Travis Hedge - Co-founder and CRO of Vouch: Responding to Adversity, Finding Product-Market Fit, and Community-Led Growth

Travis Hedge  00:00

I remember it was like week four post launch, or something like four or five, we didn't sell a single policy. And I just remember that existential like feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach, right? But you find out what you're made of, and you find what your team is made of in those moments.

Callan Harrington  00:15

And you're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone to a another episode of That Worked. This week, I'm joined by Travis Hedge. Travis is the co founder and CRO of Vouch. Vouch is the insurance company for the technology industry. Since 2019, Vouch has underwritten billions in risk on behalf of over 4000 clients, backed by A-rated reinsurers, and 165 million from Ribbit, YC, Redpoint and others. Previously, Travis helped Nationwide Insurance launch Nationwide Ventures, before joining Silicon Valley Bank's Venture Capital Group. There he raised over one billion dollars from institutional investors to invest in fintech and digital health startups, including Route Insurance, Ladder Life and EarnIn. Travis is an open book. And he gave so many good examples throughout the episode in a couple areas that I thought were really interesting. One, how to execute a community led growth strategy, including how to host your own group dinners. This is an area that I'm personally excited about and found myself taking notes when going back and listening to the episode. He also talked about the adversity they experienced at Vouch throughout different moments in time. Some of those examples include launching the company when COVID hit and when Silicon Valley Bank came into trouble. I have a ton of respect for how they handled the SVB situation, and Travis walked us through that, which I thought was excellent. And that would typically be my favorite part of the conversation. But I loved talking about how Travis has bridged Ohio and Silicon Valley. And I've known Travis for a while, and he's a very modest guy, but I will tell you this, he has had a really big impact on the startup community in Ohio, and I have personally heard this from many people within the community. I never knew the backstory on how he made this happen. And he walked us through that, and I thought it was super interesting. So with that, let's get to the show. Travis, welcome to the show, man.

Travis Hedge  02:55

Callan, it's awesome to be here. Thanks for having me.

Callan Harrington  02:57

I'm really excited. We've known each other since college, and you've had an amazing career, which is why I want to start it out. Tell us a little bit about the business that you started in college.

Travis Hedge  03:08

Yeah, so I did pull the plug on this before you and I met otherwise, I wouldn't have had time for both of those lives. It actually started in high school. I was really fortunate when I was in high school to start working full time for the US congressman in my district. And you know, between him and some candidates for bigger office, I'll leave the names out of it, they had asked me to start building a youth coalition, and very quickly realized, like by talking to users as one does, I thought there was just bigger opportunity. Also, like my own personal passions played into this, but pitched them on, hey, let's build out a platform that gamifies politics for young people, that rewards them with points for knocking doors, making phone calls. But the key was, for candidates on both sides of the aisle, that increasingly young people, I felt, cared less about the party themselves and more about the ideas they're passionate about.

Callan Harrington  04:00

Yeah.

Travis Hedge  04:00

So let's say hey, if you care about- for me, it was entrepreneurship and innovation. For other people, it might be social issues or whatever. Find the candidates that care most about your cause. Go, you know, activate for them, make phone calls, knock doors, and then you get rewarded with face time with your favorite candidate or what have you. I made three big mistakes. Thing number one- like classic startup tropes. Thing number one, tried to like build all the features on day one, right? I was like, we need like a video interview feature and all this ridiculous. Thing number two was my idea of building a team was just going around the dorm my freshman year being like, hey, who wants to help and like, yeah, like no thought behind that. And then thing number three was the bipartisan platform. The politicians that were in the fold on this were very supportive of that approach. These are people that I still really respect to this day, and I don't really respect many politicians. But they said, hey, let me connect you with my money people. Their money people were like, yeah, but you're only going to support the one party, right? (laughs)

Callan Harrington  04:12

(laughs)

Travis Hedge  04:57

Like, no, that's kind of the whole point.

Callan Harrington  05:07

We're about following ideas, just mostly our ideas.

Travis Hedge  05:12

Yeah, I always say I started a bipartisan political platform. And you can imagine how that worked out.

Callan Harrington  05:16

Yeah, it worked out just how we kind of thought it was. But I love it. So walk us through when you graduated, what did you do right after that? Where did kind of your early career start out?

