Building a start-up business, however promising the proposition may be, is never just a one way street of success and growth. There is no simple formula. In reality, it’s a journey that embraces both success and failure, challenges and learning, heartache and hard work. Ed Klinger, CEO of Flock, a fully digital insurance company for commercial motor fleets, knows this only too well. In this truly inspirational interview, Ed shares his own rollercoaster experiences of building a business - from his sleepless nights and soul-destroying rejection, to meeting Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and securing a jaw-dropping $38 million investment.
Ed, you recently gave a talk for Changemakers ‘Entrepreneurship post-Cambridge: 5 things I wish I had known’, an account of your entrepreneurial journey from student to founder. What are those 5 things?
- How fun it is to start a business
I wish someone had told me how fun it is to start a business. There’s almost nothing as fun or nerve-wracking as building a company from scratch. It’s a whirlwind—from doing whatever it takes to close your first deal and win your very first customer, to managing six-month investment processes with investors. Starting a business can take you around the world, introduce you to incredible people, and, most importantly, launch you onto an intensely steep and seemingly never-ending learning curve.
- How hard it is to start a business
I also wish someone had told me how hard it can be. I’ve lost count of the nights I’ve stayed awake until sunrise, racing to finish a board pack or an investment memo before the day begins again. I’ve poured hundreds of hours into deals, only to watch them fall apart at the eleventh hour. I’ve had to fire long-standing employees—people I grew close to and genuinely admired. I’ve pitched to investors and been rejected 40 times in a single month. Starting a business can be seriously brutal.
- Get mentors for you and your business
Another lesson I wish I’d learned earlier: find yourself some mentors. When I started my business I had no idea what I was doing. I dived in, learned by doing, and made a lot of mistakes. That’s an effective way to learn, but it can be slow. Mentors accelerate your progress tenfold by teaching you from their own mistakes so you don’t have to make them yourself. The best mentors? People who have already done what you are aiming to do - and done it well. The best way to find mentors? Identify people you admire, approach them, and ask good questions. You’ll quickly discover if you have a good rapport. If you do, ask to meet them again. Give them interesting problems to solve and, if you think they’re going to make a real difference to your business, consider offering them equity. This aligns their success with yours and keeps them motivated. Mentors are also amazing at connecting you with other great people too - so ask them for intros.
- Hire slowly, fire quickly
On the topic of people, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is this: hire slowly. A business is nothing more than the people inside it, and I’ve found that most problems are people problems. Don’t rush hiring decisions.
Conversely, fire quickly. Toxic employees can destroy a business faster than you realise. Even someone who starts great can turn toxic over time, and the damage they do often runs deeper than it appears on the surface. Every founder I’ve spoken to regrets not firing bad employees sooner. Hanging on and hoping they’ll change rarely works.
- The best time to start is always now
There will always be a million reasons not to start a business. You’ll convince yourself you lack the expertise, the network, or that you need a couple more years of corporate experience. But the truth is, every second counts, and the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll start learning. Don’t wait for the perfect product—it doesn’t exist. Your product will evolve as you speak to customers and iterate. Don’t wait for the perfect mission either; it might only become clear after you’ve started and gotten your hands dirty. The best time to start is always now, and the earlier in life, the better. Right after university is ideal: the risks are low, your energy is high. So stop overthinking it. Just start.”
If a student had a great idea for a new product or service but had no idea what to do next, what would be your advice to them?
I’d refer them to my fifth piece of advice: just get started. Don’t overthink it. If you’ve got an idea you believe is game-changing, do everything in your power to turn it into reality. The first step is simple: talk to potential customers. No one—and I really do mean no one—has as much insight or useful information for you as your potential customers do.
Sketch your app idea out on paper, build the first version of your website, or use BluTack and Matchsticks to create a mock-up. Whatever it takes, get a minimum viable product in front of potential customers and ask them, “How much would you pay for this?” What needs to change? Make the changes. Then do it again with three customers, then ten. Listen carefully to their feedback, but be discerning—decide which bits of feedback to act on and which to ignore. Make changes quickly, test again, and iterate again.
