In this episode, I interviewed the brilliant Sam White, founder and CEO of Stella Insurance. We discussed Sam’s journey into creating a female-centric motor insurance business, her challenges as a woman in a male-dominated industry, the difficulties in raising investment, and her unique approach to resilient entrepreneurship. Sam shares her experiences of starting her first company at 24, her struggles with financial institutions, and the innovative solutions she employed, including a media for equity deal. We also talk about gender disparity in business funding and highlight the importance of supporting diverse entrepreneurs.
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Transcript
Teresa:
Hello and welcome back to the Dream Business Podcast. This is episode 378, but it is number two in this special series that I’m doing with Channel 4 Ventures. [00:01:00] The first episode, which I aired yesterday was with Nikki Wicks, who is the brother CEO and creative director of Joe Wicks The Body Coach.
And I loved that conversation, so I would love to hear what you thought of it. Today, I am interviewing Sam White, who is the founder and CEO of Stella Insurance, a female centric motor insurance business that’s unapologetically led by women and designed for women. Now, this conversation was really, really good.
I was super inspired by Sam. We had conversations around the fact of Why would you even get into insurance in the first place? I’m laughing saying it, but like of all the businesses that people set up, surely insurance does not seem like the easiest thing. And it doesn’t seem like the most simple, it’s a really heavily regulated industry.
What makes someone starting a [00:02:00] business want to go into it? We talk about the fact that She was 24 when she started and that she loved solving problems and she was frustrated with some of the things in the industry. So it was her own kind of need for an answer that made her create the answer herself.
We talked about how difficult it was for her as a woman, not only in this industry, but also to try and raise money and the difficulty that she had with financial institutions. And then we looked at what makes her resilient. How is she motivated? How did she pick a really difficult industry and go on to make a really successful business?
I think you’re going to be super inspired by this. I really loved her frankness. I really loved her direct conversation. It was a wonderful conversation. And I think that you are really going to enjoy this episode. So without further Here is the amazing Sam White. Welcome Sam to the podcast. How are you doing?
Sam:
Not so bad. Thank you for having [00:03:00] me on.
Teresa:
Well, thank you for giving me your time. I was just saying to you before we hit record that I don’t think I’ve ever interviewed anybody who’s in insurance or certainly not set up an insurance company. So I am fascinated about this conversation.
Sam:
So nobody ever, when referred to insurance,
Teresa:
think about like the entrepreneurial world, there’s not many that, you know, go, this is the route I want to go down. So let’s start there. So how, how is the big question and why did you decide that that was the business you wanted?
Sam:
Yeah, look, it’s something that gets said a lot in insurance circles. People would say, nobody actually chooses to go into insurance. They fall into it. I think my path was probably quite different in the, I set up my first company when I was 24, um, and really just because I couldn’t stand the thought of working for somebody else.
I realized I was unemployable at a very [00:04:00] young age. Young age. And so I didn’t really care what I got in. So as long as it meant that I could work for myself and be independent and not have to kind of live by somebody else’s rules. So the first business that I set up wasn’t actually in insurance. It was around insurance.
I set up a business supporting insurance brokers with their motor claims. And the only reason I did that is because the only job I had. previously was in that sector. So it was what I knew and it seemed like a safer landing point. And it kind of evolved from there.
Teresa:
So 24 is very young to start a business.
Was that something that had always been on the cards? Was your parents, were they entrepreneurs? How. Did you get into that?
Sam:
Yeah, look, we, uh, my mom had had her own business when she was younger, so there was probably some kind of seeding of that, that mentality as, as a [00:05:00] child. But I think, you know, as a teenager, I used to go out washing cars in the neighborhood to make money.
I always had that energy about me of wanting to create something in the moment out of nothing. And I, I didn’t like, you know, I had Saturday jobs. I had a job in Gregg’s actually as a, my sort of first paid employment and I didn’t get paid a lot and it was very, very hard work and I hated the rigidity That kind of structure.
So I think I was always of a mind that I wanted to push out against that, that kind of framework.
Teresa:
Yeah. And I think I always, I used to joke, and I don’t say it so much now that I’m like an accidental entrepreneur, because that was never, I wasn’t one of those people. I follow rules really well. I love being patted on the head and being told I’ve done a good job.
So the fact that I now have my own business is mind blowing. And again, I could never go back to [00:06:00] it. But I think like, if you’ve grown up and had that kind of passion, what Because again, even though you’d had some experience in that industry, that doesn’t seem like a particularly easy industry to get into.
