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Assaf Wand

Founding Partner, Mensch Capital Partners · 2 appearances on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveinvestorLinkedIn ↗hippo.com ↗

Assaf Wand is the co-founder and former CEO of Hippo Insurance, an insurtech company that modernized homeowners insurance. Prior to Hippo, he founded the consumer products brand Sabi, and he is a founding partner at Mensch Capital Partners.

16statements → 2claims → 1claims resolved → 3.69/5average certainty → 2.94/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 6said about them ↓

0 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 assertions · 2 opinions · 12 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Assaf argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Wand: Legacy backend costs made pre-cloud insurance startups financially unviable
“Anything you wanted to do in insurance, you needed to set up a full back-end system. I guess you could get companies like Guidewire, get Accenture, get Oracle Database Nine, or whatever was in that sense, you know, the options. That would have cost you hundred…”
Assaf Wand Jan 18, 2019 ▶ 5:11 20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Understand Term Sheet Psyche & How The Brand Behind The Investor Can Overweight The Attention Their Opinion Is Given with Assaf Wand, Founder & CEO @ Hippo

How they sound: speaking style how? →

241 words/min while actually speaking · 1.6 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Assaf Wand: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 24 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 6,694 words across 2 episodes, but every recording we have of Assaf Wand is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 2 rated episodes:

host pushback ▾ 2/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 4/10
setup questions received 60%

