OTONOMI — Team members interview series. Meet Cecilia Rogers (Marketing)
1. Who are you?
My name is Cecilia Rogers, I’m a Growth Marketing Strategist for OTONOMI. I was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a BBA in Computer Information Systems & Finance. During undergrad, I studied abroad in Hong Kong where I picked up an obsession to learn about diverse perspectives across the eastern hemisphere. After college, I moved to NYC to pursue a career in capital markets innovation, working to digitize incumbent financial systems at JP Morgan and Citigroup. I am now working with OTONOMI and Alumni Ventures in order to pursue my newfound passion for helping startups scale.
2. Describe yourself with 4 words?
Perceptive, Insightful, Inventive, Open-minded.
3. How did you change since you started OTONOMI?
My main takeaway: stay nimble and have perseverance.
Progress has never been linear: Effort-in does not equal product-out when working for a startup. For example, there could be 100 meetings one week and none turn out to be productive than only 1 meeting the following week which turns out to be extremely valuable. I’ve learned that you can’t predict what will happen even in the near term, but you should always be ready for when the opportunity presents itself. OTONOMI has helped me be comfortable with being nimble as there are many interesting things to work on and many questions to be asked. I’m constantly learning from the brilliance of Yann, Jeremy, and the rest of the team.
3. Where will you be in 2 years?
I will be helping companies that decentralize and disrupt traditional financial services, namely OTONOMI, scale! Physically, I’ll likely still be in NYC, my favorite city in the U.S. for food, tech, and culture.
4. What is your vision for the company?
My vision is that OTONOMI will be the comprehensive platform for parametric insurance (insurance policies which pay out based on data parameters) as well as a thought leader for the insurtech industry. OTONOMI’s parametric smart contract technology will solve a pressing problem for a $50B+ target market which includes air, ground, and marine cargo companies as well as weather protection. After starting with freight and travel, OTONOMI will scale to hardware coverage and any vertical with advancing analytics that allows for data-activated insurance policies. OTONOMI will partner with many major insurance brokers, carriers, and reinsurers and will reinvent the insurance value chain by eliminating unnecessary costs in the underwriting, policy admin, and claims process. I envision OTONOMI filling the whitespace in each unique global market (and I will certainly be honed in on the Asia-Pacific insurance space!).
5. What Does Success Look Like for the Company?
From a growth marketing perspective, OTONOMI’s success will be measured by product-market fit: how our technology brings cost-efficiency and transparency to the marine insurance and frees up time, provides predictive pricing, and resources for our clients so that they can focus on more complex matters. Digging a level deeper for those who also geek out over insurance and metrics, OTONOMI’s success will look like a conversion rate in high single-digits (note: industry ratio = 2.35%); tens of thousands of policies processed in the next 18–24 months; and highly competitive performance metrics.
Team OTONOMI is hard at work and we are ready for when the opportunity presents itself!
Thanks for reading. Let’s connect on social!
-Cecilia