It feels like there’s loads of legal stuff and you’ve really got to know what you’re talking about.
Sam:
Yeah, it is. It’s heavily regulated. It’s also extremely Male dominated, which I talk about a lot. It’s, you know, it’s financial services. So the majority of senior decision makers in the industry and male, it’s not necessarily an industry that really attracts entrepreneurs either, because it’s seen as a very capital intense area and therefore it, it puts people off.
For me, I just like solving problems. And I, I kind of, I’d, I’d started because I’d started working in claims, I kind of understood the industry almost under the, the [00:07:00] hut in terms of some of the challenges that the market has generally. And as I’d started to build out a claims business and work with insurance companies, I was getting frustrated that there was things that I wanted to change.
That I couldn’t change because I wasn’t in control of that part of the process.
You know, it’s funny you talk about the accidental entrepreneur. My personal belief is that 90 percent of us are accidental entrepreneurs, but some are better at lying about it post being successful because, you know, I, I, I don’t believe in this really thing.
Cookie cutter, clean plan that plays out exactly as you expected it to. And it’s one of my big objections to sort of traditional VC is, uh, they, they, they tend from my experience of them to come from the big consulting firms. Come from a financial background. [00:08:00] So you sort of CFO mentality that says that everything works on a spreadsheet.
Then real life happens. And, and, and that isn’t how most businesses that I know and entrepreneurs that I know, and I’ve met a Tom that have been wildly successful. And when you’re sat at that after dinner party and you’re chatting and you really get to the honest nub of it with them, they’ve all had that rollercoaster of experience where they thought they were going in one direction and then they had to go in another and the pain points and the trauma and all that stuff.
And it kind of flies in the face of the. The way that we expect them to present when trying to raise funds, the two of them really kind of fit together very well.
Teresa:
No, and I think, you know, this is where we look at like people’s zone of genius. And I think to be an entrepreneur, to come up with those ideas, to have the guts to go out there and do it, to be [00:09:00] brave, to be scrappy in those early days, like they’re not necessarily the, the spreadsheet type skills that you would have necessarily.
So, so one thing that I really want to understand is when you decided to start, when did you start Stella Insurance?
Sam:
So Stella Insurance I launched in 2020 actually in Australia. Um, but I, I had the backing of my own successful businesses in the UK that I’d organically grown to be able to do that, to even be able to go out and check out the market and say, is this something that, um, I could do, uh, was possible because of the business that I’d built previously.
Teresa:
Okay, so you hadn’t necessarily had investment in those other businesses, not because you had grown such a good business and had such a foundation that enabled you to kind of flip onto the potential new business. So had you got [00:10:00] investment from day one in that business? Did you literally start with, I’m, I have investors for this?
Sam:
So with the Australian business, it was the first and only time I had any kind of investment. So part of it was my own investment. So I, as what I said for myself with, with Stella was, I really want to do this. I really love the Australian market. I love the potential of what we’re going to do with this business, but for this, because I’ve done the organically grown like freedom services group had got up to 20 odd million pound of turnover and it was profitable.
But it is, you know, blood, sweat and tears, lots of falling over and face planting the mat and getting back up again. And I said, I, I want to experience building a business with funding and backing and what does that look like? So I got a small amount of local VC funding. And I put money in and I also actually interestingly [00:11:00] did a media for equity deal, which was my first experience of the whole media for equity dynamic.
I did a deal with Bauer Media at the time across all of their female magazines in Australia. I got sort of 15 million in inventory across their now magazine, Marie Claire, et cetera, to launch the brand. But it was a, I’m not doing this by myself again. I want to have somebody in on board day one.
Teresa:
So there’s a couple of things I just want you to clarify for me.
So when you talk about the media deal, can you just explain to listeners what you mean? What does that look like? What is it?
Sam:
Yeah. So look, there’s, there’s many different ways to skin a cat, as I like to say. And over the years I’ve learned that bartering in business is really helpful. So you can’t always, getting debt into a business, getting traditional investment is unbelievably hard, particularly if you don’t fit the classical, Mold.
And what I’ve learned over the years is that you can [00:12:00] exchange things. So if you know that you’re providing a service that another bigger business has a requirement for, you can sometimes do a deal where they may help forward fund you in order to be able to get more of what they want from your business, from a supply chain viewpoint.
