InsurTech 2050 | Rauno Sigur, DriveX Technologies

The goal of the InsurTech 2050 Interview Series is to create a platform where InsurTech founders, CEOs, and top insurance regulators and policymakers share their journeys and insights.

This series aims to:

• Inspire and support fellow founders and regulators/policymakers.
• Foster closer collaboration and understanding between these two groups.
• Provide thoughtful, in-depth discussions on the future of insurance and its biggest challenges.

Today I´m speaking with Rauno Sigur from DriveX Technologies.

What is DriveX doing? What problem does your company solve in the insurance space, and what makes your approach unique?

We help insurers assess damages objectively with AI and streamline their accident recovery, removing manual work and fraud in the process.  With our remote inspection software, insurers increase repairs over unnecessary replacements. We’ve demonstrated that claim sizes are reduced by 15% and the average carbon footprint is reduced by 21%, saving insurers millions of euros and kilotonnes of CO2 per year.

DriveX has a niche approach - we discovered that 40% of comprehensive motor insurance claims are related to auto glass. So, we developed a patent-pending solution that has a best-in-class accuracy of 94% autonomously.

How did you end up building an InsurTech?

Frankly, our first idea was to provide inspections to car rental companies but it turned out that building the minimum viable product was more attainable to insurers. And over the years I’ve started to greatly appreciate how much insurers are taking responsibility towards change in society. And as a salesperson, I like to work with big players with large volumes. Once you sign an insurer, it’s a very stable business that can grow over the years!

You’ve done a lot of work on finding product-market fit, which has involved slight pivots and extensive exploration. Where are you now in that journey? Can you also walk me through the path that led you here, including some of the struggles you faced? When did you realize something needed to change?

Oh yes, finding product market fit is the holy grail that many startups will not find. Especially if you haven’t worked in the industry before, which is our case.

At first, we thought about building hardware-based inspection stations, but none of us were such engineers. We then pivoted to a self-service app that serves insurers remotely. From inception, we knew that just collecting photos is a good first step, but the solution needs so much more depth further on - in terms of what kind of information can we provide to the insurer automatically.

Initially, it was just detecting image quality, then content, and now damages. We were optimistic and ambitious, as founders are - taking on the same approach as our competitors who had much more funding and bigger teams. That was the general visual inspection of a car. There was a big “but” in this approach - cars are so varying and so are their components. We didn’t find any great success since detecting damages on many body parts requires a lot of training material for AI.

Therefore, we decided to become a “neurosurgeon” instead of a “general practitioner” in the context of visual inspections on cars. There seemed to be a great niche in auto glass, which at first seemed a small opportunity. But 88 million damages are happening every year around the world and now we are on our way to dominate this space.

Tell me about the tech sprints I know you’ve used. How have they influenced your product development?

DriveX is super agile. We have product development sprints every two weeks, standups every day and weekly calls to discuss plans and results. This is absolutely critical since startups only have two advantages before incumbents they must utilize fully - speed of execution and laser focused. 

One challenge I assume has been interacting with insurance companies. Sales cycles in insurance are typically long, the industry is often cautious about adopting new solutions, and company structures can be complex. Does this align with your experience? What’s your view on this, and do you have any tips or tricks to share?

Absolutely, the sales cycle can be from 6 to 12 months. In my experience, it’s important to map the Ideal Customer Profiles and Personas, so you know about the decision-making process. Having Champions and helping them to succeed is paramount. I’ve learned that even if you can show and prove saving millions of euros, it might not be interesting or doable for the insurer - they just have so much on their plate and usually innovation is slow to do the “ship’s size”.

What I definitely recommend is partnering up with companies who already work with insurers and have integrations. If you could help them to become more competitive, then you have one strong ally on your side to make the sale happen much quicker.

You describe DriveX as a deep tech company and are placing significant emphasis on IP rights and patents. What does it mean to be a deep tech company in your context?

First, conducting a Freedom to Operate search is very important since ideas in themselves are not very unique but time to market is. Chances are that you have developed a similar approach that your competitor has already protected and you are violating their rights without even knowing. Nobody wants to pay fines or licensing fees in this case!

