Building a company from scratch is hard, really hard. You’ll hear many founders say it’s 10x harder than you expect it to be. I’m one of those founders.
The flipside to this is that when you do something that’s really hard, it makes the progress and success that much more rewarding and exciting. This was the first thought I had as I sat down to write our 2018 year in review for Bunker. While the team is already well into 2019 and focused on the future, we still wanted to share a bit more from 2018 — and Q4 specifically.
To kick things off, here are some fun 2018 Bunker stats
1,116,000
This is how many hours of work we helped protect with our unique usage-based occupational accident / gig-economy insurance product. Using an average pay rate of $15 that workers can earn working gigs with our Members, it’s $17,400,000 in earnings! Contract workers fuel economic growth, and Bunker removes insurance as a barrier for them — so they can get to work more quickly and safely.
10x
This is the multiple of monthly premium growth we experienced when you compare December 2018 vs. December 2017. While math is hard and it turns out the bigger the numbers get the harder it is to 10x :), the team is hyper-focused on delivering the next 10x growth milestone.
30%
This is the percentage of customers for our usage-based general & professional liability insurance that selected a policy outside of 12 months — tying the duration of the policy to the contract they have, and eliminating insurance as a barrier for the on-demand and gig economy. From start to finish it takes about 3 minutes for customers to purchase usage-based general & professional liability insurance from Bunker.
8
The number of new episodes we dropped on the Ready. Set. Work. podcast, interviewing leaders and founders building the Future of Work and Gig Economy. Teaser alert: Season 2 is coming soon — subscribe on your fav podcast app today :)
360
The number of releases our engineering team pushed into production. Roughly 140,000 lines of new code.
$80,000
The amount we spent on all d2c advertising last year. Sorry Google, we know some of our competitors spend more than this in a week to buy growth. Going back to what my senior prom date told me; it’s not you, it’s me. While we’re increasing some smart d2c ad spend in 2019, we aren’t going to win any ‘spent the most’ contests.
29
The number of Active Members we have — on-demand, staffing, and other leading enterprises using Bunker to track independent workers and solve for their insurance needs. We started the year at 8 — more than tripling YoY, and the velocity of new Members joining Bunker picked up throughout 2018.
What About Q4?
I’ll shift gears now and talk a bit about Q4 specifically, it was an exciting quarter. Our top line premium grew 62% over Q3. ‘Clark’ Engagements (which is our term for customers applying for insurance) doubled QoQ. Lastly, our automation continues to improve — we accomplished this volume increase without having to add to our insurance advisor team.
That said, one of the the most exciting parts of Q4 can be boiled down to two fairly boring words that have existed for decades in the insurance industry: Certificate Holders.
Certificate Holders
Bunker is a two-sided platform, on one side we have Members, organizations that require insurance of contractors, gig workers, freelancers, and other businesses. On the other side we have Customers, those contractors, gig workers, freelancers, and other businesses that need to comply with those requirements.
Getting back to those Certificate Holders. They require proof of insurance — and require a certificate of insurance (i.e. the dreaded COI) with their name on it — hence the term Certificate Holder. Virtually every other insurance agency or company sees Certificate Holders as an administrative expense, a nuisance they have to spend valuable non-sales resources on. They easily cost the insurance industry tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Bunker is proud to be the first insurance broker/company to LOVE Certificate Holders. Why? In many cases those are our Members, someone we can help solve an insurance compliance tracking headache for. Curious how we do this? Check out a demo here.
More Certificate Holder requests on our platform feeds our lead gen engine for Members. We now have a volume of Customers (i.e. contractors, small businesses), and we’re organically seeing Certificate Holder requests daily. Those are all Member prospects for us, because we have a platform that solves their headache. The two sides feed the other; Members onboard Customers using Bunker, and Customers refer us back to Members via Certificate Holder requests.
Summary
As we’re in full swing for 2019 — we want to take one final moment to say how much we appreciate all of the help and support from everyone in 2018; our Customers/Members, insurance carrier partners, investors, and of course others in the broader insurtech and insurance industry selflessly cheering us on along the way. While building a company from scratch is hard, it’s ultimately all of the great support that provides fuel and motivation.
I used this analogy with the team and it stuck…In 2018 we built the car at Bunker, dropping the engine in, and starting to tune it. We’re absolutely going to keep tuning in 2019 — (not to mention drop in some big enhancements), but now is the time to push the gas. We rounded the first turn in 2018 and really pumped to hit the straightaway.
Last but not least, if you’re motivated to work hard, tackle big goals, and transform a $100B industry — apply to join us on the Bunker mission here!
If your interested in learning more visit https://www.buildbunker.com/ or contact us at support@buildbunker.com
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