Embrace Pet Insurance Blog

Guest Blogger: Brad Feld, Feld Thoughts

I'm delighted to have Brad Feld guest blogging for my blogging series Me, My Pet, and I.

I've been reading Brad's blog now for well over 2 years and find his perspective on VC investing, angel investing, running marathons, and being happily married a very interesting combination. Whenever I have questions about investing or running a board or just keeping my feet on the ground, Brad's blog is usually the first place I go.

Here's his post.

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When I was a kid, I tolerated the dogs we had.  As a teenager, we had a large airdale named Addison that I always found annoying.  In retrospect, I think it was channeling my mom (it was her dog after all) and I was having a normal teenage reaction to it.

After my wife Amy and I moved to Boulder 12 years ago, we decided to get a dog.  Our neighbor at the time had two beautiful golden retrievers so we decided to get one from his breeder.  Our first dog – Denali – was a life changer.  He was a kind, fun, playful, smart dog that we immediately fell in love with.  We grew with him, and by the time his was six, we decided to get a second golden to keep him company.  This resulted in Kenai, who also was extremely smart and playful, but a little more mischievous than Denali.

Amy and I don’t have kids so our dogs are a central part of our life.  We were out of town last year at Christmas when Denali suddenly got sick.  24 hours later he was in surgery – it turned out that he had a large liver tumor.  We decided not to wake him up and were devastated.  We knew that his last memories were happy prior to the surgery, so that gave us some peace, but it was incredibly difficult to lose our first dog.

A few months later we started talking about getting a new puppy.  Three weeks ago we got Brooks.  He’s amazingly cute, very smart, and much more stubborn than either Denali or Kenai.  Kenai is happy to have a new friend and we are being kept busy by the new fluffball in our life.

Dogs rock.

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I am a managing director at Foundry Group and Mobius Venture Capital. I live in Boulder, Colorado, Keystone, Colorado and Homer, Alaska.

Following is my standard bio:
Brad Feld is a Managing Director at Foundry Group and Mobius Venture Capital. Prior to Mobius, Brad founded Feld Technologies, which was sold to AmeriData Technologies in 1993, where he became Chief Technology Officer.

Brad currently serves on the boards of a number of private companies, including ePartners, Gold Systems, Judy's Book, NewsGator, Rally Software, and StillSecure. In addition, he is on the board of The National Center for Women & Information Technology, The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County, and The Colorado Conservation Trust.

Brad has previously been a member of the board of directors of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization and founded the Boston and Colorado chapters. He holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I love to read, am an avid marathoner, believe computers are my friend, am happily married to an amazing person, have one gigantic golden retriever named Kenai, (and now Brooks) and try to enjoy myself every day as I subscribe to the “you only get one chance” view of life.

Apologies to Safari users

Unfortunately our quote and purchase process on the Embrace Pet Insurance website doesn't work for Safari users. :(

It's on our list of things to change and hopefully I'll be able to announce it's fixed very shortly. We're running as fast as our little legs can carry us!

Thanks for your patience.

Laura

Embrace Pet Insurance Nows Sells Pet Insurance in Oregon and Utah

Good news for those of you residing in Oregon or Utah - you can now buy an Embrace policy. We are only left with Washington to clear up then we'll be able to sell right across the whole of the US.

We are working hard on getting Washington but it entails pursuading someone to write a rather awful exam on our behalf so I'm trying to come up with a suitably enticing reward for getting it out of the way. We know how much you love your pets in Seattle and the surrounds.

Veterinary Associations endorse pet insurance

Two of the largest veterinary organizations in the US, AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) and AAHA (The American Animal Hospital Association) , both have statements that support pet insurance.

You might wonder at this because not all vets individually support pet insurance (he might have seen his clients get burnt in the past perhaps?) but the organizations sees the benefit of pet insurance for vet clients.

AAHA's statement covers the more general topic of meeting the cost of pet care and includes the following:

The American Animal Hospital Association strongly suggests that all pet owning families assess their financial situation and consider their ability to meet unexpected expenses that may be incurred for veterinary care. For some families, these expenses may be met through existing savings. Others may be able to use credit card reserves or medical payment cards. Some families should consider budgeting for these expenses and still others may want to consider protecting themselves through pet health insurance policies.

