2 Years Down with distriBind, Forever to go

Valentines day, 2022, I purchased two croissants and grabbed a couple of coffees and skipped down the road looking forward to my first day…. my first day at distriBind working alongside Dave. 

Dave and I go way back, I first met Dave around 10 years ago. We worked in different teams but I still remember Daves first day. He must have been friendlier back then as he sent an email to all asking if anyone wanted to join him for a quiz, which is cool, I am always up for a beer. 10 years later, and we have never been so close, from a work and personal perspective.  

Dave soon left this company after a merger and to be honest, he must have seen it coming because soon after the atmosphere changed, we had been forgotten about and no support was being provided. I spoke to Dave who told me about this opportunity which I jumped at, but won’t go into details as I still growl at him when we talk about it.  

I think you get the gist of this, Dave and I have always kept in contact and when the opportunity came up to work at distriBind I jumped at it. It was a risk as not all start-ups work (in fact 60% of start-ups fail) and my wife was due our second child in the coming months, but it was an opportunity I could not let by.  

Day 1, 14th February, my role was Product Manager and in all honestly, it was a big change for me. Having been a BA, Lead BA, Business support manager, I had never managed my own team nor a product, but within an hour we had removed an outsourced Project Manager and Dave was telling me it’s now on me, why not? I was the new Product Manager and had to do things my own way. 6 months passed and Dave was promoting me to Head of Product, which for me, mentally, was a big step up.  

We achieved so much in the early days with a small team and the team was growing. We had employed in-house Dev, a number of project managers, more BAs, a BI developer, the list goes on. We had seen people come and people go, but all for the right reasons.  

This all sounds like it went perfectly, it did not. In any business let alone a start-up you have ups and downs, and some very big ups and downs. There has been times Dave and I have not seen eye to eye, but there have been times where he is my best mate and we just can’t stop laughing together, so much so tears role down my face! My point is, it has been a massive challenge and of course there will be downs, but the ups out weigh the downs, and I would do it all over again.  

During my time at distriBind not only have we grown, but the features and tech have improved. We are a modular system and we have worked hard on trying to resolve a problem and give companies  and businesses the tools they need to deal with their DA problem. Let's be clear, we have not invented this problem, it’s been there for years and not one DA solution is yet to resolve it. Our approach is different. We try to be a flexible as possible, whilst maintaining high standards of what the requirement is. If you want to get better insights into your claims only, we can do that by building a bunch of reports to understand what TPAs are outperforming others, in turn giving you better underwriting decisions at renewal. If you only want to process risk without the premium, that’s fine, we don’t need to know if and when the coverholder/MGA is going to pay you for those risk instalments, we have tools to achieve this… I could go on  

I have recently changed role from Head of Product to Head of Pre Sales, and, again, Dave and I chatted about this and it just made sense, brining my insurance knowledge with product knowledge and being able to talk to people (which if you know me, I don’t like a chat), who could say no!  

In summary, my two years have been eventful, but the team we have is like an extended family. Everyone works for everyone not only in the office but outside it too. We work hard and play harder and here’s to another two years and more.  

For anything else distriBind have a look around our recently upgraded website and find out what events you can see us at this year.