Guillermo Cornejo – Don’t Underestimate the Value of Experience

<p><strong>BIO: </strong>Guillermo Cornejo is the CEO of Riders Share, the Airbnb of motorcycles he started while attending grad school at UCLA.</p><p><strong>STORY:</strong> Guillermo had an insurance company handling claims for his customers. When he realized the insurance company had a 50% profit margin, he decided to start his own insurance business. This became a costly and challenging venture because he had no experience handling claims.</p><p><strong>LEARNING:</strong> Don’t underestimate the value of experience.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><blockquote class="ql-align-center"><strong>“The startup path or raising capital is overrated.”</strong></blockquote><blockquote class="ql-align-center">Guillermo Cornejo</blockquote><p>&nbsp;</p><h2>Guest profile</h2><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gc-ridersshare/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Guillermo Cornejo</strong></a> is the CEO of <a href="https://www.riders-share.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Riders Share</a>, the Airbnb of motorcycles he started while attending grad school at UCLA. Before that, he worked in analytics roles for GM, Nissan, and Hyundai. He grew up in Peru and enjoys anything that makes your heart race.</p><h2>Worst investment ever</h2><p>Guillermo launched his company in 2018, and it grew immensely. The company booked over a million dollars in rentals within the first year. Guillermo was on top of the world.</p><p>The company was working with an insurance partner with pretty good rates but was providing terrible service to Guillermo’s customers. It took many months to handle the claims. When Guillermo looked at his company’s history of accidents and measured the cost of paid-out claims and how much he had paid the insurance company in premiums. He found the insurance company was making a 50% margin in profits. This got Guillermo thinking he should do it himself.</p><p>Guillermo raised some capital and used most of it to set up an insurance company. This was an expensive venture (millions of dollars). The more t