RWL229 How to Build a Successful Remote Company During Uncertain Times w/ Sondre Rauch CEO

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
0:00

It's Alex from Remote Work Life and the Remote Work Life podcast. I hope you're doing well, wherever you may be in the world. Today I have a great guest with me. Today I have Sondra Rausch, who is the CEO of Safety Wing, and now Safety Wing is a really important business, especially in these times of uncertainty that we are facing in the world. Safety Wing essentially provides travel and medical insurance for remote teams and for nomads, and it's essentially Safety Wing is on a mission to build a social safety net on a global basis. But I think, as I said before, the time that we're in now, I thought it important for me to have this conversation with Sondra because of what we're going through at the moment. So, sondra, I wanted to say thank you so much for your time and for joining me today.

Sondre Rasch:
0:59

Thank you for having me, Alex. It's a pleasure to be here.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
1:03

Sondra, as always, I like to find out because I mean Sandra's not only does he run Safety Wing, he has a lot of experience when it comes to not just his individual remote work career, but also his team. He's growing his team, guiding his team, leading his team and working remotely. So I thought there's two benefits to having Sondra on the call today. But first and foremost, I want to know, sondra, a bit more about you. How did you come to be CEO of Safety Wing?

Sondre Rasch:
1:42

well, that is interesting. So my I am from norway and very early on I was interested in starting things. So as a teenager I had this little web hosting company I tried to set up in my room and offered customer service on my newly acquired mobile phone. So I've always been attracted to entrepreneurship and technology and lived sort of. You know, I was like the first generation that grew up on the internet a little bit and I had, you know, I started that together with a Dutch and a Romanian friends and we collaborated on something called IRC, which is like Slack, but back then kind of looked the same, and so that's the sort of genesis for my interest. And then I had a bit of a detour, studied economics, work as a policy advisor, and then I thought that I had to return to my roots and then I started another company and like what's the fastest way to become CEO is to start your own company, and then that's successful. I guess like what's the fastest way to become CEO is to start your own company, and then that's successful. That's how you do it.

Sondre Rasch:
2:50

So I started a previous company and then I learned there I kind of stumbled upon the problem of safe doing, which is, of course that was a remote freelancer platform. We wanted to provide benefits for people on that platform. Nobody offered it and then kind of realized that gap. So I had already kind of known from my teenage years I've discovered this thing that there is this internet economy growing up and that has many problems and opportunities, but essentially the infrastructure.

Sondre Rasch:
3:22

What I discovered there was that the infrastructure that supports the global labor market doesn't exist. Instead you have the sort of infrastructure that is nationally based. So that's why we couldn't buy health insurance for all the freelancers on our platforms, because it was spread out all over the world. So then that was kind of the problem discovery moment. And then uh, eventually left the company to found safety wing because we found it so important that somebody had to do it and nobody was doing it. We felt it was a bit overdue actually. Uh, so, yeah so and then we launched that and uh, and then it's been a great journey till today.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
4:04

And for you, because I mean, did you always think to yourself then, given that you've started different companies, did you think to yourself while you're studying your economics degree that you would one day have your own business, or did you have designs on a different path?

Sondre Rasch:
4:24

Yeah, no, I thought I would start my own tech startup, so I did have that quite narrowly. So I was curious about policy work and I'm interested in economics. I'm generally interested in systems like I. I'm interested in that kind of thing I still am for sure, uh, but, but no, I do feel like I am, at heart, an entrepreneur. So even when I've had jobs, I still am like a little entrepreneur on the job. I guess, it's like I'm kind of which you know I believe has pros and cons. If you're my boss, yes.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
5:08

I know what you mean.

Sondre Rasch:
5:10

Yeah, you know, I like to do my own things. I think I have good ideas and I like to, you know, and I have many ideas and I, you know, like to do them. So if I were put in a situation where I was just being told what to do in detail, I couldn't be happy, and that's definitely a big. I don't think I have any choice. I probably have to be a founder.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
5:36

Yeah, and there's that side of things, but there's also the remote work aspect of things, because you've worked remote for quite a while, haven't you? It's something that's been part of you for quite some time. Tell us more about that.