Travis Hedge  05:25

Yeah, well, look, I think, post that experience, I decided, hey, I wanted to get out of politics. I'd seen kind of how ugly it can be and how the sausage is made. And that people that really cared about ideas and actually having an impact, need to go, frankly, build influence in other ways outside of politics. This was the time when like, Mike Bloomberg was kind of the mayor of New York. And I looked at that as a great example to follow, right. And so I knew that I needed to go get a lot more experience to be a good entrepreneur someday. And so studied finance and ops, which are like my two weaknesses. Which in hindsight, I don't think I'd give anybody the advice like, hey, study your weaknesses in college as your majors. So I didn't love studying in college, but ended up doing like a co op at Unilever. And then I got an internship at Nationwide doing, I was working on this like, M&A transaction they were doing at the time, and ended up in the rotational program at Nationwide after school. I was lucky and unlucky that my first rotation- I graduated off cycle in the winter, and so I got into the internal audit rotation, which gave me some good foundational skills. But I was also bored out of my mind.

Callan Harrington  06:35

Yeah.

Travis Hedge  06:36

And so I started pitching- as part of this rotation, you got to like pitch the next manager to bring you into their team. And the private equity team had the like, most coveted rotation, it was typically only for MBAs. And so I got in front of this guy, walked him through my like, thirty slide pitch deck on why Nationwide should have a ventures arm. Of the thirty execs I talked to, like all- twenty nine was like, okay, get the fuck out here, kid. But this guy, David Verbance was just- he said, I've been looking for someone like you to work with, let's go. And it really gave me- it was the springboard that I needed. He allowed me to kind of build out the pitch to their CIO about why they should allocate, you know, part of their balance sheet to venture. You know, here, I was thinking I had this brilliant idea, like a lot of other people think about this, but I was fortunate to go get to work on it. And we ended up, the first investment we made was as an LP into SVB Capital, the venture arm of Silicon Valley Bank. And we were sitting there going up and down Sand Hill Road, I'm like having the time of my life, loving this trip, and we're in the meeting with SVB, and they're walking us through everything. We're walking out, and my boss goes,at the time, they've got an analyst opening on their team. Like, I know, that's what you want to do, like you should throw your hat in the ring. First of all, like having a mentor, someone like that, that like will, you know, really go out of their way to help you out like that is just huge. Wasn't entirely altruistic, because I got to be his eyes and ears on the ground in the valley for the next five years. So I ended up joining the SVB capital team as an analyst, just responsible for crunching numbers, and making pitch decks, and the first six months on the job, I was flailing. Like, the- again, those the number crunching, like I can do it, but I don't love it. And so I'm sitting there telling them like, hey, guys, I'm really passionate about AR VR and all this cool stuff going on. And, you know, can I go source some deals? And they're like, explicitly, like your job is not to source deals. Stay behind the desk.

Callan Harrington  08:31

I guess one of the things I'm curious about is, was it more that you wanted to be in kind of this venture type space? Or was it that you wanted to be where this was happening in San Francisco? Or both?

Travis Hedge  08:46

It's a little bit of both. Two things, I think, informed that for me. One was my parents had a small business here in Columbus that's an employee benefits and payroll agency for other small businesses. And it's just the dinner table was the boardroom growning up, right? Like my brothers and I all have a deep passion for entrepreneurship. Our dad never let a day go by where he didn't remind us how lucky we were to have all of our opportunities in life. I was the first one in my family to graduate from college and just that was partly why I was interested in politics, was to pay that forward to other people. I felt this real obligation. And my dad was like- in 1998, I remember talking about, you know, getting his business in the internet. And like he was, for an insurance agent, pretty forward thinking on this stuff at the time. It was just always something that was in the DNA and the conversation in our family. And then I actually owe a lot of it to my now wife and some friends that I made in college. She was in a program at Miami of Ohio, where her last semester she got to spend that semester in San Francisco working for a startup. A startup that now today is actually a Vouch client, like very full circle. And so I got to go spend some time with her out there. Got to go spend some time with my good friend, Andy Sparks, who was living out there, another Ohio State guy. I actually pitched him on that trip on my brand coin startup idea. This was like, 2013, when like Bitcoin was becoming kind of a thing. In hindsight, it was way too early for that idea. But anyways... (laughs)

Callan Harrington  09:25

Absolutely.  (laughs) Have you considered bipartisan politics?

