Founder, Next Generation Insurance – Deep Science Ventures

ABOUT DSV

Deep Science Ventures is creating a future in which both humans and the planet can thrive.

We use our unique venture creation process to create, spin-out and invest into science companies, combining available scientific knowledge and founder-type scientists into high-impact ventures.

We operate in 4 sectors: Pharmaceuticals, Energy, Agriculture and Computation, tackling the challenges defining those areas by taking a first principles approach and partnering with leading institutions.

THE CHALLENGE

Loss from natural disaster is increasing. In order to minimise human suffering, greater adaptation and preparation is needed. Unfortunately, the opposite is happening: our level of preparedness is decreasing. Many areas are more vulnerable to natural disaster than ever before and uninsured losses are growing. This is not desirable for society or insurance – more people are exposed to disaster, while insurers are losing markets. To ensure a future where both humans and the planet thrive, we need to stem increasing losses from natural disaster as soon as possible.

OUR APPROACH

While it is well understood that increasing loss from natural disaster is a problem, the causes of this loss are generally misunderstood, leading to suboptimal solutions.

Many are trying to reduce natural disaster losses by focusing on hazard (for example: trying to better predict where the next flood event will happen and how severe it will be), neglecting the fact that increasing losses today are driven by changes in urbanisation and socioeconomic factors.

With better preparation and adaptation, we could manage the majority of this risk, but insurance isn’t optimised for this.

We are using socio urban data to incentivise risk-reducing behaviour and better price risk across hazards and insurance products. We are looking to build a next generation insurance company optimised for risk reduction in a new climate. Rather than pricing risk as effectively as possible, we want to reduce risk as much as possible and then price that reduced risk. This gives the consumer lower premiums and better protection.

Requirements

Apply if you have expertise in property & casualty insurance, specifically:

• experience with underwriting, actuarial and pricing processes

• have worked in an MGA

• knowledge of parametric, embedded and/or micro-insurance

• strong insurance network

• demonstrated track record of innovation, product innovation and insurance strategy

and/or deep technical expertise in:

• computer vision, particularly in flood detection from satellite imagery

• GIS/geo-spatial data and geo-coding

• experience working with APIs for connection to data sources such as Google Street View, Sentinel 1 and 2, Twitter etc.

• ability to build efficient and robust ETL processes

Benefits

Joining DSV is a fantastic opportunity to develop concepts for and launch your own startup. We don’t require you to have an idea or IP or a “business plan” to get started. In fact, it’s the opposite – we spend on average 6 months doing our own research to identify viable commercial, venture-backable opportunity areas for starting new companies, including selecting and bringing on mission-aligned partners to validate each opportunity. You will be working closely with the DSV team, including sector-specific advisors, who have decades worth of expertise specifically in early-stage science commercialisation. Most of our team have started companies themselves and/or worked with 10s of early-stage teams and ventures even before joining DSV. We work alongside you providing the same level of support and commitment as you’d expect from a co-founder throughout. Finally, we invest at the earliest, pre-seed stage, where other, non-venture studio VCs simply don’t (until you have developed a proof of concept, built a team of co-founders and advisors, secured commercial partnerships with customers etc.).

Given the current stage of the project, we expect less than 6 months until incorporation and spin-out to start the early tech development / proof-of-concept work with investment secured from DSV, and other funding sources. We provide a monthly salary (at a pre-seed stage startup level) and pre-seed investment. You and your Co-founder(s) will own the majority stake in the the new venture.