Sondre Rasch:
5:53

Yeah, I mean both Safety Wing and my previous company, supersight, was and is fully remote companies. So I have in a way, built and scaled fully remote companies. So I have in a way, built and scale to remote companies and, of course, myself worked remotely in that period. So I'm fully convinced but I've been fully convinced about that for a long time that that makes sense, that it's the best way to build a company today, and the only period we're in is just that period where people are gradually discovering that.

Sondre Rasch:
6:38

So, yeah, I love building remote companies and I think the benefits are huge for my own personal life and the you know people who work there. You know the greatest benefit of having a remote job is that you are flexible to move. Uh, whether that is because you want to be on, you know, live a more nomadic lifestyle where you move often, or maybe it's because you're going to move to the mountains, the beach or to move close to family, you know that freedom is immense and when you couple that with very often that when you live like that, you have a lower cost of living as certainly, as opposed to working in London or San Francisco, you get a huge economic benefit as well as personal preferences being met to a very large degree, and for me personally that is something that has just been a requirement.

Sondre Rasch:
7:36

And there are, of course, challenges to building a remote company, but we've solved those mostly.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
7:42

And you're Norwegian, aren't you as well? And you moved from norway to to america. Was that in pursuit of your, your, your dreams and ambitions to become an entrepreneur? Or was it again just because, yeah, well, what was? What was that reason?

Sondre Rasch:
8:00

yeah, uh, no, it was so when I was a teenager. I discovered Silicon Valley early on, so I had already sort of as a teenager, this idea that I wanted to move to Silicon Valley. Actually, I also paid close attention to Y Combinator when that started out and there's sort of social network hacker news, but so no, I always kind of picked up on like oh there's something going on over there that seems to be the place to be, and but the way practically I moved but I was planning to get there at some point. That was kind of like the way I knew growing up is. I knew I was going to start at TechSite. I knew that, you know I wanted to move here. But the way it happened was that we actually applied to Y Combinator for my previous company Superside and when we got in we had to move. That was how I moved.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
9:04

Okay, and you obviously made a big success of it. And you you've not just the entrepreneur side of things, but the business side of things as well, you've. You've got a great brand, you've established a great team, you've figured out the so-called secrets on in terms of working remotely, um, so you've made a you you've, you've been there and done it, you've walked the talk, all those kinds of things. But along the way, I'm guessing there must have been, there must have been challenges that you've had to face and overcome. What? What were the main challenges for you in that, in that period?

Sondre Rasch:
9:43

Yeah, I think my greatest challenge in working remotely and also doing a startup remotely. So I should say when I first started out, like when I first quit my job, that was a sort of scary moment because I had a job then I was policy advisor at the government of Norway and I was trying to kind of kick myself in the butt to start a company. But it's, of course, scary and I had like a great, such a cushy job because I was policy advisor. It was a new unit, didn't really have a boss. I work in these extremely meaningful, exciting projects. It was really excellent.

Sondre Rasch:
10:27

But I knew I had to do what I had to do and so I made this decision to do it and we started. I started a company part-time and I had already kind of worked out the logic that if I just got some freelancer income and I moved to a local like I was thinking berlin at the time, which was even cheaper than it was, than it is now um, like you could live on like 500 euros a month in berlin, wow at the time. Now, now it's a little bit more.

Sondre Rasch:
10:56

Yeah, but so the plan was I started to build like freelancer income in the part-time and also to build a company in the part-time which became Superside, and I started saving some money to see if I can cut my costs and uh, and then I would move to a low-cost location which would extend my runway and the idea was that I could work like one day a week freelancing uh enough, and earn enough to kind of pay my living so that I could work on the company the rest of the time. And, um, I still think that plan was like incredible. I would advise anyone else to do the same like I. I totally nailed that. You know, like that plan was definitely the right plan. I think that's doable by almost anyone.