Travis Hedge  10:09

You can see how I went from big crazy stuff to, you know what, I know, insurance, and everybody needs it, so let's do that. Yeah. So I mean, look, to answer your question more directly, I think it's, I needed to be there, because that's where the things that I care about were coming to life. And at the same time, from day one at that, in that job, I was known as the Ohio guy. And I was very passionate about kind of helping to be that bridge, you know, between the things happening in Ohio and kind of the the talent and the capital in Silicon Valley that can all make it happen.

Callan Harrington  10:42

Yeah. And I think that it came up on the show. And of course, it came up around the community that you know, you've made a lot of those connections, you've connected a lot of the Silicon Valley investors and such to the companies and startups coming in here. I guess the question I'm pretty curious about is, do you think that you could have done that not being in San Francisco? Not so much the giving back, but making the connections? But do you think that you could have had the success that you've had, at the pace that you've had, if you didn't move your location?

Travis Hedge  11:11

No. I think the world has changed in the last ten, fifteen years, but that network density is a very real thing. You know, just the people that I got to meet by chance, by just the normal course of life, they've changed my life. And I think that talent has gotten more dispersed. And those opportunities are a lot more available to entrepreneurs in Columbus today. But there's this mentality that I've been like working to defeat for the last ten years, which is, for good reason, a lot of folks, you know, here in Columbus are very proud. But there's also I think, this mentality of like, well, you know, no one else is any better than us, we can build it ourselves. And I've seen people turn away resources from other parts of the country, and other parts of the world, because it wasn't built here. And I think that's a very just constrained mentality. I think great things only happen because there's rare talent, rare people all over the place. And we owe it to ourselves, and owe to this community to like, broaden that reach, and broaden our network. Not just, you know, if it wasn't built here, it doesn't matter. I just think it's a small way to think about things.

Callan Harrington  12:11

I 100% agree with that. And I've even seen this with, you know, companies, whether it's here, or I guess it's really anywhere. This could be in San Francisco, New York, doesn't really matter, it's like, we have to have them here and in the office, right. And of course, during COVID everybody's was like, yeah, I know, we've got a remote plan and everything else. But if you want to compete, and I mean, this- like, San Francisco, you want to get good salespeople, it's going to be tough, like it's going to be a tough mar- doesn't mean that there's not really good salespeople in San Francisco, it's just going to be tough to recruit them at the cost that you need to be able to get them to be effective, especially if you're an early stage company. If you limit yourself just to your geolocation, it's going to be a challenge. Some parts of the business may be just fine, right? You got engineers all day within San Francisco. Of course, you'll be fine in that part. But other parts, whether it's Ohio, San Francisco, I mean, I totally agree with that. You have to use everything at your disposal. Why put a self limitation on it?

Travis Hedge  13:07

Well, and I'm not saying that we have this totally figured out, because I don't think anybody does. The location strategy. But that does inform a little bit of how we built it out at Vouch, where I really believe that in person collaboration matters, and personal relationships matter for sales and internally. But there's a study I saw where trust in family members goes down by 30%, if you haven't seen them in thirty days. Family. So, if that's true of family, like I can only imagine what it looks like in a work context. And so I do think it's really important that we've got people all over the country. Our biggest office is Chicago, followed by San Francisco, followed by New York, and then actually Columbus. We have fifteen engineers here in Columbus. We actually just brought our entire engineering team to Columbus further off site. And like that was a good time. But the point being, I think being able to tap into global networks, and tap into that, those talent, that resources anywhere, but then being really intentional about getting those people together in person on a regular basis. It's the balance that's worked for us.

Callan Harrington  14:05

Well, I think it's going to- personally, I believe it's going to be ten times more important. One of the things I think is going to happen, and I'm speaking from a kind of a go-to-market and sales perspective, is AI is going to create so much content, so many emails, so many messages.It's already- automation is already there. It's just gonna get on a whole other level. It almost feels that you're almost not going to trust anything unless you talk with somebody face to face. And I was saying the exact opposite just a few years ago. So I think it's a really interesting insight. I'd love to get that study from you on the thirty days. That's really interesting. So let's fast forward. I know that that's really cool how Nationwide invested in to SVB Capital. You moved over there. So tell us about founding Vouch.

