Some of the best B2B SaaS businesses are conceived on the front lines by founders struggling to solve a known business problem. That business accelerates when that same founder has a background in developing similar solutions. Such is the case for Sondre Rasch, the CEO and Co-founder of SafetyWing, which offers global health insurance to digital nomads. Rasch is building a global safety net to allow digital nomads to thrive and flourish wherever they are.
Sondre left his successful B2B SaaS Superside, a freelance design platform, to launch SafetyWing in 2018. In this conversation with the GetLatka team, discover where he goes for product insights, what he’s doing to expand and scale, and how he is working toward his long-term vision.
- $24m ARR, 2X YoY growth from $12m
- Team of 60, with 20 engineers
- 25,000 active customers
- $35m Series B in 2022 at $195m post-valuation
Problem-solving as Superside Co-Founder in 2016 inspired launch of SafetyWing in 2018
CEO Rasch shared SafetyWing’s origins: “We noticed that freelancers on our platform had issues with income uncertainty and had no benefits. We tried to find a solution and found no one offered us benefits. Most infrastructure doesn’t work for the global world; the challenge is that the internet labor market still needs local infrastructure.” With a background in policy in Norway, Rasch continued to explore solutions and finally left Superside in 2017 to launch SafetyWing.
SafetyWing launches in 2018, hit $1m in revenue in 2019
Rasch relied on his work as a social safety net policy advisor for the government of Norway to explore feasible solutions for a global social safety net. The CEO shared, “I took my experience and said let’s make something like a regional social safety net available on the internet as a membership.”
He continued, “We needed to start somewhere. So, let’s make one little piece at a time and then build out health, retirement, and disability until we can make a membership at the end.” His approach paid off at SafetyWing crossed the $1m ARR mark in 2019.
$45 per month individual subscription, added company plans upon request at SafetyWing
SafetyWing’s current subscription model sits at $45 per month per user. The company focused on individuals but added company plans in 2020 “after getting like 100 requests,” according to Rasch. This expansion underlies a common theme in his interview; the Co-founder consistently relies on user feedback to guide the direction of the growing SaaS.
He delivered health as the first product based on freelancers’ feedback. Customer feedback on the CX drives product changes. He added the company plan option because of requests. And now he considers NPS a key metric to scale business.
COVID brings mixed bag of results: 1/3 of customer base lost, but remote work accelerates 5 years
According to Rasch, “COVID was a mixed blessing. We launched remote health right before COVID hit, so remote work accelerated by 5 years. But many of our digital nomads evacuated, and we lost 1/3 of our customers. Then in August 2020, we 3X’d our customer base after introducing COVID coverage,” summarizing, “It was a mixed bag roller coaster. But over the long run, COVID accelerated remote work.”
25,000 active customers, Superside was not the first ones
When the CEO launched in 2018, the product was not aligned with Superside’s needs. “We got our first customers without them. It took a couple of years to make a product that Superside could use,” explained Rasch.
He further expounded, “We launched to digital nomads. We knew that space because we’re part of it, so we focused on influencers in that space. Two years later, we signed up Superside when we launched remote health. Now they are one of our biggest customers.” SafetyWing now serves 25,000 customers monthly.
Why the US is an outlier on medical insurance costs
As Latka asked Rasch how he’s able to offer such low-cost health insurance, the Norwegian CEO replied, “The US is an outlier on cost in this scenario. Anyone from a US perspective always thinks medical costs out of the US are remarkably cheap. Why that is would be a whole segment on its own; one piece is that the medical provider networks in the US charge a very high price. International medical provider networks have no price.”
$2m MRR, remote health for teams at a higher price point
SafetyWing sits at $2m MRR, up from $1m MRR a year ago, as the revenue comes from a mix of individuals paying $45 per month and remote health for teams at a higher price point. The CX is simple. If a member gets hurt in a foreign country, they simply visit the website to get directed to the nearest participating hospital. The hospital then charges SafetyWing directly for the services.
“Later this year, we are making a SafetyWing card you can use to pay at point of purchase if needed, “explained the CEO, to mitigate out-of-pocket reimbursement processing for situations where the hospital can’t bill SafetyWing directly.
$53m total raised, last round $35m in 2022 at $195m valuation with 16X multiple
Co-founder Rasch described SafetyWing’s history of funds raised: “We joined Y Combinator in 2018, then did a Seed round of $3.5m in 2019. Our Series A round was $8m in 2020. And then in 2022, we raised $35m at a post-money valuation of $195m.”
When Latka asked the CEO if he was worried about valuation compression or underwater options, Rasch replied, “This was beginning to fall in April. It was already a plungy environment. 16X isn’t a crazy multiple.”
Focused on expanding user base and increasing ARPU
When Latka queried Rasch about whether his expansion plans focused on doubling the customer base or upsells, the CEO confidently replied, “Both.” He added, “Our vision is to build a global social safety net which is a massively more ambitious product. We are going to upsell digital nomad users to join the membership product. And we’re focused on improving the claims experience and small customer fixes. We are also scaling our growth channels.” Rasch added that people with remote teams could listen to his podcast, Building Remotely, where he interviews visionaries in the remote workspace.
Famous 5
Favorite Book: CEO and Co-founder Sondre Rasch identified The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch as his favorite book.
CEO he’s following: Rasch quickly chose Sam Altman of Open.AI as the CEO he’s most closely watching.
Favorite online tool: Rasch chose Teamflow, a virtual office software, as his favorite online tool.
Balance: Rasch, 36, sleeps 8 hours per night. He is married and revealed that he and his wife are expecting their first child.
What does he wish he had known at 20? “To go straight for the thing that you most wanted instead of taking the learning path,” Rasch lamented.