5 ms·

Munich Re buys IoT middleware startup, relayr, in deal worth $300M

60 points by AhmadM91 8y ago

JOSEEY 8y ago
I met a Trusted Certified Binary Options Recovery Expert through there happy again client's recovery reviews that they've recently helped to put smiles back on their faces after been cheated and scammed of their hard earned money . I invested with four binary companies and lost all of my investments totalling £720,000 Then I was contacted by someone offering help – a company who specializes in binary recovery. I was scammed by them again. By the end of it all I had lost all of my savings and I was in serious debt. I was desperate for help and that made me vulnerable to recovery scams. My husband is not around anymore and I have an 8 year old son with learning difficulties. The pressure of being a single, working mother with a child who needs so much additional attention and support became overwhelming for me. I also felt too traumatized to trust anyone else and I was very afraid, but I had no choice other than to trust Viapreferred@GMAIL.COM. He has been incredibly helpful and supportive and also very understanding about all of my fear and concerns he helped recover all of my funds back within a week using unethical means OR SKYPE contact - Parker joas . I really hope that others do not have to go through what I did, and I wish that I had realized before things were so bad that I was being scammed.
hobofan 8y ago
Kind of surprised by a sum that high. From everything I've heard from people close to the company they've been struggling really hard to close big contracts (and spending a lot of time/money/effort on building prototypes for that), and they've been hemorrhaging employees the last year.
- MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
  Judging by what former employees say, also an extremely questionable management team, at least in the Berlin office.
- cominous 8y ago
  I can confirm this - I got similar information from several employees. The market is extremely hard and doesn't scale well. They did a great job solely by surviving and I'm really happy, that their hard work is rewarded now.
- fh973 8y ago
  In the end, they closed the biggest contract that matters.
- johannes1234321 8y ago
  Considering they have raised 66M it isn't really a high sum. More like a "happy somebody bought it" deal. https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organizations/funding_total/relayr https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organ...
supahfly_remix 8y ago
Munich Re is in the (re)-reinsurance business, but they apparently own HSB which appears to be telecom-related so it could make sense to buy an IoT middleware startup. Can anyone explain the relationship between these Munich Re and HSB? They seem to be two different, non-complementary lines of business.
- detaro 8y ago
  From my understanding, HSB is the industry arm of Munich Re. For insuring industrial facilities, expertise in auditing those is needed, and they also sell that expertise. IoT fits in there as a way of collecting more data, improving the quality of their risk assessment, selling monitoring equipment also means being able to avoid insurance cases, monitoring of SLAs that are insured, ...
  - supahfly_remix 8y ago
    Thank you for the explanation. Never thought of insurance companies having an interest in IoT.
    - baybal2 8y ago
      Nobody else thought either, but now thanks to their superhuman salesmanship, now they do :) I bet, they managed to make them believe that they somehow can pull out accident rates from the data.
    - jon-wood 8y ago
      I work at Neos, where we’re using IoT in the context of home insurance. Almost all our investors are insurance companies (including Munich Re who underwrite our policies). Insurance is all over IoT, and indeed anything else with the chance of reducing risk - it’s what they do.
      - supahfly_remix 8y ago
        Wow, good to know. I know.Progressive insurance used to have a.dongle to monitor driver behavior for a discount. It predated.the term Not and used.the 2g network.
tnolet 8y ago
Pretty cool to see company I shared an accelerator and an office with being sold for this generous sum. I just don’t see how a Berlin IOT startup and its culture is going to thrive under a Munich insurance company. Very curious how this pans out.
- otoburb 8y ago
  Are the cultures very different between Munich and Berlin? Your comment implies this and would be interested in hearing about this for those of us that have only infrequently visited other cities in Germany such as Frankfurt or Düsseldorf.
theomega 8y ago
There is an interesting overlap in insurance and IoT: The big insurance companies like MunichRE are big in the business of insuring other companies against downtimes of their (industrial) machinery. If you equip machines with sensors, there is the chance of predicting downtimes (and unplanned maintenance) and preventing them. So the insurance can offer better pricing. Overall, a lot of stuff in the insurance business depends on having the right data available. If you manage to collect the right(!) data using sensors, you can get an competitive edge. Of course, a lot depends if you can crack the data analytics problems around predicting and preventing downtimes. Disclaimer: Worked for Relayr
- Eridrus 8y ago
  At some point, what are you insuring against, if you know which machines will fail? This reminds me of the pre-existing conditions debate in healthcare - if you only insure healthy machines, then what is the point of buying insurance? Sure, catastrophy insurance is good, but I wonder if better data may reduce the size of the insurance market. Not necessarily bad for those being insured, since they could do preventative maintenance, but I wonder if the insurers are at all concerned.
  - dsr_ 8y ago
    The insurance company wants to pay out less money, so they offer a reduction in premium cost for behaviors that they think are worth that differential. Suppose you have a thousand doohickey machines that cost 10,000 each to replace in an emergency, of which 50% is the doohickey cost and 80% of the rest is the emergency labor cost ; a ten year lifespan, and an observed failure rate of 1% per year. In a normal year, you need to replace 100 doohickeys at a cost of a million. Over ten years, you replace 1000 doohickeys at a cost of ten million. Your insurance company charges you 1.02 million a year whether they have to replace 900 or 1100 in that particular year. It costs you a little more on average, but it keeps you from experiencing a catastrophe. Now the insurance company gathers data from your doohickeys that predicts with 90% reliability that a doohickey will fail within a month. If they can pay the 1000 non-emergency cost of the labor (plus the 5,000 part cost), then they go from a 10,000 outlay to a 6000 outlay. 4000 savings x 90% x 100 doohickeys needing replacement is 36000. So the insurance company offers you a reduction from 1.02 million per year to 985,000 per year if you install the realtime doohickey monitoring system. That's a great savings for you, a good savings for the insurance company, and everybody is happy... unless it turns out that the realtime doohickey monitors have lousy security and leak valuable personal information to anybody who guesses the password (which is password321).

