A Fat Startup from Virginia: Andrew Rose, CEO of Compare.com (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: We run a lot of intra-preneurship programs. Oracle’s intrapreneurship program is on 1Mby1M. We are very familiar with all that.

Andrew Rose: You know it even better than most. It creates its own opportunities and its own challenges. You’re not necessarily going out and raising money, but you still have all the other corporate dynamics to deal with. I got to learn all kinds of ways that I wouldn’t do things. I certainly learned some ways that I would do things.

It was in a very interesting time to see a business doing some of the things you’re doing and then running right into the teeth of the mortgage crisis. What that really did for me was further spark my love of starting and building things. While the mortgage market was collapsing around us, and Bank of America was considering acquiring Countrywide, I was looking at what might be my next thing.

I would call myself one of the luckiest individuals around in the year 2008, because it was rather a serendipitous situation that I met a company called Admiral Group. Admiral Group’s not a household name in the US but they’re the largest car insurance company in the UK. A conversation at a conference led to further conversations that in turn led to a clandestine trip to the UK over one weekend.

I was ultimately hired by Admiral Group to start their US auto insurer business from scratch. Think of a tiny little Geico. Now I have my first true genuine startup experience. I’m employee number one. I luckily have a big backer, but am doing these formation documents for the company such as hiring the first people and finding a place to a call our office.

All of the things that you have to do when you start a business, I did. I always remind folks that aren’t entrepreneurs, that it really looks sexy from the outside. When you go in the inside, it still has some sexy parts, but somebody has to do the dishes and to clean the toilets and sometimes that someone is you. So you better be ready for all the glamour and less glamorous stuff that comes with it.

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

Andrew Rose: Watching that company grow and helping build the culture was a fantastic experience. That’s probably one of my favorites.

Sramana Mitra: Where were you based when you were doing this?

Andrew Rose: This is still in Richmond, Virginia. I have no connections to Richmond, but have been fortunate to be able to spend the last 20 years of my life in this 1.2-million-person city south of DC. It sits in the shadow of DC, so it doesn’t often get a lot of credit, but it actually has quite a vibrant startup community here. It was nice and easy to quickly find people who were like-minded and who wanted to build something.

When you look at how cultures develop, you realize that you have the opportunity to set that tone from the very beginning. It’s very powerful and important. It’s something that I’ve been very close to throughout my career now and  have watched it grow. The company that I started with is called Elephant Insurance company. “How do you end up naming an insurance company Elephant?” is usually one of the questions that comes up because it’s a very odd name.

Whenever you’re trying to name a company, there’s usually two things you want. You want credibility in the name and you want memorability. You’re not going to forget an insurance company named Elephant. Credibility side of it is something you can build overtime. I created an insurance company called Elephant. It’s been neat to watch it grow. It’s now several hundred million dollars in premium.

This segment is part 3 in the series : A Fat Startup from Virginia: Andrew Rose, CEO of Compare.com
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