*By Conor White*
Lemonade, the insurance startup that uses A.I. and chatbots to pay claims within seconds, saw exponential growth in the U.S. in 2018, but the company is setting its sights on Europe for its next phase of expansion.
"We've decided that if people in Berlin, and Tokyo, and New York are using Spotify ($SPOT), and Netflix ($NFLX), and Uber, why not Lemonade?" CEO and co-founder Daniel Schreiber asked in an interview on Cheddar.
The burgeoning company's tech-driven approach has caught the attention of some of its more traditional competitors. That includes State Farm, which [released an ad in October](https://youtu.be/KIWfc9aI1YI) poking fun at artificial intelligence and robots, a not-so-thinly veiled dig at the startup. But Schreiber said he didn't mind the mockery.
"We found it remarkable that ... the largest insurance company in the nation, that \[is\] a thousand times bigger than Lemonade, would spend millions of dollars taking us on," Schreiber said. "I really found that interesting and deeply flattering honestly."
The company even took the unusual step of paying to promote the ad online.
"They're mocking us," Schreiber explained, "but I really think it's a bit of a boomerang that comes back and hurts them much more than it hurts us."
The CEO highlighted some of Lemonade's 2018 accomplishments, including $57 million in sales and increasing the number of homes it insures by more than 300,000.
But Schreiber said he is proudest of his company's reputation with customers.
"You go now to any of the consumer ratings sites, and you'll find that USAA and Lemonade compete for the number one spot in terms of customer satisfaction," he said.
"Growing fast is fabulous," he said, "but if you do it at the expense of customer satisfaction, that's a price not worth paying."
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/lemonade-insurance-plans-european-expansion).
If you have a flexible spending account, here's some short information for you so you don't leave money on the table.
With high healthcare costs, bills can quickly add up. In some cases, it is possible to negotiate your medical bills. Barak Richman, law professor at George Washington University, joined Cheddar News to discuss the easiest way to talk to medical debt companies about what's owed.
Millions of people have selected insurance plans for 2024 but sometimes navigating them can be tricky time consuming and expensive. Paula Pant, host of 'Afford Anything' podcast, joined Cheddar News to break down what's needed to know about their insurance plans.
The European Union is investigating Elon Musk's X over alleged illicit content and disinformation on its platform. Cheddar News breaks it all down and discusses what it could mean for users.
Adobe and Figma called off their $20 million merger, Southwest Airlines gets fined, Nippon Steel is buying U.S. Steel and oil and gas prices surge after a pause in shipments.
With more employees being called back to the office, many workers are suddenly protesting by being in the office for as little time as possible. As the term suggests, coffee-badging means coming in for just enough time to have a cup of coffee, show your face, and swipe your badge.
Japan's Nippon steel is buying U.S. Steel for $14.9 billion.
Southwest Airlines will pay a $35 million fine as part of a settlement over a 2022 holiday season disaster that saw the airline cancel thousands of flights and leave millions of people stranded.
Cheddar News' Need2Know is brought to you by Securitize, which helps unlock broader access to alternative investments in private businesses, funds, and other alternative assets. The private credit boom is here and the Hamilton Lane Senior Credit Opportunities Fund has tripled in assets under management in just six months from November 2022 through April this year. Visit Securitize.io to learn more.
Stocks opened slightly higher after Monday's opening bell after several weeks of gains as the year closes out.
