JAKE WELLS INC.

Career Highlights

• Raising £950K for Meshed
  Oversubscribed, after more than 40 nos.
• Meshed's first customer
  A landlord.
• The Meshed brand
  By Good Habit. Years ago I messaged them to say that one day they would do my first brand. They did.
• Working out of New York
  An office with the Empire State Building in the window.
• Presenting to Ajit Jain
  Berkshire Hathaway's insurance chief, and the man Mr. Buffett has said he'd save first from a sinking boat.
• biBerk
  An embedded insurance product for a Berkshire Hathaway company. From Post-it notes to $25m in premium across 14 states.

Career History

The information below is presented in reverse chronological order. It draws on an interview with Mr. Wells, who answered most of the questions. The long version is 11,273 days to raise a £950k pre-seed. The formal version is on LinkedIn.    LinkedIn

• Meshed. Co-founder.
  August 2024 to Present
  The UK's first AI-native insurance broker, built with Mark and Vince. Equal split, all in. More than 40 investors said no. One asked me for the meaning of life. Then Haatch, Exponential Science Foundation, Aviva (via Founders Factory) and a group of angels said yes, and the £950K round was oversubscribed.
• Everest. Product Manager, contract.
  April 2024 to August 2024
  Back into insurance at a big corporate. Spoke up when a project wasn't working. Not everyone who spoke up stayed. I did, because I'd made friends in senior leadership. Lesson. Make strong allies.
• Taveo. Senior Product Manager, then Product Director.
  February 2023 to January 2024
  Joined Mark, the CEO of Flock's biggest broker, after a long night at Tayyabs putting the insurance world to rights. Built products, built a team and got close to investors. Then the company went back to traditional broking, and the redundancies came without warning.
• Flock. Product Manager.
  September 2021 to February 2023
  Turned down a signed offer from Zego to join six people in a WeWork, for less money and fewer shares, because I'd learn more from a serial founder. Zego had redundancies not long after, so maybe it was the right call. Helped bring the broker portal to life, then led Safety Insights. Saw commercial motor go from a handful of customers to 500 fleets in months.
• Lockdown Trading Desk.
  2020
  Day traded penny stocks over Zoom with a colleague. Educated bets on news. About £500 into £10K each. It taught me more about risk than it cost me.
• Azur Technology. Underwriting Assistant, Product Owner, then Product Manager.
  June 2017 to August 2021
  Started on the phones. The office was split down the middle, underwriters on one side and engineers on the other. I could explain one side's problems to the other, and Mo, our head of product, noticed. Built an embedded insurance product for biBerk, a Berkshire Hathaway company. Quotes by API, bound over email, $25m in premium across 14 states. In Omaha, my name was Blake. Then New York, to launch a quote and bind system for Ascot's excess casualty product, which won an industry award. Lesson, from a billion dollar CEO with the Empire State Building behind him. Say exactly what you mean and when you mean it. Ambiguity sends people running in the wrong direction.
• Manchester Metropolitan. Business degree.
  A complete and utter waste of time. Except it's where I met my fiancée.
• Early Operating History.
  2010 to 2016
  Summer internships at Sheffield Haworth and, twice, the Financial Times. HR Assistant at PPL. Summers in operations at Wells Tobias Recruitment while at university. Before that, football cards on eBay at 10, Nike wristbands at 11, and Coke on the playground at 14, a tray of 24 cans gone before 9.30am. Credit was extended only to customers whose home address I knew. No bad debts.