Sondre Rasch:
11:51

Actually, what I, what I did there, um, as in, to do those different steps like you try to start-time building a freelancer income, to make a plan to a local location, to save some money, et cetera, like it's doable by really anyone. So, by the way, building a freelancer is very difficult. It's been a lot of figuring out what you want to do. I ended up doing writing for economics magazines. I just did a little bit of it.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
12:17

It's good, it's good.

Sondre Rasch:
12:19

Yeah, it was great. It was great. It was really random how you get the first customer, but the point is, when you do a good job with one customer, that's kind of all you need, which it ended up being anyway. I didn't do that for very long because, just as I was, I quit my job and in the intervening months, my, the company I started supersize. Basically, we start working and it was just like a month after quitting my job that we got accepted to work hominator and then at that point it's like you're strapped into the roller coaster and uh, and so all this the roller coaster.

Sondre Rasch:
12:52

I like it. Yeah, and all that sort of romanticism of like living hand to mouth in Berlin was a bit kind of shut away to like, you know, starting a rocket ship in San Francisco and yeah, why did I get on this tangent again? What was that? I felt like I lost. I may need to get back to your question there. No, it's fine You're going in the right direction.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
13:19

I suppose what I'm saying is the challenges that you've overcome. Essentially, it sounds to me you're the kind of person who plans what they're going to do. You're very strategic in what you're going to do before you actually take a jump. You're more of a I don't know very pragmatic and you are very calculated in what you're going to do next. So you've gone from being a freelancer to then going to uh, like you said, the roller coaster of um why? Combinator, starting safety wing. What was that roller coaster? You know?

Sondre Rasch:
13:53

tell us about that roller coaster, because when I picture a rollercoaster I think scary, exciting, scary exciting yeah, no, exactly that's exactly what what it is, uh, uh and uh, starting a startup, especially one that has speed, because before you launch and before you kind of start to get speed, you can be in this sort of beam. There is this old sort of aboriginal creation myth, which is sort of like the dream, where there's like the gods are dreaming up this world and you live in this world and then you enter into reality and what you enter into are constraints. Yes, a, it's shaped a lot by the dream world and I just found like that's such a good metaphor for what it's like pre-launch, because you're in this, you're not in constrained by reality. Pre-launch, right, you're in this very pleasant dream world and it's an important time and you know, by all means cherish it, but you can't stay there forever because then it becomes a delusion. But but so, and then you enter into the real world with your idea and then you're supposed to kind of like work with reality and overcome reality to create this, get to a place, get to a vision, and on the way there, what you have is like I have no idea what I'm doing.

Sondre Rasch:
15:25

I had a couple of things I did really right in the beginning which I'm almost lost, which is so sad, but, like I, I essentially had very high speed, which it was very good because I did everything wrong before I did it right, wow, um so, but if you do things fast enough, if you try them fast enough and I do think that is sort of the, the kind of exercise of entrepreneurship isn't doing it right the first time, but it is to do it again, try new things so fast that it looks like you did it on purpose. Yeah, like yeah, because by the normal time someone tries one thing, you try 20 and one of them worked and um, so anyway, that that was, that's part of it. And then, of course, it's like you. You launch your customers. You're constantly looking doom in the eye. Your product almost always suck. This is not true for the beginning of safe doing. That's the only kind of difference. I did a lot right in safe doing, because I took what worked from my first company and I applied it and, maybe most of all, I knew what didn't matter, so I didn't spend time on that. That was incredibly useful the second time around just to not waste my time on things that what matters is the team, the product In the beginning. That's what matters. Is it a product people want to buy, is the team great, and then later growth once you're live and kind of out of the beta phase.

Sondre Rasch:
16:59

But of course, what's particularly wrenching is when your product is not good, when you're not growing. What makes you happy when you're growing? Fundraising. What's not happy when you're rejected, what makes you happy when you're accepted? Fundraising is particularly harrowing, I think. I mean I've done it many times now, but it definitely feels like a very high. It's like dating. I suppose it's very high-stakes salesmanship. So what is that rollercoaster like coaster, like yeah, it's like those things. It's a. It's a.

