Scouting For Growth: Recent Episodes
Sabine VdL
There are 76,000 FinTech ventures out there. 70% of this business are seeking investment from top investors or commercial collaboration opportunities with corporations. We would like to demystify corporate venturing (CVC) for the masses and give young ventures the tools and techniques to grow their business by understanding how corporate investors think and how unicorns are built.
Bárbara Fernández: Human-Agent Collaboration, Agentic AI, and the Rise of the Human Boss
The future of work will not be won by humans who move faster. It will be shaped by humans who know how to orchestrate intelligence.
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden sits down with Bárbara Fernández, Deputy Director of MAPFRE Open Innovation and Head of insur_space, to explore one of the defining leadership questions of the agentic AI era: what happens when humans stop doing every task and start directing systems of intelligence instead?
As AI assistants evolve into autonomous collaborators, work is no longer simply about increasing productivity. It is about preserving judgment, accountability, and human agency while learning how to collaborate with increasingly capable machines.
Together, Sabine and Bárbara examine where the line sits between augmentation and abdication, why convenience can quietly erode critical thinking, and how organizations must rethink trust, behavioral design and customer interaction as AI becomes embedded into everyday decision-making. They also explore what insurance looks like when protection becomes predictive, contextual, and continuously present.
This conversation is essential listening for insurers, transformation leaders, AI strategists and executives preparing their organizations for the next era of human-agent collaboration.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
One of the most important lessons from this conversation is that the future of work is not about competing with AI but learning how to direct it responsibly. As intelligent agents become increasingly capable of reasoning, coordinating, and executing tasks, our value shifts from producing outputs ourselves to asking better questions, challenging assumptions, and exercising sound judgment. Critical thinking is becoming one of the most valuable leadership capabilities we can develop.
Bárbara also reminded me that the greatest risk is not artificial intelligence itself but our willingness to stop questioning it. Humans naturally gravitate towards convenience, and AI makes it remarkably easy to accept recommendations without scrutiny. If we allow productivity to replace thoughtful decision-making, we risk automating poor judgment rather than improving it. Human oversight must remain an active discipline, not a passive checkpoint.
Our discussion also highlighted how customer interaction will fundamentally change as AI agents begin acting on behalf of individuals. Behavioral science, user experience, and trust must evolve beyond designing for human interfaces alone. Organizations will increasingly need to design services that are understandable to both humans and intelligent agents while maintaining transparency and accountability throughout every interaction.
Ultimately, this conversation reinforced that technology will not replace what makes us uniquely human. As intelligence becomes abundant and inexpensive, empathy, emotional understanding, curiosity, and ethical judgment become even more valuable. The leaders who thrive will be those who know when to rely on AI—and when human presence is irreplaceable.
BEST MOMENTS
"We need to really stop and think and evaluate what the machine is saying to us." – Bárbara Fernández
"We need to train critical thinking." – Bárbara Fernández
"If something is making your day easier—I don't know if it's better—but at least easier, you will adopt that." – Bárbara Fernández
"The danger is not bad AI. The danger is passive humans." – Sabine VanderLinden
"We need to open our minds, be curious and play with it." – Bárbara Fernández
"You need to keep learning... because if you don't understand what's behind it, you can't challenge assumptions." – Bárbara Fernández
"You cannot design trust. You have to demonstrate it." – Bárbara Fernández
"Trust is something very fragile. It takes a lot of time to build and one second to lose." – Bárbara Fernández
"If we are predictive, we act before. It means insurance becomes a prevention service." – Bárbara Fernández
"When intelligence becomes abundant, presence becomes premium." – Sabine VanderLinden
"We really need to find the proper questions and ask difficult questions." – Bárbara Fernández
"Machines can simulate emotions, but they don't have feelings—and that's something uniquely human." – Bárbara Fernández
ABOUT THE GUEST
Bárbara Fernández is Deputy Director of MAPFRE Open Innovation and Head of insur_space, MAPFRE’s insurtech accelerator. She works at the intersection of strategy, innovation, behavioral science, and emerging technology, helping MAPFRE explore how new interaction models, AI assistants, and intelligent agents will reshape business, customer experience, and organizational design.
Her work focuses on how companies adapt to structural shifts in artificial intelligence, human-machine collaboration, decision-making systems, and the future of interaction. Through strategic foresight and behavioral science, Bárbara helps leaders understand not only how technology evolves, but how humans adopt, trust, challenge, and collaborate with it.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
Carlos Falcón: Rebuilding the Insurance Core for AI, Venture Scouting and the Frontier Firm
Insurance does not have an innovation shortage. It has an absorption problem.
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden sits down with Carlos Cendra Falcón, Scouting and Investment Lead at MAPFRE Open Innovation, to explore one of the most pressing questions facing insurers today: can the core of the institution actually absorb the intelligence, ventures, platforms and partnerships being scouted around the world?
Carlos brings a pragmatic perspective from inside one of the world's leading insurance groups. Having helped evaluate more than 2,500 startups and accelerate around forty into enterprise integration, he understands that innovation is not about finding exciting technology—it's about identifying capabilities that solve meaningful business problems and can be embedded into a complex global insurer.
As AI reshapes discovery, distribution, underwriting, and customer interaction, insurers face a deeper transformation than digitalization alone can provide. Hybrid distribution models, machine-to-machine commerce, embedded insurance, and intelligent agents are changing how insurance is bought, sold, and delivered. Success will depend less on adding new technologies and more on rebuilding the organizational foundations that allow innovation to scale.
This conversation is essential listening for CEOs, COOs, Chief Innovation Officers, venture leaders, product executives and insurance decision-makers navigating the shift from digital experimentation to AI-enabled enterprise transformation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Innovation is no longer the constraint facing insurance. The real challenge is whether our organizations are capable of absorbing innovation in a way that creates lasting value. Carlos reminded me that partnerships alone cannot transform an insurer if the underlying organization lacks the architecture, governance, and operating model needed to integrate them. Before looking outward for the next breakthrough, leaders need to strengthen the institutional core that will allow innovation to scale.
I was particularly struck by Carlos' reframing of venture scouting. Rather than acting as a matchmaking exercise between startups and business units, scouting should become a strategic intelligence capability. Its purpose is to detect meaningful market signals, understand emerging technologies, and identify solutions that directly address strategic priorities. The question is never whether a startup is impressive; it is whether it is genuinely useful to the institution and capable of improving the business in measurable ways.
Our discussion also reinforced how AI is fundamentally changing the insurance value chain. As customers increasingly rely on AI assistants and autonomous agents to search for, compare, and purchase products, insurers must prepare for a world in which machines—not people—interact with their systems. Discoverability, machine-readable products, and seamless digital connectivity will become as important as customer experience itself.
Ultimately, Carlos challenged us to think beyond digitization. The frontier insurer will not simply modernize existing processes—it will redesign itself around risk intelligence, ecosystem collaboration and adaptive execution, while remaining anchored to insurance's enduring purpose: helping people navigate the risks that shape their lives.
BEST MOMENTS
"You cannot partner your way out of a weak core." – Sabine VanderLinden (00:01:10)
"Some initiatives are truly transformational, and some are simply a consequence of FOMO. You want to stay close to what's happening without necessarily bringing it into the business." – Carlos Cendra Falcón (00:03:32)
"Sometimes the best-in-class solution isn't the best fit for your organization." – Carlos Cendra Falcón (00:15:23)
"Scouting is not provider matchmaking. It's a strategic approach to solving business problems." – Carlos Cendra Falcón (00:17:08)
"You need to tackle one of the lines in your P&L or your balance sheet. Otherwise, you're just there to look nice in the picture." – Carlos Cendra Falcón (00:16:28)
"Machines don't care how pretty your website is." – Carlos Cendra Falcón (00:20:50)
"You need to have the information available, well structured, and you need to be able to talk to the machine." – Carlos Cendra Falcón (00:21:00)
"The question is never whether a startup is interesting. It is whether it is institutionally useful." – Sabine VanderLinden (00:24:42)
"We are here to help people navigate the risks they're facing in their lives, with their property, their health and their way of life." – Carlos Cendra Falcón (00:22:18)
"First understand what an insurance company should look like in 2035, then design the roadmap that gets you there." – Carlos Cendra Falcón (00:23:32)
ABOUT THE GUEST
Carlos Cendra Falcón is Scouting and Investment Lead at MAPFRE Open Innovation, where he works at the intersection of insurance transformation, venture ecosystems, and corporate strategy. His role focuses on identifying the startups, technologies, and ecosystem partners that can help MAPFRE respond to new risks, new business models, operational challenges, and changing customer behaviors.
Carlos’s work is grounded in the practical realities of transforming a large, global insurer. He focuses on detecting early signals across AI, embedded insurance, human–machine interaction, real-time risk intelligence, and preventative insurance, translating market signals into strategic partnerships and investment opportunities that help incumbents move beyond experimentation.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
Reggie Townsend: Making Responsible AI Irresistible
Responsible AI has a design problem. Too often, it is treated as a compliance exercise, a policy document, or a late-stage control, when it should be the operating system that enables organizations to innovate with confidence.
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden welcomes back Reggie Townsend, Vice President of AI Ethics, Governance and Social Impact at SAS, to explore one compelling idea: making responsible AI irresistible. Drawing on decades of experience helping enterprises embed trustworthy AI into their operations, Reggie explains why governance must evolve from abstract principles to practical systems people actually use.
As organizations race to deploy generative and agentic AI, the conversation has shifted. Responsible AI is no longer just about avoiding harm—it is about creating the conditions for innovation, resilience, and long-term competitive advantage. Boards are asking tougher questions. Regulators are raising expectations. Employees increasingly need guidance they can apply in real-world decisions, not just policies they acknowledge once a year.
This conversation is essential listening for CEOs, board directors, Chief Risk Officers, compliance leaders, AI product teams, and founders navigating the transition from responsible AI intentions to responsible AI execution.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
One of the biggest insights I took from this conversation is that responsible AI is fundamentally a design challenge. We have spent years writing principles and policies, yet many organizations still struggle to translate those aspirations into everyday decisions. Reggie reminded me that if governance feels complicated, disconnected, or burdensome, people will naturally work around it. Our challenge as leaders is to make responsible behavior the easiest path rather than the hardest one.
I was also struck by how governance is becoming inseparable from business strategy. As generative and agentic AI systems begin making increasingly autonomous decisions, governance can no longer be treated as a legal or compliance function operating at the edge of the organization. It has to become part of product design, procurement, operations, and executive decision-making. Trust is no longer something we communicate after deployment; it is something we engineer from the beginning.
Another important theme was the preservation of human agency. While AI can dramatically enhance productivity and decision-making, Reggie reminds us that organizations must remain intentional about where humans stay accountable. The future is unlikely to be defined by replacing people with AI, but by designing systems where humans and intelligent machines complement one another in transparent and meaningful ways.
However, perhaps my greatest takeaway is that responsible AI should become a competitive advantage rather than a regulatory obligation. Organizations that embed governance in their innovation will move with greater confidence because customers, regulators, employees, and investors will increasingly reward trust.
Making responsible AI irresistible is ultimately about making good governance so practical, intuitive and valuable that people actively choose to adopt it—and that may prove to be one of the most important leadership capabilities of the next decade.
BEST MOMENTS
"Responsible AI isn't about slowing innovation. It's about creating the confidence to innovate at scale." – Reggie Townsend
"If responsible AI feels like extra work, we've designed it wrong. We have to make it irresistible." – Reggie Townsend
"Governance shouldn't be something you visit once a year. It should be embedded into every decision, every workflow, and every system we build." – Reggie Townsend
"The question isn't whether AI will make decisions. It's whether we've designed those decisions to preserve human agency." – Reggie Townsend
"Trust isn't something you add after deployment. It's something you architect from the very beginning." – Reggie Townsend
"We're moving from governing models to governing systems of intelligence—and that's an entirely different challenge." – Reggie Townsend
"The organizations that thrive won't be the ones that adopt AI the fastest. They'll be the ones that build trust the fastest." – Reggie Townsend
"Responsible AI is no longer just an ethics conversation. It's becoming a leadership conversation, an operational conversation, and ultimately a competitive advantage." – Sabine VanderLinden
"As AI becomes more autonomous, our responsibility as leaders becomes even more intentional." – Sabine VanderLinden
"The future belongs to organizations that can turn responsible AI from a policy into a practice." – Sabine VanderLinden
ABOUT THE GUEST
Reggie Townsend is Vice President of AI Ethics, Governance and Social Impact at SAS, where he leads SAS’ global AI Ethics, Governance and Social Impact organization. His remit includes the company’s Data & AI Ethics Practice, AI & Society initiatives, AI Governance Advisory, Standards, Regulations & Risk Intelligence programs, and Accessible & Adaptive AI efforts. He drives SAS’ work on trustworthy, human-centric innovation across products, policies, and partnerships.
Reggie is recognized as one of the clearest voices in responsible and trustworthy AI. He has served as a member of the White House National AI Advisory Committee, sits on the board of EqualAI, and works at the intersection of responsible innovation, enterprise governance, social impact, and emerging AI regulation. In this conversation, he explores how organizations can turn AI governance from a source of friction into a driver of adoption, accountability, and growth.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
Dale Diamond: When a $25K Claim Becomes a $7M Verdict or More
A small claim is no longer a small claim. It can be the first signal of a verdict that changes everything.
Dale Diamond, J.D., Vice President of Claims at NAMICO, joins Sabine VanderLinden to unpack one of the most urgent realities facing mutual insurers today: nuclear verdicts are not random events. They are often predictable. And if they are predictable, they can be prevented.
With more than 30 years of experience across appellate law, bad-faith defense, complex professional liability claims, underwriting, and claims leadership, Dale brings a rare three-dimensional view of what is changing within US insurance. He has seen the courtroom. He has seen the underwriting file. He has seen the claim review where one missed signal can turn a $25,000 auto liability claim into a $7 million jury verdict.
The uncomfortable truth? The old claims playbook was built for a world that no longer exists.
This conversation is for mutual insurance CEOs, claims leaders, underwriters, reinsurers, and transformation executives navigating social inflation, plaintiff sophistication, AI-enabled litigation, climate volatility, and the new protection gap.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
One of my biggest takeaways from this conversation is that claims are no longer simply an operational function; they have become one of the most important strategic differentiators in insurance. Dale made it clear that the difference between a well-managed claim and a nuclear verdict often comes down to the decisions made in the first few months. Early collaboration, honest assessment, and having the courage to settle the right cases before positions harden can dramatically change outcomes.
I was also fascinated by how artificial intelligence is reshaping both sides of litigation. While insurers are embracing AI to analyze documents, accelerate investigations, and support claims professionals, plaintiff firms are using the same technologies to generate stronger complaints, organize evidence faster, and pursue increasingly sophisticated litigation strategies. AI isn't creating the problem—it is accelerating it for everyone.
Another insight that stayed with me is the importance of trust. Whether we are talking about policyholders, mutual insurers, or regulators, insurance remains a promise business. Technology should never replace empathy or transparency. Instead, it should free experienced claims professionals to focus on judgment, negotiation, and building stronger customer relationships.
Finally, Dale reinforced something I believe will define the future of insurance leadership: the best organizations won't simply automate existing processes. They'll redesign work around people. As routine activities become increasingly automated, the most valuable professionals will be those who combine technical expertise with communication skills, strategic thinking, and emotional intelligence. That combination will become one of the industry's greatest competitive advantages.
BEST MOMENTS
"Insurance wasn't my first career choice… I always thought I'd be much more useful before all the problems happened, to prevent them rather than defend them afterwards." – Dale Diamond
"All the departments have to work together. If one gear breaks, the whole machine stops working." – Dale Diamond
"You don't just want to sell all the business you can—you want to make sure it's profitable business." – Dale Diamond
"Claims today are about much more than processing files. They're about protecting the customer, protecting the insurer, and making strategic decisions early." – Sabine VanderLinden
"The most dangerous cases are the ones with clear liability but disputed damages." – Dale Diamond
"Insurance is selling a promise." – Dale Diamond
"Technology should augment human judgment—not replace it." – Sabine VanderLinden
"As AI takes away the routine work, claims professionals will spend more time making decisions, building relationships and analysing complex situations." – Dale Diamond
ABOUT THE GUEST
Dale Diamond, J.D., is Vice President of Claims at NAMICO, the insurance arm of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies. With more than three decades of experience across appellate law, insurance coverage, bad-faith defense, professional liability, EPLI and D&O underwriting, and complex claims leadership, Dale brings a deeply cross-functional perspective to the challenges facing mutual insurers.
His work focuses on helping NAMIC members navigate nuclear verdicts, social inflation, bad-faith exposure, litigation funding, claims modernization, and the operational realities of defending mutual carriers in a more volatile claims environment. In this conversation, Dale helps decode the new survival playbook for mutual insurers in 2026: earlier intervention, better data, stronger talent, verified property intelligence, and sharper leadership discipline.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
Willem Paling: From Messy Middles to Autonomous Agents and the Race for Trust at Scale
While the insurance sector has long flirted with artificial intelligence, a vast majority of firms find themselves paralyzed in perpetual pilot phases. In this installment of Scouting for Growth, I sit down with Willem Paling, Executive Manager of AI and Analytics at IAG, to decode the transition from mere experimentation to the realization of operational AI at scale.
