Meet Mart, Black COO: “When I heard about Black Insurance, I immediately thought: “Damn this is BIG”.”
Idea is a multiplier of execution. In Black’s case, we have both — the most ambitious idea in the insurance industry, with a team that has proven to deliver one success story after another.
Tell us a bit more about yourself? What is your professional background?
As it happens, I come from a journalism background — having worked as a columnist, radio show host and producer for a good dozen years. At a certain point, I was hosting and producing 2 of the Estonia’s top 5 radio shows — one on technology, the other on business. All the talking about business made me want to jump in myself as well, so I went ahead to get 2 economics degrees — after which I switched from journalism to management. One thing led to another, and I got involved in insurance technology. But technology interest has been running in my blood for a long time, for instance I co-founded an online retailer in Estonia in early 2000s that sort of became a household name; and I have also been heavily involved in the Estonian e-government projects back in the day.
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What was your first impression of the BLACK project? Why you decided to join the team and movement?
When I heard about Black Insurance, I immediately thought: “Damn this is BIG”. Why? All other insurance startups address only a small sector of the entire insurance industry. For example, a startup might focus on distribution of home insurance — it’s limited both in that it only addresses the distribution part of the value chain, and only the home insurance product line. If it is only doing distribution, it can’t innovate around the product since this is done (or, rather, not done) by the insurers that underwrite the product that they’re selling.
Black is building a very attractive value proposition that is relevant to the entire $4 trillion insurance industry, across all parts of the value chain, applicable to all insurance product lines.
The value it could add to the insurance industry is about $400–600 billion annually, both by enabling new innovative products and making the existing business more efficient.
Also, Black has really strong founders. As a wise man once told, idea is just a multiplier of execution. Bundeep and Risto have proved to deliver operational high growth businesses one after another.
What is your area of expertise that contributes to BLACK business the greatest today?
I’ve been working at the crossroad of technology, business and management for about 18 years now; as a journalist, entrpereneur and currently a startup manager. I believe it enables me to see challenges from various angles, to spot and integrate opportunities. And it might also help that I’m really passionate about innovation and technology, so work is not even a hobby but rather a lifestyle for me.
Where we can find you when you are not working?
I spend almost the entire free time (recently there have been little to speak of) with my family — hiking and camping, or spending time in our summer cottage. We also tinker a lot with Raspberries, Arduinos and 3D-printers with my older son.