Sondre Rasch:
17:42

You're on your own, you're in the wild, you don't know what's going to work, you don't know your environment you have to figure it out by trying things yes and and most of the time it doesn't work, and you have to just not be deterred by that rejection, whether it's from customers or investors or like reality itself. But I do think it makes you into an interesting person over time.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
18:06

No, I can imagine yeah, I can imagine and I think what it looked. I mean, obviously now you, you started safety ring back in 2017, so you're getting some stability there. I'm guessing now and those that roller coaster ride is a bit smoother, and am I right in saying that, or is it still?

Sondre Rasch:
18:27

I mean, yeah, um well, you certainly have like more of what works, but you always have problems and the problems in a startup are usually deadly right.

Sondre Rasch:
18:45

So there are periods of safe doing where things have just worked remarkably well, and that is actually true. Not long after we launched, we had this lovely scenario that we launched Nomad Insurance and it just worked out of the gate. Uh, like we had word of mouth which I think is kind of like the true market product market fit out of the gate, like we were just a couple of months in and we were observing just like every day customers were signing up, they were coming from which is sort of word of mouth, and so that's because we were a bit ahead of the game there.

Sondre Rasch:
19:23

that allowed us to, in a way, not be as stressed out. So that was one very fortunate thing.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
19:36

And from there then. So you've gone out of the gate and you've done pretty well with nomad insurance. You've added now different branches to to safety wing. You've got the nomad insurance, you've got remote health for teams as well. So you, you're put, you're putting other things out there. Tell us about. Tell us then, I mean if, if I'm a manager, and why are these things, I suppose, I guess, important to me? Now I guess right?

Sondre Rasch:
20:13

um, well, well, you are a manager and let's say you have a remote team and, like many remote teams, at least some of your team, and quite often a large share, is international, because you found them on international job sites and you hired the best and you weren't too concerned with whether or not they were locally located to you. Um, you know, that's what almost all companies that go remote, they, they kind of inevitably go down this route. Um, you know, barring limits on time zones, there isn't that much difference from working with someone if they're sitting like in I don't know for in your case, like newcastle or brosfils or romania, so, uh, so you end up becoming this international employer and, uh and uh, you know, as an employer, you, you, uh, you have salaries but you also want to have benefits. That's to a varying degree, I should say in England that's less, it's less important.

Sondre Rasch:
21:31

The NHS is like a very well-developed thing, but even in England I do, I have seen the stats quite a lot, especially in sort of like knowledge work. It is kind of common to also have benefits on top of that, like as an extra perk. That's getting increasingly common. So that's just one of the problems you have and once you pass a certain number of employees maybe like 10, 20, you start to feel the need that like oh you know, I want to be a proper employer. Like you don't care about that when you're like three people and like the founders and a couple of freelancers. But you know, as you get more you kind of you, you feel like you should, you want to be a serious, uh, employer and you're not pleased.

Sondre Rasch:
22:08

You want like to be seen as a good, a serious company takes serious company that takes care of your employees and um, and of course it's a little bit extra to say, in the job. I'd like what are the benefits? You want the answer to be yes, yes, there are benefits in this role and uh, and it probably also increases retention a little bit.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
22:32

There are some data, although I'm not sure how much people kind of emotionally care about that, but but there is certainly some data to support that I would agree on that there's definitely because I mean, I think, even from an anecdotal experience, my time in in hiring, one of the first questions I always get asked, apart from how much is the salary, is what's the you know, what's the remuneration package, what are the benefits?

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
22:56

yeah, but, like I said, there is there is data to support it as well. So yeah, I think sorry I interrupted you. You were saying Safety Wing offers that in there as well.

Sondre Rasch:
23:07

Yeah, and so that's your problem. You want to have benefits. Well, how do you do it? And Safety Wing is the answer to that and it's, for now, the only answer.