Reflecting on IAG’s aggressive deployment—launching more models in the past year than in the previous six years combined—Willem highlights that success in insurance will be anchored in trust architecture and governance rather than in model complexity alone. We unpack the friction of deploying in a regulated environment, moving beyond the "messy middle" of claims workflows toward a future of autonomous agents that enhance decision-making while ensuring human accountability remains paramount.
Our dialogue ventures into the frontiers of agentic commerce, machine-readable products, and the looming challenges of AI-driven fraud. As we look toward 2030, the vision of an AI-native insurer emerges, revealing why the winners will be those who weaponize their data foundations and human-AI collaboration today to dominate the industry's next era.
Key Takeaways
What stood out to me most from my conversation with Willem is that the AI race in insurance is no longer about access to models. Frontier models are becoming increasingly available to everyone. The real differentiator is the ability to operationalize AI safely, consistently, and at scale. Trust architecture, governance, monitoring, explainability, and human oversight are becoming strategic assets rather than compliance requirements.
I was particularly struck by Willem’s observation that the industry must stop treating AI as a series of experiments and start treating it as a core operating capability. The organizations creating value today are those that have embedded AI into business workflows, assigned clear ownership, and built repeatable deployment mechanisms that move beyond proof-of-concept thinking.
Another important lesson is that the greatest near-term value lies in the “messy middle” of insurance operations. By automating document-heavy, repetitive, and semi-structured tasks, AI can free highly skilled professionals to focus on judgment, customer relationships, negotiation, and exception handling—the areas where human expertise remains essential.
Our discussion also reinforced how dramatically the distribution of products may change as AI agents increasingly influence product discovery and purchasing decisions. Insurers must prepare for a world in which products must be machine-readable, API-enabled, and easily consumable by AI systems, not just by human buyers.
Finally, Willem highlighted an often-overlooked challenge: AI is not only helping insurers but also empowering bad actors. AI-generated fraud, synthetic identities, deepfakes, and manipulated evidence will require stronger trust mechanisms, verification systems, and provenance controls. The insurers that thrive by 2030 will be those that invest today in trustworthy AI foundations while redesigning their organizations around human-AI collaboration.
Best Moments
“This is what the messy middle actually looks like. Not the hype, not the holdouts—the insurer that stopped experimenting and started shipping.” – Sabine VanderLinden
“We stopped doing experiments, and we focused on delivery.” – Willem Paling
“The frontier is no longer just model capability. It’s whether you can industrialize AI with trust.” – Willem Paling
“Trust architecture isn’t separate from value creation. Trust is what turns AI from an impressive model into something that improves insurance at scale.” – Willem Paling
“We’re talking about expert judgment, decision-making, critical thinking, and empathy.” – Sabine VanderLinden
“The goal is not to preserve every task in the old role. It’s to preserve and elevate the expertise inside the role.” – Willem Paling
“The most underestimated risk is AI on the other side—AI attacking the evidence layer of insurance.” – Willem Paling
“The winning insurer in 2030 will be AI-native in how it operates, not just AI-enabled in a few functions.” – Willem Paling
“The companies who win the agentic frontier aren’t the ones with the biggest models. They are the ones who earn autonomy instead of declaring it.” – Sabine VanderLinden
ABOUT THE GUEST
Willem Paling is the Executive Manager of AI and Analytics at IAG, Insurance Australia Group, Australia’s largest general insurer, operating brands including NRMA Insurance, CGU, WFI, and Swann Insurance. He leads the strategy and industrialization of AI across the organization, including production-grade systems in claims, underwriting, customer service, responsible AI governance, and human-AI teaming.
His work focuses on moving AI from experimentation into trusted execution. Willem has helped shape IAG’s responsible AI commitments, supported the Australian Responsible AI Index, and contributed to the AI 2030 Horizons perspective following the ITC 2025 executive summit. His mission connects frontier capability with the governance, explainability, and operating discipline required to deploy AI safely in an industry built on customer promises.
Read the latest report: The State of AI in Insurance
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
Patrick Van Deven: The Frontier Firm's moat isn't data — it's the layer that governs it.
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden sits down with Patrick Van Deven to unpack one of the biggest hidden blockers to becoming a true AI-native enterprise: legacy data infrastructure.
As organizations rush toward the “Frontier Firm” vision championed by Microsoft — intelligence on tap, human-agent collaboration, and AI-powered workflows — Patrick argues that most regulated industries are still running on fragmented data pipelines built decades ago. Beneath the excitement around agentic AI lies a critical operational reality: data remains horizontally distributed across systems such as SAP, Salesforce, Guidewire, and legacy warehouses, stitched together by opaque code that no one fully understands anymore.
Patrick explains why the future of AI in regulated industries depends less on flashy copilots and more on deterministic, governed, audit-ready data transformation. Drawing from his 35 years in enterprise software and his leadership at Volspeed, he outlines how AI is now reshaping data engineering itself — automating the “plumbing” layer while generating the metadata and lineage AI systems need to operate responsibly.
Together, Sabine and Patrick explore why re-architecting does not require a dangerous core system replacement, how organizations can solve tractable business problems in months rather than years, and why the next generation of enterprise leaders must bridge business expertise and data intelligence. This conversation is a practical roadmap for any executive navigating AI transformation inside complex, regulated environments.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What stood out most to me in this conversation with Patrick was the reality that the “Frontier Firm” conversation is no longer about experimentation. It is about operational readiness. Every organization I speak to wants intelligence on tap, agentic workflows, and AI-enabled productivity, yet many are still constrained by fragmented legacy systems and undocumented data logic buried deep inside their infrastructure. Patrick made it very clear: if we do not solve the data foundation problem, we simply accelerate complexity and risk.
One insight that resonated deeply was the idea that data engineering is entering the same transformation that software engineering experienced with generative AI. The real opportunity is not just automation, but abstraction — enabling smaller teams to solve historically impossible integration problems while creating governed, machine-readable metadata that AI systems can actually trust and consume responsibly.
I was also struck by Patrick’s perspective on talent. Rather than replacing expertise, AI elevates the importance of subject matter experts who understand the business context behind the data. The future belongs to professionals who can bridge operational understanding with technical fluency and collaborate effectively with AI-enabled systems.
Most importantly, this conversation reinforced that becoming a Frontier Firm does not require ripping out every core system overnight. The no-regret move is to start solving tractable, high-value data problems now — especially those tied to governance, lineage, regulatory reporting, and customer intelligence. Organizations that modernize their deterministic data layer today will be the ones capable of building scalable, trustworthy AI tomorrow.
BEST MOMENTS
“You can bolt all the AI you want on top of that. It will not make you a frontier firm. It will just make your regulatory problems arrive faster.” — Sabine VanderLinden
“AI is coming to data engineering just like it came to software engineering.” — Patrick Van Deven
“The board looks at AI at the end of the value chain of data. But how did that data come to be?” — Patrick Van Deven
“There is no world where a company would run on one system.” — Patrick Van Deven
“Treat the AI agent like an employee. Onboard it, brief it, give it a personality.” — Sabine VanderLinden
“The dragon in the basement has finally reached the boardroom.” — Patrick Van Deven
“No data lineage. No agent bosses. No governed transformation. No intelligence on tap.” — Sabine VanderLinden
“This is a new era for subject matter experts.” — Patrick Van Deven
ABOUT THE GUEST
Patrick Van Deven is the CEO of Vaultspeed and a veteran enterprise software leader with more than 35 years of experience in software engineering, predictive analytics, data infrastructure, and venture investing.
Patrick began his career as a software engineer, building and selling his first commercial application at just 22 years old. He later spent 15 years at SAS Institute, where he helped build data and predictive analytics applications for enterprise environments. He then transitioned into venture capital as an Operating Partner and General Partner at Fortino Capital, investing in software and AI startups across Europe.
In 2025, Patrick stepped back into an operational leadership role as CEO of Vaultspeed, driven by his belief that automating deterministic, governed data transformation is one of the most critical “no-regret moves” organizations can make in the age of AI. Today, Vaultspeed works with major global enterprises, including organizations operating across highly regulated industries such as insurance, banking, and financial services.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
Brad Wetherall: AI Search, Agentic AI, and How Corporations Must Adapt to Digital Discovery
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden is joined by Brad Wetherall, former Director of Operations at Google and current COO of Esquire Digital, to unpack the transformative impact of AI on search engines and digital visibility.
The conversation explores how search is moving beyond traditional search engine optimization (SEO) to an era where AI agents, neural networks, and zero-click searches are redefining how brands are discovered, trusted, and chosen online.
Brad Wetherall outlines the emergence of "agentic AI" and the rise of the "frontier firm," where human expertise and AI collaborate to generate both authority and visibility in this new digital ecosystem. This episode offers actionable strategies for corporations, regulated industries, and innovators aiming to future-proof their digital presence and leverage the next chapter of AI-led search.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The traditional SEO playbook is now outdated. The critical question is no longer “How do I rank number one on Google?” but “What does AI say about my company?”
AI-generated summaries and answer engines sit at the top of results, often preventing users from ever clicking on links. To succeed, businesses—especially in highly regulated industries—must ensure their information is not just human-readable but also machine-readable, authoritative, and genuinely original. Websites should be built with both humans and AI in mind, making content easily digestible for AI agents. Content creation has become an interplay of art and science: AI values unique human perspective, expertise, and experience—simply generating generic, regurgitated answers will not suffice and may even have negative consequences, as Google’s recent algorithm updates penalize unoriginal, AI-generated spam.
Building trust, authority, and relevance is now an ongoing process. It’s essential to invest in structured content, active reputation management, robust Google Business profiles, and credible third-party validation through PR. AI agents are becoming the intermediaries of trust, filtering which brands and content make it into these AI overviews. Organizations must become agent bosses, orchestrating both human and machine intelligence, and focusing on verifiable outcomes, not just website traffic. The early adopters who build their authority and distinct voice now will lead in this new landscape and avoid the scramble of playing catch-up.
BEST MOMENTS
"The question is no longer how do I rank, but rather, what does AI say about my company?" — Sabine VanderLinden
"AI is fundamentally changing the rules of digital discovery. We're seeing a once-in-a-generation shift equivalent to the disruption caused by the Internet itself." — Brad Wetherall
"There is no easy button. There’s no shortcut. It’s not just about buying backlinks anymore—AI search requires a different blueprint." — Brad Wetherall
"AI wants to know who you are. The authoritativeness and trust in your company or as an individual now matter more than ever." — Brad Wetherall
"Clicks were always a flawed metric. Now, what matters is how many customers you get—not just traffic but outcome." — Brad Wetherall
"The companies that do this well—who invest in website optimization, unique content, reputation, and public relations—will win the race. It’s hard work, but it’s how you’ll stand out in an AI-driven world." — Brad Wetherall
ABOUT THE GUEST
Brad Wetherall is the Chief Operating Officer at Esquire Digital and the best-selling author of AI and the Future of Search. He spent over a decade at Google, leading operations and shaping products like Google Business Profile, Google Shopping, Google Wallet, and Google Domains—helping over 100 million businesses to be discovered online.
Now at Esquire Digital, Brad applies his deep expertise to help companies adapt to the ever-evolving landscape of AI-driven search and digital visibility. His work focuses on demystifying the complex world of AI search and equipping organizations with the tools and strategies they need to remain competitive and authoritative as the digital economy transforms.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
The App Era Is Over: Wallet-Native Insurance & the Agentic Frontier — Marc Lampe × Ernesto Suarez Talk Collaboration
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden sits down with Ernesto Suarez and Marc Lampe to explore why the future of insurance is moving beyond apps and into wallet-native, AI-ready experiences.
The conversation begins with a powerful reminder of why customer experience matters: a traveler stranded abroad, unable to prove they had insurance in an emergency. From there, the discussion unpacks the hidden friction embedded across the insurance journey — especially in claims, servicing, and customer engagement. Ernesto shares how Gigasure was designed as a digital-native travel MGA focused on mobile-first engagement, instant gratification, and removing the traditional “handoffs” that frustrate policyholders. Marc explains how Wallet Studio, developed by Miss Moneypenny Technologies after nearly a decade of experimentation, enables insurers to create dynamic wallet-based insurance experiences that sit directly alongside boarding passes, payments, and loyalty cards.
Together, they reveal how the partnership rapidly launched over 50,000 digital wallet cards in just a few months, achieving remarkable customer engagement and demonstrating that insurance can become proactive, contextual, and genuinely useful. The episode also dives into parametric claims, embedded insurance, MGA innovation, AI-enabled customer journeys, and why ecosystem collaboration — not disruption alone — is shaping the next era of InsurTech.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What struck me most in this conversation is how both Ernesto and Marc are solving an issue the industry has talked about for years but rarely fixed: making insurance truly accessible and useful at the exact moment customers need it most. We often talk about “customer experience” in insurance, yet too many journeys still rely on PDFs buried in inboxes, disconnected claims processes, and handoffs between providers. This discussion showed what happens when founders design around real human behavior instead of legacy systems.
I was particularly fascinated by the simplicity and power of wallet-native insurance. Consumers already use wallet technology every day for boarding passes, payments, loyalty cards, and transport tickets. Integrating insurance directly into that ecosystem feels obvious once you see it in action. The results speak volumes: more than 50,000 wallet cards issued within months and exceptionally high customer engagement rates. That tells us customers are ready for insurance experiences that are frictionless, visible, and mobile-first.
Another important insight is how the MGA model is evolving. Ernesto highlighted how modern MGAs are increasingly powered by specialist InsurTech enablers rather than trying to build every capability themselves. The future is less about disruption in isolation and more about intelligent collaboration, integration, and speed to market. This partnership demonstrates how insurers, MGAs, and technology providers can create far more value together than separately.
Finally, I loved the honesty around AI and the “agentic frontier.” Both guests acknowledged that technology alone is not enough. The real challenge is guiding customers through increasingly complex ecosystems in ways that remain trustworthy, intuitive, and human-centered. The winners in this next phase of insurance innovation will be the companies that combine intelligent automation with seamless customer trust.
BEST MOMENTS
“The era of the app, as we have known it, is over.” — Marc Lampe
“88% said they have trouble finding their documents.” — Ernesto Suarez
“Insurance has never been tangible. And I feel like this is a little piece that we can give customers for what they’ve purchased.” — Ernesto Suarez
“The solution is not to build the perfect AI-driven functionality, but to deliver that actually to the customer.” — Marc Lampe
“We’re all very good at selling, but it’s the post-sale service element that I feel is a big lie.” — Ernesto Suarez
“The customer should only have the experience and not struggle.” — Marc Lampe
“We are trying to eat away at the friction.” — Ernesto Suarez
“Customer experience in insurance can actually be good.” — Sabine VanderLinden
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Ernesto Suarez
Ernesto Suarez is the Founder and CEO of Gigasure, a digital-native MGA redefining travel insurance through mobile-first engagement and wallet-native customer experiences. With more than 25 years in the insurance industry, Ernesto previously founded and exited a successful niche insurance venture focused on car hire excess protection. Through Gigasure, he is building a new generation of insurance products designed specifically for millennials and Gen Z consumers, combining embedded services, parametric claims, instant payouts, and app-driven customer servicing.
Marc Lampe
Marc Lampe is the Co-founder of Miss Moneypenny Technologies, the company behind Wallet Studio, a wallet-native platform enabling insurers to create dynamic digital insurance cards and customer engagement experiences. An entrepreneur since the age of 17, Marc has spent more than a decade developing wallet technology solutions across industries before focusing on insurance. Today, Wallet Studio powers wallet-native experiences for more than 20 insurers and MGAs, helping carriers modernize customer engagement, claims interaction, and embedded insurance journeys.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
David Daiches: Inside INSHUR — From Manhattan Uber Rides to Insuring Autonomous Fleets
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden speaks with David Daiches, co-founder and COO of Insure, about building insurance solutions for the on-demand economy. The conversation traces Insure’s origins to a simple yet powerful insight: traditional insurance models were not designed for gig workers like Uber drivers, who operate entirely on their smartphones and cannot afford downtime. David explains how Insure addressed this gap by creating flexible, usage-based insurance embedded directly into platform ecosystems.
They explore the importance of “fluency over features,” emphasizing that successful insurtechs solve real operational problems rather than just showcasing technology. A central theme is that claims, not policies, define the true value of insurance, leading Insure to bring claims in-house to improve customer experience and data insights.
The discussion also looks ahead to emerging challenges, including electric vehicles and autonomous mobility, where insurance must evolve to cover complex ecosystems of software, hardware, and data. Finally, David shares candid lessons on scaling, partnerships, and the growing role of AI, highlighting the need for adaptability, continuous learning, and strong teams in building resilient insurtech businesses.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What stands out most is the importance of starting with the problem, not the technology. David and his team didn’t build Insure by showcasing features; they immersed themselves in the daily realities of gig workers and platform operators. That mindset shaped everything, from product design to partnerships. It reinforces my belief that fluency in a partner’s business model is far more valuable than any standalone innovation.
Another key insight is how insurance must adapt to changing customer behaviors. The on-demand economy is no longer a niche; it supports millions of people. Traditional annual policies simply do not fit this model. By aligning insurance coverage with actual usage, Insure has shown how to close protection gaps while improving affordability and access.
