Since founding TLV Partners back in 2015, we have always been steadfast in our belief that the only thing that matters in building a successful venture firm is partnering with the best founders.
While that seems obvious, in practice there is a lot of distracting noise from the market that can push you in different directions and lose sight of that seemingly simple belief.
But every so often a team comes around that mutes the noise and provides clarity. There is no better example of this than the team at NEXT Insurance.
My personal journey with Guy, Nissim and Alon began back in 2009 when I led the series A of their consumer fintech company, Check. The mobile revolution was kicking into gear, and they had a vision to disrupt personal finance in a mobile native way.
While it wasn’t an obvious bet from a market perspective, it was already clear to me then that these are the type of founders I wanted to work with. They never took no for an answer, consistently found solutions for difficult problems and were incredibly ambitious.
Intuit acquired Check for close to $400M in 2014. Despite the successful outcome, Check wasn’t always guaranteed to succeed. The company went through several difficult, and even existential, moments. Going through these difficult times together with the founders, strengthened my belief in them even more and created a deep bond between us.
After Check, many other founders could have called it a career. But Guy, Nissim and Alon weren’t done.
In early 2016, just months after TLV Partners was officially launched, the team left Intuit and decided to take on one of the most traditional industries in the world: Insurance.
Back then, Insuretech wasn’t even a category, and the idea of a tech-native direct insurer was far from obvious. But going back to the basics of our core belief that the only thing that matters is the founders – investing in them again was an obvious choice.
And after digging into the market opportunity, it became clear that indeed there was a significant opportunity to disrupt the traditional insurance industry.
After co-leading their seed round alongside Zeev Ventures and Ribbit Capital, the company was off to the races. Unlike traditional insurers, they built their company around technology and data from day one, creating an experience that was faster, more affordable, and better tailored to small business owners. Very quickly, the company began to receive interest from industry players, one of which was Munich RE.
Along the journey we kept investing and doubling down from several TLV funds. In 2018, I wrote about why we doubled down on NEXT Insurance, diving into the reasons we believed so strongly in their vision even at an early stage. Looking back today, that conviction has only been reaffirmed.
Munich RE’s acquisition of NEXT Insurance for $2.6BN is a testament to the uniqueness and strength of its founders and team. They succeeded in building a massive, and rapidly growing business in a lion’s den of competition and difficult market dynamics.
It’s also a confirmation of our belief that the only thing that matters is to partner with the best founders. Guy, Nissim and Alon have, and will continue to be, the measuring stick by which we assess who we want to partner with.
Congratulations to the entire NEXT Insurance team and to Munich RE!
The post From Early Bet to $2.6B: The NEXT Insurance Journey appeared first on TLV Partners.