Soon you’ll have a product that customers like. And just like that, your business is up and running before you’ve even realised it.
Undoubtedly there have been many exciting moments in your rollercoaster career, but is there one particular highlight that stands out?
The highlight of my career—and still one of the coolest things I’ve ever done—was meeting Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and explaining my business to her at St. James’s Palace. To this day, I have no idea why I was given such an extraordinary opportunity, and I doubt I’ll ever have the chance to do anything quite as surreal or extreme again. It was an unforgettable experience, utterly awesome, and something I wouldn’t trade for the world.
What has been the biggest challenge and how did you deal with that?
Raising our $38M Series B was a defining challenge for both me and the business. It came during a major economic downturn when most companies at our stage were being told there was no funding to be found. But we defied the odds and raised $38 million from some of the world’s best investors. This gave us the firepower to make critical hires and continue scaling at a time when many of our competitors were running out of cash.
It was an incredibly intense and challenging four months—the hardest of my professional life, without a doubt. We heard a lot of “no’s” before we got a “yes” meeting over 100 investors along the way. Raising this round took thousands of hours of work and involved writing a detailed 88-page investment memo from scratch. We had to kiss a lot of frogs, but ultimately, we got an even better outcome than we were looking for.
Read more about raising $38 million for Flock
Moving on to your time at Homerton, what do you remember most fondly?
What I remember most fondly from my time at Homerton was the incredible freedom I had during my Master’s degree to deeply explore a wide range of topics. I had the time and space to immerse myself in immense detail and find insights I never would have found otherwise. I still crave the kind of freedom I had at Cambridge to pursue a topic I was uniquely passionate about—it’s amazing what you can achieve when you’re able to go that deep on something you love.
Those deep dives at Cambridge are what ultimately led me to become obsessed with autonomous vehicles. That obsession brought me together with my co-founder and set us on the path to starting Flock. So in many ways, I owe it all to Homerton.
And what about Changemakers? How did you get involved and why are you still involved now?
I’m involved in Changemakers because I’m passionate about helping Cambridge grads discover that there’s nothing as exciting and rewarding as starting a business. If my relationship with Changemakers achieves nothing else, I hope it inspires just one person to take the leap and start a business rather than following a perfectly respectable but more traditional (and perhaps less exciting) path.
As well as being a speaker for Changemakers, Ed has recently provided an opportunity for Jesi Akinsuyi, Changemakers Ambassador and Social Media Manager, to join Flock for an internship.
Jesi says:
I had the privilege of joining Flock over the summer for an internship, where Ed graciously welcomed me into the team. Witnessing his exceptional leadership firsthand was truly inspiring. His passion, dedication, and meticulous attention to detail, combined with the outstanding team he's built, made it one of the most enriching experiences of my career. Ed’s commitment to empowering young people to develop and achieve their goals is truly remarkable. Working with him has been an honor—a true embodiment of what it means to be a Changemaker!
Last question for Ed - do you think you are born with entrepreneurial tendencies and skills, or can this be learnt?
I believe many of the skills required for entrepreneurship can be learned over time. I’ve seen this firsthand with people who, early in their careers, had neither the interest nor the skills to start a business. Yet, as they developed those skills, they became passionate about turning their own ideas into a commercial reality. Many of them have gone on to build wildly successful businesses.
There are certain personality traits that great entrepreneurs need: resilience, intellectual curiosity, and a willingness and a desire to work incredibly hard. Whether those traits are innate or developed is still up for debate in my mind.
More about Ed Klinger
Ed is the CEO of Flock, a fully digital insurance company for commercial motor fleets. Flock is on a mission to make the world quantifiably safer. With Flock, safer fleets pay less. Hundreds of companies (like Jaguar Land Rover and Virtuo) trust Flock to protect their vehicles and drivers, with connected insurance that enables and incentivises safer driving. Flock recently completed a $38M Series B fundraise led by Octopus Ventures. Ed graduated from Oxford (M.Eng, Engineering, Economics and Management) where he specialised in High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU). He subsequently graduated from Cambridge University (M.Phil, Technology Policy), where he published papers on the opportunities and risks associated with autonomous vehicles.