Um, media for equity is, is for me, is a bit of a bartering system where You’ve got a company like Bauer who have various media businesses, whether it be magazines, radio, etc. And they will have inventory that they are selling to other companies. And a media for equity deal is simply saying, is it me paying you for it?
I’m going to give you some shares in my business. And in doing that, you’re, you’re playing for the long term. So you get, you’re going to give me some of this space. You’re going to help support the marketing of my business. But you accept the fact that I’m not giving you cash day one, I’m giving you a share of [00:13:00] the business and hopefully we’ll all win together in the future.
Teresa:
So I’m assuming then for someone listening to this and maybe thinking about, you know, straightforward, we’ll give you some money for a percentage of our business. And then this type of investment. What would you do? Is there one that’s better than the other? Is there a reason you chose that one? Would you have rather had the straight money if you could?
Sam:
Look, there’s lots of different ways of looking at it. I can only speak to sort of my motivation. At the time, the deal metrics were more favorable than I would have gotten a straight cash for the equity deal. But also my mentality was, If, if you just purchase the media, it’s an exchange, it’s a financial exchange, but it’s done.
You’ve spent the money, they’re gone. If it’s a media for equity dynamic, then they only get that return if you’re successful. So one of the [00:14:00] motivating factors for me was the idea that there was skin in the game on both sides, that there was, there was a sort of active interest in being, um, in the business being successful and being able to do that.
But the, the other factor was. I think the media world is probably more open minded to different types of entrepreneurs than the financial world. And I had had a terrible time of it trying to raise money over the years. In, in my previous businesses, my, my original bank manager, when I set up on my own, when I was 24, the first thing he did was remove my personal overdraft.
And that kind of was a pattern across the, the entire time, whenever I’ve engaged with financial institutions, it’s just not, it’s not been good for me. So, I kind of, you know, their engagement with us because we were a fresh brand, we were doing [00:15:00] something different and interesting. They were excited by the possibilities of what we wanted to do as, as a business.
And it was a very different response to the response that I’d had before.
Teresa:
And that is so interesting and kind of really nicely brings us onto the work that is being done with Chavarron Tapped is that one of the, when you think about investments and people who give investments, they tend to fit a very small, box and the people that you had like this TV box and then the people that they’re giving investments to.
And that was one of the most shocking things about when we went, um, at the time recording this, it was last week. I knew the stats would be bad. Like as a woman in business, I knew that. The people getting funding would be low when it came to anybody that wasn’t necessarily a white male, but I was gobsmacked.
I mean, from your point of view, obviously you weren’t [00:16:00] surprised because you’ve been in it, but what were your thoughts about it?
Sam:
I wasn’t surprised. I mean, it, it was even worse than I thought and I had a fairly low opinion. So it was, it, it was kind of like I was, I’m just, I’m a bit embarrassed for them.
So like I’m a part of a lot of female entrepreneur groups and some incredible women doing phenomenal things and, and the thing that I’ve found in my experience of dealing with. Female entrepreneurs is they often have like a societal lens as well. So they’re not just building businesses that are good for them.
They are trying to build businesses that are good for everybody. And this is a consistent theme that I kind of come across. So. I, I look at them and I go, why on earth wouldn’t we be backing the, these incredible women? And for, I think, you know, the Rose review pointed out that if we backed female entrepreneurs in the same way that we do men, there’d be another 250 billion [00:17:00] in the UK economy.
So I look at that and I go, this is like, it just doesn’t make any logical sense. So yeah, the stats were hugely disappointing, but not surprising. And having got a small amount of investment in Australia, but then trying to do a series A after really successfully scaling the business, you know, to a substantial number of customers and turnover and being very close to profitability.
And systematically failing in that endeavor, having been told that we were, like, perfect profile, perfect, you know, incredible this, incredible that, I kind of, I kind of wasn’t going in there with an expectation that the stats were gonna surprise me, put it that way.
Teresa:
Yeah, and I, like, it just, for me, I work, I would say, probably 90 percent of my audience are women.
And, I think we’re starting on the right foot anyway [00:18:00] in getting in a business and the day to day things of running a business of, you know, I had a, in one of my groups, there was a conversation going on that the husband was ill or the children were ill. And the assumption was the wife would just go and pick up the childcare, even though they were speaking at a really big thing online.
And the husband wasn’t very happy about the fact that actually he might have to take the time off, you know, and he had the real job or the proper job and, you know, and, and I think so, burst off straight out of the gates. You’re dealing with that. And of course, when it’s in your head as well, and society saying, you know, The successful people at the top, the people who have the biggest business that, you know, the, the people who we should look up to are not, they don’t look like us.