Sondre Rasch:
23:18

If you have this kind of team, um, so you can go to safe doing, you can add your employees or contractors, uh, and very often they're contractors even though they're actually employees when you work remotely because of the legal hurdles, uh, without you having a local entity, and that um and um, and you can add them anywhere in the world and they can also move anywhere in the world and you can add sort of health, dental, maternity benefits to them. When you add more people, you can kind of like in the dashboard plus and add them more and remove when they're gone and offer sort of like high quality but very competitively priced Everything available in the dashboard. You sign up sort of in five minutes kind of situation. So it's like a way to solve that problem how to offer good benefits to my team in the simplest possible way and the only way for now for these remote teams what kind of benefits are you seeing now that are typically offered, or what do you typically offer yourself?

Sondre Rasch:
24:27

uh, so the most common is health insurance, and then almost all the companies we have added actually also add the dental, and then it's like 30, 40 percent at 30, and, uh, what we call outpatient, which is like physical therapy and other such things. Uh, we don't yet have retirement, that's coming next summer. Uh, we have to make this product from scratch because they don't exist. So, uh, we don't have retirement, that's coming next summer. That's gonna. It's a similar kind of share. 34 other potential ones are disability life. There are also other benefits, I should add. So now I'm talking about the kind of the heavy lifting. Yes, yes, health insurance is by far the most. There are also other benefits, I should add. So now I'm talking about the kind of the heavy lifting. Yes, yes, health insurance is by far the most.

Sondre Rasch:
25:10

There are also other benefits that people think about as benefits, vacation being the most prominent, that people care about the most. Like, when you see rankings, like what do people care about the most, health insurance is typically number one and vacation is typically number two. Uh, other benefits that are somewhat common and very often comes up in an onboarding process is laptop, yes, and then, of course, there are those fairly low-cost but fun benefits, which is also quite common, where it's a small amount but it can be useful. That could be like gym trip or for remote work. You can have a remote work stipend for co-working space. That's more expensive actually. You see some of those. But in terms of generally, what do people think about? What do people actually care about? It's health insurance and vacation, and then for a lot of people it's also the other insurances life, disability, dental, dental is actually very common and retirement savings.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
26:18

And talking about health insurance and, given the situation that we're in, we can't really escape it, can we talking about it? Have you seen any changes? I mean, what do things look like before and after Any changes that have happened with Safety Wing in terms of the uptake of that?

Sondre Rasch:
26:37

Yeah, absolutely so. I mean we saw, with remote health, a bit of an explosion in interest because of COVID. A bit of an explosion in interest because of COVID and I don't know the percentage, but like a significant share of the companies reaching out to us have gone remote since.

Sondre Rasch:
26:56

March. There are different numbers on it. Between five to 10X seem to be the expected increase in the people who work remotely before COVID and after COVID, remote work and remote teams. There seems to be an explosion. In cities like San Francisco it's even more. I don't know what the numbers are, but it seems like every company has gone remote permanently, or remote first, or remote for a couple of years, which very often will turn into permanently here. So that's, I would say, the biggest driver. Then, of course, we have the nomads, which was, for us, the first product, which are, by the way, remote workers as a subset of remote workers, but they buy the products individuals. Workers is a subset of remote workers, it's uh, but they buy the products individuals. Um, there we saw actually a drop of february to march down, like for for us, like 20 to 30 percent down. There were a lot of them.

Sondre Rasch:
27:55

We evacuated ourselves actually because we covered that okay, yeah, so, and then uh, but we got through that quite well and and we fared much better than other people who are in the. So no money insurance isn't strictly travel insurance, but it's adjacent to travel insurance. So no minute the difference is there are some differences, but it's it's more of a medical plan and you can have it forever. That's the biggest difference. So travel insurance you have to like 45 days, but no money insurance is like a subscription. That's like $37 a month and you can have it like for 10 years or forever. So a section of Nomads went home but starting in July, that started ticking up and actually, like in last quarter, we had like an 83% growth in that product and that continues. So, nomads it's this weird thing that has happened. We had many of these like weird predictions about remote work and nomadism when we started out.