What resonated deeply with me is the idea that claims are the product. Customers only truly experience insurance when something goes wrong. Investing in claims operations, empathy, and responsiveness is therefore not optional; it is the core value proposition.
I was also struck by the operational lessons. Scaling too quickly, hiring without enough rigor, and taking partnerships for granted are common pitfalls. Building a strong, empowered team and maintaining close alignment with partners is essential for long-term success.
Finally, the future of mobility and insurance will require entirely new thinking. Autonomous vehicles, AI, and data-driven ecosystems are reshaping risk. The winners will be those who can navigate this complexity while staying grounded in customer needs.
BEST MOMENTS
“Claims is the product. Everything else just gets us to that point.” – David Daiches
“We didn’t just sell insurance, we solved problems in the platform’s business model.” – David Daiches
“People are not interested in a fancy UI when something goes wrong. They want a product that is there at the moment they need it the most.” – Sabine VanderLinden
“Make yourself easy to do business with.” – David Daiches
“The best insurtech founders aren’t selling insurance, they are removing friction from someone else’s business model.” – Sabine VanderLinden
“If you’re not spending time learning AI now, you risk being left behind.” – David Daiches
ABOUT THE GUEST
David Daiches is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Inshur, a digital-first managing general agent focused on the on-demand economy. With a background in technology and retail, he entered the insurance industry over 15 years ago and identified significant opportunities for digital transformation.
At Inshur, David has led the development of embedded, usage-based insurance solutions for platforms such as Uber, Amazon, and DoorDash. David is particularly focused on innovation in mobility insurance, including the future of autonomous vehicles and AI-driven claims and underwriting.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
Alan Martin: Why Insurers Who Invest in Wellness Win - The Healthcare Innovation Playbook still works
In this episode, Sabine VanderLinden sits down with Alan Martin, founder of Resilient Risk and Health Solutions, to challenge the fundamentals of life and health insurance. The conversation highlights a growing disconnect between insurers, customers, and the health tech ecosystem, and why current “wellness” programs often fail to deliver meaningful outcomes.
Alan argues that most insurance products remain transactional, focused on payouts rather than prevention and long-term resilience. He introduces the concept of “modifiable risk,” emphasizing that many health risks are within individual control and should be actively managed through continuous engagement rather than static underwriting. The discussion explores how insurers can evolve from passive payers to active health partners by embedding personalized, digital care pathways and leveraging ecosystem collaboration.
The episode also tackles systemic issues such as low customer engagement, outdated service delivery models, and the widening protection gap. Alan and Sabine conclude that meaningful transformation requires bold leadership, dynamic pricing models, and a shift toward service-led propositions that genuinely improve health outcomes while creating sustainable economic value for insurers.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What really stood out to me in this conversation is that we are still thinking about insurance in far too narrow a way. We’ve designed products that only show up when something goes wrong, even though the greatest value we can deliver is helping people stay healthy in the first place. If we reposition insurance as a resilience partner rather than just a financial backstop, we unlock a completely different level of relevance for customers, especially younger generations who expect ongoing value, not just a payout.
I’m also struck by how many wellness initiatives miss the mark. Too often, we reward those who are already healthy, while the people who truly need support remain disengaged. If we are serious about impact, we need to design for the harder-to-reach segments and build solutions that genuinely change behavior, not just tick a box.
Another key insight is the importance of rethinking how services are delivered. Traditional models, such as nurse hotlines, are costly and underutilized. Digital, personalized care pathways offer a way to scale engagement while improving outcomes and reducing costs.
Finally, I believe we need to rethink incentives across the entire system. Concepts like dynamic pricing and modifiable risk are not just technical shifts; they fundamentally reshape the relationship between insurer and customer. When combined with stronger ecosystem collaboration, they create a pathway toward a more proactive, impactful, and sustainable insurance model.
BEST MOMENTS
“It is wellness theater dressed up as risk management.”
“The best way of protecting the family is to make sure they don’t pass away.”
“Insurance isn’t just a financial product, it should be a product of resilience.”
“Diagnosis is not the end point, there is always something you can do to improve health.”
“The gap between the insurance we have and the one we need is not a technology problem, it is a courage problem.”
“If you want real impact, you have to design for the people who actually need the support.”
ABOUT THE GUEST
Alan Martin is a Chartered Insurer and the founder of Resilient Risk and Health Solutions, a consultancy that bridges the gap between insurance and the health tech ecosystem. With over 30 years of experience in life and health reinsurance, Alan has held roles spanning underwriting, claims, pricing, and product development.
Throughout his career, he has worked closely with insurers, reinsurers, and health innovators to design solutions that improve health outcomes while delivering sustainable business value. He is particularly known for his work on modifiable risk strategies, helping insurers rethink how they engage with policyholders and manage long-term health risks.
Alan brings a rare combination of deep technical insurance expertise and a strong understanding of healthcare and emerging technologies, positioning him at the forefront of the shift from traditional insurance models toward prevention-led, customer-centric propositions.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
Xavier Lestrade: From Insurance to Personalized Care Pathways
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden explores the transformation of health insurance from a claims-paying model to a care partnership approach with Xavier Lestrade, Managing Director of AXA Health International within AXA Global Healthcare.
The conversation delves into how AXA Global Healthcare is redefining industry standards by transitioning from traditional insurance products to an integrated membership model focused on prevention, personalization, and digital engagement. Together, they discuss the operational, regulatory, and technological complexities of building all-in-one health platforms and the broader mission of combating medical inflation while making quality healthcare accessible globally.
This episode offers an inside look into what it takes for a leading insurer to become indispensable to its members, not just reactive in times of crisis.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The future of health insurance is defined by proactive support rather than reactive compensation. The shift Xavier and I discussed is not merely technological; it’s cultural and strategic, centered on creating integrated, member-centric experiences that anticipate needs.
I learned that true differentiation in this space hinges on our ability to orchestrate seamless journeys by combining wellness, prevention, payments, and claims into a cohesive platform. The greatest challenge, according to Xavier Lestrade, is bridging regulatory regimes across payments, insurance, and healthcare, which demands expertise beyond traditional insurance boundaries. Moving forward, he sees the largest value in member experience and sustainable healthcare access, not just improved retention or cost control.
I was struck by the ambition to leverage AI and ecosystem partnerships, blending human and machine expertise to be not just insurers, but trusted medical concierges for globally mobile members. Ultimately, the discussion reinforced my belief that becoming a care partner is about operational courage, relentless execution, and an unyielding commitment to making health protection truly indispensable, even when no claim is made.
BEST MOMENTS
“What happens when an insurer stops talking about becoming a care partner and actually starts building like one?” — Sabine VanderLinden
“We are kind of the private banking of health insurance. Our members...are expatriates, diplomats, wealthy people, individuals willing to access and navigate the best of healthcare in the world.” — Xavier Lestrade
“Bringing this all-in-one app, building bridges between wellness and prevention, virtual healthcare, and insurance into one app, helping us orchestrate the patient journeys of our members.” — Xavier Lestrade
“The dream we have is to position ourselves in the eyes of our members as their medical concierge…the person they come to when they’ve got questions regarding preventative healthcare.” — Xavier Lestrade
“The most powerful insurance isn’t the policy that pays the claim—it is the partnership that prevents it in the first place.” — Sabine VanderLinden
ABOUT THE GUEST
Xavier Lestrade is the Managing Director of AXA Health International within AXA Global Healthcare. With over 31 years at AXA and extensive international leadership experience, he has been at the forefront of transforming health insurance into a proactive, data-driven, and member-centered service.
Xavier Lestrade leads a global business serving mobile individuals and organizations in 200 countries, focusing on integrating wellness, prevention, and streamlined healthcare journeys to position AXA as a global leader in forward-thinking health solutions.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
From Org Charts to Work Charts: What the MIT Frontier Firm Paper Means for Insurance, Finance & Risk
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden explores a 2026 research paper from MIT CISR on how business models are evolving in the age of agentic AI. Drawing on longitudinal data from nearly 2,400 companies, the research highlights a major shift from traditional digital business models toward AI-driven ones. Sabine explains how earlier models, such as supplier, omnichannel, modular producer, and ecosystem driver, have now evolved into four new archetypes: existing plus, customer proxy, modular creator, and orchestrator.
She emphasizes that most financial institutions and insurers remain stuck in incremental “existing plus” adaptations, while the real competitive advantage lies in becoming orchestrators that dynamically coordinate ecosystems to deliver customer outcomes. Using her “frontier insurer matrix,” Sabine illustrates how firms can move from rigid, process-driven structures to adaptive, AI-enabled ecosystems.
The episode also examines the implications for finance and risk management, highlighting the importance of real-time decision-making, AI governance, and human-AI collaboration. Sabine concludes with five practical imperatives for leaders, stressing that this transformation is not just about adopting AI, but fundamentally rethinking how value is created, delivered, and captured in a rapidly changing landscape.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What stood out to me most from the MIT CISR research is that we are not simply witnessing a technology shift. We are seeing a fundamental redesign of business models. Too many organizations are still treating AI as an incremental improvement when, in reality, the opportunity lies in rethinking how value is created and delivered. Moving from “existing plus” to orchestrator requires a mindset shift as much as a technical one.
I also see a clear gap between where most insurers and financial institutions operate today and where they need to be. Legacy systems, rigid processes, and siloed structures limit their ability to scale and respond dynamically. The firms that will lead are those that embrace modularity, ecosystem thinking, and API-first architectures, allowing AI agents to operate at speed and scale.
Another critical insight is the evolving role of humans. AI can handle routine processes, but trust, empathy, and judgment remain uniquely human strengths. Designing the right human-to-agent ratio for each task will be essential, particularly in high-stakes scenarios.
Finally, governance becomes a design challenge rather than just a control function. Risk leaders must define guardrails upfront, shaping how AI operates rather than reacting to its outputs. This is a shift from oversight to architecture. Ultimately, the organizations that succeed will be those that ask not how to use AI, but what new value they can create for customers because of it.
BEST MOMENTS
“This is not a technology gap, it is a business model gap.”
“Scale your ecosystem or get out, or you will be competed by someone who does.”
“The frontier insurer doesn’t just pay the claim, it prevents the loss and manages the recovery.”
“Risk management has to move upstream from auditor to architect.”
“This is not a technology story, this is a purpose story.”
“The real question is not how do we add AI, but what can we now do that was impossible before?”
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
The Risk Intelligence Gap: How Exposure Data Deficiency Is Reshaping Property Underwriting
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden is joined by Anthony Peake, CEO of Intelligent AI, to dissect the "Risk Intelligence Gap" reshaping the property insurance landscape. We are both dissecting the recent white paper Anthony commissioned during Q1 2026.
With 93% of UK and 90% of US commercial properties insured for the wrong amount, the discussion reveals why the industry’s vast data resources fail to reach underwriters in a form that is both actionable and trustworthy.
Sabine VanderLinden and Anthony Peake delve into their co-authored research, examining the architectural, integration, and trust challenges at the heart of this crisis and exploring how API-first, verifiable risk intelligence is redefining underwriting. The episode is packed with real-world examples and actionable insights into how the property underwriting process must evolve from reactive data chasing to predictive, cognitive risk management.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The scale of the risk intelligence gap in commercial property underwriting today is both alarming and transformative. We’re not suffering from a lack of data; instead, we’re hindered by fragmented architectures, poor integration, and a deep-rooted trust problem that leaves underwriters rating their data confidence at just three to five out of ten at the critical point of decision. This results in billions in unrecognized exposure and inefficient operational drag, with underwriters losing up to 55% of their day to tedious data gathering instead of strategic decision-making.
Our findings underscore that technology alone is not the cure. While AI decision engines and sophisticated catastrophe models abound, their potential is constrained by the quality of the data that feeds them. The true opportunity is to build verified, explainable, and decision-grade risk intelligence, delivered directly into workflows through uniform APIs. The advent of digital twins for properties and real-time data integration equips underwriters with a 360-degree risk view, trimming inefficiencies, mitigating underinsurance, and creating a platform for predictive and preventive underwriting.
Trust and explainability remain essential: underwriters will not act on data they cannot understand or audit—and they shouldn’t have to. Only those insurers who move decisively from asserted to verified data, and from periodic snapshots to continuous monitoring, will achieve sustainable underwriting profit and own the best risk. The time to tackle this structural data problem is now.
BEST MOMENTS
"This is better engines running on worse fuel." — Sabine VanderLinden
"The client pays for being underinsured—until regulators say the insurer must take responsibility." — Anthony Peake
"We can create a model of all the data a risk engineer might manually collect—but do it very quickly and accurately." — Anthony Peake
"People are making not million-dollar decisions, but billion-dollar decisions on thousand-dollar data." — Sabine VanderLinden
"The real question isn't whether data matters. The question is who will move first from asserted data to verified intelligence, from reactive pricing to predictive underwriting." — Sabine VanderLinden
ABOUT THE GUEST
Anthony Peake is CEO of Intelligent AI, a pioneering property risk intelligence platform dedicated to real-time, API-first delivery of structured, verifiable property data for insurers, reinsurers, brokers, and MGAs. With over three decades of experience leading projects at global enterprises such as Apple, GE, BT, and Oracle, Anthony Peake has deep expertise in large-scale data architecture and risk system implementation, including for six of the top ten UK insurers.
Through his leadership and collaboration with institutions such as Lloyd’s Lab, Anthony Peake drives innovation that bridges the gap between raw data and actionable underwriting insights, supporting both the UK and US markets in their transition toward predictive, cognitive insurance infrastructure.
Download The Risk Intelligence Gap white paper.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist-turned-entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
Trust Is the Operating System of the Agentic Enterprise
In this episode, Sabine VanderLinden is joined by Franklin Manchester, Global Insurance Strategic Advisor at SAS, and Steven Abel, Global Technology Partner and Deputy Global Head of AI & Transformation at Oliver Wyman. Together, they unpack the concept of "trust by design" in the context of agentic enterprises and AI adoption.
The conversation pivots from traditional risk frameworks and compliance-based approaches to trust to the urgent need for architectural and cultural transformations in which trust is embedded in every system and decision. They explore why organizations often confuse expanding AI tools with genuine readiness for autonomy, discuss why "human in the loop" is no longer sufficient, and offer perspectives on scaling trust, managing risk, and redefining organizational roles.
The trio debates actionable leadership moves for CEOs and boards, the evolving skills for insurance professionals, and how the frontier firm of the future will distinguish itself through intentional trust-building—not just AI deployment.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Many organizations treat AI trust as a compliance issue, which hinders safe scaling. The fundamental shift involves deploying autonomous decision-makers, making trust-by-design an architectural and leadership mandate.
We, as an industry, over-invest in AI models and technology while under-investing in people and trust. Simply using more models or data doesn't guarantee higher trust, especially without architectures built for transparency and governance. Franklin noted a disconnect where insurers use AI but lack trustworthy systems, surprisingly favoring newer generative AI over established machine learning.
I question the efficacy of "human in the loop" controls in high-stakes industries, while Steven advocates embedded, infrastructure-level trust solutions. Franklin identified processes as primary failure points, particularly when tacit knowledge is overlooked (citing Cigna's mass claim denials).
The discussion explores the need for new AI risk and governance roles, akin to those in past actuarial practice. While human-centricity should drive design, scalability is challenging as organizations move toward agentic systems in which humans supervise, rather than directly control, risking brand integrity if governance fails.
For leaders, I urge you to shift focus from technology hype to foundational trust. Steven prioritizes "under the water" capabilities, such as risk and regulatory expertise. Franklin recommends three people-centric actions: embracing new skills, breaking data silos, and protecting the brand.
The truly future-ready firm embeds trust into every decision system—a practice rooted in culture, governance, and leadership, not just technology. Scaling AI without trust is merely scaling risk; organizations must engineer trust as a core operating principle.
BEST MOMENTS
"Trust isn't what you say, it is what your system does." — Sabine VanderLinden
"The architecture of these models themselves doesn’t lend itself to a high trust environment." — Steven Abel
"We trust generative AI 200% more than machine learning. Which is bonkers to me because machine learning has been around for like 30 years." — Franklin Manchester
“There’s still no more sophisticated sensor than a human being and a more powerful computer than the human brain.” — Franklin Manchester
“Auditability, transparency, and a connection with the human ecosystem and judgment—these things are non-negotiable.” — Steven Abel
"It is clear that the adoption is moving fast, and we need to make sure, within the regulated industry, that we apply trust in everything we do. Otherwise, we are going to shun both customers." — Sabine VanderLinden
ABOUT THE GUEST
Franklin Manchester
Prior to joining SAS, Franklin Manchester served as a Global Insurance Strategic Advisor at SAS Institute, bringing over 20 years of experience in insurance underwriting and analytics. Known for his deep industry insight and passionate advocacy for trustworthy AI, Franklin is currently focused on linking insurance expertise with AI-driven transformation, highlighting the importance of governance, ethical frameworks, and human-centricity in future-ready companies.
