out of a dorm room.
01:12 And when COVID shut down college campuses,
01:15 it forced us to shut down that business.
01:17 Because it was in the middle of a global pandemic,
01:19 we took a different route.
01:22 How did those initial investors react then when you said,
01:25 hey, we're going to switch gears and do this new company?
01:28 They were super salty.
01:29 There's no other way to put it.
01:30 They're like, we invested in a car sharing app.
01:32 Now you want to do something with insurance.
01:34 And we told them, look, college campuses are closed.
01:38 There's nothing we can do with this old app.
01:40 But insurance is actually a bigger deal
01:44 right now than ever before.
01:46 Because if you think about it, insurance
01:48 is that one cost you can't afford to eliminate.
01:52 We actually, before we ever spoke to investors,
01:54 we went out and we got contracts signed.
01:57 And then once we had about 23 letters of intent,
02:00 we took that to investors.
02:01 And we're like, hey, look, people
02:03 are willing to pay us for this stripe for insurance.
02:05 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:09 So talk to me now about the scale of your company.
02:14 How many customers do you have?
02:15 How are sales doing?
02:16 Anything you can share with us?
02:17 Yeah, so we started actually on this new version of the business
02:22 towards the end of 2020.
02:23 And then we went out to market with a real product in 2021.
02:28 And that first year, we were able to hit the $1 million
02:31 ARR mark.
02:33 And then in the past, I'd say, 16 months,
02:37 it's just gone gangbusters.
02:38 We've grown almost 45x in the last 15 months.
02:43 We'll be the fastest insurance startup
02:45 to hit $100 million ARR.
02:48 We'll also hit profitability next year.
02:50 So not only will we be one of the fastest software companies
02:53 to hit that revenue mark, but we'll also
02:55 be one of the only ones to have done it in a super
02:57 capital-efficient way.
02:59 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:01 What would you say is the most challenging part
03:04 of running your company?
03:05 This was my first job, my first real job.
03:07 The only job I had before this was selling women's shoes
03:10 at Nordstrom for like two months and then
03:13 working on my family's farm.
03:15 And so the hardest thing for me was,
03:17 there's a bunch of articles that tell you
03:19 how to make your first $10,000 or your first million dollars.
03:24 Nobody ever tells you what it's like to go from a million
03:27 dollars in revenue to $50 million in 15 months
03:31 or anything like that.
03:32 And so just having to navigate all those different things
03:35 on your own is super tough.
03:37 And of course, we have investors and advisors.
03:39 But again, they haven't even gone through that.
03:41 And so dealing with life changing so fast,
03:45 I'd say that's probably the toughest stuff.
03:49 What's it been like to work with a family member?
03:52 And how has your history shaped what you're building at Lula?
03:55 I think one of the big things is because we're twins,
03:58 we grew up so close.
04:00 We have an unfair advantage when I
04:02 think about other competitors.
04:03 We go to the gym together.
04:04 We live in the same apartment.
04:06 We drive to work every day on the same.
04:08 And so one of the things that's really cool
04:11 is I never have to guess his motives.
04:13 And a lot of times, founders don't
04:15 know if somebody's on the same wavelength as them,
04:17 if somebody has the same character,
04:18 if somebody has the same ambition.
04:19 So while most companies are fortunate,
04:22 they just have one elite founder,
04:26 I think we're in a really good spot because we have two
04:28 of basically the same person.
04:30 Founders or entrepreneurs, successful people,
04:35 the worst thing you can ever tell them is you're lucky.
04:38 And to a certain extent, I used to hate when people say that.
04:41 But looking back on my journey, I'm
04:42 the luckiest person in the world.
04:44 [MUSIC PLAYING]
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04:55 [MUSIC PLAYING]
04:58 (upbeat music)
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