Decision To Become
An Entrepreneur
Case 1.2. Embrace Pet Insurance:
A Lesson in Persistence
Ly, Pham Hien
Pat
Minh, Nguyen Van
MA1N0241
Contents
Embrace
Discussion
Questions
Application
Questions
I. About Embrace
Embrace Pet Insurance is an online insurance agency, headquartered in
Cleveland, Ohio, specializing in pet health insurance for cats and dogs in the
United States.
Laura Bennett
CEO & Co-Founder (aka Chief
Embracer)
Start date: July 2003
Alex Krooglik
President, Chief Marketing Officer &
Co-founder
Start date: July 2003
Summary Case 1.2 Embrace Pet Insurance:
A Lesson in Persistence
The idea for PAWS emerged in a series of MBA classes at
Wharton. Laura Bennett and Alex Krooglik start this company in
2003 but it took three years to overcome many problems.
Embrace received funding from JumpStart, a non profit venture
fund.
Embrace eventually hooked up with Lloyds of London. The
differences that make Embrace surpass than other competitors
which is they offers numerous choices for coverage and it also
differs from most pet insurance companies in that it calculates its
reimbursements on whether a member’s vet charged a
“reasonable and customary” fee rather than on a set
reimbursement schedule. Nowadays Embrace is the premium
brand in the market.
Discussion
Questions
Application
Questions
#1.1 Four Primary Characteristics of Successful
Entrepreneurs
 Passion: Encourage extraordinary behavior and supply you with the
energy it takes to invest the huge amount of effort it really takes to
succeed.
 Product and customer focuses
 Tenacity
 Execution intelligence
(According to Barringer 2010)
#1.2 How Embrace Pet Insurance reflect each of
these characteristics?
 Passion: they won the prestigious reward with 20,000 USD.
 Product and customer focuses: They give customer more choices.
 Tenacity: Their first policy took 3 years instead of 6 months as they
predicted.
 Execution intelligence: The try to find out good partner who has
experiences in insurance industry.
Key their success
• Tenacity
• Reason: it took 3 years for the launch their product instead of 6
months. And two of four members give up.
• Continue to find out possible partner after 6 months negotiating is
failed.
#2.1 Embrace Pet Insurance’s basic business idea
“adds value” to the lives of its customers.
 It comes from the first idea of the founders is to avoid 5000 USD to get
their cat healthy again.
 Embrace Pet Insurance gives its customer more choices in comparison
with the existed Insurance company. (They offer customized insurance;
They offers numerous choices for coverage versus premium and
deductible; They are passionate advocates for fair and reasonably
priced Pet Health Insurance…)
#2.2 Who is likely buy Embrace Pet Insurance?
 The USA is a huge potential market with 70 million dogs and 90
million cats and less than 0.5 percent of those insured. U.S people is
no reluctance to spend money on their pet.
 Veterinary is costly
 Population is aging (Old people tend to spend more on pets)
 The pet insurance that was available give consumers very limited
choices for coverage.
#3. List the occasions in the development of Embrace
Pet Health Insurance showing their Tenacity.
 The way that they found Information
 The way that they found Partner
 Lesson:
Never give up, never surrender because you never know how close is
your target if you give it up. The time you nearly give up is always
near the time when miracle things will be happened.
#3. List the occasions in the development of Embrace
Pet Health Insurance showing their Tenacity.
 The Ashtons who proposed the business idea-Pet Health Insurance,
gave up because they predicted the company could start selling
policies in six months but it seems not to work. But Laura Bennett
and Alex Krooglik decided to give PAWS Pet Health Insurance a go.
Three years later, the first policy was sold.
 Lesson: The distance between what we expected and what really is,
a little bit far… Keep going!
#3. List the occasions in the development of Embrace
Pet Health Insurance showing their Tenacity.
 The way that they found Information
- Problem: Pet Health Insurance Market with a few suppliers, it
seems like Proprietary. Hard to take Data.
- Solution: Exchange, Win-Win
Bennett and Krooglik have the right to access to pricing data of Vet
Clinic but must provide feedback on their data to Vet Clinic.
 Lesson: Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you
don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds.
#3. List the occasions in the development of Embrace
Pet Health Insurance showing their Tenacity.
 The way that they found Partner
- Losing the first potential Partner but keep going then seek out the
other good choice.
 Lesson: Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall,
don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go
through it, or work around it.
#4. The company’s business practices, values and priorities, as
depicted on its Website, consistent with the type of company
that Bennett and Krooglik intended to create.
 Business Practices: The History of Embrace Pet Insurance
 Customer Value
 Reimbursement Method (Straight % of vet bill >< Limited by benefit
schedule)
 Compare Coverage
 Embrace Customer Bill of Rights
 Priorities: Core Value
Discussion
Questions
Application
Questions
#1.1 Does your college or university sponsor a
business plan competition, or are you aware of a
college or university that does?
1. No, it doesn’t.
But when I came here for the first semester I saw this competition
posted by the group of STUST but I think it not support by
university or college. It was hosted and organized by the
Entrepreneurs Society of Taiwan (EST) and one of my Thai friend
(Pon) joined this competition that hold in Taipei and finally he got
the third prize.
#1.2 What are the benefits of participating in a
business plan competition
 Moneys- Raising money to finance your start-up is always a time
consuming nightmare. Instead of relying on fickle investors, why not
try a business plan competition? Some award hundreds of thousands
of dollars in almost string free financing.
 Connections- When you join the competition, you’ll meet a lot of
entrepreneurs as the judges and to know those people it might be the
good thing when you do the business.
 Idea- Business plan competitions encourage people to create new
ideas of business.
#1.3 Do you think Embrace Pet Insurance would exist today if the group
of four students mentioned in the case hadn’t entered an early version of
Embrace’s business plan into their college’s business plan competition?
•It would be exist or It wouldn’t be exist we’ll never know but one thing
that I’m sure about this the business plan competition made them have
confident that they’re on the good way to go.
#2.1 What areas are you the most passionate about?
Take a piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the
middle.
In Vietnam most of the restaurants still
use foam box to put the food and as we
know when the foam box disposable
food on the temperature reached 60
degrees, the plastic foam will release
toxic substances that will have some
central nervous system damage, serious
threat to people health. When the
temperature reaches 65 degrees,
disposable foam in the hazardous
substances to leak into the food, would
be the liver, kidneys and central nervous
system damage.
Paper Meal Box
Minh’s idea
#2.1 What areas are you the most passionate about?
Take a piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the
middle.
As I mentioned above we’re trying to make Vietnamese people aware of
this problem and then introduce paper meal box to the restaurants.
Thanks for your attention!
Questions & Comments