It feels like we are pretty far away from LLMs running a concession stand (see andon labs) so not surprised it would struggle here. Still the failure modes are super interesting and having benchmarks seems to be the starting point to domain-specific improvements.
This is a pervasive myth. Young founders get pr because it’s notable and drives clicks, but the average age of a successful founder is older. The average age of a YC founder is 30. According to a Harvard Business Review article I remember reading, the average age is 45.
Unfortunately “protecting ourselves” against these drugs has terrible second-order effects (see war on drugs). Perhaps we should let people buy drugs and bad food but add taxes to cover the collective damage done by them.
I worked in the game industry on the business side and saw all salaries. Game developers are paid well under software engineers at “traditional” software companies. Similar software engineering job requirements, except one pays less and demands far more in terms of hours worked. Of course the depressed wages are consistent as you move to lower paid roles at game companies.
It comes down to supply and demand. There are legions of young, passionate gamers who want to “work with their passion”. Why they stick with it, I’m not sure. I certainly didn’t.
I think you are right - but only for a specific crowd. The hardcore iron types tend to be serious about fitness, but define fitness narrowly. They fetishize the weightlifting basics, and dislike any and all gadgets and tech in their routines.
Always in fitness you have a group of customers who are not into fitness and making an aspirational purchase. However, there is also a group (probably larger than the hardcore weightlifter types) of fitness-oriented people who aren’t trying to lift heavy weights and they use apps, workout classes, and HIIT training with light weights.
Peleton/Mirror suit this group well. Both of my parents - who are older but fit - do almost 100% of their workouts on the Peleton now. My roommate, a former D1 athlete runs and does fitness classes via app. In both cases they were doing this before COVID, and quarantine is obviously causing many others to embrace this as well.
A good friend was recruited by Meg in Quibi's early days (under 20 employees). Her report to me: 0 customer validation, experimentation, research, etc. She ran for the hills and predicted this outcome for years. They had a giant vision from the execs and set out to build it with huge piles of cash. Never stopped to see if consumers actually wanted it along the way. If people's jobs weren't at stake, I would say there is some kind of dark humor here. As a startup, they built the exact type of company startups are great at disrupting.
This looks great, looking forward to trying it out. I was a heavy Essbase user at a previous analyst role so working with data as a spreadsheet plugin feels very natural.
We also leveraging the ICHRA, but Savvy works a little differently.
Instead of a reimbursement-based approach, where employees pay insurance premiums themselves and submit them for reimbursement (like a business expense), we manage the payments for employees. This means the insurance bill is paid by the employer and any extra employee contribution is deducted from payroll. We do it this way so that the employee contribution is also tax-free.
We are also investing heavily in helping employees find the right plan. Behind the scenes our brokers are recommending plans for every employee, and we are building out tools that help employees do things like find a plan with a specific doctor or hospital in network.
As long as you are enrolled in health coverage (whether yourself, or on a spouse's plan) you can spend your employer's health funds on dental and vision.
Agreed healthcare is changing. I will say, however, that the ICHRA was one of the few healthcare related initiatives with pretty strong bipartisan support. The SBA (Small Business Administration) lobbied for it.
To your point on employees quitting - one of the benefits of Savvy is that if you change jobs, your insurance can stay with you as it is no longer tied to your employer.
This is a good point - we can do a better job demoing how the product works before you buy. Although it looks immediate on the site, we don't currently charge the setup fee until we check in with our customers and make sure they are happily set up.
The reason right now is that we work with outside experts to draft and review the legal plan documents for every customer that signs up. Because this is such a new thing we think it's worth spending extra to be sure we are buttoned up from a compliance standpoint. This has an upfront cost we need to cover. Once we bring this in-house we can think about the pricing differently.
As you say, the sheer number of choices can be overwhelming. This is why we have our brokers, who are experts on the nuances of health plans, recommend a few plans for each employee - we do the shopping for most employees, and the power users can pick for themselves if they like. Employees can always chat with us in-app as well.
If you work for a large employer, you have benefits professionals who spend all year thinking about this - we work with small employers who don't have these kinds of resources and are happy to offload it onto us.
Thanks! We have definitely found we are a good fit for remote companies with employees in multiple states. If you don't mind me asking, what did you end up doing for your health insurance?
Apologies - We usually walk customers through the setup over the phone, definitely needs some work to be fully self-serve. We appreciate the feedback.
To answer your question: The premiums will be deducted from your account, and any extra employee contribution would be deducted, tax-free, from the employees paycheck. We integrate with Gusto to set this up for you.
You are right, some of the regulations around association plans were only recently decided, so they are not widespread. We are very interested and working with some experts in the space to better understand how we can leverage them.