The CEO who’s solving the ’64 million problem’

The once upon a time named ‘top 10 Innovators of the Decade’, Max Drucker is now the CEO and founder of a new startup called Carpe Data, which looks to offer insurers insights into the 64 million unscorable millennials.

Max, between eCoverage, Steel Card, and Social Intelligence, Carpe Data is your fourth startup. How did you become a startup founder?

I think it was just the right place at the right time for me. I was living in San Francisco in 1998 and it was almost as if getting a real job was the less conventional path. Since then, I have basically been unemployable, so if I want to eat, I needed to start a company myself.

Why Carpe Data?

The global insurance data market is more than $10B and has been dominated for decades by only a handful of companies with a captive audience. The entrenched players have exerted their market position for years and haven’t needed to innovate or offer new products that keep pace with the changing landscape of consumer behavior. We believe there is a huge gap in the marketplace – insurers are eager to incorporate new sources of predictive data such as social media, online content, and connected devices, yet the establishment companies don’t have the products or capabilities to meet their demands. There’s a clear need for a new, innovative data provider focused on the next generation of data.

How’s Carpe Data different than other data companies?

We are developing data products specifically for insurers, leveraging our deep product knowledge of each stage of the policy lifecycle and the challenges P&C and Life carriers face. We are taking vast arrays of both structured and unstructured online data and applying them to insurance specific use cases to offer compelling alternatives never before possible. We are giving insurers new and exciting ways of assessing risk that both drive down costs and enable a better customer experience.

Your target market?

Any insurer that buys traditional data products such as credit, MVR, loss histories, inspections, lab tests, leads, etc. So all insurers.

You are the cofounder and CEO of Social Intelligence. Are you channeling Elon Musk or will you be transitioning your responsibilities to someone else?

As much as I love my Model X and believe in the future Elon Musk is selling, the demands of Carpe Data are too great and I’m not going to be able to run two separate businesses. Management of Social Intelligence has been transitioned and the company is focused solely on the social media pre-employment screening market.

Let’s get personal. 

Favorite mantra? If it were easy, everyone would do it!

iPhone or Android? Not even close. Android, Galaxy S7 Edge.

Sweet or savory? Savory all the way.

A software or tool you can’t do without? Amazon Echo. My only concern is that Alexa will eventually replace me.

What did you want to be when you grew up? Pro skateboarder. We can see how well that worked out.