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Meet NECT — Germany’s most downloaded self-identification app
Tech in insurance … is not on the cutting-edge of technology, but what one does has a great impact on a lot of people.Benny Bennet Jürgens, CEO & Co-Founder NECT
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We thought video ident is great but let us put in some AI magic.Benny Bennet Jürgens, CEO & Co-Founder NECT
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The Founder
We talk to Hamburg-based Founder Benny Bennet Jürgens (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennybennet/), the CEO and Co-Founder of NECT (https://nect.com/de/) Germany’s most downloaded self-identification app in 2020. Benny has a past history with insurance companies and found their need for self-identification — required by law — to be a major pain point for them. So he set out to provide a convenient solution, which turned out to be NECT.
My co-founder and I pushed our children in strollers, and we talked about what is next in life for us.Benny Bennet Jürgens, CEO & Co-Founder NECT
We got accepted at Insurrect Accelerator Munich and we had to start two weeks later, which did not give us a lot of time to think twice.Benny Bennet Jürgens, CEO & Co-Founder NECT
MOIN! Media Partnership
This podcast is in media partnership with the Hamburg-based startup blog Hamburg Startups (https://www.hamburg-startups.net/). They keep you up to date on the local startup scene in Hamburg, they organize regular events (in normal non-corona times) AND they do have a special section on food startups as well. Even if you are not able to speak German, a visit with an auto-translate is worth it, since they also have an extensive directory of local startups on their website.
We are currently adding users at about 200.000–300.000 a month. Benny Bennet Jürgens, CEO & Co-Founder NECT
The Startup
NECT was set up in 2017 and has since developed in Germany’s most downloaded self-identification app in Germany in 2020, according to NECT. It used for everything like filing for unemployment to getting a new insurance contract. You can learn more about the company here https://nect.com/ https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/nect-2
The company provides automated video identity verification, using AI, instead of having a person in the loop.
They have joined Insurtech Hub Munich in the past. You can learn more about them here: https://www.insurtech-munich.com/
The App
You can find the app in the Apple and Google store:
Google play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nect.app.prod&hl=de
We enable our users to re-use a once verified ID again.Benny Bennet Jürgens, CEO & Co-Founder NECT
Venture Capital Funding
NECT is currently working on their second product the digital signature. They are also going international with the European Union as a first step. NECT is currently profitable and could boot-strap, but they may be looking for a funding round towards the end of 2021.
We are currently live with 40 customers, but they are all the big names who have a range from 11 to 20 million customers.Benny Bennet Jürgens, CEO & Co-Founder NECT
We really made sure to prevent tricking our app with deep-fakes, for which we filed even two patents.Benny Bennet Jürgens, CEO & Co-Founder NECT
The Video Interview is set to go live on Tuesday, April 27th, 2021, 17.00 CET (Frankfurt / Paris / Zürich / Milano)
The Audio Interview Podcast
The Audio Podcast will be published at the same time.
Further Readings / Additional Resources
Reeperbahn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reeperbahn
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The Interviewer
This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:LinkedInTwitterEmail
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Transcript
[0:00] Music.
[0:08] That I owe you were podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startups.With News interviews and Live Events.
[0:22] Hello and welcome everybody this is Joe from startupradio the whole year startup podcast I need to block from Germany as well as the host of the world’s first internet radio station dedicated to startups and,companies how to how to learn more about this just go down here in the show notes there you’ll find a link to our link treeand then you can find all the options including our newly published Alexa skill we just have to say Alexa playradio and we will be on your smart speaker with me today on your spot speaker likely is Benny hey how you doing.
[1:04] Hi I’m fine how are you doing I’m doing great and I completely forgot everybody who’s watching this please leave us a nice comment thumbs upand a good review and if you haven’t done so already make sure to like And subscribe as people can tell,that are one watching on YouTube and second note Hamburg they can tell you are located in lovely Hamburg.As we can see in the window back back behind you right.Yeah right I’m based in Hamburg and I have a very good very good place here in writing the city center right behind me is the town hall and all the other good places in hamburger,just around our office so pretty proud to be here.
[1:53] We may add many people have not been to Germany or a Hamburg at all thatlisten to our podcast or we may add that Hamburg is world famous for its enjoyment mile its enjoyment street called deeper bond is it also close to you.Um so yeah the reeperbahn is like.I would say like 400 meters down this way so so yeah I can see it from here.