And obviously this wasn’t just a male female thing, you know, it was very much a, you know, an ethnicity thing as well. Like if they’re not seeing those examples and obviously this is what untapped is there to do. It’s to, to try and help bring. a more diverse portfolio of people who [00:19:00] are being invested in.
How are we meant to, like, how did you keep fighting, keep, like, going back up there and asking the question and trying again and building, like, where did that resilience come from?
Sam:
I mean, look, there is no safety net for me. So there isn’t another option and I am deeply passionate about what I do. So you just do find another way.
And the, the, the, the one thing I will say is. I, I, now, I don’t even bemoan it anymore because I consider it a superpower. When I go toe to toe with a competitor in the industry, I’m like, I know how strong I am. And I, I say that without being arrogant. No, you don’t get strong by walking in a gym. You get strong by lifting the weights and every time someone says no, or, you know, you, you aren’t [00:20:00] offered the support that, that maybe other people are offered, then you do build up a level of resilience and.
Entrepreneurialism by the solutions that I can find to problems that just wouldn’t occur to other people because of the experience that I’ve had is a strength and it’s in my toolkit and I get to keep that. No one can take that away from me. So it doesn’t matter. They can reject me wholeheartedly on every occasion and I don’t care anymore.
Because for me, I’ve, I’ve built up enough resilience and, and capabilities that I will make the business successful regardless. What I think is interesting is that what you can see in the stats is that when women are obviously an area that I’m particularly focused on from my business, because we’re focused on designing financial services around women.
So a lot of these stats kind of come my way, but [00:21:00] when women are funded, they outperform their male counterparts by a significant sum and the stats show that they are, in terms of the return on investment, 30, 40 percent better returns on a female founder than a male. So whether that’s because they had to fight through all of this stuff, so the people that are getting their, uh, You know, top draw, but it does support the thesis that untapped have got that nevermind the social good, nevermind the, you know, the, the impact from a societal viewpoint.
Teresa:
This
Sam:
actually commercially is a very smart move because whilst the other investors are sat in mirrored boxes, patting themselves on the back at how clever they are, that they threw a load of money at something and it managed to turn, they be seeing those resilient founders and those interesting propositions.
and backing people that, that know what it’s like to fight through stuff [00:22:00] from, from a person’s viewpoint. So I kind of go, you know, commercially it’s genius. Yeah. Yeah.
Teresa:
Which it is, which. is awesome for them that it has this commercial viability and that actually this is a good move. Not only, you know, because that’s great, but then they’re doing something good in the, in the process as well.
Do you think, what would you do? Okay, if you could wave a magic wand over this and change something, do something differently to help female founders get investment and get put in front of the right people and get the money, what would, what would your perfect solution be?
Sam:
Oh, you know, it’s, it’s a difficult one because it’s like senior appointments in financial services that there’s a load of arguments about that, whether you make it compulsory that they have to have a percentage.
I, I think a starting point would be transparency. I am very frustrated at the opaqueness of, of financial investment [00:23:00] decisions like there needs to be one, you need to be declaring. Your investment portfolio profile, you know, just, and it should be easily available so that somebody like me can make an instant assessment as to whether it’s worth me wasting time sitting down, having a conversation with you.
If you’ve invested in a thousand businesses over the last 12 months and not one of them has been female or in the North of England or whatever, then thank you. No, like let’s just not waste each other’s time here on, on this conversation. So. I think transparency is, is really important. And, and if there is a way, there’s been a number of studies done where if, if you had blind investments, like blind CVs, where they weren’t able to identify who the, the, the founder was by characteristics, Would they make the same investment decisions and we’re [00:24:00] still very much in this old school mentality.
And I had it said to me so many times during the series, we back the team, like, what, what does that mean? Like, yeah, give me, give me some, some categories. I said, I said to a couple that we were talking to, you tell me what you would need to see in order for you to want to last in 12 months time. Like you give me that benchmark to go for, cause I will get those numbers.
Because if, if 350 percent growth year on year, if, if, you know, the, the, the customer scores, the, the, the, the tech development, if, if all the markers that I’m presenting to you aren’t enough today, what would be enough in order to get an investment? And, and nobody will answer that question. They’ll say it’s complicated.
It’s it’s not that simple. Why is it not that simple?
