Startup Spotlight #139: Fleri

Fleri enables immigrants to compare and buy health insurance for their loved ones back home.

Jul 14, 2021

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I got the chance to speak with Sam Baddoo, founder and CEO of Fleri, about what he’s working on at his startup, and any advice he has for emerging entrepreneurs.

Fleri founder and CEO, Baddoo grew up in Accra, Ghana and after a relatively adventure-filled childhood, left for Morocco at age 18 to study on a United Nations scholarship. His experiences living and working there will come to shape his views on Pan-Africanism, immigration, and entrepreneurship.

A serial entrepreneur who will later find himself as an immigrant in the United States, those past experiences—seeing first-hand the challenges that face many immigrants who leave their home countries for a chance at a better life for themselves and their loved ones back home—will be the very same challenges he will end up addressing.

A reservist in the United States Army and previously a co-founder at [re]start, an Ohio-based startup, Sam Baddoo recently founded Fleri, a directed remittance empowering immigrants who need a way to provide quality healthcare for dependent family members in Africa.

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Startup Spotlight: Fleri

Problem: For decades, the default option for immigrants who wish to support family and loved ones back home has been the almighty money transfer, with long queues and all sorts of hidden fees. Fleri focuses on the reasons for which immigrants might need to send money back home and enables them to directly provide them starting with healthcare.

Market: Every year, African immigrants send around 48 billion dollars in remittances back to the continent, with about a quarter of this earmarked for healthcare-related expenses and emergencies. The opportunity to meet these needs in a much more efficient way beyond simply transferring money has long been left unaddressed.

Solution: For the 32 million Africans living in the diaspora, Fleri's platform currently enables them directly provide their loved ones back home with access to quality healthcare through dedicated healthcare plans with options to provide traditional health insurance, in-home care, or prescription fulfillment. Fleri is quietly building the financial infrastructure to enable globally migrant families to seamlessly support their loved ones both abroad and back home.

Team: A globally distributed team made up of some of the sharpest minds around the world, which includes Caleb Wells-Funk, Damilola Oyeyipo, and Abena Addai Boadi.

Recent Success:

Baddoo: While there is no shortage of challenges building a new category business from scratch, there are some things that we have done relatively well as a company.

The one I'm most proud of is making collaboration a central piece of our approach to solving the market problems we are going after. As you know, we run a cross-border business which requires us to have oversight into our operations in several countries - something we couldn't possibly do as a four-member team. However, we've partnered with and leveraged the expertise of several other partners to ensure that the beneficiaries we care about enjoy smooth access to care no matter what. We continue to work with our underwriting partners, brokers, and providers to provide a seamless value chain when viewed from the outside.

Recent Struggle:

Baddoo: Nobody tells you how hard building a team of aligned individuals until you experience it first hand. A lot of people would love the opportunity to join a startup early but not a lot of people have an appreciation for what the sacrifice involved in making that decision really entails. Over the last six months, we've struggled and stumbled bringing on a core team of mission-aligned people, which for a solo-founder is even more important than anything else you will do.

I've had to learn to trust my gut, but also to lean on the experience of advisors and peer mentors who have done their fair share of hiring and letting go of people. To me, this is a struggle that will never go away completely but gets easier to manage as more of the right people occupy leadership roles within Fleri.

Founder Advice:

Baddoo: My one piece of advice has remained the same over the last few years - trust yourself to get the job done. It's easy to look to others for validation and approval, but the road to entrepreneurship is unforgivingly lonely and you'll have to trust yourself and your focus on the mission to get through those tough days.

We will all have bad days and even sad, depressing days. It's important that you prepare your mind and have a network of people you can truly lean on to help you through.

Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:

Baddoo: Here are three founders you should check out next!

Akintola Adesanmi, Co-Founder of Spleet: Spleet is a subscription-based, living solution that provides access to Shared/entire living spaces with flexible payment options.
Marvin H. Coleby, Founder of Raise: Raise simplifies the fundraising process for founders and their investors.
Kay Akinwunmi, Founder of Zazuu: Zazuu is a money transfer comparison platform for Africa.

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