Steven Abel
Global Technology Partner at Oliver Wyman and Deputy Global Head of AI and Transformation, Steven Abel leverages his extensive background in tech innovation and large-scale enterprise change. As a self-proclaimed technology enthusiast, he offers critical perspectives on the infrastructural and professional challenges organizations face in responsibly scaling agentic AI with embedded trust, urging leaders to rethink assumptions and prioritize under-the-surface architectural investments.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist-turned-entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
In this riveting solo episode, Sabine VanderLinden confronts what she calls "the capacity gap"—a silent barrier that undermines organizational success in today's complex business landscape. Rather than blaming common culprits like strategy, leadership, or talent, she reframes the issue as a structural mismatch between ambitious goals and the finite resources available to deliver on them.
Drawing from her extensive experience in the insurance sector and referencing compelling case studies from companies like Ping An and Nestlé, Sabine VanderLinden unpacks the math behind the capacity gap and lays out a practical five-step playbook to help leaders bridge it and thrive in the era of AI-driven transformation.
Key Takeaways
Reflecting on the capacity gap, it becomes clear to me that most organizations are not failing due to weak ideas or a lack of vision, but because they are unable to match their strategic ambitions to their actual capacity to implement them. The sheer pace of technological change, combined with heightened expectations around innovation, puts immense pressure on existing operating models, especially in sectors like insurance.
The essential insight I share is that companies will win not by having the grandest vision, but by developing the operational elasticity to close the capacity gap faster than competitors. This requires a rigorous assessment of current delivery abilities, a relentless focus on throughput, leveraging external partners as capacity multipliers, and embedding elasticity into both technology and workforce design.
Most crucially, making capacity a leadership and board-level metric shifts the organization from admiring problems to solving them. As I explore in the episode, frontier firms show us what’s possible when capacity is managed as a dynamic asset rather than a limiting factor. The future belongs to those who can execute, not just strategize.
Best Moments
"What if the single greatest obstacle to your company's future success isn't the competition, a lack of budget, or even the speed of technological change—but a silent thief of momentum that lives in the space between your boardroom's bold vision and your team's daily reality?"
"It is not a people problem. It is a math problem, a fundamental mismatch between the infinite demands of strategic ambition and the finite capacity of your organization to execute."
"The winners will not be the companies with the most visionary strategies. They will be the companies with the smallest capacity gap."
"Frontier firms are not just managing capacity; they are weaponizing it."
"Closing the capacity gap is not about asking your teams to work harder. It is about redesigning the work itself."
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist-turned-entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
In this episode of "Scouting for Growth," Sabine VanderLinden welcomes Florian Graillot, founding partner at Astorya VC, for an in-depth conversation about the evolving landscape of risk management and insurance innovation. The discussion explores how risk management is shifting from static predictions to adaptive strategies designed for tomorrow's uncertainties, emphasizing the rise of the “frontier firm”—organizations that continuously learn, adapt, and act in real time.
Florian Graillot shares insights from his experience investing across insurtech, cyber, climate risk, and financial fraud, highlighting the increasing importance of technology, data, and AI.
Together, Sabine VanderLinden and Florian Graillot discuss the structural advantages Europe may hold in building AI-native, trust-driven business models and the critical role of agent-human collaboration in future risk management. They address the challenges faced by incumbents—including talent acquisition, cost efficiency, and profitable growth—and consider what distinguishes great founders in the era of frontier firms.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
This episode underlines that risk management is no longer about controlling yesterday’s uncertainties but engineering resilience for tomorrow. I was struck by Florian Graillot's argument that insurance leaders must rethink the entire risk value chain—not just the insurance segment—but encompassing prevention, risk assessment, capital efficiency, and claims. Simply layering AI onto legacy workflows isn’t enough; true transformation requires intention, openness to external partnerships, and a clear focus on ROI.
It’s clear to me that embracing AI isn’t “optional practice"—it’s existential. Organizations that experiment vigorously and collaborate with tech-first ventures gain a competitive edge, especially as emerging risks outpace traditional data models. Europe’s more measured regulatory approach, sometimes critiqued as cautious, actually presents an opportunity to build trust-by-design, ensuring AI is explainable and aligned with both ethics and end-customer value.
Ultimately, the essence of any successful frontier firm lies in clarity of vision, a readiness for real change, and a focus on trust between leaders, employees, and customers. As the industry shifts, those who can articulate and measure technology’s value while empowering agent-human teams will undoubtedly shape the future risk landscape.
BEST MOMENTS
"Risk management is no longer about predicting yesterday's risk. It is about designing for tomorrow's uncertainty."
"Either you consider emerging risks as a threat and retreat from the market, or you leverage technology to build resilience. That resilience is the optimistic side of the challenge."
"The perfect founding team is a blend of technology expertise and deep industry knowledge—you need both to create real value in insurance."
"If you expect big figures tomorrow morning, it will not work... But if you are ready to take more time and invest accordingly, innovation can deliver real and very nice results."
"In the end, technology doesn’t remove risk. It actually reveals our choices."
ABOUT THE GUEST
Florian Graillot is the co-founder and founding partner at Astorya VC, one of Europe’s most influential venture capital firms focused on early-stage insurtech, risk, and regulatory technology.
With 15 years of tech investing experience—ten of them specializing in insurtech—Florian Graillot has an unparalleled vantage point on the evolution of the insurance and risk landscape. He is passionate about backing founders who are redefining resilience, tackling climate, cyber, and financial fraud with cutting-edge data and algorithms, and reshaping how risk is owned and governed across enterprises.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist-turned-entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden welcomes industry veteran Karl Grandl, now of Miss Moneypenny Technologies, for a wide-ranging conversation on the real transformation underway in financial services and insurance.
Sabine VanderLinden sets the stage by emphasizing that digitization is no longer enough—true change means re-architecting operating models for velocity, intelligence, and trust at scale. Together, they explore the pitfalls of strategic complacency, the opportunities provided by European regulation, and the immense potential of intelligence layers and wallet technology to redefine how institutions interact with customers.
The discussion moves from strategic leadership to practical use cases—from frictionless onboarding and claims to agentic customer experiences—offering a roadmap for both incumbents and challenger firms looking to thrive in the era of real-time risk and embedded governance.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Reflecting on my conversation with Karl Grandl, what became clear is that transformation in financial services isn’t just about digitizing legacy systems—it’s about fundamentally re-architecting the industry. For decades, institutions like banks and insurers were built for stability, but the pace of change and customer expectation today demands real-time, intelligent, and seamless experiences. Simply layering new digital tools over old processes leads to fragmentation, not progress.
We’re stepping into the era of frontier firms: organizations powered by intelligence, human-agent collaboration, and embedded governance. As Karl emphasized, automation by itself doesn’t mean autonomy or intelligence. Instead, success hinges on evolving operating models and creating trust at scale. Regulatory changes, particularly in Europe—such as the EU AI Act and the introduction of digital identity wallets—are not burdens, but strategic advantages. They force discipline, drive infrastructure modernization, and create opportunities to offer frictionless experiences for 450 million citizens.
Karl’s insight into customer experience “activation layers” resonated deeply. True transformation is about orchestrating intelligent touchpoints so insurance feels invisible and effortless, yet highly trustworthy, especially at moments of service or claim. This approach preserves the value of brokers and advisors, enhancing their roles as strategic risk partners instead of replacing them.
Finally, leadership, not technology, is at the heart of transformation. The ability to articulate a clear vision and quickly demonstrate value is what distinguishes the winners. Real-time governance, compliance by design, and empathetic human engagement are becoming essential to build—and keep—customer trust. The challenge for every executive now is not just to optimize yesterday’s operations but to actively build tomorrow’s intelligence layer. The frontier is being defined now, and it begins with a leadership mindset ready for structural redesign and velocity.
BEST MOMENTS
"Automation is not autonomy, efficiency is not intelligence, and digital channels without orchestration create digital fragmentation."
"European regulation is our unfair advantage. It’s not just about discipline, it’s about infrastructure."
"You have to evolve—from transaction intermediary into a strategic risk advisor, augmented by intelligence that handles routine so you can focus on relationships, empathy, and judgment."
"Governance is about to become the most strategic capability. When compliance agents and financial AI are embedded in every workflow, governance shifts from retrospective reporting to real-time intervention."
"The frontier firm is not defined by how much AI it deploys; it is defined by how intelligently it integrates risk, compliance, capital, and customer experience."
ABOUT THE GUEST
Karl Grandl is often dubbed an “insurance dinosaur,” with over 30 years in the industry spanning Swiss Life, GetSafe, WeFox, and now Miss Moneypenny Technologies. His experience spans product development, distribution, and embedded insurance, as well as scaling tech-driven aggregators across markets.
At Miss Moneypenny, Karl is spearheading the integration of wallet technology and intelligence layers, focusing on frictionless customer interaction and embedding trust and compliance by design.
An advocate for regulation as a strategic advantage and transformation as a leadership imperative, Karl is a sought-after voice for both legacy insurers and challenger MGAs looking to build tomorrow’s intelligence-driven operating models.
Connect with him via LinkedIn or at upcoming events such as InsurTech Week and InsurTech Insights in London.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden sits down with Manish Shah, President and Chief Product Officer at Majesco, to explore the rapidly changing landscape of insurance core systems.
Together, they examine how AI is shifting the industry from being purely a protector to one that also focuses on prevention and dynamic participation. The conversation covers everything from the persistent protection gap and the urgent need for behavioral—not just technological—transformation in insurance to the practical realities and fears surrounding the implementation of agentic AI systems.
Manish Shah shares actionable insights on overcoming internal resistance, building trust with customers, and the importance of leadership courage. Throughout, listeners will gain an insider’s view on how insurance models are transforming and what sets bold, future-ready leaders apart.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
I was delighted to welcome Manish Shah to explore how the insurance industry is being transformed at its core. Our discussion began with the fundamental premise that insurance is built on trust and a promise of protection—yet today, both are being challenged by shifting customer expectations, legacy systems, and the rapid evolution of AI technologies.
Manish emphasized that closing the protection gap is not merely an issue of customer education but primarily a challenge of product and experience design. If customers do not understand or value our offerings, it's a failure of design, not comprehension.
We agreed that the path to genuine transformation must be grounded in a behavioral shift—beyond technology upgrades or business process reengineering. Transformation executives must start by listening deeply to customers, adapting to their evolving needs, and fostering a culture that is not afraid to take bold risks rather than settle for incremental change.
The conversation also delved into how AI, when embedded into the core—not bolted on as an afterthought—can help insurers move from process-led to truly human-centered operations. This enables better capacity, more personalized experiences, and the ability to anticipate rather than react to customers’ needs.
Crucially, Manish Shah articulated the importance of trust, transparency, and auditability in the AI era: true trust is built through consistent, clear, empathetic engagement, supported by AI that augments—not replaces—human judgment. The insurers that will thrive in the next 3-5 years are those who are brave enough to rethink their business models, leverage intelligent, agentic cores, and prioritize behavioral change.
The future belongs to those willing to become active partners in their customers' lives, focused on prevention, participation, and peace of mind.
BEST MOMENTS
“If our customers don’t understand or see the value in the product, then it is a design problem. It’s not really a customer problem or an education problem.
“Trust is built in small moments, not in any marketing material or strategic deck.”
“If we can actually execute well as an industry, insurance should feel more like a proactive safety net than a just reactive payment mechanism.”
“The brave ones… are those who are willing to rethink their business model and not just the tech stack.”
ABOUT THE GUEST
Manish Shah is the President and Chief Product Officer at Majesco, a leader at the intersection of technology, product strategy, and insurance industry expertise.
With over 30 years in the insurance sector, Manish Shah has been both a witness and a driver of major transformation, from the analog days of the industry to today’s AI-driven innovation. He is particularly passionate about embedding intelligence into the foundation of insurance operations—not just talking about AI, but delivering it as an engine of change.
At Majesco, Manish Shah oversees strategy for their cloud-native, intelligent core platform, with a special focus on agentic workflows, operational effectiveness, and preparing insurers for future challenges and opportunities in P&C, Life, Health, and Benefits.
If you want to connect with Manish Shah, he encourages open dialogue and learning across the industry.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden welcomes Gil Arazi—a serial entrepreneur, executive, and leading insurtech investor—to explore the urgent transformation taking place in insurance. Gil Arazi argues that the industry’s traditional role of simply paying claims post-loss is outdated and that prevention is the new north star for sustainable growth.
Their conversation dives into why insurance must shift from risk transfer to risk mitigation, what the future holds as data, AI, and even quantum computing disrupt business models, and how prevention can actually drive profit—not just avoid cost. Gil Arazi introduces The Spark, a not-for-profit initiative designed to help insurers decrease systemic risk and increase societal resilience through practical collaboration, not empty innovation theater.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Reflecting on my conversation with Gil Arazi, several themes truly stood out, affirming both the urgency and opportunity for true transformation across insurance.
First, it’s clear that insurance cannot remain content with its legacy of paying claims post-loss. We are entering an era where prevention, not just remediation, is imperative—technological advancements, from AI to quantum computing, now offer insurers the tools to anticipate and prevent systemic risks, fundamentally altering their value to customers and society. The model must evolve from chasing losses to proactively reducing risk, and this shift is not just about cost efficiency, but empowering profitable growth through enhanced customer retention and relevance.
In building The Spark as a nonprofit prevention lab, Gil Arazi emphasized a collective responsibility: by leveraging data, domain expertise, and increasingly mature technology, we—insurers, partners, and innovators—can bridge the protection gap and act as genuine “protection architects.” This vision requires us to move beyond innovation theater and toward real operational enablement, where execution trumps experimentation.
The challenge, however, is not just technological—it is cultural and emotional. Building trust across competitors demands we fall in love with solving the problem, not just owning the solution. Clear boundaries and shared vulnerabilities create the foundation for meaningful collaboration on the risks no single entity can control alone.
BEST MOMENTS
“The insurance industry needs to move from reacting to the claim ... to proactive prevention of this damage or systemic risk.”
“The only way insurance can be actually successful and sustainably profitable is by being biased.”
“Technology will predict risk, but humans will decide what to do with it. Algorithms are very good at probability, but they're terrible at responsibility.”
“Do something good for humanity and for yourself. If you can't measure your impact by the loss that never happened, you're just optimizing the decline.”
“The real revolution isn’t technological anymore. It is emotional, it is behavioral, and it is strategic.”
ABOUT THE GUEST
Gil Arazi is recognized as an insurance industry disruptor and visionary. He’s the founder and managing partner of Fintlv Venture Capital—a top insurtech VC fund with close to $1 billion invested globally—and the founder of The Spark, a purpose-driven, not-for-profit global prevention lab.
With a career spanning nearly 30 years, including executive leadership, board roles, and serial entrepreneurship in insurance, Gil Arazi has first-hand insight into the industry’s pain points and future opportunities. His work focuses on shifting insurance from loss-payout to loss-prevention, leveraging technology and collaboration to build resilience and drive growth.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
In this forward-thinking episode, Sabine VanderLinden returns to kick off the year with a transformative discussion on “frontier firms” and the rise of agentic enterprises.
As digital transformation accelerates, leaders face challenges like increasing climate risks, cyber threats, and widening protection gaps—pushing businesses (especially in regulated industries like insurance) to rethink strategies. Sabine explores how trailblazing organizations are leveraging AI not just as an assistant, but as an autonomous driver of capacity and productivity.
Through practical frameworks and real-world case studies, this episode lays out the playbook for riding the next wave of innovation, resilience, and growth.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
This year on Scouting for Growth, I wanted to regroup and make sure my podcast continues to deliver what matters most to you in the fast-paced transformation market. After a brief pause and reflection, and evaluating the insights from the World Economic Forum, with a clear sense that the world feels increasingly uninsurable—climate risk, cyber threats, and protection gaps are all expanding. But I believe that this narrative of uninsurability is simply a choice, not a certainty.
I see a new class of leaders emerging, those who aren’t just trying to manage risk but who are fundamentally changing how we approach it. Transformation isn’t just happening in isolated labs; it's exploding at the convergence of capital, technology, and strategy—the true frontier of business. This is where agentic enterprises are emerging, blending human leadership with AI agents, forming digital workforces where competitive advantage depends on our agility with data, not just data ownership.
Examples abound: Telstra is scaling AI across thousands of employees, UBS has put AI at the heart of its business via a Chief AI Officer, Mercedes-Benz uses digital twins and multiple agent systems to optimize production, and at Nestlé, AI is transforming everything from farm to fork. These companies aren’t dabbling—they’re fundamentally rethinking their models and leadership.
My message is simple: the agentic frontier is not some distant theory—it’s here and now. The uninsurable world is a choice, and you can choose to lead in this new paradigm. The tools and models exist, and the only question left is who has the courage to execute. As you listen and engage this year, I’ll keep guiding you through these themes—helping you build, not just watch, the future unfold.
BEST MOMENTS
"The uninsurable world is a choice, not a certainty. While some twist their hands over these challenges, a new class of leaders is rewriting the rules of the game."
"A frontier firm in the simplest terms is an organization that is human led but agent operated. This means your people set the vision and define success, while AI agents handle a significant share of the execution, working autonomously with oversight across processes."
"Mastering [these levers] is the difference between watching the future happen and actively building it."
"The market is sending an unequivocal message: the future of financial institutions including insurance, all regulated industry belongs to the agentic enterprise. This is not a distant vision; it is happening right now."
