“I think everything I do, I kind of do differently.”

My family is from Israel. I felt like that was the right thing to do. So I joined the IDF and enlisted as a lone soldier.

It's not that easy to change locations and put on a uniform in a different language, in a different atmosphere. Right?

It's not easy. All my friends continued on to college. There wasn't a community around me that went to the IDF. I was definitely the odd ball out. But I think everything I do, I kind of do differently. So it's quite normal for me.

How has engineering been a part of your life?

I've always been technological. My mom actually chose a technological career path as well. I definitely had a head start through her. It's just always been there throughout high school and even before that.

Now you're CTO of Parametrix Insurance and created this company with some amazing entrepreneurs. How did you get together and decide to form a company?

I definitely have an amazing team beside me. Actually everyone, except for me, is an experienced entrepreneur. Our co-founder and chairman, Tamir Carmel, founded 10bis, which is probably the largest e-commerce website in Israel. Our CEO and co-founder Yonatan Hatzor, he was CTO and co-founder of a startup that did 3D modeling for construction sites. They're doing amazing. Ori Cohen, our COO, previously had an eco-water solutions startup that also merged into one of the largest in Israel.

We met through some personal connections and got together, and we just had this amazing click. We were playing around with some ideas, and insurance is such an amazing industry actually. It's a huge industry. There's so much innovation to be done.

Was it stressful to start a company with serial entrepreneurs?

Maybe a bit. But I think this has kind of always been my path. This was always kind of where it was leading to. There's just so much to learn from them. There's so many mistakes that they have avoided for us based on past experience.

Tell me about Parametrix and what you're doing there.

Parametrix is a startup that creates downtime insurance for SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS downtime. That can be cloud computing, payment systems, CRMs, web hosting, ISP, CDNs, you name it. When downtime happens on these pieces of infrastructure, they experience downtime as well. They incur the losses, even though the downtime wasn't their own fault.

We've actually been able to identify this protection gap that existed in the insurance market and this pain point that companies are feeling and create this amazing product around it. What powers that is technology. It allows us to eliminate the claims process. If you're able to monitor and know exactly what happened throughout the incident, there's actually no need for a claims process. That's what I focused on, the technology aspect of the company. We build really, really robust monitoring systems that monitor SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS globally. We know exactly what's happening at any given time. There's no need for our customers to submit a claim.

How do you identify the costs incurred?

A business knows exactly how much downtime costs them. They can really specify. It can be a matter of direct revenue loss. It can be recovery expenses. It can be intangible costs like brand or SLA liability to their own customers. In most cases, they actually know how to calculate how much downtime costs them.

But since we have seen many, many cases of downtime and how it affects companies, we know how to calculate it. We will give an estimation of loss and how much we think the business loses per hour. Then they can adjust that if they see the number any differently than we do.

When you're giving insurance on a home, the premium is based on how much it is worth. Here a premium would be based on an agreement that you make with the businesses over what is a downtime worth per hour, right?

Yeah, exactly.

When you come to a SaaS company and you say, "We want to provide insurance," do they get what you're talking about?

Oh yeah. Companies have experienced downtime. Up until now, there really wasn't a financial solution for it. They have definitely felt the pain. They know exactly what we're speaking about, and there's actually a lot of demand.

Neta Rozy, co-founder and CTO of Parametrix Insurance. Photo: Neta Rozy

What has been a challenge on this journey?

Again, I turn to my co-founders and they don't see challenges. They've seen so many challenges over their career where they're not budged by challenges. I will say the insurance industry is highly regulated, which is something to take into consideration. But that's not a challenge.

Cyber insurance is also a market in the insurance industry that's valuated at over $9 billion and it's growing almost 30% a year. Cloud consumption alone is a market of over $350 billion. We kind of lie in between both of these markets. It's really growing very fast.

Your ability to remove the claims process really is the innovative part beyond the fact that you're entering into a really innovative market, right?

Absolutely. Claims are one of the biggest pain points in the insurance market. It's just something that you can try and improve as much as you can, but if you're able to just get rid of it, that's the best way to go.

Neta, what excites you really about what you're doing? Is it the entrepreneurial journey? The business? The technology? The people?

It's all of the above. It's just being a part of change. Being a part of change, working with amazing people, and moving toward this vision that we have as a company.

How do you approach this excitement? Is it more day-to-day or the marathon view?

I'd say both. As a co-founder, I'm living in the vision of the company, but in my position as CTO, I'm also living in the present. We need to execute in order to be able to reach that joint vision that we have.

Now a few fun questions. One of your favorite subjects in school, K-12?

Computer science.

How young did you start in computer science?

Toward the end of middle school, we had the opportunity to start learning. I think it was Java back then.

One of your role models or somebody who inspires you?

I'll probably say my mom. That's because she took such a technological career path that I think inspired me and led me on mine as well.

Did she help motivate you to go into that? Or was it more knowing that you can do it?

I think it's just that you can do it. And we've always had technology around the house. It was just very natural.

Three words that you would choose to describe yourself and why?

Passionate. Passion is something that I think any entrepreneur has. It's something you have to have in order to succeed. I'm excited. And always learning. You just cannot stop learning.

Are there some things that you're observing now and saying, "Wow, this is something that only experience could have taught me"?

Just being brave enough to have those experiences, to emerge out of that box that society puts us in and do things differently.

Michael Matias. Photo: PR

Michael Matias, Forbes 30 Under 30, is the author of Age is Only an Int: Lessons I Learned as a Young Entrepreneur. He studies Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University, while working as a software engineer at Hippo Insurance and as a Senior Associate at J-Ventures. Matias previously served as an officer in the 8200 unit. 20MinuteLeaders is a tech entrepreneurship interview series featuring one-on-one interviews with fascinating founders, innovators and thought leaders sharing their journeys and experiences.

Contributing editors: Michael Matias, Amanda Katz