John Ardelius
Describe your roles and what it is that you do overall and on a day-to-day basis.
I'm the Co-Founder and CTO of Hedvig. As CTO I make sure the technical infrastructure we build supports our business in a efficient and scalable way. The daily work is very diverse ranging from problem solving with the team to discussions and presentations with external stakeholders and investors. In my founder role there is also a fair share of "picking up what no one else is doing" and making sure the team can work and grow efficiently
What inspired you to start Hedvig? What excites you about your work? Where do you think insurance is going in the next 5-10 years?
Insurance is such a central service in our society which for some reason is still very hard to both purchase and use. The development in the business has traditionally been driven by optimizing cost and is marketed by alluding to our fear of loss and lack of protection. There is another way to deliver insurance in a more intuitive way, where the focus is rather to get the service you need rather than to file claims as a transactional event. Also, there are a lot of problems in the life of young people today that are not catered to by traditional insurance offerings. This combination of service and relevance is where Hedvig comes into play. Personally, I am also a big fan of automation which leads to both better member experience and more efficient operation. And its fun to engage in new machine learning technology!
What makes Hedvig unique? What is it like working together with friends? Did you meet while at SSE?
Lucas (Co-Founder) and I met after SSE when we both worked as consultants. I came to the realization that so little has happened in the insurance industry given the vast amount of new technology available, which has disrupted other industries. Siri and Alexa had just been launched and it was clear that, given the pace of development, major things would happen in customer support across industries shortly. Lucas was doing a study on a large insurance company and mentioned that data was copied and pasted using ctrl-c ctrl-v across systems in some cases, so there was a big opportunity to apply modern technology best practices. Back and forth over the next couple of months together with our third Co-Founder Fredrik, we decided to start a new insurance company from scratch rather than to innovate in some particular position in the value chain.
How did your time/education at SSE help guide you to the career journey you have embarked on?
I have an engineering background and have always been interested in entrepreneurship so many of the courses in management and leadership made a lot of sense to me. It gave me tools that I still use today. Learning to reason about financial statements have put me in a better position to understand how investors think, how they reason about risk, and how to capitalize your business. When I went to SSE, the general perception was that there were basically two paths: banking or consulting. Consulting felt more versatile and closer to running your own business, so this was the path I took. The curriculum at SSE prepares you very well for the work as a consultant
Following your time studying, do you have any words of wisdom or advice you would like to share with our current students?
Try to learn many different things. Don’t specialize to fast but be open to taking courses that initially maybe don’t sound too interesting. Also, try to think about your future career as early as you can and try to get summer internships from the get-go. I didn’t realize this was an option until later, so I missed out on the opportunity of trying different industries early on. Take your studies seriously but don’t kill yourself. Grades are not everything. You can make it up by showing you have put energy into other areas when you apply for jobs later on.
What are three words that sum up your time at SSE?
Exciting! Insightful. Social.