Sondre Rasch:
29:01

One of them was that one of the secondary effects of remote work is that countries and cities would start competing for nomads, remote workers and remote companies. It's happening and that's happened so exactly like we were predicting. That is almost scary. So Sarah McClendon did a talk on Web Summit where she explained exactly how this would be, and it's completely played out to the to the wildest extent. Like there are now I think it's eight, nine countries where you can't travel from the us as a tourist, but you can go there as a remote worker or nomad. They've made these crazy situations. Uh, and now your latest. You had you had greece, which took it one level up, where they said 50, if someone, a remote worker, were to move to greece, they would have 50 tax break for seven years, I think.

Sondre Rasch:
29:54

So they like adding it to the next seven years wow yeah, so that's really happening and um, so I do think that so we're seeing a resurgence of nomadism. Another reason we're seeing is because all these companies have gone remote, and what I saw here in San Francisco is, yeah, they got suddenly. Their job was remote, they didn't do something for a few months, but then they started asking themselves wait, I work remotely, I don't have to live here, they're paying. I'm paying an obscene amount for rent and I don't like it that much.

Sondre Rasch:
30:25

I, I'm paying an obscene amount for rent and I don't like it that much, I'm only living here because my job is here and you know, some of them went on road trips, some of them went to another state, but a lot of them went kind of nomad. They went to Tulum or they went to Lisbon or Barbados and kind of switched to a nomad lifestyle. So we're seeing that resurgence starting from August and I would expect sort of as travel resumes and this sort of vaccine becomes more widespread, that that's only going to accelerate. So next year is going to be the year of the nomad, for sure.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
30:56

And I think, places like Barbados. I saw that they're offering and other countries as well are offering certain benefits and they're trying to, I suppose, reel nomads and remote workers in with. I suppose, work here for a year, and we'll give you this, or work here for six months, and we'll do that for you. So that's that's on the rise as well, isn't it? It's basically what you're saying yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Sondre Rasch:
31:20

barbados was one of those that really went for it. Uh, they made this remote work visa, which is super easy to get, and they've sort of put in place like the whole range of public services to make it as attractive as possible. And I know several people there are a couple of people, even a person, chris, on the Safe Doing team which took that offer and is currently living in Barbados, so I'm guessing they're starting to get a little nomad community going there as well well given the weather in um in London.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
31:53

Uh, I could see myself doing the same thing myself, so yeah watch this space.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
32:00

No, it's good. I mean, one of the questions I get asked quite a lot, which you're kind of alluding to and it seems like you've got your finger on the pulse in terms of what's going to happen in the future is that are there any other sort of like predictions that you've either kind of foreseen, or any predictions that you kind of know about? Sorry, let me start again. So either predictions that you foresee that have come true or predictions that you that haven't yet sort of played out yeah, absolutely.

Sondre Rasch:
32:35

Well, I mean, the primary one is the safety wing hypothesis, because you know, we say we're building a global social safety net and and we are but our secret mission, which is not that secret but is that we see that as a platform for building the first country on the internet, and and I do think that the inevitable logic of the thing the internet and, if you think it through, goes in that direction that these sort of social structures will exist in a way that's practical, and that what will inevitably happen in the future is that there will be made these essentially, countries on the internet. And I think it's the most important thing to think about now, because, even though the technological driver is inevitable, how it's made it can take many different forms. The future country on the internet is coming. Is it a dystopia or a utopia? I would say, time will tell, but it certainly is coming.

Sondre Rasch:
33:47

And uh, of course, that raises many questions what, what do you mean by country and uh, and what will the relationship be to? You know, other countries and this sort of new type of social entity and uh, that also remains to be seen. Although you know we have a strategy at safety wing which is very friendly. We try to do the good things about everything and have a very positive relationship with existing countries. They won't play the same role. So I do think geographical countries will continue to exist, they just will have less significance. It's similar to when we went from city-states to nation-states the city-states still exist, it's just less important. Went from city states to nation states right, the city states still exist, it's just less important. They just do the things that are strictly relevant to the city, right? And I think that's a sort of similar feel it will have they will still exist, just be less significant, and so that's a prediction.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
34:47

It's fascinating. I think we could probably do a whole other podcast on on this, um, so I might have to uh, I have to invite you back on another time because it fascinates me. I love to talk about the future of. I love to get different perspectives on what's going to happen in the future. So a country on the internet sounds good to me.

