Dive Deeper with BREEZY by Jason Chen
Jason Chen is the co-founder of Breezy, an online website that helps pet-owners find and compare insurances for their fluffy friends. Read on to learn more about his startup journey!
Please introduce yourself and your business to our readers.
My name is Jason Chen and I was born and raised in China. I came to the United States when I was 13 and have been living in California ever since. I currently work as a product manager at a tech company and I love to solve problems with technology.
On the other hand, I’m also the co-founder of Breezy which is a platform that helps people quickly find the best and most affordable pet insurance plans.
What inspired you to start your business?
I personally have gone through the pet insurance search process for my 8-year pug girl, it’s very repetitive because each provider requires you to fill out the same form to get quotes, and the amount of information online is quite overwhelming for pet parents. So we believe this problem can be easily resolved by tech because we can easily aggregate the quotes from each insurance provider instead of requiring the user to fill out the same form. Our goal is to help people save time and compare all the quotes on a single page.
There is only less than 2% of pets in the U.S. are covered with pet insurance, other countries in Europe have 30% coverage. We believe there is a huge potential in the pet insurance market and by making this process easier, we hope we can get more pets covered in the near future.
What is unique about your business?
First of all, it takes less than 1 minute to fill out the form on our website and we’re able to get quotes back from multiple pet insurance providers on the market and display them back to our users.
Second of all, we ask our users for their preferences and display the corresponding results. For example, some users are more price-sensitive, so they might be looking for quotes that have a cheaper monthly rate. On the other hand, some users want the best protection for their pets, so we’ll display coverage that has the best protection such as unlimited reimbursement limits.
What was your first “I can do this moment.”
Insurance aggregator is quite common in the insurance industry, especially in auto insurance. Companies such as Jerry.ai, Zebra, Insurify, and Policygenius do a great job of finding the best auto insurance quotes for their users and help them save money.
Since I work in the tech industry, I know some very talented engineers that can build the tech, and my wife is a product designer. I have the right people with the right skill sets to solve this problem with tech.
How do you manage time to run your business efficiently?
Since I do have a full-time job, I usually spend time in the evening or weekends to work on my startup. It sounds easy but persistence is the hardest part. Doing this for 1 week might sound easy, but consistently sacrificing your evening and weekends for 6 months, 1 year, or even longer can be extremely difficult. However, as long as this is something you’re truly passionate about, it’s easier to push yourself to see it through.
How do you advertise your business?
We’ve tried many different approaches. I’ve posted Breezy on social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Nextdoor, etc. I’ve also responded to people that have questions about pet insurance on Quora. Lastly, we’ve tried paid marketing such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads targeting people that are searching for pet insurance or people with pets.
What did you learn from your biggest failure?
I think picking the right co-founder for your business is the most important thing which is what I learned from my previous startup experience. Starting a business can be a long, boring, and dry adventure. It takes patience and courage to keep pushing yourself down a path that other people might be doubtful about. This is why it’s extremely important to have someone who shares the same vision as you, and is willing to put in if not more, but just as much time and effort as you’re giving. Fortunately this time around, I have a super awesome co-founder Richard that I can always rely on because he always delivers quality work on time every time.
What do you wish someone told you before you started?
This is my 3rd time starting my own business so I know exactly what I’m getting myself into. However, due to the nature of our business and insurance being a highly regulatory space, obtaining the necessary licenses and involved to operate our startup can be quite complicated and expensive which is something I wish I knew before getting started.
What businesses do you admire and why?
I admire any business that solves a real problem and makes our lives easier. If I pull up my phone right now, there are hundreds of apps that do that. For example, WeChat, Uber, Airbnb, LinkedIn, Google, Apple, etc.
Was there a time you wanted to quit?
Yes, and there are many moments like that to be quite honest. Starting a business can be extremely difficult and challenging especially in a space that has not been fully developed. We believe pet insurance has a bright future and a huge potential, but the problem is it’s not a space with a huge market size currently. Therefore, to some people, it might seem like we’re solving a problem that has a small market size which means it’s difficult for us to generate sustainable revenue in its current landscape. However, we believe it’s the right problem to solve and we’re preparing ourselves for the moment when the industry starts to experience hyper-growth.
How do you personally define success?
Happy wife, happy life. Haha just kidding. Everyone defines it differently, but as a product person who loves to solve problems with tech. If we can build a product that can solve a real pain point for some people and they’re willing to pay for our service which in return generates enough revenue for us to live comfortably, I would say that’s successful in my opinion.
What was the best piece of advice you ever got? The worst?
The best idea comes from your own experience.
What is a quote you like to live by? (Please explain why)
Get shit done. I think many people have great ideas and love to talk about their ideas, but it’s nothing until you execute it. If I’m thinking about something, I usually want to take action on them as soon as possible to make sure we can get it done and see it through. The longer you spend thinking about an idea, the more reasons/excuses you might come up with to not do it.
How do you find inspiration? What motivates you every day?
I love to look at the problem and see what are the current solutions out there. If it’s a problem that’s interesting enough or I personally have the problem myself, I’d like to think of ways to solve it or see how we can build an even better solution if the current solutions aren’t good enough in my opinion.
Check out Breezy here: https://sobreezy.com/