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sangha Penesetti, founder and CEO of goZeal, who didn’t just break the glass ceiling—she installed a flexible skylight.
Today we’ll dive into the economics of equity, why flexible work is not a perk but a performance driver, and how insurers can win by rethinking who gets a seat at the table—and how that table is set.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
In my early career, every client meeting I walked into was a room full of men. I was the only woman of colour. When I became a mother in 2010 I felt first-hang how unforgiving the industry was, there was no real flexibility, no empathy around new mums (though that may have just been the company I worked for then), and certainly no system that was designed for working mums.
During Covid I found my own community: Brilliant, highly educated women, especially Indian and Asian mums, step out of the workforce to raise kids and never return. Not because they lacked ambition, but because the system simply wasn’t build for them. That’s the moment I realised it wasn’t an individual struggle but a systemic design flaw, that’s when goZeal was born.
We talk about empowerment a lot, but what is empowerment? It‘s the financial empowerment, the capacity for women to have the money to spend on whatever they want be that a Gucci bag or feeding their kids. The data is clear: When women (and especially women of colour) advance, companies become more innovative and perform better financially.
BEST MOMENTS
‘My experience taught me that being included isn’t the same as being empowered.’
‘Radical inclusion flips the dynamic. It’s not about representation, it’s about access to meaningful work decision-making authority and economic mobility.’
‘Remote work is not “flexibility.” Flexibility means flexibility of time. I wanted to hire women directly to give them the autonomy of time. Direct impact comes when you are the employer.’
‘True flexibility allows for peak productivity not proximity. When people work at their best insurers benefit from higher quality work, lower burnout, less attrition, stronger retention, all of that good stuff.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Sangha Penesetti is the powerhouse founder and CEO of goZeal, a company rewriting the rules of work by directly hiring skilled women, especially women of colour, for high-impact, flexible roles in insurance and tech. With 18 years of experience in finance and insurance, she’s lived the challenges of being the only woman at the table—and decided to build her own.
Under her leadership, goZeal is more than a talent platform—it’s a movement. One that’s tackling systemic inequity, modernizing legacy operations, and showing insurers that flexible work is not a perk but a strategic edge.
She’s here to talk about the real economics of inclusion, why hybrid isn’t enough, and how insurers can close talent gaps while building a future-ready workforce.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Marinela Profi, Global Market Strategy Lead for AI, GenAI and Agentic AI at SAS, about the rise of agentic AI and how we will move from hype to real, reliable AI.
In today’s episode, we’ll discuss: Why LLMs alone don’t solve business problems – and what does, how governance is becoming the new frontier of AI trust, and what leaders should expect by 2026, as enterprises shift from experiments to autonomous, explainable intelligence.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
A generative AI chatbot is really good and answering questions, generating text, or summarising content. But, it typically stops when it comes to conversation. On the other hand, an AI agent goes beyond that, it can take action, it has goals, memory, reasoning capabilities and can orchestrate multi-set workflows using a combination of not just large-language models but also rules, data and analytics. Generative AI talks, and agentic AI does.
The 5-step lifecycle of an agent is a framework I put together to help me and my customers understand what an agent actually does step-by-step in practice. 1. Perception 2. Cognition 3. Decisioning 4. Action, and 5. Learning.
Governance boards in 2026 will act more like digital oversight committees, they will ensure that agents aren’t just smart, but they are safe, explainable and accountable.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Post action the agent learns from feedback from a human operative. It’s important to monitor the learning loops, you cannot allow the agent to “self-update” in ways that are uncontrolled.’
‘How autonomous should an agent be? 90% of the time it depends on the risk and impact of the task.’
‘Autonomy without accountability is a risk multiplier.’
‘Governance doesn’t stop at deployment, performance must be continuously monitored.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Marinela Profi helps organizations move from AI hype to trusted impact. As Global Market Strategy Lead for AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI at SAS, she works with enterprises in financial services, healthcare, and government to build AI systems that don’t just act fast—but act responsibly.
With an MBA and a Master’s in Statistics and AI, Marinela bridges two worlds: translating complex data science into clear business strategy. Her work focuses on how agentic AI—intelligent systems that perceive, reason, and act autonomously—can deliver governed, explainable decisions instead of black-box predictions.
A frequent keynote speaker at international AI and analytics events, she shares insights on the evolution from generative to agentic AI and the new frontier of AI governance, trust, and human-AI collaboration. Marinela is also an Advisory Board Member for Wake Technical Community College’s Data Science Program, helping shape future-ready curricula that connect classroom learning with real-world AI innovation.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Andrei Craciunescu, founder and CEO of RiskCube, about why the next generation of insurance will be built like software: adaptive, transparent, and embedded into every business platform.
They also discuss how AI and data are transforming the broker's role from middleman to intelligent orchestrator, and what the insurance experience of 2030 could look like when protection becomes invisible and trust becomes the new currency.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What companies want from the insurance market is fast underwriting, not to talk with humans so much anymore, especially startups; they want a quote in minutes, not months. This is how we got into the segment where we offer business insurance for startups – mainly venture-backed startups.
Some providers already offer what we are doing, but there is no comparison. Every founder needs to go to each insurance company separately and ask for a quote, which often varies a lot – sometimes by 40%. They spend a lot of time investigating these quotes, which is expensive and hard to understand. RiskCube is an AI insurance agency for startups where founders can buy and manage insurance online.
We looked at what an agency traditionally does: it has different processes in place, such as insurance applications, renewals, cancellations, and claims. We tried to map out all these processes to see which can be done by AI agents. AI cannot solve the whole insurance value chain, but we see a huge adoption in the claims and applications processes.
Generally, most founders don’t really care which insurance company they’re with; they care that they have somebody who really understands them as a customer. We want startups to come to us because they trust the system, which provides a fast experience that works for them. It’s not very complicated, what we do for them at the beginning, we provide a smooth process where we can say they have high, medium or low risk then evaluate different quotes for them.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Everybody’s pushing on the AI front, but the insurance market is also evaluating if it’s really necessary; it’s not all in, which is impressive.’
‘We build the firm first and then embed the technology inside the firm. This will make us defensible in the future because we will own the data in our agency and use it to train our own model.’
‘People are using a lot of AI nowadays, but nobody really understands where the data is going or hosted.’
‘Insurance companies tend to adapt AI for themselves, not for the whole market. We want to bring them all together in one channel.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Andrei Craciunescu is redefining risk management with RiskCube, an AI-powered platform revolutionising insurance by streamlining risk assessments, accelerating quote processes, and providing real-time insights to help businesses secure coverage faster and smarter.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Rob Schimek, Group CEO at bolttech, about how bolttech’s connector model is redefining global insurance distribution, from telcos to auto makers and beyond.
They also talk about why the future of protection will depend on trust, data and design more than policy documents and premiums, and what leadership really looks like when you are building at the intersection of revelation, innovation, and human impact.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
If you have an hour to solve a problem you should spend 55 minutes on the problem and then 5 minutes on the solution. I’ve spent my career in the problem, the formation of bolttech is the attempt at the solution – it’s the path that I’ve chosen to bring that solution to the marketplace.
Our mission is to work out how to close a multi-billion-dollar protection gap that has existed for years, that’s getting bigger? In order to do that we need to really understand the problem. We think there are 4 basic drivers for this multi-billion-dollar protection gap that and they’re pretty irrefutable.
We’re trying to make a seamless connection between the buyers of protection products (insurers) and the distribution partners who have access to the customers so we can put those solutions into the hands of the customers. bolttech’s here to try to provide tailored, affordable, accessible, and convenience insurance in the hands of the customer on a B2B2C basis, connecting big partners who have lots of customers to the insurance providers.
Without the data there’s a tendency to paint everything with one brush, like it’s all the same. Data is accessible and available on a real-time basis today and it can be available with no intervention, straight from the vehicle telematics about the unique driver.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We really want to connect people with more ways to protect the things that they value, we want to close the global protection gap.’
‘The more we make connections frictionless, the more the connection will happen and the more the protection gap will get closed.’‘
If the mission and the vision are super-well-known then nothing can distract you from solving that problem, regardless of what’s going on in the marketplace around you.’‘
If a customer doesn’t trust the use of AI in their interactions with you then AI won’t be successful in that space because it won’t be accepted in that space. Ultimately it comes back to do we do things the right way and give the customers a reason to trust us?’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Rob Schimek is Group Chief Executive Office at bolttech where he leads the team across its operations globally, overseeing its growth and partnership opportunities.
With more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, Rob previously held senior leadership roles, including Managing Director & Group Chief Operating Officer for FWD Group, President and Chief Executive Officer of AIG’s commercial insurance businesses worldwide, and Chief Executive Officer of the Americas for AIG. Prior to that, he served as President and Chief Executive Officer of EMEA for AIG, and was the Chief Financial Officer of AIG’s global property and casualty insurance business.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to us about all she’s learned from the numerous guests on the show recently, from startup founders who build AI to simplify the chaotic insurance back office, to innovation leaders in Fortune 500 firms wrestling with ethics, regulation, and talent shortages.
After dozens of conversations here’s what Sabine has learned: AI isn’t just changing our tools. It’s changing our temperament.
This episode is her reflection on those lessons; a guide for leaders and builders trying to navigate this new age of intelligence and unpacks five principles that define successful AI adoption.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When Branch Insurance introduced AI into its claims process, something unexpected happened. It wasn’t the customers who resisted, it was the adjusters. They were worried, not because AI made mistakes but because it didn’t.
When Lisa Bechtold’s (who led AI governance at Zurich Insurance, now at Nestlé) team started implementing AI, they faced the classic dilemma: Move fast or move right. Lisa said: “We don’t see governance as slowing innovation – we see it as enabling trust at speed.”
ERGO Group worked with CamCom, a startup from India that uses computer vision to detect car damage from photos or drones. The tech was brilliant. The challenge? Integrating it into a multinational insurer’s process. They didn’t just hand over the product, they sat side by side – engineers, adjusters, compliance officers, even lawyers – to make it work. It took nearly a year to get from pilot to production and the result wasn’t just faster claims; it was a new relationship model. The startup learned how corporates think. The corporate learned how startups move. That’s the real win.
After all the talk about data, systems, ethics, and pilots, what really matters is how humans evolve. AI won’t replace people, but people who know how to use AI will replace people who don’t. That’s not a threat, it’s an invitation. AI is already changing what we expect from talent. Claims adjusters now need to interpret AI outputs. Underwriters must question models. Leaders must learn to manage digital teammates.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Intelligent tool don’t remove human judgment; they reveal it in higher resolution.’
‘In this AI era, trust is the new currency.’‘Every AI dream dies in the shadow of bad data.’‘The irony is that the more intelligent our systems become, the more human our leadership must be. Empathy, creativity, ethics aren’t data points, they’re our differentiators.’
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Stephen Brittain, co-founder of InsurTech Gateway, a pioneering venture builder focused on bringing early-stage startups into the heart of the insurance world – a regulated industry that typically moves at glacial speed.
Over the past decade, Stephen has helped launch and scale ventures inside one of the most regulated, risk-averse business sectors on the planet: the insurance space. He has been the spark for innovation inside large insurance corporates and the strategic partner for founders who wanted to navigate the labyrinth of regulation, procurement and distribution at scale. In other words: he has been solving the archetypal “how to innovate inside a large enterprise” question while keeping the spirit of a startup alive.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
I was a product /service designer, and I found myself – through building bigger and bigger products – coming up against risk, and I saw risk as a constraint. I knew that if I could only understand risk better that I might be able to do bigger and bolder and better projects. That’s how I outgrew product design and moved into insurance.
InsurTech Gateway’s original intention was to find amazing founders and fast-track them into market with enough creative energy to survive, adapt and evolve in an environment where your first idea had to be your fixed idea. Today we give founders greater agility to learn and evolve, because no one ever knows what to do when they first start, it’s a learning journey.
The upside, the enthusiasm, the opportunity framing of entrepreneurialism and venturing gets everybody started, rallies people together. But, an a bad day, the downside view is actually the long-term sustainability of any new category. VCs and insurers have never sat round the table together.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The opportunity was not to make insurance sexy, it was to look at the secret powers of insurance to create mutual models to work at scale, to unlock lending and put trust into ecosystems that didn’t exist before.’
‘One of the biggest challenges in InsurTech is; to get a successful outcome from something that looked great on day 1 but didn’t evolve into the opportunity.’
‘Pattern recognition has never been higher and the cost to entry and experimentation has never been lower. We recognise what works and what doesn’t much better, but can we validate it with an insurer and get them onside? I think we still need to work out the connectivity.’
‘If you can work with innovators, and you understand risk, and you can help unlock that innovation, you can make it sustainable.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Stephen Brittain is the Co-Founder of InsurTech Gateway, the world’s first authorised venture builder and fund focused on insurtech. A true pioneer at the intersection of innovation, investment, and impact, Stephen has spent the past decade turning bold ideas into scalable ventures that redefine how insurance and technology collide.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sebastien Denef, CEO and co-founder at AGENTS.inc, a company at the forefront of building intelligent agent platforms for enterprises.
On this episode we explore how agentic AI architectures are reshaping industries, what it takes to scale agentic AI solutions across siloes, and why the winners in this space will be those who master both the technology and collaboration.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
You can give a task to an AI agent – a piece of software – that autonomously handles the task. When compared to previous layers of automation, we can now increase the autonomy level because of the AI models and the increased amounts of data we have.
It’s underhyped. The impact we can have with today’s technology is very, very big and it will impact all sectors, from education to finding a job, buying a house, buying your groceries, deciding where to go on your weekend where right now we’re only seeing the beginnings of what could happen.
Almost the entire industry is trying to improve ChatGPT, to make it a little bit better, we actually see that this chat function isn’t really needed. What is needed is having a tireless workforce that tirelessly works for you as AI agents – you don’t necessarily want to converse with all of them because there would be too many messages to handle. You need a control interface to steer these new employees.
RPA allowed us to move a document from A to B. AI agents will allow us to understand what’s inside that document, extract the right stuff, put the right thing into the system, evaluate the information, and so on. All these things were impossible before, that’s the big difference and that is possible today.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Think of AI agents as computers that work while you are asleep.’
‘We will see shifts in entire industries, especially those with large workforces which will no longer be needed, and we will see new stuff coming up because of that.’
‘Companies are only just waking up from the dream that if you use ChatGPT or Microsoft CoPilot you’re “AI-ready”.’
‘More than 70% of the work people do right now can be automated.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Sebastien Denef is CEO and co-founder at AGENTS.inc who is inventing the future of human-computer interaction.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Ulrich (Uli) Homann, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft, and Mark Luquire, EY Global Microsoft Alliance Co-innovation Leader, about how to build an agentic AI enterprise that doesn’t just work faster, but works smarter and, most importantly, works for everyone.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
In the past automation has been very task driven and specific, things had to go in a certain order and you needed to know that order ahead of time. While you need some of that with generative AI, we now have a system that can help do some of that thinking, so if things change in the process along the way, you can deal with it. Now you can rethink what processes even need to exist and focus on the outcome and how to get to it in a new way.
By giving everyone at EY access to generative AI a couple of years ago we learned that people were able to accomplish more more quickly. They used it as a thought-partner, used it as a way to fine tune the product they were working on. Being able to see the evolution of generative AI to now where it’s coding applications on its own almost, seeing the new agent capabilities and tools, and being able to take action on its own with very little prompting, it opens the doors to possibilities and what you’ll be able to do in the future.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Focus on where you want to be and then rethink how you’re going to get there, that’s the real key.’
‘It’s not just an assistant to you, providing you with information, it’s actually taking on work it’s actually thinking through and processing those things as well.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Ulrich (Uli) Homann is a Corporate Vice President & Distinguished Architect in the Cloud + AI business at Microsoft. As part of the senior engineering leadership team, he’s responsible for the customer-led innovation efforts across the cloud and enterprise platform portfolio. Previously Homann was the Chief Architect for Microsoft worldwide enterprise services, having formerly played a key role in the business’ newly formed Platforms, Technology and Strategy Group. Prior to joining Microsoft in 1991, he worked for several small consulting companies, where he designed and developed distributed systems and has spent most of his career using well-defined applications and architectures to simplify and streamline the development of business applications.
Mark Luquire leads the EY organization’s global efforts to co-develop innovative solutions with Microsoft and clients, driving growth and accelerating technology strategy. He oversees cross-functional teams spanning sectors and service lines, serving as a key liaison to Microsoft’s product and engineering teams.
Previously, Mark headed Platform Adoption for EY Global, leading enterprise-wide AI and cloud enablement, including integrating generative AI tools like EYQ, GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Copilot. He also created the first EY Global DevOps Practice and led cloud transformation efforts, making EY a leader in Microsoft Azure usage. Mark’s career includes leadership roles in large healthcare enterprises and technology startups, where he established scalable operations, spearheaded digital transformation, and built high-performing global teams.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Laurna Castillo, Senior Vice President of Product at CSAA Insurance Group, a AAA insurer serving millions of customers across the western United States.