The statement goes on to list some of the considerations you should consider when choosing pet insurance:

• Be sure you understand what the policy covers. Some policies (but not all) cover some preventative care, such as vaccinations, but there may be additional cost for this coverage.
• Understand the exclusions. Almost all policies exclude pre-existing conditions and some exclude hereditary conditions. Some may exclude certain conditions unique to certain breeds.
• Almost all policies have a deductible and a co-pay requirement. Some pay according to a set schedule of “usual and customary fees” while some pay based on the actual incurred expense. Be sure you understand how expenses will be reimbursed.
• Ask whether or not the policy allows you to seek care from a veterinarian of your own choosing or whether you must go to a veterinarian that participates in the company’s network of providers. When faced with a pet’s serious illness, most pet owners want to be able to obtain care from their regular veterinarian.
• Speak with your veterinarian or someone on her practice team. While veterinarians do not sell insurance, chances are they have had experience with the policy you are considering and can provide helpful advice.

These are all pretty sound points to consider. I'm not sure that a vet will know every pet insurance product out there and her consideration may be slanted by what she's seen in the past but it's worth asking anyway as just one of many data points for your research on pet insurance.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find AVMA's statement on-line. We know they have one but it's not on their website that I could find. If anyone does happen to find it, let me know will ya?

new search feature: Lijit

As per Brad Feld's nudge, I am trying a new search tool called Lijit for my blog - see top right corner. I'm not sure how it's going to go so I left my old one up there as well from FreeFind and will see what works best for you folks.

Right now, Ligit's not returning very many entries when you search on something so I'm not sure what's going on with that. I'll give it a day or two to hear some feedback from users before deciding if I want to keep on with it.

But how's this for funny. Lijit has a "find an expert" feature, which I thought I'd try using the term "pet insurance". It came up with 5 people, one of which was Brad Feld. Now that's a surprise!

I am secretly coveting a Brad Feld guest blog entry for my series "Me, My Pet, and I", especially now that he has his new pup. Even mean old VCs have a sweet spot for dogs.

Do let me know how Lijit goes though.

Laura

Update: the results for Lijit searches aren't coming out as expected so Tara at Lijit is kindly helping me sort through it all and I'm sure we'll end up with an excellent search tool. I'll keep you posted.

Update 2: Tara and the gang saved the day with an easy fix (don't bother reading this if you aren't going to run ligit). I have my blog listed under two urls - http://blog.embracepetinsurance.com and http://embracepetinsurance.typepad.com. I had the first url listed in ligit but Google only looks at the second url so I just switched it and voila! It works now.

Ask Laura: I'm worried you are such a young company

Question that came into Embrace via our Contact Us page:

Hello! I am looking at purchasing pet insurance for my yorkie puppy and I really like your approach to pet insurance and competitive pricing. I am a little concerned, however, because you are such a young company. I am afraid to be left with no coverage in a year because the company went under. What kind of assurances can you give your customers? It's not that I think you won't make it, I am just asking what happens if the unforseen occurs. Thanks!

Her's the answer my fellow co-founder Alex sent out:

Thank you for writing in to us. I am glad that you like our approach to pet insurance. You are right, we are indeed a young company. My business partner, Laura Bennett (CEO of Embrace), and I spent 4 years getting Embrace off the ground and we don't intend to go out of business anytime soon, it's taken too long! All of our policies are backed by Lloyd's of London so no matter what happens to Embrace your claims will be paid, does that make sense? Our company has solid, committed investors (http://www.jumpstartinc.org/PortfolioCompanies/PortfolioCompanies.aspx, look for Embrace on the list) so that leaves less risk for you and for us.

We're truly insurance geeks and as such I have to say that you can "never say never" about going bust. But we're going to do whatever it takes to build Embrace into the pet insurance that responsible pet parents like you prefer over any other.

So when you tell your friends and they tell their friends about us, that will be what helps Embrace truly flourish. And, like Avis crossed with WalMart, we always try harder, always. I hope this gives you some peace of mind.

Regards, Alex Krooglik
Co-founder & VP of Making Pet Parents Feel Comfy with Embrace