Travis Hedge  14:49

Yeah.

Callan Harrington  14:50

How did that come together? What brought that and what did that look like?

Travis Hedge  14:53

So when I joined SVB capital, I told them from day one like, hey, I think I want to go start- my goal is to go start a business again someday or be part of building a company. And so about six months in is when I realized, like, okay, I need to do things a little bit differently here, if I want this to work. Thing number one was, I got lucky to become a little bit of like the, the person that entrepreneurs from Ohio would come to see when they were in town raising money, partly to raise money, but partly just to like, go out for dinner, and drink, and be that like sounding board. And so built a lot of really good relationships doing that. Led to a couple of the first investments that I was able to kind of do my source directly, which ended up being some of our most successful kind of bets in the portfolio at the time. And so I say that to say like, it is what gave me the like, credibility to even have these conversations. So actually like that Ohio bridge thing was like a big step for me. Thing number two was, I was like, hey, you know, as cool as this like, drones and AR VR and all this stuff I'm looking at, this insurance thing's still really broken. And so the first thing I did was I called the smartest person I knew in insurance, which was Alex Timm, who I worked with at Nationwide. And he's like, actually, I just left last week, Drive Capital, this gave me five million bucks to go start this new company that would go on to become Route, which, I'll come back to that in a second. So I started this insure tech practice at SVB with a couple other folks. We started hosting these quarterly dinners of investors, entrepreneurs, corporates, kind of coming together. At the time was called the insurance technology dinner before like insur tech was a phrase.

Callan Harrington  16:26

 Yeah.

Travis Hedge  16:27

And that just allowed me to start kind of building that awareness, and brand, and kind of credibility in this space. Ended up spending a lot of time with Alex, every time I come back to Columbus for all of the board meetings at the time. And when he was thinking about raising his series B, I had already started introducing him to the people that I thought were the best investors in the category. And he was like, I think I might raise the series B in the next twelve months. And I was like, well, who's your favorite? Of the people we've talked to so far, who's your favorite? He's like Nick Shalek, Ribbit Capital. Great. Nick, and I had been doing these dinners together, meet up with him, pitch him on, hey, let's go try to do this Route deal together. We come out to Columbus, and we ended up co leading the series B for Route, and spent the next couple of years talking about other ideas that we wanted to pursue. And in that early on, in my time at SVB, my dad's business had a cyber threat. And it almost destroyed their business. Luckily, they got through it, they're doing great. But it got me thinking a lot about how entrepreneurs, even my dad, who was an insurance guy, you know, didn't necessarily have the right cyber coverage, had one IT guy doing security on laptops, right. But like, the especially the businesses I was investing in, were competing on a global scale, have the same risk and exposures of like Fortune 500 companies in a lot of ways, but a fraction of the resources to manage those risks. And I started talking to some friends and I'm like, how do you guys do insurance and cyber protection? And they'd send me their, like fifteen page PDF that's like asking the most irrelevant questions.

Callan Harrington  18:03

Which nobody knows how to read.