60 points by AhmadM91 8y ago

I met a Trusted Certified Binary Options Recovery Expert through there happy again client's recovery reviews that they've recently helped to put smiles back on their faces after been cheated and scammed of their hard earned money . I invested with four binary companies and lost all of my investments totalling £720,000 Then I was contacted by someone offering help – a company who specializes in binary recovery. I was scammed by them again. By the end of it all I had lost all of my savings and I was in serious debt. I was desperate for help and that made me vulnerable to recovery scams. My husband is not around anymore and I have an 8 year old son with learning difficulties. The pressure of being a single, working mother with a child who needs so much additional attention and support became overwhelming for me. I also felt too traumatized to trust anyone else and I was very afraid, but I had no choice other than to trust Viapreferred@GMAIL.COM. He has been incredibly helpful and supportive and also very understanding about all of my fear and concerns he helped recover all of my funds back within a week using unethical means OR SKYPE contact - Parker joas . I really hope that others do not have to go through what I did, and I wish that I had realized before things were so bad that I was being scammed.

hobofan 8y ago

Kind of surprised by a sum that high. From everything I've heard from people close to the company they've been struggling really hard to close big contracts (and spending a lot of time/money/effort on building prototypes for that), and they've been hemorrhaging employees the last year.

MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
Judging by what former employees say, also an extremely questionable management team, at least in the Berlin office.
cominous 8y ago
I can confirm this - I got similar information from several employees. The market is extremely hard and doesn't scale well. They did a great job solely by surviving and I'm really happy, that their hard work is rewarded now.
fh973 8y ago
In the end, they closed the biggest contract that matters.
johannes1234321 8y ago
Considering they have raised 66M it isn't really a high sum. More like a "happy somebody bought it" deal. https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organizations/funding_total/relayr https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organ...