Everything Assaf Wand said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Wand: VCs undervalue InsurTechs because they misunderstand insurance de-risking mechanics
“VCs don't really understand insurance. So they don't understand the risking that was done behind the scene. To lower the risk and actually bring you to have a customer. They don't understand how you manage your claims, and what you've done on the reinsurance, …”
Assaf Wand Jan 18, 2019 ▶ 9:13 20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Understand Term Sheet Psyche & How The Brand Behind The Investor Can Overweight The Attention Their Opinion Is Given with Assaf Wand, Founder & CEO @ Hippo
Opinion
Wand: Not a single top VC fund truly understands Hippo's business
“There's not a single top fund that truly understands what the hell am I doing?”
Assaf Wand Jan 18, 2019 ▶ 10:13 20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Understand Term Sheet Psyche & How The Brand Behind The Investor Can Overweight The Attention Their Opinion Is Given with Assaf Wand, Founder & CEO @ Hippo
Insight
Wand: Startup boards overweight top VCs' opinions based on brand, not merit
“Usually, if there is a partner from a top fund, there is a tendency to give overweight to his idea and decision point, where it's not substantiated by the merit of his idea, but just rather from the fact that he came from Sequoia, he came from Benchmark, he ca…”
Assaf Wand Jan 18, 2019 ▶ 11:21 20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Understand Term Sheet Psyche & How The Brand Behind The Investor Can Overweight The Attention Their Opinion Is Given with Assaf Wand, Founder & CEO @ Hippo
Insight
Wand: Modern data sources give insurtech startups an advantage over legacy carriers
“Data, if anything, it flips. So I'm actually an advantage. I don't have just ten million customers in the US data. I have a hundred million customers data. I have more data that I can actually use. I have more data components that keep on popping every day. I …”
Assaf Wand Jan 18, 2019 ▶ 6:22 20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Understand Term Sheet Psyche & How The Brand Behind The Investor Can Overweight The Attention Their Opinion Is Given with Assaf Wand, Founder & CEO @ Hippo
Insight
Wand: Startups must gain distribution faster than incumbents achieve innovation
“Because in essence, the fight that you have of incumbents versus startup is a startup needs to reach the distribution faster than an incumbent can reach the innovation.”
Assaf Wand Jan 18, 2019 ▶ 21:57 20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Understand Term Sheet Psyche & How The Brand Behind The Investor Can Overweight The Attention Their Opinion Is Given with Assaf Wand, Founder & CEO @ Hippo
Insight
Wand: Remote work creates a mercenary culture and increases employee turnover
“This remote work environment creates a bit of a mercenary environment because you never built any relationship with the a person. You never infused the culture of the company. So it's not a really big problem for them to leave and to move.”
Assaf Wand Feb 18, 2021 ▶ 20:07 20VC Special: The Real Estate Fintech OGs on Why This Is Not The End For The Bay Area and What Can Be Done To Solve It, The Pros and Cons of Working with Corporate Investors and How Leading Their Teams Has Fundamentally Changed in a COVID World
Insight
Asaf Wand: Remote Work Inhibits Creativity and Complex Problem-Solving
“I think it's very, very difficult to do creative things and solve hard problems. The actual amount of work that's done on some silos is probably fine for engineers. They still close more tickets. Potentially they don't have commute. Maybe it's effective, but t…”
Assaf Wand Feb 18, 2021 ▶ 21:00 20VC Special: The Real Estate Fintech OGs on Why This Is Not The End For The Bay Area and What Can Be Done To Solve It, The Pros and Cons of Working with Corporate Investors and How Leading Their Teams Has Fundamentally Changed in a COVID World
Insight
Wand: InsurTech startups look one funding round earlier than they actually are
“In general, what happened, and this is my view for InsurTech, is There's a lot of interest and demand, and a lot of players actually wants to do something in this field. However, every company looks one round earlier than it should be. What I mean is that a co…”
Assaf Wand Jan 18, 2019 ▶ 8:21 20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Understand Term Sheet Psyche & How The Brand Behind The Investor Can Overweight The Attention Their Opinion Is Given with Assaf Wand, Founder & CEO @ Hippo
Insight
Wand: Fundraising time pressure favors VCs, so founders should run blitzes
“The time value is always in the benefits of the fund and not of the founder, and because of that, I think when you're doing a fundraising, it needs to be a condensed blitz and have 20, 30 meetings in that week, see what's going on, push it to the next level.”
Assaf Wand Jan 18, 2019 ▶ 16:13 20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Understand Term Sheet Psyche & How The Brand Behind The Investor Can Overweight The Attention Their Opinion Is Given with Assaf Wand, Founder & CEO @ Hippo
Insight
Wand: Strategic corporate investment dramatically increases BD partnership success rates
“If you're having them as a strategic investor with a very specific deliverables, then the likelihood and the chance of these deals succeed are, I don't know, a hundred times more than you thought before.”
Assaf Wand Jan 18, 2019 ▶ 21:26 20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Understand Term Sheet Psyche & How The Brand Behind The Investor Can Overweight The Attention Their Opinion Is Given with Assaf Wand, Founder & CEO @ Hippo
Insight
Wand: External board members rarely provide continuous ongoing value to startups
“It's going to be very rare for an external person to come up with continuous ideas and value on an ongoing basis. I'm not saying that they can't bring a lot of value every once in a while, but not on a continuous kind of level.”
Assaf Wand Jan 18, 2019 ▶ 23:45 20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Understand Term Sheet Psyche & How The Brand Behind The Investor Can Overweight The Attention Their Opinion Is Given with Assaf Wand, Founder & CEO @ Hippo
Insight
Wand: Disregard for structure drives Israeli entrepreneurs into insurtech
“As Israelis, we don't have a lot of respect to structures, which is maybe why there's a lot of Israelis working in insurtech, because it's a regulated industry, and to begin with, we don't have a lot of values to regulated industries.”
Assaf Wand Jan 18, 2019 ▶ 27:41 20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Understand Term Sheet Psyche & How The Brand Behind The Investor Can Overweight The Attention Their Opinion Is Given with Assaf Wand, Founder & CEO @ Hippo
Opinion
Wand: Silicon Valley remains the best place to scale a company
“If you want to build a company to scale, it's probably the best place in the world to build it, and it's because of the people that you have around.”
Assaf Wand Feb 18, 2021 ▶ 16:21 20VC Special: The Real Estate Fintech OGs on Why This Is Not The End For The Bay Area and What Can Be Done To Solve It, The Pros and Cons of Working with Corporate Investors and How Leading Their Teams Has Fundamentally Changed in a COVID World
Insight
Wand: Scaling $10M to $100M ARR is much harder than $1M to $10M
“It's a lot harder to go from ten million dollars to a hundred million dollars than a million dollars to ten million dollars, and it's not an easy route, and a lot of people fall along the way, and I think that's one of the things that nobody talks about.”
Assaf Wand Feb 18, 2021 ▶ 32:18 20VC Special: The Real Estate Fintech OGs on Why This Is Not The End For The Bay Area and What Can Be Done To Solve It, The Pros and Cons of Working with Corporate Investors and How Leading Their Teams Has Fundamentally Changed in a COVID World
Assertion Contradicted
Wand: Legacy backend costs made pre-cloud insurance startups financially unviable
“Anything you wanted to do in insurance, you needed to set up a full back-end system. I guess you could get companies like Guidewire, get Accenture, get Oracle Database Nine, or whatever was in that sense, you know, the options. That would have cost you hundred…”
Assaf Wand Jan 18, 2019 ▶ 5:11 20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Understand Term Sheet Psyche & How The Brand Behind The Investor Can Overweight The Attention Their Opinion Is Given with Assaf Wand, Founder & CEO @ Hippo
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wand: The average age of a Hippo employee is 42 years old
“Average age of our employees is around 42.”
Assaf Wand Jan 18, 2019 ▶ 12:41 20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Understand Term Sheet Psyche & How The Brand Behind The Investor Can Overweight The Attention Their Opinion Is Given with Assaf Wand, Founder & CEO @ Hippo

The other half of the tape: Assaf Wand's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 6 times in 1 episode on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Victoria Treyger 3Harry Stebbings 3

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0031612019episodesmentions
0112019episodes it came up in
0030.5612019episodesmentions per episode
2019 6 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC Special: The Real Estate Fintech OGs on Why This Is Not The End For The Bay Area and Feb 18, 2021 6m
20VC: Why Every Company Looks One Round Earlier Than It Should Be, Why Investors Don't Und Jan 18, 2019 22m
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