[2:26] Pretty good pretty good we are here today to talk about your startupnecked but before we get to that as always I’ve been looking a little bit through your published CV on LinkedIn and I found a lot of interestingDuff.As always everybody would like to reach out to you go down here in the show notes there is a link to our blog post and on our blog post you will find,a link to your personal LinkedIn profile I’ve seen a lot like scrum lots of crumb lots ofinsurance and we may already step a little bit ahead of us and tell necked is not an intruder Tech but tell us a little bit about your time in insurance and,what did she learn from there how did it drive you how did it form you,so basically I’m really born and raised in Insurance are because my parents have been working in the insurance industry so I was already running in my diapersin the insurance company where my parents were working and this is also the place where I started my traineeship.
[3:44] So and then I’ve stayed there for 10 years but I am a software engineer,so I never sold any insurances I always just worked on the tech side of insurance I always thought that this is a great place to work in Tech because.
[4:03] Obviously it’s not on the edge of the newest sinks and Tack but,what are you doing has a great impact on a lot of people.Like most insurance companies in Germany have a very very great user base.So for example the issues I was working for has 14 million customers so when I release an app with my team,it targeted 40 million of our customers at the same time so what are you doing has a great impact on users and that was a great feeling working in Tech and having such a high impact and this is also being the.They where the idea got born.So the last three years of my career there I was responsible for the app development.And we seen that the apps did a great job Percy but it was,for the users they had a hard time to get into the Abyssal to do the registration because there was high compliance needs to get into the insurance apps but on the market you only found,Solutions targeting the banking industry.So you don’t have the specific solution for the insurance industry because the insurance industry needed a very low price.
[5:27] And not that high of compliance that you have needed in the banking industry so all solutions targeting the banking industry had a very high level of compliance and those are very high level of price,so and that that was the bone of the idea to have.Something in between to have a solution complying with all the needs of the insurance industry but on the other hand being very cost-effective efficient.We may add for our audience out there that in Germanyhas he talked about compliance you have to comply with laws and they require a proper identificationall for example you when you open a bank account so there is usually a video chat involved where you have to hold your ID card but this pattern allows device which has many reflection spaces on it and so the person on the other side can tell yes he is actually personhe is supposed to be and he has a valid ID document there.
[6:33] That something like this is what you guys are actually offering exactly so yeah I mean.The idea was are we as we started the security of having a video chat showing your ID card is very high.I’m about due to the fact that a human being needs to check the ID card and it has to be in place 24/7.Makes the process very very costly and on the other hand you will has had to wait for a free service agent all the time so we sought.
[7:08] Video I down it’s a great idea but but let put some some AI Magic on it to make it automatic without the human being and the loop,so it can be very very,very low price and on the other hand the user never has to wait because waiting for user is the most prominent point of breaking out of the process.
[7:29] Actually I’ve never given any thought to this until nowthere are poor souls out there setting between like midnight and 4:00 a.m. German time somewhere around here in Germany and waiting for somebody to call them for online identification.Really yeah yeahso I mean what we see in the statistics is that really Monday 8:00 a.m. 8:00 a.m. is through the rush hour so so everybody is rushing on like the identity verification service providers amongst all service providers in Germany,it’s Monday 8:00 a.m. people start to rush on opening up bank accounts doing insurance contracts whatever,but are you also see from time to time people doing their stuff on like a Saturday night.I saw if you want to do your paper works and stuff like that maybe you need some information from your service,from your insurance company or you need need some information from your public health insurer or something like that,for the tax filing for example and then you then you are sitting there and want to make a check mark below you to do list.
[8:40] But you can’t because you can’t do the identification to access your data and you always need to verify that the people who want to access the data is really the person who is allowed to access this specific data.So you have you have a lot of people doing it and then in the night and I was curiouswhere is actually the real low point of light registration is it like Sunday morning like a 4 a.m. 5 a.m.Or is it that people actually take time off and it’s during the week it’s during weekday sometime or when is it.
[9:19] Um we see the you really can see if it’s like serious business or if it’s like fun time so if it’s like serious business like insurance companies or like Banks you see the low on Saturday.Saturday around noon but if you’re looking at like gambling or way we have to verify your age.Don’t I don’t want to go into details here now but if you look at websites like that you really see that this is happening at the weekend.
[9:54] So people are doing their paperwork on the on the weekdays and doing the fun time on the weekend and you couldn’t really see that in the identity verification space and then confirm that people are behaving.Exactly on time plants so to say,I see so basically you’re already told us a little bit about the idea taking the human out of loop putting a i in it butwhere did the idea come from because I’ve seen you have one count for co-founder at neck,how did you guys develop the idea I mean it’s Hamburg did you have a plane tomic’s that a brainstorming session over a cup of tea.No so I count on my co-founder is spacing and them horse which is a city next to blame.But we know each other for like 14 years so our wise went to school together and.
