Why we’re Crowdfunding
Pluto was started by travel lovers, for travel lovers. We’ve always operated with the principle of putting people first, and we’re delighted to be able to take that to the next level by offering you the chance to join us on the next stage of our journey, through our upcoming crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs.
In December last year, we launched our first product: hassle-free travel insurance through your smartphone. We believe good travel cover is key to protecting yourself as you prepare for and enjoy your travel adventures.
However, traditional insurers that are set up to ensure we are covered, are stuck in the past. They make things confusing and complicated, painful and slow, and often, don’t even payout when you need them the most. We were frustrated and we know you were too.
As a result, we wanted to shake up the travel industry and we want you to join us as we work towards our mission of helping you make the most of your travels.
Following in the footsteps of successful Crowdfunding campaigns from the likes of Monzo, Revolut, and travel startup LuckyTrip, we want to grow a community of investors who will actively help us to shape and improve the business.
Beyond building a community, as we embark on our journey, another reason for doing a Crowdfunding campaign is the chance to provide everyone and anyone the opportunity to get involved.
You don’t need to be an expert. You don’t need loads of money. You don’t even need to have done this before. You just need to believe in what we’re doing. From as little as £10 you can get your piece of Pluto, and share in our future successes as a part of the company.
You can check out the campaign below…
Why we’re looking for your investment
As many of you will know, building a business from scratch is hard work. It takes time to become profitable so that you can sustain yourself without the need for investment. Of course, money could be raised in other ways, but for all the reasons above, we couldn’t think of a better way to do it than with a crowd of committed investors.
There are four areas that the funds we raise will be focused on:
The products and services we offer
Our focus to date has been on providing the best travel insurance offering in the UK. While we’ll always be working on that, the money we raise will also enable us to release new products and services that help us to progress towards our mission.
This equates to providing you with travel care that’s there when you need it.
- Helping you prepare for a safe adventure.
- Getting the most out of your trip whilst you’re away.
- Taking care of you if something goes wrong.
What does that mean? Well in the coming months, we’ll be releasing a mobile app that will act as your trusty travel companion. Providing top-notch trip planning tools, free lounge access if your flight’s delayed, and 24/7 access to a UK GP from your phone if you’re ill abroad. This is just the beginning. We work closely and continuously with our customers and community members to identify and explore the stuff that’s going to help you get more out of your travels.
Grow our business
We’ll be relying primarily on organic word-of-mouth growth, meaning our customers are encouraging their friends and family to try Pluto too. We’ve had success in this space so far, but it takes time and can benefit from a little super-charging from time to time to get the ball rolling. We’ll be investing some of the money raised into paid advertising to amplify our message and build awareness of the Pluto brand. However, we’ll be doing this in a very measured and data-driven way to avoid wasting money.
We’ll also be working with other brands that have a relationship with our target audience, giving more people the opportunity to get quick and easy access to Pluto cover. We’ve already had success integrating with other services, like travel websites and challenger banks, and this is something we’ll be doing more of in the coming months.
Growing the team
We’ve been able to get where we are today with a relatively small team, but as our ambitions increase, we’ll be hiring more top talent to help us deliver our product roadmap, support our customers and work with our partners.
Boring operational stuff
Think legal costs, office space, regulatory costs, accountants… you get the picture. It might not be exciting, but as a business regulated by the FCA and dedicated to doing things properly, it’s an essential part of running our business.
Why you should invest in Pluto
We’ll cover this in more detail when we launch our campaign page on Seedrs, where you’ll be able to download our pitch deck, see our campaign video, hear more about the things we’ve achieved, and get more information on what we’re doing with the money we’re raising. But we know you want a little teaser. So, here are three reasons why you should believe in Pluto.
- We’ve built an amazing product that has significantly improved the way people buy, manage and claim on their insurance, and we haven’t even been around for eight months yet. Just take a look at our community’s reviews on Trustpilot. They cover everything from our brilliant customer service and hassle-free claims to the simplicity of building your own policy. This has put us in the top three travel insurers in the UK! But, as we said above, there’s plenty more we plan to do with the product.
- We have an awesome founding team. Our background is in technology and design, and we know precisely how these skills can be used to solve big problems in simple ways. We don’t have much of an insurance background, but we believe this is one of our biggest assets because we’re constantly coming at things with a different perspective to the rest of the industry. We also just get s**t done. Like launching a new insurance business in under six months, winning a few awards and getting a bunch of prestigious press mentions.
- Finally, what the Pluto brand stands for. For travel lovers, by travel lovers. We’re all about doing things differently — being bold and ruffling a few feathers, beautiful design, a sense of humour and a human touch. We don’t think there are many other insurers that can say the same.
Ready to get involved?
You can check out the campaign below…
Originally published at https://blog.pluto.travel on August 10, 2019.
