From startup to public scale: doubling our member base in two years

• Scaling for the Public Sector without losing simplicity
• Making coverage flexible without creating chaos
• Designing beyond digital-first
• Turning institutional billing into a seamless experience
• Making product quality everyone’s job
• What two years of public scale taught us

Alan started 10 years ago in an industry dominated by incumbents, where the health insurance experience was opaque and slow. After securing the first new health insurance license granted in France in over 30 years, our growth was mostly fueled by startup customers that wanted to invest in forward-thinking products that are simple, transparent, and member-first.

But the Public Sector was always the real stress test and a new engine for growth. Over the past two years, we won several large public deals in France and Belgium, growing our user base by almost 2X in two years.

This market awards deals through an involved process where RFPs are scored on various factors, alongside pricing. These deals demand that products work for a more diverse population: they need to serve digital-native employees in their 20s as well as legacy users in their 60s. With the added complexity of institutional billing rules, “simple by default” stops being so simple.

Each deal forced us to make trade-offs every B2B scale-up eventually faces: how do you absorb operational complexity without it bleeding into the user experience? How do you add features without creating bloat? Here’s how we approached that as a team of designers, product managers, and engineers.

Public Sector employers often fund mid-tier coverage. But given their large and diverse populations, upgrades are essential in the offer we give to their members. Optionality in insurance, however, creates risk. Anti-selection - when people upgrade only when they expect high expenses- can destabilize pricing models.

We had to implement more complex eligibility rules while keeping the experience simple and transparent. This pushed us to redesign how we present coverage. Instead of only showing a coverage table, members can now see a pricing overview for their entire family, including future changes.

What started as a compliance requirement became the foundation for more flexible customization across our product.

Public sector populations are more diverse in terms of comfort with technology, given the range of ages and demographics. A chat-only, fully digital model wasn’t enough.

We resisted the temptation to duplicate every process on paper. Instead, we identified where offline support mattered most: onboarding, managing claims, and accessing customer support.

We introduced physical welcome packs for members who would benefit from them. We scaled a phone hotline and added callback options for time-sensitive or complex cases. We also organized in-person sessions across the country to answer member questions and collect feedback.

Everyone at Alan participated in these on-site sessions- whether they work in product, operations, or customer service. That direct contact gave us valuable insights into how new members use our app. It’s easy to optimize flows behind a screen. It’s different when you sit across from someone who’s new and confused and just wants to get their family insured.

Offline support has sharpened our product design approach.

Public Sector pricing models are rarely simple. Contributions can depend on salary bands, age brackets, family composition, social funds, and employer participation.

While that complexity affected our architecture, the real risk was on the front end: confusing members with too many pricing details. Instead of exposing the underlying rules, we built a unified pricing layer across all touchpoints. Members see one clear breakdown, regardless of the calculation logic behind it. We also introduced a simulator that provides a precise estimate of total costs before enrollment. Employers see a slightly different but parallel view on their admin dashboard.

Payment flows were another shift. In the private sector, employers often deduct family premiums directly from payroll. Many public institutions require civil servants to pay directly for additional coverage and family members.

Rather than patching local solutions, we built a global payment component. It collects payment methods seamlessly and is now being rolled out company-wide. It lays the groundwork for features like multiple subscriptions, payment delays, and support for digital payment solutions.

Winning large public contracts changed our scale overnight. We began onboarding hundreds of thousands of members across multiple institutions simultaneously.

The strain was immediate: performance, usability, visual consistency, and copy were all tested.

One early shortcoming was organizational. Requirements were delivered by separate teams, which didn’t always translate into the single journey members experience. Imagine five teams contributing to a single onboarding flow while it still has to feel cohesive.

So we changed how we build and test. Across the product organization, we introduced clear end-to-end ownership for each major user journey. We began scoring critical journeys over time. We made bug reporting radically simpler, including in-app “shake to report” functionality. We built better infrastructure for creating test accounts to simulate every combination of member status, salary band, and family setup.

In this challenge to build for scale, product quality became a transversal topic led by design and protected by all teams. Today, teams own the whole journey, not just a feature slice.

The result? measurable drop in bugs between our first launch in 2024 and today.

In two years, we went live with major civil servant institutions, including 22 local government organizations in Belgium, the French Ministry of Ecology, the French Ministry of Finance, the French Ministry of Aviation, the French Court of Auditors, and the Prime Minister’s Office. These contracts nearly doubled our member base.

Each deal increased product complexity under the hood. They forced us to mature faster- with better ownership, stronger infrastructure, tighter quality standards, and more inclusive design. Our core principles didn’t change. Health insurance should feel simple, transparent, and supportive in the life moments that matter.