supahfly_remix 8y ago

Munich Re is in the (re)-reinsurance business, but they apparently own HSB which appears to be telecom-related so it could make sense to buy an IoT middleware startup. Can anyone explain the relationship between these Munich Re and HSB? They seem to be two different, non-complementary lines of business.

detaro 8y ago
From my understanding, HSB is the industry arm of Munich Re. For insuring industrial facilities, expertise in auditing those is needed, and they also sell that expertise. IoT fits in there as a way of collecting more data, improving the quality of their risk assessment, selling monitoring equipment also means being able to avoid insurance cases, monitoring of SLAs that are insured, ...
- supahfly_remix 8y ago
  Thank you for the explanation. Never thought of insurance companies having an interest in IoT.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    Nobody else thought either, but now thanks to their superhuman salesmanship, now they do :) I bet, they managed to make them believe that they somehow can pull out accident rates from the data.
  - jon-wood 8y ago
    I work at Neos, where we’re using IoT in the context of home insurance. Almost all our investors are insurance companies (including Munich Re who underwrite our policies). Insurance is all over IoT, and indeed anything else with the chance of reducing risk - it’s what they do.
    - supahfly_remix 8y ago
      Wow, good to know. I know.Progressive insurance used to have a.dongle to monitor driver behavior for a discount. It predated.the term Not and used.the 2g network.

tnolet 8y ago

Pretty cool to see company I shared an accelerator and an office with being sold for this generous sum. I just don’t see how a Berlin IOT startup and its culture is going to thrive under a Munich insurance company. Very curious how this pans out.

otoburb 8y ago
Are the cultures very different between Munich and Berlin? Your comment implies this and would be interested in hearing about this for those of us that have only infrequently visited other cities in Germany such as Frankfurt or Düsseldorf.

theomega 8y ago

There is an interesting overlap in insurance and IoT: The big insurance companies like MunichRE are big in the business of insuring other companies against downtimes of their (industrial) machinery. If you equip machines with sensors, there is the chance of predicting downtimes (and unplanned maintenance) and preventing them. So the insurance can offer better pricing. Overall, a lot of stuff in the insurance business depends on having the right data available. If you manage to collect the right(!) data using sensors, you can get an competitive edge. Of course, a lot depends if you can crack the data analytics problems around predicting and preventing downtimes. Disclaimer: Worked for Relayr

Eridrus 8y ago
At some point, what are you insuring against, if you know which machines will fail? This reminds me of the pre-existing conditions debate in healthcare - if you only insure healthy machines, then what is the point of buying insurance? Sure, catastrophy insurance is good, but I wonder if better data may reduce the size of the insurance market. Not necessarily bad for those being insured, since they could do preventative maintenance, but I wonder if the insurers are at all concerned.
- dsr_ 8y ago
  The insurance company wants to pay out less money, so they offer a reduction in premium cost for behaviors that they think are worth that differential. Suppose you have a thousand doohickey machines that cost 10,000 each to replace in an emergency, of which 50% is the doohickey cost and 80% of the rest is the emergency labor cost ; a ten year lifespan, and an observed failure rate of 1% per year. In a normal year, you need to replace 100 doohickeys at a cost of a million. Over ten years, you replace 1000 doohickeys at a cost of ten million. Your insurance company charges you 1.02 million a year whether they have to replace 900 or 1100 in that particular year. It costs you a little more on average, but it keeps you from experiencing a catastrophe. Now the insurance company gathers data from your doohickeys that predicts with 90% reliability that a doohickey will fail within a month. If they can pay the 1000 non-emergency cost of the labor (plus the 5,000 part cost), then they go from a 10,000 outlay to a 6000 outlay. 4000 savings x 90% x 100 doohickeys needing replacement is 36000. So the insurance company offers you a reduction from 1.02 million per year to 985,000 per year if you install the realtime doohickey monitoring system. That's a great savings for you, a good savings for the insurance company, and everybody is happy... unless it turns out that the realtime doohickey monitors have lousy security and leak valuable personal information to anybody who guesses the password (which is password321).