Richard Joffe built and sold two successful tech companies in the US. He is now building well-backed Honey Insurance from Sydney and says some things are far less difficult here.
When I meet Sydney-based Silicon Valley import Richard Joffe in the sunshine at modern Greek restaurant Ploós, I’m immediately taken by his coat, which makes him look like a World War II fly boy., but is it Matthew Modine he looks like? Eric Stoltz? Harry Connick jnr? Maybe it’s all of them rolled into one.
He is a Canadian whose family moved there from South Africa, before he relocated to the US, then came to Australia in 2019. “I went through a divorce, is the real reason I came,” Joffe, 44, says. “I married a Sydney girl I’d met in New York. I had this business that was taking off in San Francisco [Stella] and two little kids, one in diapers, and things just fell apart.
It quickly becomes apparent that he occupies an excellent vantage point for assessing the local tech scene, as itHe has strong views on how things should work, and is now part of the local network while also retaining the perspective of an outsider who invited himself to the party. I go for lamb shank boureki to start, followed by rump souvlaki. Joffe classes himself as an “aspiring vegetarian” and orders grilled halloumi with fennel, lemon and isot pepper, followed by pan-roasted gold band snapper. We order sides of potatoes and Aegean green salad to share.
“It automatically adjusts the temperature in your bed to your perfect body temperature. It even wakes you up with vibrations instead of an alarm clock. It’s brilliant,” he says. Agog at how disinterested the incumbent insurers seemed to be in engaging with their customers, or offering better deals, he decided to apply a tech solution.
“I have definitely never been willing to put the fear of rejection or my own feelings before success,” he says. “I have a very high tolerance for suffering, and I think that you have to just put yourself out there.” As we tackle the remainder of our main course, we segue into a chat about our shared experience of living and working in a different country to where we grew up.
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