Innovative Insurance from Upsure

Olivia Utharntharm

Aug 5, 2022

3

min read

We are excited to announce that Upsure are supporters of our upcoming Queensland Climate Tech Showcase.

On August 17 we are partnering with the QLD Chief Entrepreneur for a Queensland Climate Tech Showcase featuring demonstrations, Climate Tech pitches and a panel with Australia’s leading investors. Click here for more information and tickets.

We chat below with Andrew Birt, co-founder of Upsure, about the importance of founder focused and founder friendly insurance, the huge climate potential of Queensland and how best to support climate tech startups:

‍Q. QLD Government has announced a $2B Hydrogen taskforce and the Olympics are set to be the most sustainable yet, could QLD become the climate tech powerhouse for solutions and jobs across Australia if not the world?

Definitely! Queenslanders have unfortunately seen the impacts of climate change first hand a lot over the last few years, with flooding, bushfires, and further north issues like coral bleaching throughout much of the Great Barrier reef. On the positive side, because this is a problem in the here and now, not in the future there’s real momentum in QLD for problem solvers right across the state - creating solutions that can be taken world wide. QLD universities, government, and importantly entrepreneurs are tackling such a wide variety of initiatives from sustainable agriculture, to solar efficiency, to even algae based plastic disposal, that the opportunities here to make a positive impact are limitless.

Q. As serial founder, you will know the challenges founders face more than most, what are some of the challenges startups face with insurance and how does your solution help?

My main gripe with insurance over the years is I’d personally always found it so cumbersome, tedious and generally unhelpful that I always resented paying the bill each year, even though I knew the importance of it.

A few years ago, my cofounder and I started to think there’d have to be a better way to not just improve the experience for founders, but also take the profit and tip it back into supporting entrepreneurs in Australia, sponsoring events, investing in new companies and generally delivering value well beyond just insurance.

Fast forward to today, and that’s exactly what UpSure is all about, with just under 200 startups covered, countless hours supporting and mentoring up and coming founders, a streamlined platform for making the experience much easier and less time consuming, and an appetite to really work hard and help founders get the right insurance in place, when many more traditional brokers would decline and say it’s all too hard.

Q. Upsure helps startups navigate insurance quickly and effectively, you mentioned a focus on the climate tech sector, why is it important for Upsure to help this sector?

Insurance is often a massive piece of the puzzle for climate tech startups because you’re dealing with sensitive data, or if it’s a hardware solution potentially batteries, machinery and equipment that it’s often a requirement to have in place prelaunch. For the entrepreneur this can mean you spend months trying to get the right insurance in place, and sometimes this can even delay the launch, and the path to market for businesses that are otherwise ready to go! We believe climate tech is such an important space, that insurance hurdles should be the least of entrepreneurs worries, not forefront! We work closely with the founders to take this workload on us, and then get the right solution in place that will scale with the business and keep them protected.

Why do you see it as important to support the climate tech industry?

There’s no bigger problem for us to collectively solve right now than the climate crisis, so we’re really pleased to be able to play a small part in helping climate focused entrepreneurs get to market, cover their risks, and give them peace of mind as they’re delivering solutions that can have such a positive impact on the world!

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