Sondre Rasch:
35:08

Yeah, absolutely On remote work, our predictions come true a lot of them, but they seemed outrageous when we made them, so I mentioned that about cities and countries competing. I certainly also think it is inevitable that every company that can be remote will be remote. There are economic drivers to it, which makes it an inevitable outcome and similarly, every company that can be digital will be digital and will be global. That's another one that I think a lot of people haven't picked up on, which creates this completely different market. This is already the case. I'm not sure why so many people is, in a way, blind to this, but everything that's sold on internet is global, which means your market is global and it's a different market. It's very big. Everything has this infinite potential, and many niches are huge on a global basis that are insignificant on a small base, uh, on a like a local scale. So that's another one that is sort of startup related. That uh is, in a way, has already come true, but but people doesn't seem to have realized it yet.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
36:31

Yeah, and my suspicion is, is that people who I suppose it's more. It's one of those predictions, I guess that if you're working digitally and you're you've got, you've got your finger on the pulse of what's going on, like something like yourself, you're working remotely as well you're more likely to be able to be more, I guess, more sensitive to those changes and those um transformations than if you're somebody who got maybe is not necessarily geared towards that, you know um, but yeah, like I said, I think there's another podcast in there somewhere, so yeah, let's return to that let's return to it, but no, it's so before we go, uh sundry, what is the what's on the horizon for you?

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
37:17

I know you said there are some different product areas that you were thinking about adding to to safety wing, but what's the future for for safety wing in general?

Sondre Rasch:
37:28

yeah, uh, so, uh, our um, our uh, near-term future, uh, our coming year. You know we're very exciting year ahead. We have some, but the big product launch is probably the, the, the pension retirement product, just the first of its kind. It's the first global portable uh retirement product. You know that allow people who live in different countries to keep saving for the same pension account, which is actually not possible today. So you have a lot of people who have like like me, who are like I have pension savings in norway. I can't access them here. It's's like a separate I don't know. Many people have that problem who have moved. They don't have to be nomads, they've just moved internationally sometime in their life. So that's going to be the big one.

Sondre Rasch:
38:16

We also have, of course, a lot of improvement for remote health. Remote health is a big product and we have a lot of exciting product improvements um coming out. So, just working on, there's also this window of opportunity with remote health. You know, I think we made this product at this incredibly fortunate time and we have to sort of take that window of opportunity to to to make sure that people know about it, that people know that it's possible, because a big reason, I think a lot of people don't have benefits today when they work internationally.

Sondre Rasch:
38:56

Remote is just because the companies don't think it's possible. We know that because we hear it from the companies who come to us. They're like, oh, that's so fun that it's now possible. And then they're like, oh, that's so fun that that's it's now possible. And then they're, you know, implementing benefits and that's, of course, a great help for you know these people's lives. So, so that's that. And then we will continue on to add the other insurances and the income protection, and then we're going to make a membership product, sort of a couple of years ahead, where we uh like, where you bundle all these products into like a membership, the way you would have nationally in a social safety net, so you get all of it and, uh, maybe you pay a share, like 10, of your incomes, um, so it becomes available for even more people to have access to a very high quality social safety net that works globally.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
39:54

That's that's where we want to get to well, for sure, I'll be looking out and talking about safety wing, because I I really believe in what you do, sandra and um, I think it's really important, not just because of the situation that we're in now, but generally speaking. It's something that is overlooked and it's something unique that you do. So I'll be keeping close with you and Enlin and keeping track on what you do. I will obviously be talking about uh safety wing with the community too, but what I want to do is just wish you all the best and thank you so much for uh taking time today to speak to us on the podcast and, um, yeah, wish you and the team all the best thank you, alex.

Sondre Rasch:
40:41

it was uh great to chat with you and super nice to meet you, and I think this community sounds exciting. I look forward to checking it out and seeing how it develops as well.

Alex WIlson-Campbell:
40:54

Excellent. Well, I'll be speaking to you soon. Thanks, Sondra.