Arriving at Luko as VP Finance in the middle of the Covid 19 crisis
I used to be an Inspector in a major French banking player, a combination of audit, consultancy and fraud fighting. After 4 years of enjoying that unique experience, I needed to shift, discover a completely different environment, embrace a new challenge 🚀
How did my adventure in Luko begin?
I met Raphael (Luko’s CEO) a few days before Christmas. The insurance industry is calling for revamping and, during my discussions with him and the rest of the team, I got that feeling Luko can make it. As luck would have it, I joined Luko as CFO on March 16th, 2020.
Onboarding: from excitement to thoroughness
First three days were very nice and peaceful, I got to grasp the gist of Luko’s culture as a company : customer obsession, transparency, team spirit, innovation, moving mountains and positive impact.
However, Covid19 crisis is there. We mentioned it, and I tried to enjoy those few days of remote onboarding grace as much as I could, because we knew doomsday scenario was cooking.
Setting up a new mindset to ensure Luko’s sustainability
On day 5, as the startup mindset of hyper-growth shifts to cash monitoring and staying alive, “How’s the runway now?” is my first obsession as Luko’s CFO. Sequoia published “Coronavirus : The Black Swan of 2020”, we start hearing bad news about some French startups despite BPI amazing work.
We review our ambitions in terms of recruitment, freeze marketing budgets, engage in-depth review of our expenses. The responsiveness of all the company is impressive, at least to me.
Alongside, I am quite amazed how we manage to create the remote-Luko, over the night, with the same commitment and state of mind.
Taking the role of VP Finance and face a crisis such as Covid 19
At Luko we deliver home insurance, we pride to show full transparency, especially about our financials.
Stick to our values
One of our major “time of the year” is giveback announcement : the money left after insurees’ damages are paid is given back to the charities our insurees chose. In those special times, we decide to double the donation as a company for “Tous unis contre le virus”. We claim no tax benefit from such actions.
Come out stronger of the crisis
First of all, we partner with the 2 of the largest re-insurers & insurers, so our policyholders are safe. And I believe we can actually emerge stronger after that crisis : based on the Serie A the team closed end of 2019 and our current burn, we can put up cope with more than 20 months of total crisis (ie 0 revenues).
It means we can use that slow business life to lever on our new talents, take care of our customers (we already managed to increase customer satisfaction to a 80 NPS with remote-Luko) and prepare for the good times to come (hopefully).
And what now?
There is a famous article from Ben Horowitz about Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO, I think same applies to CFO… and even though I’ll be very happy to discover that dreamed “peacetime” (not remotely, I hope so), I have to admit I feel very confident in our current wartime.
Originally published at https://www.luko.eu on June 9, 2020.
