The Entrepreneurs
MATTHEW and MICHAEL VEGA-SANZ, 26
Founders, Lula
As they have been rising up, a profession in know-how was by no means within the image for Matthew and Michael Vega-Sanz, 26-yr-previous twins now working considered one of Miami’s hottest tech startups.
The brothers did all the pieces collectively, enjoying exterior with chickens, goats and ponies on a small household farm within the aptly named Miami-Dade neighborhood of Horse Country, not indoors on video video games. They have been good college students, performed basketball and initially attended Miami Dade College earlier than transferring to Babson College inside a yr, targeted on pursuing Wall Street careers.
In Boston, the brothers have been launched to the world of tech. They met college students who taught themselves how to code and have been constructing startups; they might see themselves doing that, too. “In athletics, a lot of your success could be predicated on some sort of supernatural ability, but when it comes to tech, as long as you had internet and a computer, it’s essentially a level playing field,” says Matthew. And with know-how, they might resolve massive issues that on a regular basis folks have been dealing with, says Michael. “I thought that was much more meaningful than chasing dollar figures on Wall Street.”
The brothers, whose mother and father are from Cuba and Puerto Rico, based Lula to allow school college students to hire vehicles to each other. They went to tech meetups and requested a lot of questions. After months of growth, they dropped out to pursue the car-sharing app full time in 2018, each considering it might solely be for a semester or two till the app turned “self-serving.” “I was naive because anybody with a startup knows it will never be selfserving,” Matthew says.
He remembers the day they launched the app past Babson on Sept. 1, 2018: “I told my mom if we expand to 25 campuses in year one, I’ll be happy.” Within the primary 5 months, Lula had members on greater than 500 campuses nationwide. “People would see the company, and they thought it was this big, sophisticated company. In reality, it was just two kids out of a living room.” The brothers relocated to Miami in 2019.
While the location gained tens of 1000’s of customers, the trail to profitability wasn’t clear till the brothers created the insurance infrastructure software program for his or her business.
When the pandemic shut school campuses down in March 2020, Lula’s business was toast. “Matthew and I put our cars up for sale so we could make payroll, and then we got about $20,000 or $30,000 in PPP money, and that was gone in less than 90 minutes. Then I gave away my stimulus checks as well. The bank account had negative $2,000, and we had creditors calling us.”
They thought of making an attempt to promote their car-sharing app software program however stored eager about their Lula workplace signal, one they nonetheless have of their Miami-area headquarters. “We knew if that sign came down, it would mean the business would be dead,” Matthew says. “Michael and I’d go into our workplace each single day and put our heads collectively and assume: ‘How can we keep that sign up?’
Around that point, a car-sharing service for navy bases inquired about licensing Lula’s insurance infrastructure know-how that enabled car sharing and rental companies to solely pay for insurance when their automobiles are literally in use — generally known as episodic insurance — and managed insurance processes. That generated some income, however the founders additionally believed that they had one thing particular in that insurance tech they constructed that would assist them evolve their business mannequin. “College students were the riskiest demographic, and we had the lowest accident rate in the industry,” Matthew says.
Soon after, Matthew and Michael started focusing completely on the insurance tech and making their instruments accessible to different shared-mobility corporations by way of an API (software programming interface).
Lula’s revamped web site launched in early 2021. Within weeks, 1,600 car-sharing and car-rental corporations signed up for the waitlist. To broaden, the founders final summer season raised $18 million in enterprise capital from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, SoftBank, Florida Funders and others.
In 2021, business grew about 400%; Lula expects 500% to 600% progress this yr. In a yr, Lula went from using a handful of individuals to about 50, and this summer season expects to make use of 60, together with an skilled govt staff, Matthew says.
Lula now could be launching a product for the trucking trade, the place insurance is pricey. Truckers are required to pay for 12 months a yr of protection, when the typical trucker is barely on the street 220 days. What’s extra, proprietor-operators don’t need to have to fear about vetting drivers, organizing insurance policies and managing claims. Lula’s API offers for all that, together with episodic protection.
The startup is eyeing e-commerce subsequent. For the 1000’s of business house owners who promote their wares on web sites like Etsy or Shopify, refunding $200 for an order misplaced or broken in delivery, for instance, is a excessive worth to pay, Matthew says. Lula may present entry to insurance for a couple of greenbacks on each checkout display screen for patrons who would possibly need to save time and trouble making an attempt to get a refund if crucial.