Laurna has become a leading voice in reimagining how the insurance industry – and entire communities – can build resilience in the face of escalating wildfire risk. On this episode, Laurna will share her journey, lessons learned from the frontlines of growth, and actionable insights for listeners eager to drive meaningful impact in their own ventures.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The AAA was originally an automobile association focused on making cars safer, advocating for seatbelts, for example. Without seatbelts, car insurance would be more expensive, making driving less accessible to the average person. It’s the same with wildfire; there are massive quantities of homes being lost every year, and if we don’t have these solutions for fewer homes being burned down by wildfire, it’s going to be less accessible for the average consumer to live in places like California.
Knowing where to start was our biggest challenge, but picking a direction and sticking with it, and recognising all the different facets that need progressing, we leant in when we recognised those.
We’ve learned that people are overwhelmed. There’s so much information out there, if you speak to your neighbour, you might get one thing, if you speak to your local fire chief, you might get another. That was reinforced in our community engagements, as was the fact that trusted voices matter; people are most likely to trust the motivations of people they know rather than insurance companies.
We’ve been leaning into this problem with this mindset for over a decade, and it’s becoming a strategic focus and imperative for us because of the increase in large-scale fires affecting many properties. One of the most important issues is where to start with mitigation. The 0-5-foot ignition zone is the single most important factor. The next is scalability, we need to rally around and give common standards and similar messages, that will help homeowners receive clear, consistent guidance.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Do the next, best, right thing that’s in front of you. If you keep doing that, eventually it builds up into a system of change and collective progress.’
‘I cannot emphasise enough how important partnerships are to this problem. They extend reach.’
‘The easiest way to have a wildfire resilient home is to build one, building one that’s not resilient and trying to retrofit it is less optimal and not as easy.’
‘The single most important thing is clearing flammable material (fences, overhanging trees and bushes) from a 0-5 foot zone from the house.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Laurna Castillo is a forward-thinking leader and passionate advocate for innovation and sustainable growth. With a dynamic background spanning entrepreneurship, community development, and strategic leadership, Laurna has dedicated her career to empowering organizations and individuals to unlock their full potential.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Yo Kwon, CEO at Voltaire.Claims.
Together, we pull back the curtain on how enterprise operations (and in particular finance and insurance operations) are being reinvented – not tomorrow, but right now.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
I was working with my co-founder on Ai technology trying to work out what would be applicable for wider businesses. While we were testing ideas someone was using one of our products to write claims letters.
Adjustors don’t enjoy writing claims letter, especially denials, they lean heavily on templates and cheat sheets to figure out the clauses to cite, so small mistakes and big ones can slip though. Voltaire generates each letter from scratch, it doesn’t take shortcuts which removes the room for error.
Litigation alone adds an average of $10,718 per claim in loss adjustment expense, we projects Voltaire can reduce litigated claims by 10% or more through more defensible correspondence. Even a conservative 5% improvement in leakage through clearer letters translates to $320,00 in recovered value.
We include critical guardrails. If an adjustor requests a denial letter but there’s no valid policy exclusion that exists to support the denial, the system returns ‘no relevant policy language was found’. This prevents a wrongful denial or compliance violation before it happens.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Before I started this company I did not think this would be a problem in 2025, and this is a problem because of the complexities of claims.’
‘Whenever productivity is measured, people will choose speed over compliance, I’d go far as to say most adjustors never actually learn the correct way to write a claims letter.’
‘Claims managers and adjustors have told us the AI is teaching them things about policies that they’ve never known before.’
‘Our approach treats compliance as a product feature, not an afterthought.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Yo Kwon is the Co-Founder and CEO of Voltaire.Claims, where he leads the development of cutting-edge AI solutions that transform insurance correspondence. With deep expertise in artificial intelligence, decentralized systems, and cybersecurity, Yo brings a rigorous technical perspective to one of the industry’s most overlooked but high-impact challenges: claims letter automation. Under his leadership, Voltaire has built a lightweight, API-driven platform that integrates seamlessly with core systems like Guidewire to deliver accurate, regulator-compliant claim letters in seconds.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Scott Gunther, who is not only a corporate venture capitalist and start-up enthusiast—he’s also the secret ingredient that helps big businesses think like nimble innovators!
In this episode, we’ll hear how Scott’s unique blend of strategic vision and hands-on execution has set him apart in both blue-chip boardrooms and early-stage tech circles. We’ll dive into the venture client model, explore the evolving CVC (Corporate Venture Capital) landscape through the lens of 2025, and uncover the do’s and don’ts for insurance providers and emerging Tech founders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Recently we’ve seen a bit of stability in CVC investment, there’s been a strong volume of deal-flow dollars that are starting to pour into startup investment. At the same time, we’re seeing corporate change their attitudes and approaches to innovation and venturing. Some have closed their CVC funds, others have changed their investment focus, some have scaled back altogether, although some are quite the opposite.
- We’re starting to see CVCs experiencing slower exit returns and their financials aren’t what they were in 2021/22. In the last 2-3 years the savvy CVCs have done 2 things well: They’ve managed to keep their portfolio afloat and managed to hang onto their strategic assets but have also helped their portfolio grown at the same time. This will be a trend for CVCs in 2025.
- We don’t put anything up to our investment community until we have an exec sponsor because post-investment is when the exec sponsor comes to life and the VC model starts to hit home. We have a dedicated post-investment team that connect the startup and the corporate.
- The biggest opportunities for insurers and CVCs operating in that space is understand how people use and interact with digital technologies, and how they’re affecting society. Also, customer segmentation and proposition development is different for different demographics now and how different cohorts are research, buy, service, claim, it’s not one size fits all. The savvy insurers know what these macro-trends are and understand how the latest technology, data, and AI trends are. This could help us get to the holy grail: The segment of one!
BEST MOMENTS
‘We’re going to see more competition, things are going to happen faster and cheaper, but there’s still an uncertainty about which things we should own and which we should outsource.’
‘I think a lot of people focus on the E and S or ESG, but not the G, but the G incorporates some of the most crucial aspects about how a company runs itself.’
‘The more efficient and effective a company can run the more it can have on its customers and community.’
‘We connect the startup with the corporate to create mutual commercial value, it’s an ethos we live by.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Scott Gunther is a Corporate Venture Capitalist and start-up enthusiast with a track record of partnering with business leaders to identify strategic opportunities and guide transformational change.
Drawing on years of experience designing future-state, digital-first businesses and delivering critical programs across multiple industries, he brings a rare blend of strategic vision and executional prowess to his clients and colleagues.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Staci Gray, Founder and CEO of Organize To Scale, whose journey is nothing short of inspirational. Imagine graduating high school at 16, diving headfirst into the entrepreneurial world, and buying your first property at 18.
When her mother was diagnosed with stage four cancer, Staci leaped into action. Taking the reins of her family businesses, she transformed overwhelming challenges into streamlined successes. In just 36 months, Staci helped launch 36 syndication businesses that collectively raised over $300 million.
Today, we'll dive into Staci's unique approach to scaling businesses through people and processes. We'll explore how she empowers leaders to build strong teams, streamline operations, and prepare for successful exits—all without losing their minds or their personal identities.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- You need to know yourself, whether you’re a visionary, an integrator, or more operationally minded. Getting that level of clarity is critical because the visionary role is externally focussed, thinking 5 moves ahead, caring about customers, interested in advancement and expansion. Whereas the integrator (COO) role is internally focussed on the team, fulfilment, operations. Sitting in both seats at the same time is fragmenting yourself, it’s important you choose which role you do and then employ opposite to that who also buys into your vision.
- As a business you should be continually adapting. The technology or the team you needed at 6-figures is not the same that you will need at 8-figures. Your job as a leadership team, in whatever seat you’re sitting in, is to get good at pushing to the next ceiling, hitting it, and then adapting to make sure you have your cash, tech and trained team aligned. Those things are critical to scaling.
- I’m a huge advocate of trying to scale businesses in a way that truly creates freedom: Tim freedom, financial freedom, and geographic freedom. That’s only our ‘eyes-open freedoms’, sometimes people also sacrifice their internal freedoms; Joy, love, peace, connection, belonging to scale their businesses. I think that’s a bigger sacrifice. It’s important to not attach my identity to my business, it’s not me, it’s something that I do.
- All building a business really is is taking an idea and turning it into a reality. It’s also people. People are doing the work, even if they’re using technology. And ideas and people sometimes create friction, we see it all over the world, and that friction can create bottlenecks. We have to be able to have conversations around what isn’t working, in a non-personal, objective way to see how we can improve communication, workflow, accountability, processes, documentation so the flow is smoother and we can all achieve and win by driving revenue, scale up the business, create operational efficiencies and improve gross profit.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The best integrators are ‘co-visionaries’, they can envision with you and also take the vision and sculpt it into tactics.’
‘Stay in your lane, if you try to get in someone else’s lane it can fragment operations.’
‘The moment I found out my Mum had stage 4 cancer was when I realised the importance of organising to scale your business before there was a crisis.’
‘Doing whatever it takes to build your business might look different than what you think it looks like.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Staci Gray is the Founder and CEO of Organize To Scale, a company dedicated to liberating mission-driven leaders from operational chaos and empowering them to scale their businesses effectively. With a passion for organizing businesses and building strong, high-performing teams, Staci envisions a world where entrepreneurs and leaders can grow their enterprises, fuel the economy, and make a tangible impact on people's lives without sacrificing their personal well-being.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to a panel of global experts to explore the bold new frontiers shaping insurance technology in 2025 and beyond, including microinsurance in Africa, digital disruption in Latin America, the evolving tech scene in the US, Asia, Europe and the UK.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI cannot just be something we add on top of existing infrastructure, there needs to be some re-work to integrate it into existing infrastructure. Foundation for AI scalability and security (not as a bolt-on) will be a big trend. The second thing is generative AI that’s across ecosystem.
- There is a trend emerging and growing in InsurTech in Europe at least around emerging risks. 20% of all the deals done in 2024 were around that specific topic. Most of the startups in this area are in the pricing/underwriting part of the value chain. There is a need for these with emerging risks that didn’t exist (or weren’t as prevalent) in the past, such as climate change or electric vehicles.
- In Asia, especially South-East Asia, the markets are way more green field than they are in the US. Here, embedded insurance and ecosystem integration are a really big deal. As people get onto external ecosystems outside of their own they want to embed insurance in them across sectors. We don’t think insurance just in the insurance space is enough.
- There’s a lot of brain drain in Africa where skilled professionals are leaving the continent. But the paradox of that is that there’s a lot of influx onto the continent. The questions is: Where exactly do the opportunities lie? There’s a lot of grown happening in the emerging communities where companies are developing the mindsets and capacities to transfer risk in all kinds of insurance, not just life.
BEST MOMENTS
’95-97% of the economy in Asia is driven by SMEs, and 75% of employment is in the SME sector, and it’s wildly underserved from an insurance perspective. It’s a massive opportunity.’
‘Accessibility possibilities that the technology and maturity curve provides in emerging markets, especially, is quite exciting because it’s making insurance sustainable, affordable, and reaching more people.’
‘The population where I live is very young, they were the first penetration for insurance here and, unlike the rest of the world, they’re deeply unconcerned about data privacy, they’re willing to trade their data access for convenience, better products and more personalisation.’
‘Don’t only stick to the regulations timeframe, keep an eye on what entrepreneurs are building because the market can move faster than the regulations.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Florian Graillot (covering InsurTech Europe)
Hilario Itriago (covering InsurTech LATAM)
Lisa Wardlaw (covering InsurTech USA)
Michael Waitze (covering InsurTech Asia)
Tunde Salako - Africa InsurTech (covering InsurTech Africa)
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Carolina Klint, Managing Director and chief commercial officer for Continental Europe at Marsh McLennan, who shares her views on the latest WEF report and its implications for businesses and insurers worldwide.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- My goal with speaking about and promoting the Report is where the topics of risk and resilience belong, which is on the agenda of world leaders, decision makers, executives, board members. The business world is so complex and difficult to navigate and we have an environment now where risks are not only interconnected but they are also layered. So, the Global Risk Report is a great place to start trying to make sense of this.
- When a company looks at the risks that have the potential to impact or execute on strategies it’s so difficult to get it right: You’re going to go through your risks and scenario planning to pull together an ambitious risk register. Most companies have good processes for this, but in the current environment it’s very rare to pick and prepare for the risks that are going to be the ones that will hit you.
- Aby working on a culture of risk awareness and resilience, by working on taking a holistic view, connection the dots between people, risk and strategy, companies that do that have a much better opportunity to deal with whatever ends up hitting them. If you have a culture and awareness, and if you empower your leaders and employees to manage through when something hits, it’s going to become a much better outcome for you regards of the risks.
- We need to not just look at what’s in front of us, but look at the long term perspective. Human beings are wired to focus on what’s in front of us and it’s easy to forget the long-term horizon. This is where the Global Risk Report is so helpful because it looks at the perception of current risks, the 2-year and 10-year risk horizons.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We look at how we can bring more value and become more relevant to our clients by connecting people, risk, and strategy – and the WEF Global Risk Report speaks directly to that.’
‘The business environment is very difficult to navigate, and it’s only through collaboration and looking at the business holistically that you can achieve a long term sustainable business model.’
‘For anyone in risk and resilience, when the Global Risk Report comes out it’s like Christmas Day as a 5-year-old!’
‘Everyone’s got a plan until you get punched in the face – that’s exactly the way it is in the current environment.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Carolina Klint is a recognized expert in global risk management and a key contributor to thought leadership initiatives, including the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report.
As a Managing Director and Risk Management Leader for Continental Europe at Marsh, she works with clients across industries to anticipate, quantify, and navigate emerging threats—ranging from geopolitical and environmental disruptions to the rapid evolution of technology.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Michael Lingelbach, CEO and co-founder of Hedra—a company that specializes in long-form generative video and agentic AI solutions. In just over a year, Michael and his team have seen explosive growth and raised backing from leading tech investors, including Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz.
From marketing and social media campaigns to corporate training videos, Hedra’s technology is revolutionizing how we produce immersive, human-like content at scale. Michael and I discuss the power of agentic AI, the ethical dimensions of automated digital creation, and how he’s charting new paths for startups, enterprises, and content creators alike.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- We’re still very early in ‘generative media’. Stable Diffusion came out 2 years ago for images, video models have been maturing rapidly, but right now they’re focused on small fragments of content not cohesive brand storytelling. Building models that can not only generate compelling dialogue performances, and incorporate consistent identities and assets is a challenging research problem and something we’re pushing on.
- When people first think about generative AI they think about increasing the volume of content, but that typically isn’t a problem. The predominant concern of most marketers now is engagement. We live in a limited attention economy, so the focus now – in my opinion – is how to make really good content that’s going to hook people.
- For short-form content you’re usually trying to hook the viewer’s attention in the first 5-10 seconds as they’re scrolling through Tik Tok style feed. You want bright colours, a crazy character or a hook like “OMG you’re not going to believe what we’re going to talk about today!” With long-form content you’re optimising for retention. You still want the viewer to be engaged, but usually they want information or entertainment.
- We think the big opportunity is making it accessible for product/social marketing managers to have all this powerful technology to generate video and have a workflow were they’re working together with AI to make compelling content. That doesn’t require them to outsource to an external agency. We then get rapid feedback cycles rather than drawn out ones when you’re working with an external partner.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We’re focused on bringing this technology from something that’s fun to play with to something that’s a strong part of an enterprise/brand marketing workflow.’
‘Are you conveying information that makes the user feel like you’re conveying information that’s also usable for them? That’s the job of a content creator.’
‘Video is the most natural form of communication; people have been talking to each other face-to-face for a long time!’
‘Video is a massive market and it’s growing rapidly, it’s where most advertising, marketing information, learning and spending is shifting towards.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Michael Lingelbach is the CEO and co-founder of Hedra. While pursuing his PhD at Stanford, Michael worked closely with world-renowned AI researchers and developed a deep interest in pushing the boundaries of long-form video generation.
Seeing an opportunity to combine advanced visual models with natural, human-centered dialogue, he set out to create a platform that produces fully generated video and immersive, conversational virtual avatars.
Under Michael’s leadership, Hedra attracted early backing from top-tier investors, including Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Since launching publicly in 2023, the company has grown its user base to over one million registered users, earning recognition from both independent creators and major enterprises.
Hedra’s generative video technology now powers cutting-edge use cases ranging from marketing and social media content to more complex interactive experiences.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Denise Garth, a globally recognized InsurTech thought leader and Chief Strategy Officer at Majesco.
In our talk today, we dive into the top trends shaping insurance and InsurTech as we head toward 2025—from next-gen technology enablers to constantly evolving customer expectations. Denise will share her insights on where the industry is headed, how to stay ahead, and why a collaborative mindset is crucial.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- What was happening in the resilience market in 2024, from both economic and risk standpoints, has had a huge operational impact on insurance companies. As a result, as we go into 2025, the reaction of loss ratios increasing, unprofitability, high interest rates, all the economic factors are forcing us to step back and see it as a wake-up call.
- We’re in the midst of business model and technology driven change. We’re finally realising our decades old operational models and technology foundations no longer meet the challenges and opportunities of this fast-changing risk, technology, and customer demographics world. It’s a race to the future because there’s a growing protection gap that we must address in a different way.
- We’ve been on a technology ride for 10-15 years , especially in InsurTech, but the last few months have been mind blowing with the pace of change and what the technology, like GenAI and IoT can do. They can help us do risk assessments better, give better customer experience and optimise the whole operation.