Travis Hedge  18:05

No, it's ridiculous. And so, so I had two ideas, actually, at the time that I was thinking about. One was what would go on to become Vouch. So I was thinking about, okay, not just providing the coverage, but providing risk protection directly to companies and you know, maybe the SVB of insurance. What would that look like? But also very passionate about mental health. And I started thinking about what kind of mental health therapies could you develop through virtual and augmented reality. So I remember I actually pulled Sean Lane aside, from Olive. One point was like, hey, I'm thinking about this, and like door number three is I stay doing what I'm doing. And he's like, the fact that you're not convinced on one of these two ideas enough yet means you need to stay doing what you're doing. And it was really good advice. And also, that conversation happened the same week that I went to my partners at the fund, and I said, hey, guys, I think I want to go start this company. And it was the insurance company that I was focused on with them. And they were like, you know what? Great, I know you want to do that. But why don't you take a week off, think about what it would take for you to be here for the next ten years. So I went up to my aunt's lake house, and she had a spin studio in a brewery on a lake in Wisconsin. So I just like worked out, drank beer, and thought about life for a week, and came back with this whole like framework of like, okay, guys, like, I think I want to do this. You guys are giving me an awesome opportunity. But I want to try to make this Silicon Valley Bank for insurance idea happen. And so we tried to make it happen internally. Didn't have the tech resources to make it internally. Like why don't you find this company to go partner and invest with, you know, invest in and partner with? So, every time I talked to Nick at Ribbit, I'd be like, hey, have you seen this company yet? No. And he's like, I think we might just incubate it. Everyone wanted to build a digital broker. And that just wasn't solving the core problem. And you fast forward a couple years, and finally, Nick, they had really moved the ball forward and said, yeah, we want to incubate this. Travis, do you know anybody who's really good with like startups and insurance that could, that should run it. And I was like, well let me think about that. And I came back to him, and I was like- Actually, I talked to another mutual friend of ours, and he was like, dude, this is the thing you've been talking about for years, like, what are you doing? Like, this is you. Like, call him.

Callan Harrington  20:18

Why didn't you say that right out of the gate? What prevented you from saying that right out of the gate?

Travis Hedge  20:22

I think maybe a little bit of Nick and Ribbit are these like, just giants in the FinTech world?

Callan Harrington  20:29

100%.

Travis Hedge  20:30

And I didn't think that he could possibly be thinking of me in that way. It took a little bit of encouragement from a friend to think of myself in that. I don't know why. But that's just, you know, I was like, well, clearly, like, he wants someone more important than me. And I just kind of put that on the shelf, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. And so it was like a week later that I called him, and was like, dude, I can't stop thinking about this. Like, I would love to do this. How heavy

Callan Harrington  20:54

How heavy was that phone to pick it up before making that call?

Travis Hedge  20:59

To pick it up, when we're an LP in his fund, we sit on board, like, you know, I just- it felt like a risky thing in hindsight. I wish I'd done it sooner.

Callan Harrington  21:06

How'd the call go?

Travis Hedge  21:07

Great. He was like, yeah, look, let's talk about it. Right. And so he actually introduced me to my co founder, Sam, who they had invested in Sam's last company. And Sam and I spent the next few weeks like doing the co founder dating thing. And ultimately, it ended up being kind of a three way. You know, Sam, and myself, Rbbit. And SVB is our kind of anchor investors and partners to get this thing off the ground.

Callan Harrington  21:30

What did those conversations look like? What was it that kind of was like, okay, here's what we want to talk about? And to see? I mean, I'm sure a lot of people go- I know, I have, right? To find a good co founder, what needed to be there for you?

Travis Hedge  21:42

Yeah, I mean, this goes back to one of the lessons I learned with the bipartisan political thing in college, where I was like, oh, my gosh, I have to have somebody who complements my strengths and weaknesses. And on paper, it's like, oh, Sam, and I kind of bring similar things to the table. Like at first, oh, this needs to be a technical co founder. I'm the business guy. But in practice, as I got to know, Sam, I found out he and I are the opposite in a lot of ways. You know, he's the experienced pragmatic one who will make sure that we're like building a durable business in a really thoughtful way. I am the one that's going to push us to do some crazy stuff, and like, try to think big, and I think that that pairing has worked really well for us.

Callan Harrington  22:21

So Vouch has had a lot of success. You know, of course, fundraising. But more importantly, that you guys have had good financial success, just in general. What was kind of the early spark to doing that?

Travis Hedge  22:33

Yeah, I mean, thing number one is, we're very lucky to buy a product that people already need, right? We were not creating a new category, or a new motion, asking buyers to change behaviors. We were dramatically improving the things that we're already doing. And so like, in the early days, though, like I was going up and down, Utah was our first launch market, I was camped out there for six months, knocking doors and co working spaces and doing all those things. And not sure if we'd have product market fit. I remember it was like week four post launch, or something, like week four or five, we didn't sell a single policy. And I just remember that existential like feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach, right. But you find out what you're made of, and you find what your team is made of in those moments. And we went back and kind of challenged ourselves and... I'll tell you this, when we launched in California, we made a couple tweaks to the product and the positioning. It just started taking off. And it was then two months later COVID happened. And it was like pause everything. Let's see what's going on here. And then two weeks after that, demand was even higher than ever before, because people had seen how this weird edge case can happen. And, you know, insurance all of a sudden made a lot more sense. And so I don't know from there, it's all been- that spark was, you know, it's like any product market fit story. It's like a little bit of effort, and a little bit of luck, and being in the right place, and it just all kind of came together.

