Why we invested in Juno
Parents do everything in their power to take care of their children. Despite all the love, energy, and effort, things outside their control still happen. If, god forbid, your child is in a car accident and loses their ability to walk, health insurance will kick in to help cover medical bills. But what about the impact on the rest of your life? You may have to retrofit your home, buy a new car, or pay for full time child care. You may even have to drop out of the workforce.
In America we don’t have a way to truly acknowledge this burden. Juno changes this. With Juno, parents can secure insurance coverage to offset the ongoing, non-healthcare costs of catastrophic events. The product aims to recognize the cost of this new reality and support your family in a moment where American society fails to adequately support families today. That’s a mission worth waking up for.
At Spero, we invest in mission driven companies and founders whose products are building the future we want to live in. The process of getting to a yes with Juno in many ways helped me internalize why mission truly matters in building a startup.
Starting a startup is really hard! Getting a new insurance product to market is its own unique flavor of hard. It takes years of building underwriting models, getting the largest and most risk averse businesses (insurers and reinsurers) in the world to take a chance on you and provide a pool of capital to back your product, expensive lawyers and consultants to believe in you, early customers willing to take a risk on a product new to the US, and incredibly talented people to take a chance on something ahead of any real proof points. All while leaving guaranteed money on the table elsewhere.
In getting to know Jordan Epstein, Snaebjorn Gunnsteinsson, and the whole ecosystem of stakeholders around them — everything came back to Juno’s mission. Concessions were made, risks were taken, lives were uprooted, and the consistent variable that everyone came back to was Juno’s mission to support families in their times of greatest need. It certainly doesn’t hurt that if Juno is successful in their mission, everyone will walk away with real financial gain. But there are a lot of ways to make money, and life is short. Juno’s mission is important.
I am excited to be joining the board and to have the chance to work with Jordan and Snae. Their life stories and natural talents have led them to this moment and Spero is fortunate to be a part of the journey.
If the mission of Juno resonates with you and you either employ parents or are an employee and want your employer to carry this product, don’t hesitate to reach out!