- Cloud computing is expanding the capabilities. We’ve got to fundamentally rethink the technology and business architecture of our solutions to optimise and take advantage of not just cloud computing but all the other technologies that are going to leverage cloud.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We must think about how to underwrite and assess risks differently, more importantly how do we minimise the risk. We can’t keep growing the risk and the insurance costs, people can’t afford it.’
‘Data is the lifeblood of this industry, and we’re coming to realise that we’ve got to democratise and demonetise data because everybody needs to have it.’
‘MGAs and full-stack insurers are trying to think how insurance is going to be done, but also, what constitutes the insurance policy.’
‘48% of part-time workers don’t have access to life or health insurance, they want a simple way of buying insurance, and they also want the risk about themselves by having Protection as a Service based on usage.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Denise Garth is an internationally recognized InsurTech thought leader and innovator, serving as Chief Strategy Officer at Majesco. With a passion for transforming the insurance industry, Denise leads global strategy, marketing, industry relations, and innovation—helping companies navigate disruption and harness new technologies to capture growth.
Her accolades are numerous, including being named among the 30 Most Powerful Women in Business: The Titans of Industry (2024) by International Business Times, an InsurTech Top 50 Influencer, and one of the Top 50 Women in SaaS.
Bringing a blend of deep insurance expertise and visionary thinking, Denise’s work focuses on how today’s industry challenges can spark tomorrow’s opportunities. She has served in leadership positions around the world, developing go-to-market strategies, guiding operational transformation, and fostering collaboration across multiple continents—from Europe to Asia-Pacific.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks about the technology trends shaping the future of insurance and finance in 2025, the big shifts, from AI wizardry to climate tech disruptors, that are revolutionizing how we manage risk, measure reward, and generally conduct business in these fast-changing industries.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI in insurance alone is predicted to jump from just over $8 billion in 2024 to potentially over $140 billion in 2034. With generative AI tools creating on-the-fly risk assessments and personalized product recommendations, the old “one-size-fits-all” insurance model is heading out the door. Soon, underwriting or credit-check processes that once took days could be done in mere minutes.
- With 5G insurers can collect real-time driving data to offer usage-based policies – like getting rewarded for being a safe driver. Meanwhile, finance companies roll out mobile-first investment platforms that update your portfolio in microseconds. VR is also taking the stage, letting financial advisors or insurance agents hold “virtual meetings” with you inside immersive 3D worlds. This creates deeper engagement and a better understanding of the coverage you’re getting.
- With hurricanes, floods, and wildfires happening more often, insurance providers are analyzing climate risks like never before. Some are even adjusting policies in real-time based on environmental data, which is crucial for those living in high-risk areas. Meanwhile, finance giants are offering “green bonds” or environmentally friendly investment options. Sustainable practices aren’t just an afterthought; they’re part of corporate strategy, and regulators are stepping in to promote responsible business.
- “Financial Services 2.0,” covers InsurTech, embedded finance, embedded insurance, blockchain, and more. This signals a future where financial services, insurance, and other industries blend into platform-based experiences. Blockchain is a game-changer here. From frictionless cross-border payments to “smart contracts” that auto-trigger claims payouts, the possibilities are endless. We’re also seeing digital currencies – from stablecoins to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) – gain traction.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Insurance is flipping from driver-centric to vehicle-centric as self-driving cars become more common. Meanwhile, in big cities, sensors track traffic to reduce congestion, meaning fewer accidents and lower claims.’
‘Cybercrime could cost the world up to USD 10 trillion annually by 2025. For insurers, that spells an opportunity to offer robust cyber coverage, but it also means constantly updating your own defences.’
‘AI and data-sharing help shape new solutions—but trust erodes quickly if people sense their data is being misused or if algorithms are biased. Transparency and good governance are your best friends.’
‘Step outside the old “policy mindset” and start innovating in ways that deeply resonate with how people live, work, and move..’
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Zaid Ammari. What sets Zaid apart is his ability to transform complex data into actionable insights, empowering businesses to make smarter marketing decisions. His mantra, 'work smarter, not harder,' is reflected in his approach to managing PPC campaigns and optimising SEO strategies.
In today's episode, Zaid will share his insights on how businesses can leverage paid media, navigate recent changes in Google's SEO and Ads platform, and utilise data for maximum impact.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- While I was working in a bank, not making a lot of money and not able to move up the ranks, Facebook came out and became popular. I decided to take out my savings and set up a marketplace for cars, I paid a developer to make the website, then the challenge was to get traffic to it. As well as putting up physical posters I ran some Google Ads and learned from my mistakes using it which made me learn fast!
- Eventually I started looking at who I wanted on my website. I looked at time spent on the site, how many pages they look at, what they’re doing, and what keywords they’re clicking on from Google and how can I get more clicks from better keywords.
- The biggest challenge is managing your budget and doing long term projections. Every time I get a client, I run projections/estimates for them on how much money they’d need to spend to make some back. First, plan long term, you can’t just run marketing for 1-3 months, you need at least a year and you need to budget for it.
- If my organic traffic is converting at 10% (buying a product/submitting forms/getting leads), I’d halve that and assume it’s my paid traffic conversion rate. Then I’d go into Google Ads to the free Google Keyword Planner to find the high intent keywords (where people that click from are looking to purchase) and find the average cost-per-click to see how much money it makes sense to spend on Ads and keywords compared to what you’d expect back.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Most of my learnings came from watching my dollars religiously, what happened to that $50 I spent today? I had to be careful because I had a super limited budget.’
‘If you’re not making a lot of money or selling high ticket items from your business, it’s very challenging to do big advertising from the beginning.’
‘The hardest clients are those that are looking for lead generation because there’s a problem with tracking if you made money from that keyword.’
‘If you’re trying to rank on page 1 of Google you could run a report and see what keywords you’re not ranking for in page 1 and start bidding on them. The top three positions get 50%+ of the traffic.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Zaid Ammari’s story is a testament to resilience and innovation in the digital marketing space. From his humble beginnings as a minimum-wage bank employee to becoming the founder of a leading digital agency, Zaid has carved a niche for himself as a formidable force in PPC and SEO. With over 11 years of experience, he has transformed the digital strategies of renowned brands like Sony and the University of California, helping them not just meet but exceed their revenue goals.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Paul Austin, a pioneer in the world of psychedelics and a leading voice in leveraging these substances for intentional personal growth and enhanced leadership.
Today, Paul joins us to delve into how psychedelics are revolutionizing personal transformation and professional success. We'll explore how these tools can be harnessed to navigate the complexities of leadership, spur innovation, and drive growth in both personal and entrepreneurial realms. We will delve into the implications for insurers and pharmaceutical companies.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I grew up pin a place where psychedelics, cannabis and all sort of illicit substances were frowned upon. But, at the age of 16, I was introduced to cannabis, and I started to experiment with it. My parents found out and were very disappointed in me. A few years later at university I started experimenting with psylocibin and it was much more profound and life changing. It inspired me to travel abroad and became a digital nomad, experimenting with microdosing.
- In 2015 I started an educational platform called Third Wave, because there wasn’t a lot of great educational information on the internet about psychedelics and I wanted to help people learn about the history, recent scientific studies as well as the risks sop that they could use it safely and effectively during their work.
- Back then it was still highly stigmatised, there weren’t a lot of people who understood some of the benefits and risks. Simply by being a first moved, providing free educational content, starting a podcast allowed me to help steer people when they came into the space. My focus then was mostly on microdosing.
- In our current climate that we live in, we’re very disconnected from the natural environment and we’re seeing the negative consequences of that. When people have psychedelic experiences they feel more connected to the natural environment. Psychedelics can be used as a tool, when used with intention and responsibility, to help us wake up to the fact that how we relate to the environment is how we relate to ourselves. The wider mission is how we step into a mode of environmental regeneration and how can psychedelics help leaders to recognise this?
BEST MOMENTS
‘Life is what you make of it, we’re all sort of making it up as we go along, there’s massive creative potential to live life on your own terms.’
‘Microdosing 2-3 times a week helped me to stop drinking alcohol and find more flow and creativity in my every-day life.’
‘When psychedelics are done with intention, responsibility, in a safe way, they can have really productive outcomes for those who choose to take or work with them.’
‘My intention has always been to make psychedelics accessible to more people. Microdosing is like getting in the shallow end of the pool before you jump in the deep end.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Paul Austin is the founder of Third Wave, an educational platform dedicated to the responsible use of psychedelics, Paul has empowered millions to explore safe and meaningful experiences.
With a focus on microdosing and intentional psychedelic use, Paul specializes in helping entrepreneurs, executives, and creatives unlock their full potential. He believes that psychedelics, when used responsibly, can enhance leadership abilities, creativity, and overall well-being. By combining scientific research with practical application, Paul guides individuals to become better communicators, recognize emerging patterns, and foster innovation in their respective fields.
Psychedelic Coaching Institute
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Beate Chelette, known as the Growth Architect, about her journey from being a broke single mom immigrant with $135,000 in debt to selling her business to Bill Gates for millions.
In this episode, Beate shares her hard-won wisdom on what it really takes to pressure-test your idea, build a solid foundation, and scale your business sustainably. She reveals the most common pitfalls she sees founders making at each stage and how to avoid them.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I trained to be a photographer and ended up as photo editor at Elle Magazine. I always liked working with creative, non-conforming, colourful people who had great ideas and needed somebody to help them. I later moved to LA to do something new and that would put me in charge of my own life. After an economic recession I became an entrepreneur on my own with a 6-month-old baby. It was a rough road.
- I went through a lengthy and expensive lawsuit, my Dad died, multiple natural disasters impacted my clients and then 9/11 happened. I had to file for bankruptcy. Then I got a letter from the White House that put me in touch with a small business administration that helped with funding for small business owners. They helped my find a bank to restructure my debt into a single loan that freed up my line of credit. Three months later I broke even and 18 months later I’m the world leader in my category. Next thing I know I’m doing a transaction with Bill Gates after his company agreed to buy my business. I became a self-made multimillionaire 18 months after the worst moment of my life.
- As a creative, the reality is that you’re in your creativity 30% of the time and in business 70%. Creatives want to be in the creative world because they don’t want to be in the business side of things. But the successful creative has to be creative and they have to understand business. Somebody who isn’t creative and is only in the business only has to master one skill, so the creative has two strikes against them to be successful.
- The idea of being a Growth Architect came from the fact that when you’re building something you’re architecting it, you’re deciding where it’s going to be, how big it will be, which way it faces for the sunset/rise, what it’s built from, who it’s for, etc. I build the blueprint so you can build your house any way you want, but I advise you every step of the way.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I left Germany to find adventure and I’ve not had a boring day since.’
‘Before you need to be right, be very careful of what you’re getting yourself into. A fight for your life could end up being a fight for nothing.’
‘A good idea is nothing unless somebody else wants to buy it.’
‘If you look at AI and image creation, creativity has taken a new route. It’s no longer about taking something that exists and making it look good, it’s an imaginary world and a completely different business.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Beate Chelette is the Growth Architect and Founder of The Women's Code. She equips visionaries and leaders with proven strategies, blueprints and growth maps to improve business systems, strengthen leadership skills and scale their impact.
Beate believes success resides at the intersection of strategy and spirituality, a philosophy she infuses into her work as the Growth Architect. Her mission is to empower others to embrace strategic thinking, unlock hidden opportunities, and build sustainable business models, especially in challenging times.
Quiz
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Marinela Profi, a leading expert in AI and the Global AI and Generative AI Marketing Strategy Lead at SAS.
Marinela has a wealth of experience at the intersection of data science, artificial intelligence, and strategic marketing. At SAS, she has been instrumental in crafting global marketing strategies for cutting-edge AI solutions, helping organizations worldwide leverage AI to drive innovation, enhance productivity, and achieve operational efficiencies.
Today, Marinela will share insights from the recent SAS Generative AI Global Research Report, and we will both delve into how organizations are approaching generative AI, the benefits they're seeing, and the challenges they're facing in areas like governance, compliance, and skill gaps.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The SAS Generative AI Global Research Report interviewed 1600 organisations from 16 different countries from all continents so the data would be as diverse and include as many voices as possible. The results found that the top 2 players are China and the US. China leads the world with usage (83% said they have adopted the technology and are experimenting with it) while the US leads in implementation and maturity.
- Generative AI truly allows organisations to enhance operational efficiency while improving employees’ experience through more personalise, streamlined, accessible resources. Ultimately what generative AI is doing, at a high level, is creating a more agile, responsive and engaging workplace for employees. However, there are things we need to think about.
- Generative AI is not delivering the same value to all employees, from business users to business analysts, data scientists, IT people, marketers. They each see different kinds of benefits, but at the same time they need to be aware that there are different kinds if risks and they are asking themselves different kinds of questions.
- Having governance in place is one of the top challenges between winning and failing with generative AI. When you don’t have governance frameworks in place (and the report shows that the majority of organisations are not thinking about this) there’s a lot of risks that you could incur. Ethical risks, compliance and legal issues, intellectual property risks, security vulnerabilities.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Higher adoption and implementation doesn’t necessarily equate to effective implementation and effective returns.’
‘Banking is one of the top markets for generative AI implementation even though you may think it would face the most challenges because of being a highly regulated industry.’
‘AI’s answers may sound convincing, but how do users ensure accuracy? By prompting more effectively.’
‘Generative AI is being used worldwide in either sharing information that is right or creating positive engagement, or misinformation. Governance allows to make sure that we are not incurring any ethical concerns.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Marinela Profi: When it comes to data and analytics investments, organizations are looking to achieve better and faster decisions. Data science/IT teams need to effectively collaborate to quickly prototype and industrialize solutions. Conversations are no longer about what tool or specific technology to use. Expectations are being elevated to increased productivity/cost savings, privacy and security.
At SAS, my role as Principal Product Marketing Lead for AI has been instrumental in global marketing strategies, particularly for cutting-edge artificial intelligence solutions like Machine Learning and Generative AI. With an MBA and a Master's in Statistics and AI, I've been able to translate complex technical concepts into strategic marketing initiatives that resonate with our diverse clientele.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Adrian Mendoza, founder and general partner of Mendoza Ventures, whose inspirational journey sees him go from first generation Mexican-American who turned a successful tech-exit into a platform for empowering others. He’s a living embodiment of the power of perseverance and vision.
On this episode, Adrian shares his insights on everything from pitfalls to how to deal with corporate life, and building corporate innovation lab to the art of securing strategic investments.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- It was very rare to find an operator/founder that was also an investor in 2015, but we had a lot of experience meeting people with domain expertise who would come to us because they’d invested in us through funds. VC was a black box that would never connect to founders. We theorised there was incredible potential success in breaking that black box open and connecting incredible investors that had operational and domain expertise with founders.
- Venture has been very localised. When we first looked at the landscape we realised there was an opportunity to find incredible talent that wasn’t the kids that went to Oxford or Stanford because you’re missing out on everything in between. One of our first investments was two Latinos that were working at RSA security and left because they had an idea, they didn’t have Ivy League educations, they were domain experts. That company returned 10x in 5 months back to us.
- For us, DE&I is not just black, brown and female, but also age diversity, veterans, those coming from rural areas. If you’re going to look at equity and inclusion it can just be within a sub-segment because then it’s incredibly hard to find talent. We want to find talent no matter where it is and what it looks like.
- In order to create the best outcomes you cannot be a passive investor, you have to help find customers, investors, help mentor these individuals because they’ve never run a company with 80-100 people before, help them find the talent and the ways into mainstream financial institutions or corporates.
BEST MOMENTS
‘No one looked like us, there were no women or Latinos writing venture cheques, we didn’t know that we were one of the first Latinx Venture Funds on the East Coast until individuals in private equity told us.’
‘There’s incredible talents at corporates in rural areas in middle America that no one’s touching that is out there having ideas and building companies. We invest in this talent because we look like that talent.’
‘60% of California is Latino, if we’re looking at being representative of that area then 60% of the capital should be going to Latinos. Most states are 50% women, 50% of capital should be going to women.’
‘Our references aren’t just the investors, they’re the founders that we backed and those that we’ve had exits with.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Adrian Mendoza is the founder and general partner at Mendoza Ventures which is both Latinx and woman-owned and the first Latinx-founded VC fund on the east coast. His firm focuses on investments in Fintech, AI, and Cybersecurity, with diversity playing an important role in their investment decisions—about 80% of their portfolio consists of startups led by immigrants, people of colour, and women. Since its founding seven years ago, Mendoza Ventures has raised two funds and had two successful exits. The firm is currently raising its third fund, a $100M fintech fund anchored by Bank of America, focused on early growth funding rounds. In 2022, Axios Magazine listed Adrian as one of the five most influential people in Boston and the LA Times honoured Adrian as a DEI visionary as one of California’s most prominent game-changers and thought leaders in the business world today. Adrian is also a regular contributor on CNBC on the state of Venture capital in the US and the firm has recently been covered in Forbes, Bloomberg, and The Boston Globe.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Marcy Axelrod, a bestselling and award-winning author, TV contributor, two-time TEDx speaker, and renowned management consultant. Her latest book, "How We Choose to Show Up," has recently been honoured with the prestigious Hayakawa Book Prize.