[10:53] In someday in a single Moss 2015,we pushed our child’s in the stroller and was talking about what is the next step in life so to say and yeah so we came up with the with the point thatwe are now both working like 10 years as a normal employee and we sought like the next step to really have a big impact is to found the company.So in 2015 we started like okay what could be the idea of our company.And then I came up with the idea of having a a new form of identity verification for the German insurance industry,and that’s when we started in 2016 joining the shooter accelerator Munich,that is almost too good to be true develop the startup by the avoid pushing the strollers of their babies that the data is or toddler said that that is quite cool,joining the.Intro take up in Munich I’m how hard did you make the decision for yourself to actually leave insurance that you’ve spent like I said more than a decadeor basically including your parents all your life and how hard was it for you to leave the insurance business and say okay let’s do something more or less related but actuallydifferent so I always have the idea in mind to to be a Founder one day.
[12:19] So and in this specific case.It was a lucky situation for me that everything went so fast from the point of.Being accepted for the accelerator to be to be needed to start inside the accelerator the ditch the timeframe was so sure that there was not much of a room to think about.Am I on the right path now you just had to make because we got the information that we got accepted for the accelerator on like start of June it was like assertive force of June.And then we have to move from Hamburg to Munich and start in the in should accelerate I’m unit like on the 20th of June so we had like roughly,two weeks to move to Munich to cancel our jobs and stuff like that so it was such a short timeframe that we haven’t had any time to sit down and think about or,a situation we just we just worked on it to make it happen aha I see.And as people can already tell from the headlines you are the most downloaded self-identity app in Germany over taking a few established players and.
[13:33] First how many downloads that you actually get.So that that sometimes closed numbers right but we were awfully awfully do 20,000 idents a day as of now which also results in like 20,000 downloads a day.Um so as of now we have roughly adding users in like 200 to 300 thousands users a month.Which is which is one of our kpis is the user base,it’s not only like the transactions we do with the identity verification but but it’s also like how many users download the app and stay inside the app because they can reduce theirverified identity so if you verify with our solution your identity was Insurance ayou can reuse your knocked up to be used at Insurance be and be even faster.Might so that’s that’s one of them or biggest kpi’s to have a lot of users inside the neck tap to be to have the neck tidy usable across the the nation.
[14:41] That’s pretty cool I have one question do to reason experience involving the small hands of my baby boy and,a street and a crash display afterwards can you actually move like your necked app from one device to another or is the ID tightto the app and the device.
[15:05] So as of now due to compliance regulations and stuff like that we it’s tied to the device.
[15:15] Um but we are working on that you can make it portable between all your devices or if you get a new device that you can report it to your new device.But on the other hand our identity verification process itself it’s so easy that it’s not a big deal to do another fresh identity verification on a new devicebut obviously the the the goal should be that it’s a portable ID but as of now it’s tied to the device.ICC because I had this happened with several apps would mean when my phone broke so that’s what why I was asking we got little bit ahead of ourselves so you guys.
[15:56] Got accepted at the intertek up in Munich and how did the story unfold because I assume at one point you finish your program there and you move back to Hamburg as your background already tells.
[16:11] Exactly yeah so after the six-month in Munich we decided to go back to Hamburg because our families stayed here and.It’s a great City so why stay in Munich hammock is also a great City and we had our family here so we wanted to move back and for us it was also a very great decision and,looking back at it because we got a government grant in 2017 from the city of Hamburg which made it possible to hire the first employees.And from down and we got rolling so then in 2017 by the answer December 2017 we got our seed funding with the different hot spring Ventures.And in 2018 went finally life with the RMV Insurance Group which is the top five insurer here in Germany.Um and this was really a great reference while it is one of the word.Biggest insurers but also on the other hand it’s one of the most well-known brands in Germanyum so it’s a great reference for our solution and from there on really got rolling and we on board a lot of new customers but I have to say it’s like we know life with 40 customers.But it’s all like the big names it’s like who could work noon back I saw a cool book has 11 million customers mean bigger has like 6 million or 7 million.
[17:36] Um and stuff like that so ATAC and yes he has 22 million customers so it’s.
[17:42] The idea is he alone is bigger than some countries in the world right so,we have a lot of very big customers and lately we also added some government services like from the federal agency of unemployment,and for the corona instant help so that the government pastes are the company’s certain amount of money to help them through the hard time of Corona.