Callan Harrington  23:56

One of the things I think that Vouch has done a phenomenal job of is your community led growth strategy. Can you talk about that a little bit? Where did that start? How did you do that? And then for our listeners, we're going to literally a dinner right after this, which I'm super excited to see it live. But how did that start? How did you do it? Can you walk- just walk us through that?

Travis Hedge  24:16

So it actually started when I was at SVB. The key to that? Gosh, we could probably have a whole other conversation on SVB, obviously, but they had back in the late 90s started this venture advisory board. And actually I think that was V2. I think the first one started in the late 80s, early 90s, where they took the very best general partners at the very best firms and said we're gonna have a dinner once a quarter of the most important investors in Silicon Valley. So the head of Sequoia and NEA and Kleiner all there. And I was really lucky in 2016 or so, 2015, something like that, they'd asked me to build out the next version for my generation, and I got to go kind of to each of the top firms and say hey, who do you want to nominate for this, and you know, kind of get that group together. And it was, for a group of people that is insanely competitive with each other, very ambitious, it was creating this vulnerable space where we could just be really honest with each other. It was really powerful.

Callan Harrington  25:14

How did you set the stage to- like you said, a lot of these people don't want to share that, so a lot of times they're at each other's throats, just in general. And this can be any group, but what did you do to make sure, like this was going to be a conversation where people were going to be very real, very honest, very vulnerable?

Travis Hedge  25:29

Yeah, I think thing number one starts with just being very vulnerable myself, right. Like you got to set that tone up front. And I think that setting those expectations, like, hey, nothing we talk about here leaves this room. And by the end of it, people are talking about, you know, the offers they're getting from other firms and what like, really personal stuff, and it was cool to see that happen. But in fact, not keeping that group going after I left SVB is one of my biggest regrets. I wish I had. But yeah, just I think once you set that expectation and give people the chance, you'd be shocked at how many people that seem guarded and end up they're seeking those opportunities to open up and learn from each other.

Callan Harrington  25:30

Do you think size matters? The size of the group?

Travis Hedge  26:06

Absolutely. No more than twelve people, max, if anything. And I think it needs to be like, literally a round table. Like a rectangle doesn't work. Round table. Or, you know, it's hard to have a cohesive conversation.

Callan Harrington  26:18

Yeah, I love that. And I've seen similar myself, and I think it's fantastic. And one question I wanted to touch on a little bit, right is, you know, you mentioned a lot of the- you guys have had to deal with some adversity. You dealt with adversity with COVID, and then you were kind of looped into this by sake of partnership with the SVB situation. One of the things that I would thought was just phenomenal, was how you guys responded to that. Can you walk us through that a little bit?

Travis Hedge  26:47

And look, I think one thing just about the community led thing, I want to make sure we hit on real quick is, it is one of my theses about this business is that the number one sign of preventable risk is the quality of management and leadership. And I think we all know that that journey of leading a startup can be really lonely. And so whether you're a founder or an operator, I almost think about it as how do we help give people that MBA for building their company. And you do that by getting peers together to learn from each other. And so it's not just like a business development strategy for us. I think it ties to the risk management component of the business too. Now, there's a couple of leaps to get there. But I think like that's part of the approach for us. And so as it relates to the SVB email, gosh, I mean, I'm sitting there feeding my three week old son at the time, and I see these, like texts start rolling in about SVB, and I'm like, I'm sure it'll be fine. No, definitely not. And so, you know, we were fortunate, we had some backup bank accounts elsewhere, and very quickly realized, like, okay, we'll be fine as a business, but very immediately shifted gears into our clients, right. I mean, at least a third of our client base was was banking with SVB. And so we're lucky that we already had some, like legal partnerships and resources in place, but were able to call those folks and say, hey, like, could we expand our offering here and offer up like a free legal hotline to our clients? Great, put all these resources together and like, sent the email out Got great response on that, clients took advantage of it, and, you know, just, we did a similar thing around COVID. Right. I think when COVID happened, sent a whole care package and playbook on how to deal with it to our clients. And like, that's the best part of our job. Like we work with awesome companies, people that are building amazing things. And like, we get to just play a small role in helping them do that. And that's what makes it rewarding.

