Eric Grunfeld

Background

About Eric Grunfeld

Parents teach their kids to walk before they can run, but for me it was skiing before running. By the age of 5, I was skiing my first double black diamond — a lesson instilled early in my life to challenge myself and take risks. Fast forward to graduating college, I ventured off the trail map and founded an InsurTech start-up to tackle the reported 1.7 Million car collisions caused by distracted driving each year. There’s nothing more fulfilling than providing people my age the one opportunity that matters more than anything else…a chance to live. During this time I was learning to rapidly adapt and manage risks to any changes in the landscape, just as a successful product manager or skier would. Despite falling and facing uncertainty about what trail obstacles lie ahead, I stayed true to the vision, strategic roadmap, and even emerged as a guide to help others navigate where we’re going. The journey led to a product and mountain view that empowered the team and generated a projected $615M in total insurance industry value. The startup journey also brought me to be on the National auto product management team at Travelers Insurance, a team that’s generating $8B in revenue. This scale enables me to have significant marketplace impact when building cross functional strategies for product modernization, product optimization, and enhanced vehicle segmentation. When I’m not working, you can find me on the mountains (in the winter obviously) and maybe jumping out of a helicopter with skis (I did it once in Alaska). If you’re an avid skier or want to talk about product, let’s connect.