It's summertime - and it's time for Lemonade.
The insurance industry disruptor is aiming to take relationships out of insurance agents' hands and automate and optimize a process that has long been bound by paperwork and tricky contracts - and now, Lemonade ($PRIVATE:LEMONADE) is charting out its path to an initial public offering.
It's especially important for one of Lemonade's backers, Softbank, to earn some solid returns, after IPOs either flopped, like Uber, or stalled, like WeWork, and turned some of the Japanese investment firm's startup bets into last-second losers.
Fortunately, there's some good news to be found in Lemonade's Apple Store Ratings Count - or, how many people choose to provide feedback on the quality of the app when prompted by their smartphone. Notably, in April, ratings not just continued to grow (at top-far-right), they also began to increase at a new trajectory, as more people were forced to operate online.
However, its rating, which remains exceptional (over 4.9) has begun to dip in recent weeks.
Lemonade's LinkedIn data also reflects that it's continuing to grow, at a time when there are plenty of tech companies that made IPO debuts and then had to pull back on hiring thanks to the pandemic. For Lemonade, headcount has risen more than 30% already in 2020.
Now, an insurer isn't exactly going to earn Uber-level chatter on social media - and that's what our Facebook Talking About Count chart for Lemonade, above, reflects. But - unlike so many businesses that saw social chatter choked off during the pandemic - Lemonade's modest engagement kept chugging along, and, has been ticking up lately.
That's not enough to make up for the fact that the company isn't profitable, however. But there are plenty of software companies, with recent IPOs at their backs, and investors eager enough to be betting on a streamlined, efficient winner, that the market can stomach losses - at least for a little while. Lemonade is going to have to do more to take a bite out of legacy players' businesses, once it makes its big market debut, in order to keep its next batch of backers' thirsts quenched.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales, and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue, and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