As a startup, intellectual property is one of the main determinants of your valuation as a company, so it must not be taken lightly. Protecting the real value should remain in the “bear’s belly” and not be revealed to the public via patents, so it becomes a trade secret. Our Product Officer is the main inventor and we have our first patent application and more will follow.

Let’s talk about funding. I always ask founders about this because there are so many lessons to share. Can you walk me through your funding story? You’ve publicly mentioned that the process was quite a journey. What were the key challenges?

We’ve raised four times now, 2.4 million euros in total. The funding story is a long and winding one, but mostly Baltic investors don’t fund automotive or deep tech companies. 2023 and 2024 was a tough time to raise since investors became very picky and a record amount of startups died. I prepared very extensively and met with 150 investors but our metrics were not as great for VCs at that time. The product development cycle is several times longer compared to traditional SaaS, but as McKinsey has brought out, the return on investment is 2.5X higher later in case of exits.

Deep tech only became popular about two years ago, before that it wasn’t so. And more importantly, what is “deep” is quite subjective. For some investors, we have too little and for some we have too much. But to summarize, using public grants is a great way to fund your business and retain ownership as a founder. Secondly, raise from angels or businesses who could also use your product and promote it to others - we have a great experience from Carglass angels.

As part of your recent funding round you secured a sizable grant. On one hand, grants are equity-free, making them ideal from a founder's perspective. On the other hand, they often come with stricter rules on how the money can be used (e.g., limited flexibility to pivot) and certain KPIs to meet. Was it difficult to obtain this funding? Would you recommend this path to other InsurTech founders?

Chances of getting grant funding are between 1-20% depending on the specifics. It takes months of preparation and usually hiring a professional to help with the project writing, who in turn takes lump-sum and success fees. Reporting is done quarterly and doesn’t bring too much bureaucracy, but still a bit. I recommend it only when you have proven demand and contracts from the market that this technology is needed. Founders must be absolutely sure that increasing Technology Readiness Levels is doable and has a positive economic result in revenue later on.

Let’s go a bit more technical. Your solution is AI-driven, and you started well before AI became mainstream. Can you tell me about your AI strategy and development process?

Our strategy is that using AI must be justified - when all other options have been proven ineffective. A lot of startups build a solution looking for a problem, whereas you can reach the same goal much more effectively with other methods. Don’t build an expensive overkill!

We use some off-the-shelf models but all of them require significant retraining and finetuning. Currently, we estimate that even Gemini or GPT will not reach the accuracy level that specialized providers have. Importantly, data processing and storing infrastructure become key to keeping unit economics as attractive as possible. There’s a lot of inventing the bike.

What is the biggest challenge when developing AI-based solutions? I assume obtaining training data (e.g., damage data) is one of them. Has this improved with recent AI advancements? For instance, is it now easier to create synthetic training data, or do you still rely primarily on real-world damage data—or a mix of both?

That’s a great question. Indeed, we’ve experimented with a lot of creating synthetic data. We can create hundreds of thousands of images of various damages on different cars and environments (lightning, mud, etc). Optimizing the amount of real and synthetic data is the only way to achieve accuracy in live environments.

As a CEO, how involved are you in the AI development process?

I’m actually very involved since we have a founder-led sales approach. My job is to understand what are the model weaknesses from statistics, how are we going to improve the solution and when. This is all very crucial information in our discussions with multi-billion dollar corporations where every percentage point counts.

Of course, I don’t engage in model training but have a fairly good understanding of what’s being done and why. I often bring market feedback and questions back to the development team. It’s important to look at issues the way people from outside of development understand them.

DriveX supports sustainable development goals. Can you elaborate on this? Also, looking ahead, do you see opportunities beyond windshield damage where DriveX could contribute to sustainability?

Indeed, we have committed to SDG no 3 - good health and wellbeing, and SDG no 12, responsible consumption and production. I see lots of opportunities to increase repair and refurbishment of other items such as smartphones. We need to extend the lifecycle of components and assets. That’s also our long-term vision, to enable such assessments and provide the tools to make the change.

Let's shift to regulation and potential barriers to innovation. Based on your experience, what are the biggest obstacles to innovation in insurance? While DriveX is not directly regulated under insurance laws, frameworks like the AI Act and DORA still impact your business, particularly when working with regulated financial services. Are your regulatory challenges primarily domestic or at the EU level? Beyond regulation, what other barriers do you see for InsurTech innovation?

