Jason Chen, Co-Founder Of Breezy – Offering The Best And Most Affordable Insurance For Pets

Jason Chen was born and raised in China. He came to the United States when he was 13 and had been living there ever since. When he was 19 while still in school, he and his friends started their first business, and it was a construction company. Later, he proceeded to start another company where they created a social networking app and launched in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. This startup experience offered him the opportunity to work with engineers and product design, which helped him discover his passion for product management.

Currently, his co-founder Richard Vinh Lam and he are working on Breezy. It’s a website that helps people quickly find the best and most affordable insurance for their pets!

In an exclusive interview with AsiaTechDaily, Jason says:

You need to know where your target audience spends most of their time and start planning as early as possible instead of waiting until the very last minute. Before we launched on ProductHunt.com, I’ve already been a member of the community for a long time. It takes time to build and establish a relationship with your target audience in the community. If you wait till the last minute and start promoting your product, you might not get as much support as you initially anticipated.

Launch your product as soon as possible! The best way to get early feedback from your user is getting your product out there in front of them! The most valuable feedback always comes from your user because you created the product to solve their problems! If you took too long to build your product, you could spend a very long time making something that’s the opposite of what your users are looking for and end up not having anyone use it at all.

Read on to know more about Jason Chen and his journey.

Please tell me about your personal background, and what are you working on currently?

Jason Chen: My name is Jason Chen, and I was born and raised in China. I came to the United States when I was 13, and I’ve been living here ever since. When I was 19 while still in school, my friends and I started our first business and it was a construction company. After doing that for 8 months, I realized it wasn’t something that I was passionate about, so I withdrew from the business. However, this particular experience opened my door to entrepreneurship and expanded my horizon into a different world. I later proceeded to start another company where we created a social networking app and launched in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. This startup experience offered me the opportunity to work with engineers and product design, which helped me discover my passion for product management. Besides, I worked as an online English teacher and Uber driver to maintain a flexible schedule for my startup and school.

Currently, my co-founder Richard Vinh Lam and I are working on Breezy. It’s a website that helps people quickly find the best and most affordable insurance for their pets!

What motivated you to get started with your company?

Jason Chen: As someone who owns a dog that has gone through 3 surgeries with the most recent one being just a few weeks ago. I’ve gone through phases of not having pet insurance to having pet insurance and back to not having pet insurance. The reason why we decided to build Breezy is that as a pet parent myself, I found the pet insurance search process to be extremely redundant and overwhelming as you have to fill out the same application form over and over again to get a quote. Also, understanding each provider’s policy and exclusions can be very frustrating as they can be quite different depending on the plan you choose. Lastly, there is no clear evidence as to why the prices vary so much when comparing one company to another. Our goal is to make the pet insurance search process easy and transparent.

How have you attracted users and grown your company from the start?

Jason Chen: So far, we’ve been using online channels to attract users such as ProductHunt, Facebook Group, Reddit, Hacknernews, etc.

What’s your business model, and how have you grown your revenue? What strategy worked best?

Jason Chen: We just launched our MVP on Feb 28th, 2020, and we haven’t generated any income at this point. In terms of business model, in a short time, we might generate revenue through affiliate marketing, which is to funnel our users to the pet insurance provider that they’re interested in. In a long time, we’re hoping to become the broker and handle all the transactions directly through our website.

How much money (funding) have you raised in total so far? When was the recent funding round? (Additionally, any plan for the future?)

Jason Chen: We have not raised any money, and we’ve been bootstrapping our startup. However, we do have plans to raise a seed round in the near future.

What are some marketing tips to help maximize the success of a product launch?

Jason Chen: You need to know where your target audience spends most of their time and start planning as early as possible instead of waiting until the very last minute. Before we launched on ProductHunt.com, I’ve already been a member of the community for a long time. It takes time to build and establish a relationship with your target audience in the community. If you wait till the last minute and start promoting your product, you might not get as much support as you initially anticipated.

What is a good product launch checklist?

Jason Chen: Create all your social media profiles such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Make sure to set up a valid email using the website as the custom domain so people can easily reach out to you.
Test your product to make sure it doesn’t have any apparent issues.
Make sure you have an event tracking set up to help you understand what your users are doing and track conversion rates.

What’s the hardest thing about product launches?

Jason Chen: Getting the word out and get people to try out your product.

What are the most common mistakes founders make when they start a company? (or What should all first-time startup founders know before they start their business?)

Jason Chen: I think one of the common mistakes is founders sometimes begin with the solution first before validating if the solution solves any real problem. It should be the other way around and always start with the problem first. The simple way to look at this is if a lot of people need a small size t-shirt, then you can make a small size t-shirt for them because that’s exactly what they’re looking for. However, if you make the small size t-shirt first then look for people to fit it in, you might have a hard time finding those people.
The other common mistake has the wrong co-founder to start the business. When I built my first app, my co-founders were not committed, and it took us a very long time to launch a straightforward and small mobile app. I always have to follow up with them on their progress and push them to get more done. But in a healthy co-founder relationship, you should be pushing each other, not one person doing all the work.

What do most startups get wrong about marketing?

Jason Chen: Startups sometimes target EVERYONE as our customer and end up promoting the product to the wrong audience. It’s crucial to target a smaller segment of the audience and reiterate as you go.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? And What advice do you have for someone who is interested in doing similar things like yours or in a similar direction?

Jason Chen: Launch your product as soon as possible! The best way to get early feedback from your user is getting your product out there in front of them! The most valuable feedback always comes from your user because you created the product to solve their problems! If you took too long to build your product, you could spend a very long time making something that’s the opposite of what your users are looking for and end up not having anyone use it at all. Since our launch on Fed 28th, we’ve already received some constructive feedback from our users and also some people reaching out for potential partnerships.

What are the one or two things that you would do differently if you could go back to 10 years ago?

Jason Chen: I will probably try to get into a better school to build a vast network and major in computers to become more technical.

You can follow Jason Chen here.

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