Teresa:
How can it not be that simple? Because surely. [00:25:00] When there’s no bias, like it comes down to maths, surely. It comes down to, is your business profitable? Can we see it continue to be profitable? Will we get a return on investment? That’s it. Like that’s, that’s all it should be.
Surely that’s all it is.
Sam:
Like, it categorically is not, it categorically is not because I have benchmarked arm numbers, like for like on some of the most well funded startups in exactly the same sector. And the, the just, it, the makes, it makes no sense because ultimately it’s a popularity contest amongst a very small demographic.
So if they say it is worth a billion. It is worth a billion. Well, there is no real science behind a lot of these valuations. It’s not revenue. It’s not EBIT. It’s not, when you’re looking in the startup space, it’s all about a bunch of people stood around slapping each other on the [00:26:00] back saying, haven’t we found this great next unicorn?
And I saw a fantastic post by a woman saying. But I don’t want to be a unicorn. I want to be a camel. Camels can survive in the desert for months of time without any water. She was like, she’s like, unicorns don’t exist. They do not exist. And, and it’s, it is very much this mythical story that is told about this incredible business that it’s just hot air a lot of the time.
Teresa:
And it makes me feel like, where’s their credibility? Like almost if. You don’t want them to think, because are they really that smart? Like if that, you know, if they can’t literally go, this is what makes good business, this doesn’t, and actually we couldn’t give a hoot who’s running it, because here’s the proof to say they can run it and run it well, then, you Why, you know, why would you even want their investment?
And I know why people want their investment, because they want the money. But, [00:27:00] it does make you go.
Sam:
I said exactly this, I did a post earlier, because I had one investor, which you may or may not want to include. But early doors, I met this guy. Um, successful insurance entrepreneur met him for lunch, interested in investing.
And he said to me, it will not happen for you. It will be like trying really hard to have an orgasm and just not getting there. And I said to him, that’s not happened to me since I stopped sleeping with men, which probably didn’t help me with the investment. But my, my point was like, actually he wasn’t wrong.
Like at the end of the series A, and it was like, you know what? When I step back from it, you’re not for me either. Like, this is actually a total waste of both of our times. Because if you straight out of the gap, the gate said to me, My preference is for white [00:28:00] males who went to Oxford university, you have a tech business, and my preference is so overwhelming that I am only going to give money to 99 percent of the people that I give money to is that then.
I likened it to dating. You just would not be swiping each other’s profiles. Now, don’t do me the disservice in bothering to have a meeting with me when clearly I am never going to be your target market because I’ve got other shit to do.
Teresa:
And it’s patronizing. It’s, you know, oh yeah, I’ll have a conversation.
No, you have no intention to. So just straight off the bat and go, you’re not for me, sorry. I’m sorry.
Sam:
Exactly. And, and I respect that and I have no problem with that because, you know, it’s, it’s actually not the bias that offends me. And I know a lot of people are offended by the bias and I get that. That’s not my like problem to solve.
I can’t, and I can’t solve that. All that I can do is, is concentrate on building a business so [00:29:00] successful in the space that I’m in that it disrupts the incumbents to such a degree. It makes them pause for thought. Okay. Cool. That is all I can do. The rest of the stuff, I am not here for changing people’s Minds in, in, in that regard.
And I just think the frustration for me is, is the lip service.
Teresa:
Yeah,
Sam:
that is far more frustrating than anything else is. I don’t tell me that you’re for this. If, if you cannot demonstratively prove it
Teresa:
in
Sam:
any way, shape or form, then jog on.
Teresa:
Yeah,
Sam:
because otherwise it is just a colossal waste of time for all parties concerned and there’s no point to it.
Teresa:
Yeah, no, I love that. And I think when you were talking, one of the things that sprung to mind is I had a conversation a little while back again with a group of women, and we were talking about how spite is a great motivator. And I do think that’s [00:30:00] probably quite a be well thing, but you like, you tell me I can’t.
Oh, you just wait and see.
Sam:
Don’t tell me I can’t, for sure. That is like, oh yeah, just watch me. Yeah, I love it.
Teresa:
I love it. Yeah, it definitely feels that way sometimes. Sam, you have been fabulous. Thank you so, so much for your time. I really, really appreciate it. Where do you hang out online that maybe people could come and follow you and see you if they
Sam:
I am absolutely a LinkedIn baby. I try with Instagram, but I’m terrible at taking the glossy pictures. It doesn’t quite work. So yes, LinkedIn, founder and CEO of Stella Insurance. They’ll find me.
Teresa:
Amazing. Thank you so much, Sam.