Currently, we are most impacted by GDPR and not even DORA or the AI Act. But in the long run, if Europe is regulating AI much more than China or the US, our companies will definitely suffer in international competitiveness. But at the same time, I agree that AI can be an existential threat to humanity, so regulation is needed. Therefore, the question is as always about balance.

Do you think regulatory frameworks are keeping pace with InsurTech innovation? If not, what specific changes would you recommend?

To be honest, I think regulation is important for the financial industry. Hundreds of millions of people’s lives are at stake. Keeping tabs on financial and now ESG-related accounting is cumbersome but necessary. I believe grace periods should be shorter and there must be real consequences in fines if greenwashing is conducted.

Now, let’s look ahead. How do you think mobility will evolve by 2050? Will we have flying cars? Fully autonomous vehicles? Will accidents still happen? And will you still be working on windshield damage repair?

I wish we would have flying cars! It should have happened already in 2000, according to sci-fi movies from the 60s. Jokes aside, accidents will still happen. Not all cars will be autonomous as older vehicles remain on the roads and their lifecycle should be extended whenever it is possible and reasonable. But more importantly, even if all cars are autonomous and safe in traffic, natural disasters and riots still happen. Even technicians may damage the car during their repairs.

Therefore, diagnosing faults and especially preventative maintenance will have strong demand for decades. Also augmenting repairs with autonomous decisions and robots.

More broadly—what will insurance look like in 2050? How will technology, customer needs, and regulations evolve? What role will customer expectations play in shaping future insurance products and services? Which current trends or emerging technologies do you believe will define the future of insurance?

Probably we will face under-insuring and less people protected due to rapid climate change. Insurers see risks way before the rest of society, as the recent wildfires have demonstrated in California. A lot of people did not have insurance since it was too expensive and the price was related to the high risk of natural disasters. Battling climate change and creating personal coverage will be key.

More presently, purchasing insurance and dealing with claims is still an outdated process. I wish insurers could utilize AI to explain and recommend products better, most people don’t want to read four PDF files and just are not capable of understanding every nook and cranny of terms and conditions. The customer experience is truly felt in claims and many insurers lack good solutions to ensure quick recovery and transparency over progress and reasoning.

One of my goals with this interview series is to share practical insights for fellow founders, so I have three questions for you. First, what’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned from building an InsurTech startup? Second, can you share a mistake you made along the way that others could learn from? And third, if someone were considering launching an InsurTech company, what’s the one piece of advice you’d give them? 

Valuable lesson - don’t be afraid to ask for more money! What seems big to a startup is actually microscopical for an insurer.

Mistake - don’t try to build everything at once. Truly aim to become the best in a small niche as your beachhead market.

If I would launch today - read “The Mom Test” and interview industry experts the right way to understand if there’s actually a problem to solve. Don’t be fixated on your initial idea that’s more probably a dream.

Continuing on a more personal note, do you have a go-to productivity strategy—whether it’s a tool, an app, or a daily habit—that helps you stay efficient?As a founder, how do you manage work-life balance and maintain your mental well-being?

I use the Eisenhower matrix for prioritizing and booking slots in my calendar to allocate time, with different color codes. As a team, we implemented Objectives and Key Results pioneered by Google to keep the team accountable and review progress every week.

There’s no such thing as a good work-life balance once you start a company. And that’s exciting! But if you’re several years in, fatigue will kick in. I removed all notifications on my phone, try to recharge batteries by doing stuff I enjoy - walking, gaming, cars and reading. Cold plunges and training work wonders!

Has there been a book, podcast, or resource that has influenced you or provided valuable insights recently?

I definitely recommend Y Combinator and Diary of CEO as podcasts. I like to read autobiographies and most recently the founders or CEOs of Disney, Apple, Nike, Walmart. Learning from their real-life examples is truly useful!

To close, is there a specific request you’d like to make to the audience—whether it’s hiring, partnerships, or support in a particular market?

Using the right technology is just one key part of innovation. Also, process matters and proper communication to policyholders and partners if you aim to make the technology successful for your insurers. Retention and upselling only happen if adoption is achieved. And the word then spreads!

Thank you so much!