Joining Claims Gate

I recently made the decision to join Claims Gate as a strategist covering areas around product, marketing, legal, and sales. A wide-ranging role you might say. I should caveat it all by saying that Claims Gate is a start-up. And if we had actual offices, I would probably be helping do coffee/tea runs too! Going from the relative security of working with larger organisations, I have been tempted back to the world of a bootstrapped company and the trials that come with it.

Breaking out of the comfort zone

Learning

Anyone looking at my CV will see that in the early days of my working life, I worked in large corporations. From starting in consulting and investment through to the legal sector and media.

They were great experiences and were highly formative. I learned a hell of a lot from the people around me. I made a lot of great friends along the way and had some great times with them.

In the last 10 years or so, I decided to mix it up and take on roles with startups. Although I was quite content in many ways, earning good money doing stuff that is within my comfort zone, I opted to travel a road somewhat riskier.

Different challenges

The fact is you do have to go in with your eyes more open than usual. Depending upon your role, when you are working in a large organisation you can be closeted from the bigger picture. There are fewer things that you need to be critically aware of and fewer things you are fully accountable for. And this may suit you to the ground. You can get all the adventure you need from working the daily grind and knocking those projects you are on, out of the park.

In a startup, where cash flow forecasting might be for weeks ahead rather than quarters and years, almost everyone will have an acute sense of how things are going. It’s far easier to get visibility of how many customers the company has, how much revenue might be coming in, if you need to be thinking about keeping that recruiter on speed dial because things are about to go wrong!

Conversely, it's not all about the potential for stress! Startups give you a chance to explore. Smaller companies need people to take ownership, not just responsibility and really deliver. You can challenge yourself and be challenged to push your skillset to another level. It's not optional to be able to multitask and solve problems that you have not come across before. If you don't do it, there is a real good chance that there is nobody else around you to cover it off. It's these environments where I have seen people discover whole new skill sets and flourish into new roles and career paths.

Why Claims Gate?

People

I first started dealing with CG a year before I came aboard. They were providing a data service that simply worked. Whilst it was an important service, I would not say there was anything particularly unique or special at play. What did strike me though was the team I was working with; James, the MD and Rayyan, the Technical Director. As I got to work with them, I got to know them as a very raw but very smart couple of guys. They had a lot of drive and some great ideas. Not least their ideas about the future of data.

Ideas

James talked about looking at a world where ownership and control of personal data were being put squarely in the hands of the individual. And he wasn’t shy about telling me how he believed it was the way forward. To be fair, he didn’t have to sell me too hard on it. The idea was and remains a mighty proposition given how things are set up to get our data and for us to freely give it away. But, for me, the fact is that the challenge is a fascinating one. And that’s what got me into joining the team.

New learnings

Delving into it to see how this could work has opened up a whole new world that I wasn’t paying any real attention to. We are talking about looking into the future through the lens of blockchain technologies and Web 3.0. Aside from the futile exercise of figuring out when to buy or sell cryptocurrencies, I wasn’t too aware of what else was happening in this space. But now I am looking at how to help productize something under a Web 2.0 guise and what the journey to decentralized data and control looks like. Will such a thing even exist? I’m not sure. But coupled with James’ determination, Rayyan’s lead on technology, support from our experts like Jesse, Nazar and Max, (and hopefully my focus on going to market), it’s gonna be good to find out.

We want to make this company go mainstream and help it to make a difference. We have ideas and we have the passion and energy to help realise it. I have a front seat to this Claims Gate world and come what may, I am going to enjoy the ride!