[18:07] I see we may add for everybody who doesn’t know this who could work nieuwenburg up there are insurance companies here in Germanywhere Ada see is the roadside assistance so it’s necessary action and they have cars driving all around in Germany and wake up breaks down and you remember they help you most of the time free of charge,think it’s comparable to the Triple A in the u.s. so it’s basically a very big organization and for all of them youoffered the identification including like the federal unemployment agency they are going to throw our bite their identification via a a.I will be a little bit curious on how people try to trick you and how you taught your programto actually get around those tricks because I do assume at the very beginning somebody was may be smart enough to hold up a tablet or something like this what did you experience there.So yeah I mean.We look at the video identification solution and what is the most prominent attack vectors to trick the video I Den solution and.It is basically a social engineering so tricking you’re a real person into the process and catching the data to open up a bank account under their name but with my credentials.
[19:35] And the other Tech Vector is basically using like digital manipulation at defects.
[19:41] And we really made sure to look at the Deep fake situation how can we prevent digital manipulation or process.And there will be fire to patterns so while we do is not only to check if there’s a manipulation and place on the digital files,but we also make sure that.
[20:04] You the the recording of your ID card or they want recording of your face is really made in this point in time with a certain device.So that you can’t use pre-recorded material and those may be fake material and on the other hand that you can’t use a live stream of another camera which maybe is also manipulated,so that is that is one of the the parts we will make sure that you use the device and the manor how we sort of you should use it advice and on the other hand.We are do certain kind of life in this checks so most of our competitors are using like you have to move your face.
[20:47] Always always solution we ask the user to say to random words.
[20:54] On the one hand this is very user-friendly because if you move your face some people have like,trouble to move in the right direction and those liketo where do I have to move from now I mean you have to say yeah let’s go do the other layer right I mean you have to sing about that identity verification is not like only made for like the the young guy being very experienced was like all the smartphones and stuff you also have likelike your grandparents or whatever who needs to access especially in this in the types of Corona who needs to access their insurance company right soit’d have to be very easy for all kind of people.So we thought like just speaking words is very easy for most of the people and on the other hand Escape if gives you a high variance e because.
[21:44] As an attacker you don’t know what what has to be said,but the movement you can assume I mean it’s left right up down I just needed to 3D picture of your face and I can make all the movements butyour face and your lips move in a certain way if you speak words so it’s not only speech to Texas we like how your face moves when you say words and this also helps to detect defects.Because deep facts professional deep facts are pretty hard to do when you have a lot of movement in the face ICC and so for example you can identify a person by telling them to say startupradio and bockwurst.So to say it’s a it’s a very it’s a very specific list of words which we don’t know what the English word for that is but the banter look Peyton so it’s like.People who knows which words are easy to speak.So we made a list of easy to speak words and wears a lot of movement in the face it when you say the words.
[22:47] But it’s like like I said like it’s smart phone Pals not always wise stuff like thatyeah it’s a speech therapist you’re referring to local paid yeah German and actually I do believe a lot of startups with very strange names May consult some speechtherapist people actually the name but Nick at admittedly is bed is on the better side of that.We’ve been talking now with a little bit where you come from what you guys are doing what are your next steps are you looking to expand its your tool applicable in Europe you’re also looking for investment for that and so on and so forth.
[23:33] And so on the two biggest points on all our Jenna as of now really to have our second product which will be e-signatures.So that you can sign your contracts with our solution and on the other hand are going International so as of now we are German German only show the next step really for us is to go International.And I would say it’s as of now the European Union because we have common law for identity and signature processes in the European Union which makes it.More easier for us to go and go International and European Union than other countries.
[24:14] I see and you’re also looking for funding for this expansion.So as of now we’re working profitable so we do can grow based on our Revenue.I would expect that by the end of the year when we have the finest strategy how we can expand in the European Union.Stop this can be the time of writing another round to really have the funding to do.
[24:44] An explosion and like being International.And I really see that the space or the identification space as of nose is really hot.Like are you just so like two big funding rounds,one in the u.s. like the ID me funding route about like 150 million dollars I think.There was another one some weeks ago also around 100 million so the identification space as of now is pretty hot so I see good good chance that we can raise a good round.
[25:21] Hmm I see and everybody who would like to learn more can go down here in the show notes and learn more about you guys reach out to youdirectly and as always we do our best to give you links in our,in our podcast podcast show notes as well but they’re limited not always links you’re working so make sure to hit dub dub dub startupradio Tayo.And there you can find in the blog post the post with Benny endall the show notes Benny was just play having you I may have forgotten to say that this recording is in media partnership with Hamburg startups thank you very much to them and it was just a pleasure having you,thank you very much thanks for having me was a pleasure to talk to you and see you soon.CC and keep us updated by my wife if you are a professional looking at the European startup scene Germany is a place you cannot miss.
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[26:35] Tweak most likely you have never heard or read anything only startups before in English but you will in the future be ahead of the curve And subscribe to start up rad dot dot.
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