4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Mario Schlosser is the Founder & CEO @ Oscar, the startup that makes health insurance easy. They have raised over $700m in funding from some of the world's best investors including the likes of Founders Fund, Google Capital, Thrive Capital, Lakestar, Khosla Ventures and Jim Breyer just to name a few. Previously, Mario co-founded the largest social gaming company in Latin America and held roles with the likes of Bridgewater Associates and McKinsey. Fun fact, as a visiting scholar at Stanford University, Mario wrote 10 computer science publications, including one of the most-cited computer science papers published in the past decade.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Mario made his way into the world of healthcare and Oscar from founding Latin America's largest social gaming company?
2.) Why is insurance one of the most complex spaces in tech? Why is there a chance for companies, not governments, to cut costs and innovate on the current system? Does Mario agree with Brian Singerman, "once we go to a single player, innovation ends", thesis?
3.) Oscar has raised over $700m, to what extent does Mario believe that too high a valuation can be a liability? How did Mario look to select his investors? What are the challenges of raising funds for a category-defining opportunity?
4.) Oscar now has over 600 in the team, where have been the inflection points in the scaling of the company? Where have things broken? How does Mario look to rectify and observe these inflection points ahead of time?
5.) How does Mario look to optimise team composition? How does he look to balance athletes with heavy domain experts? Does Mario believe that too much domain expertise can prevent innovation due to a lack of naivety?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Mario’s Fave Book: Herr Lehmann
Mario’s Fave Blog: Spiegel
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Mario on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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0:00.0 | Welcome back to the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and you can find me on Snapchat |
0:04.1 | at H. Stebbings with 2Bs to see all things behind the scenes here at the 20 minute VC. It'd be |
0:09.4 | great to see you there, but to our guest today, and what a guest we have in store for you today. |
0:13.5 | So joining us in the hot seat, I'm thrilled to welcome Mario Schlosser, found and CEO at |
0:18.1 | Oscar, the startup that makes health insurance easy. They've raised over |
0:21.8 | $700 million in venture funding from some of the world's best investors, including the likes of |
0:27.0 | Founders Fund, Google Capital, Thrive Capital, Lake Star, Coastal Ventures, and Jim Breyer, just to name |
0:33.2 | a few. Previously, Mario co-founded the largest social gaming company in Latin America and held |
0:38.4 | roles with the likes of Bridgewater Associates and McKinsey. |
0:41.4 | Fun fact, as a visiting scholar at Stanford University, Mario wrote 10 computer science |
0:46.2 | publications, including one of the most sighted computer science papers published in the past |
0:50.8 | decade. |
0:51.5 | I'd also like to say huge thank you to Brian Singham and it found us Fund for the intro to Mario today without which this episode would not have been possible. |
0:58.3 | But before we dive into the show today, if you're an early stage startup, the right infrastructure |
1:02.5 | and support systems are critical. And that's where First Republic is so good. First Republic's |
1:07.1 | resources, network and expertise allow entrepreneurs to customize a solid foundation for |
1:12.2 | your business across all stages. So why First Republic? Well, you get to leverage their incredible |
1:16.9 | network of VC firms to prepare you for future fundraising events. You get to count on a single |
1:21.4 | point of contact that will be there for you and your employees when you need them. You get access |
1:25.6 | to exclusive events and networking opportunities. |
1:28.3 | But don't trust me on this. Their clients include the likes of Instacard, e-shares and Wish, just to name |
1:33.1 | a few. Check it out by heading over to innovation.1strepublic.com. And speaking of incredible startups there, |
... |
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