Callan Harrington  28:32

Yeah, I think and just for our listeners that may not know, specifically, there was a competitor that essentially said, hey, they're tied to SVB. They are, you know, they've taken investment from SVB, and so if you feel that you're nervous, or at risk, or whatever, come over to here. And at the exact same time that this email was going out, and I don't have the specifics on when these were sent, you guys sent out an email that said, hey, here's personal phone numbers and who to call, here's where you can get information, respond back, and it was just kind of the tale of two different cities there.

Travis Hedge  29:04

We had sent that email the weekend everything was going down, and no one knew what was gonna happen with SVB. Two weeks later, someone forwards me like, hey, did you know your competitor is like sending this around. And I thought for a couple days about what to do about it. And ultimately just said, hey, let's just let it speak for itself. So I did do a little LinkedIn post, like what you get from Vouch versus what you see from them. And yeah, it was well received. I wasn't gonna bring that up. But I appreciate you, you know, flagging it.

Callan Harrington  29:29

Well, I think it just kind of gets back to those core values, right? And how you how you go, and I don't know, necessarily, I don't know the core values of the other companies, so I'm not necessarily trying to throw stones. But I think it goes back to what you're saying. It's like, who are these people that we're building this with from the beginning? What are we trying to build? And can we stick to that when our backs are against the wall? And I thought was a great example of that. So it's pretty cool to see. Last question I have for you- actually, second to last question. Where are you going with this? What is the future of Vouch look like?

Travis Hedge  29:58

Well, long term, my aspiration is to build a financial institution that's going to be here for decades to come. If you look back, it is our clients that are consistently moving the world forward, creating new risks and kind of changing the world. And insurance doesn't always keep up with that. And so if you look back, you know, since the Industrial Revolution, we've had to build financial institutions to kind of accommodate these changes. And institutions like Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan and others have played a really important role over the last hundred years. And I think our opportunity is to understand that innovation risk better than anybody else, and move faster at addressing it. And in doing so, I think we can create that institution that helps the world keep up with the pace of change and volatility that our clients are often driving. That's the big, you know, picture aspiration. Ultimately, the goal is to get the company to about a billion dollars in premium over the next few years. And you know, in doing so, that means nailing the core early stage component of our business, which you know, is on track that's doing great, and then continue to go up market, right? We serve fintech, health and life sciences, AI companies, you name it, we've kind of divided the business up in these verticals. And we serve companies from series B through IPO. That's the big focus for the next couple of years, is continuing to scale with our companies through IPO and beyond. From there, we'll see, right? How do we expand the platform into other categories, geographies, products? But a lot of opportunity, but right now, just very focused on that core mission?

Callan Harrington  31:27

Last question, if you can have a conversation with your younger self, age totally up to you, what would that conversation be? What advice would you give them?

Travis Hedge  31:35

Yeah, you know, I've made a lot of mistakes along the way, it hasn't been easy, but I feel very, very fortunate for where I'm at today. And I wouldn't change a thing. Like I just I feel very lucky. What I'd tell myself is, enjoy the ride. Like I think I've had way too many sleepless nights worrying about stuff that, in hindsight, didn't really matter. And I think have had to develop the habits to be happier and healthier in the journey. And I just, you know, kind of wish I would have had those habits ten years ago, but it's just really enjoy the ride. That's what I would tell myself.

Callan Harrington  31:36

Yeah, I love that. It's something I've had to remind myself is, celebrate those small wins, right? And those small wins, compound into big wins. So I think that's excellent advice. Travis, this has been great, man. Thanks for coming on.

Travis Hedge  32:20

Callan, thanks for having me, man. I'll see you at dinner.

Callan Harrington  32:26

I hope you enjoyed Travis and I's conversation. Travis is a community builder in so many different ways. And if you want to learn more about Travis, you can find him on LinkedIn and in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you next week.