In today's conversation, we'll dive deep into the concepts from her book: The idea of "Showing Up"—the invisible system connecting us to our society, our situations, ourselves, and each other, how understanding and embracing the way we choose to show up can lead to a happier, more effective, and balanced life – whether we're parenting, coaching, playing, empowering others, or steering a global company.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- At 6 years old we moved from Baltimore to Boston, my older sibling wanted nothing to do with me and I needed something I wasn’t getting. There was no one making me feel felt, which is what all humans need, and rather than act out I acted in and took it out on myself, I developed a stutter which led to me losing the ability to speak.
- Back through time to when we lived in caves we were never just in one role. We were always individuals distinct from, but also we were always a member of a family, a tribe, and we were at the whim of the environment. My book says that we were not designed to show up as inward facing individuals, we’re designed in 3 roles: We’re a discreet self (but not separate from), we’re a situation member, and we’re defined by a society there that creates who we are, and we create it as part of the collective.
- The model of how we can show up is easy for anyone to intuit, I’ve just put it on paper. Level one is burned out, stressed, not engaged, you can’t show up in a meaningful way – and there are valid reasons for this that we all go through as part of life. Level 2 is just showing up, just getting stuff done – this isn’t bad, we have to be there some of the time with a narrow, deep focus that is tactical and practical. Level 3 is truly showing up.
- There’s a believe system behind how humans are designed to show up, and it’s an important one because it gets us back into the flow of how nature designed us. There’s nothing cultish, woo-woo, or mystical, it simply recognises you can’t have up without down, left without right, or some version of individual without there being a society collective.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I became a natural and deeply driven observer of how other are showing up, and I saw that they can show up as they choose, and yet they are not choosing.’
‘Our bodies are sensing flow systems, the skin exists because we can feel the world; temperature, pressure, motion, movement, the granularity and nuance of what we can perceive is awe inspiring.’
‘A big part of the ‘showing up continuum’, and what it means to be a level 3, is recognising what and who we truly are.’
‘Some people wake up at 5am and get more done before 8am than some of us do in a day, but sometimes they can burn out and stress about things. We all dance along the continuum.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Marcy Axelrod is a bestselling and award-winning author, esteemed TV contributor, and dynamic 2X TEDx speaker. With a robust career as a management consultant, her innovative approaches have earned her recognition and accolades, including the prestigious Hayakawa Book Prize for her latest work, "How We Choose to Show Up." This groundbreaking book is the culmination of over 20 years of research, offering a revolutionary 3-D model of human thriving that has transformed the lives of thousands.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Theodora (Theo) Lau, the founder of Unconventional Ventures, where she spearheads efforts to create an ecosystem that brings financial institutions, startups, and venture capitalists to meet the diverse needs of consumers, particularly older adults and gig economy workers.
In today's conversation, we'll delve into the evolving landscape of fintech, exploring the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Theo will share her insights on fostering corporate-startup collaborations, now called Venture Clienting, leveraging technology for social good, and building a more inclusive financial ecosystem. We'll also touch on her recent work, including her books "Beyond Good" and "Metaverse Economy," which explore the future of finance and the role of technology in shaping it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The world of FinTech is about money movement and how we get people from point A to point B. You got to a bank or online lender for a loan for a house, or saving up for your children for retirement, these are both moving from A to B. There are more player in this space over the last few years using technology and “super-apps” to allow access to micro-loans, access to insurance, saving money and paying people.
- What gets me really excited about AI isn’t the ChatGPTs of the world, it’s how we apply it and how we can change how we do things. For example, how do we use that to help small businesses? How can we create a connection between financial institutions and the people that they serve? Those are more interesting use cases that I’d like to see more.
- A lot of people in the industry are very hung up on whether it is or isn’t a bank. From a consumer perspective, they simply need a means to save or do ‘x’. From their perspective they’re interfacing with an app, not a specific bank. The most important thing is that consumers are protected and not exposed to predatory measures/practices.
- Do I trust the entity that is giving me advice? Do I trust a faceless algorithm? How do I know they’re acting on my best interests? For it to work I need to expose all of my financial interests to this tool, which goes back to trust.
BEST MOMENTS
‘With things like Apple’s savings account, why would people need a regular bank account?’
‘We need to focus on why consumers go a specific route and have the tools to help them spend responsibly.’
‘We all need information and we need to be more informed on where we are from a financial wellbeing perspective.’
‘It’s really hard to create an AI to be a CFO in your pocket autopiloting your finances, we’re not there yet but hopefully we will be.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Theodora (Theo) Lauis a dynamic public speaker, writer, and startup advisor who is dedicated to inspiring innovation and enhancing consumer financial well-being. As the founder of Unconventional Ventures, Theo focuses on building and nurturing an ecosystem that includes financial institutions, corporations, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists, all united to address the unmet needs of consumers, particularly older adults and gig economy workers. She has a strong commitment to supporting women and minority founders and regularly mentors and advises FinTech startups.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Ian Chamandy a truly inspiring guest who has mastered the art of helping businesses and individuals unlock their unique potential.
In today's conversation, we'll explore:
- The importance of a clear and concise purpose statement for startups seeking investment and corporate clients.
- How to uncover and articulate the unique value proposition that sets your business apart in a crowded market.
- The role of storytelling in attracting investors and fostering strong client relationships.
- Practical steps startups can take to align all parts of their business towards a common goal.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I was originally a copywriter, and I found it all so generic, banal, and cliché driven. I was frustrated because I wanted to get to the true authenticity of the company/brand/product/service. I asked an art director to make me a sign that says: “is that true?” and I taped it to the wall behind my typewriter. It didn’t improve my copywriting, but it did begin a journey to get to the root of authenticity.
- Once you have an expression of what makes you uniquely remarkable, you can use it to define the 2 broad activities of the organisation: What is everything that it does (operations, product development, service/product delivery), and everything it says (branding, marketing, sales)?
- Step 1 is to find your gift; the one thing that makes you uniquely remarkable. Once you define what that is you’ve really got to the root and the true authenticity of who you are. Because you’ve articulated that you can use it as a guide for how you live, it’s a tool that helps you make decisions when faced with a problem or challenge and how to deal with or avoid it depending on how it aligns with your purpose.
- The reason organisations struggle to be clear around what makes them unique to their customer segment annoys me immensely. I believe the single most important strategic asset of any organisation is knowing what makes it uniquely remarkable. That’s your basis for differentiation, but 98% of companies around the world don’t know what that is.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We define the one thing at the essence of the organisation that makes it uniquely remarkable, there’s always one thing, in 7 words or less.’
‘My definition of purpose is: Your purpose in life is to find your gift and share it with the world.’
‘If you dig deep enough, figure out what it is, and articulate it in a clear, concise, and compelling way, then you can live that life for your business by design, actively, intentionally rather than having it working in the background without knowing it’s exerting its influence.’
‘We’re so focussed on short term gains that we forget that the short term gains happen because of our long term planning and our understanding of who our company is.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Ian Chamandy is an author, speaker, coach, and strategist with over 20 years of experience helping organizations define their purpose and become uniquely remarkable. Through his proprietary Blueprint process, Ian has assisted more than 400 CEOs and organizations in transitioning from traditional management to purpose-driven approaches, resulting in enhanced focus, increased employee motivation and retention, and boosted sales.
The Blueprint process involves identifying the one thing that makes an organization uniquely remarkable—in seven words or less—and leveraging it to design how the organization operates and communicates. This distilled purpose becomes the foundation for making a company consistently and sustainably remarkable. By knowing their root superpower, companies can align all parts of the business toward a common goal and effectively communicate their full value.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Dawn Herndon, a visionary leader at the forefront of artificial intelligence innovation. With a profound passion for technology and its transformative impact on society, Dawn is spearheading IBM's efforts in embeddable AI and the groundbreaking watsonx platform.
Her work is revolutionizing how organizations across industries integrate AI into their products and services, enabling real-time data processing, decision-making, and automation directly within applications and devices. Dawn will share her insights on the challenges and opportunities organizations face when integrating AI, the importance of trustworthy and responsible AI, and her vision for the future trends in our rapidly evolving landscape.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I have the best job in the company, every day I get to talk about emerging technologies and right now it’s all about AI. Pert of what makes this an exciting topic is that it’s a bit unknown to people, and organisations and companies are trying to figure out what to do with AI.
- What excites me most about AI technology is the innovations that comes from companies take advantage of these technologies and the ability they have to leverage it to drive real and tangible outcomes for their business. These can be enhanced productivity, attracting new clients, getting to new markets, driving their products, services, and solutions into new market categories. My passion lies in helping drive that innovation with the companies that we work with by providing thought leadership or co-creating with them.
- Embeddable AI has evolved not only so a company can leverage NLP/speak-to-text/text-to-speech technologies in the AI space but has expanded into the production of the “what’s next platform.” IBM’s platform provides not only machine learning technology and advanced analytics but also an overall studio for organisations to incorporate large language models, train them, fine tune them, provide governance around the models, and ways for organisations to take advantage of IBM’s AI technologies to drive productivity, efficiency, and optimisation.
- You can’t have AI if you don’t have data. If you have large sources of data and you don’t know where it came from then you have risk and exposure. IBM believes that data should be trusted, that you should know the data and, if you’re working with our AI technology, that you own the data, we don’t use your data, you use it to accomplish the outcome you’re driving in your business. More than that, we have a keen focus on governance, risk management and compliance – AI ethics.
BEST MOMENTS
‘What is your company trying to solve and how can we work together to leverage technology that helps you solve that initiative and helps you drive that outcome you’re trying to achieve?’
‘We want to make sure it’s tangible for an organisation and we do that by using an AI assistant, which doesn’t just provide a conversational AI-based interface but integrations to back-end systems.’
‘Once a person joins an organisation and becomes an employee, watsonx orchestrate provides that ability for a manager to take action on anything to do with employee relations, like processing a salary increase.’
‘Productivity is an ambiguous word that can be applied to so many different situations within companies, AI can improve that productivity across your enterprise.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Dawn Herndon is an experienced global business leader with over 25 years at IBM, showcasing expertise across various functional areas, general management, and building strategic partnerships. Currently serving as the IBM Vice President of EMEA Build Ecosystem and AI Partnerships, Dawn is at the forefront of the evolution of AI, focusing on embedding AI and watsonx. She spearheads the development of strategic partnerships that drive innovation and deliver value for organizations across industries and market segments.
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IBM Watsonx
IBM Embeddable AI
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Ola Jacob, Business Development Director for the UK & Ireland at Descartes Underwriting, a specialist Parametric Insurance MGA and Insurer.
On today's episode, Ola will provide an educational deep dive into the world of parametric insurance. He'll explain what parametric insurance is, how it differs from traditional insurance, and why it is gaining traction as a data-driven solution to cover risks like natural catastrophes.
Ola will share real-world examples of how parametric insurance has provided significant value to corporate clients and industries adopting this innovative approach as part of their risk management strategies.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- When I started in insurance I didn’t know much about it, but when you strip it down to its bare bones it’s the idea of making good on your promise. That was a big draw for me because it felt altruistic. When it’s done right, and someone receives their cheque for the claim after it’s all gone smoothly is the best feeling in the world. The stigma we get from the bad experiences is what damages the image of insurance.
- The best solutions are ones that people don’t know about, and ones that don’t get in the way and make things better. If you’re going to create a solution that helps it should have another login or portal, something clunky that gets in people’s way, it should be cool and slick like a Rolex.
- Innovation can’t be done on your own, when I won the Insurance Times Technology Champion of the Year Award, it was a reflection of the whole industry and all the people I’ve met on my journey that have been open to change. I don’t think we’ve done it yet, I think there’s so much more change to be had and I’m excited to see how we can push further.
- The biggest problem in parametric insurance is the name, because it sounds so complicated. But it’s actually the simplest form of insurance there is. The Mantra behind all parametric policies is: When a pre-agreed parameter is met then a pre-agreed pay out is made. This forms the backbone of all parametric contracts. That differs from indemnity because indemnity is a promise to put you back in the same condition you were in before the loss, parametric is pretty much black and white.
BEST MOMENTS
‘If you add parametric to indemnity it could really be a game changer that could change the face of how we do insurance forever.’
‘I’ve always wanted to come in and do something to help change insurance for the better with technology.’
‘In parametric products, the parameters must be measurable and independent, something that’s not controllable by somebody else, like weather.’
‘Clients recover, using parametric insurance, with 10X less limit than they’d previously because of the speed of payout. And they’d planned how they would use that payout because they already knew what they were going to get if this event happened.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Ola Jacob is the Business Development Director for the UK & Ireland at Descartes Underwriting, a specialist Parametric Insurance MGA and Insurer covering Natural Catastrophe exposure globally.
With over 12 years of experience in the London Market Insurance Sector, Ola has worked on UK Retail, Product Recall, Terrorism, Onshore Energy and Parametric insurance.
Ola's background in Human-Computer Interaction and Psychology has fueled his passion for developing new approaches to risk transfer and managing risk for clients. As one of the pioneers of parametric insurance, Ola helped build a distribution strategy for one of the first successful parametric solutions in the London Market. In 2024, he was named Insurance Times Technology Champion of the Year for his innovative work.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Barbara Maheshwari, CEO and co-founder of Remote Bob, a game-changing virtual assistance hub that's redefining how entrepreneurs and businesses operate in our increasingly fast-moving digital world. Barbara is not just a successful founder; she's a go-to-market consultant, a sought-after speaker, and a startup scout for ABC Accelerator.
With her finger on the pulse of the future of work, Barbara has helped countless businesses navigate the complexities of remote staff augmentation and achieve remarkable growth. Today, we'll be diving deep into Barbara's expertise, exploring the trends shaping the future of work, and uncovering valuable insights for scaleup ventures.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The gig economy is characterised by an increasing preference for flexible, project-based work arrangements. This trend is driven by both workers seeking more autonomy and employers looking for cost-effective, on-demand talent. The gig economy allows individuals to work on multiple projects for different clients, often remotely, which can lead to a more diversified skill set and work experience
- AI and automation are reshaping job roles by taking over repetitive tasks and enabling new forms of human-AI collaboration. This integration is creating opportunities for workers to engage in more complex and creative tasks, while also necessitating the development of new skills to work alongside AI technologies. The shift is expected to lead to the creation of new job categories and the transformation of existing ones
- The future of work is being shaped by a variety of trends that emphasise flexibility, technological integration, global collaboration, and well-being. These trends are transforming traditional work models and creating new opportunities and challenges for both employers and employees.
- Both the gig economy and digital nomadism are experiencing significant growth globally. The gig economy encompasses a vast and diverse workforce, while the digital nomad community is characterised by its flexibility and global mobility. These trends are reshaping the future of work, offering new opportunities and challenges for workers and employers alike.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The global gig economy has seen substantial growth, with the World Bank estimating that there are approximately 435 million gig workers worldwide.’
‘The number of gig workers has increased dramatically, with a 170% rise between 2019 and 2021. This growth is driven by various factors, including economic pressures such as inflation, which has led 63% of workers to turn to gig work.’
‘The digital nomad community is also expanding rapidly. Estimates for 2023 indicate that there are around 40 million digital nomads globally.’
‘Digital nomads are a diverse group, with no single generation, profession, or socio-economic class dominating. While they tend to skew young and male, one-third are female, and 54% are over the age of 38.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Barbara Maheshwari is the CEO and co-founder of Remote Bob, a virtual assistance hub that connects entrepreneurs with skilled virtual assistants. With an MBA from COTRUGLI Business School, Barbara brings a wealth of experience as a business consultant and go-to-market strategist. Her expertise lies in helping business owners solve their most pressing challenges and scale their operations efficiently. As a speaker and startup scout for ABC Accelerator, Barbara is deeply embedded in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, constantly seeking innovative solutions to the evolving landscape of work.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sri Ramaswamy, the founder and CEO of Charlee.ai, with a career spanning over 22 years in advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, Sri has emerged as a formidable leader in the insurance technology landscape.
But Sri's story goes beyond her professional accomplishments. As a thought leader and mentor in the InsurTech community, she is breaking barriers in our traditionally male-dominated industry, championing diversity, and inspiring the next generation of female entrepreneurs.
Join us as we delve into Sri's remarkable journey, exploring the challenges she faced, the triumphs she achieved, and her unwavering vision for the future of Charlee.ai, and the broader tech landscape.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- One of the constant things I heard from claims managers was their inability to access a lot of data points within the claim files because a lot of it was in unstructured formats, so making a financial decision wasn’t easy for them. I wanted to create a platform to not only collect exposures easily but also be able to convert them into a common denominator that could be measured, predicted and queried – long before ChatGPT.
- Claims processes start with a very human experience because somebody has had a loss, and you’re dealing with them in the most sensitive and vulnerable position. When you think about how the process is carried out from receiving the claim until it’s resolved, there are a lot of nuances, such as being empathetic and empirical. That is key to understanding all the problems that can arise, data allows you to ask the right questions so you can get the details.
- The vision of Charlee is also behind how to get to these exposures and the risk intelligence, and how this leads to avoiding attorneys getting and litigations so a better settlement can be agreed with the claimant. But, it doesn’t stop there, the real vision of Charlee is to be able to connect those data points with actuary, with underwriting, with product marketing, even with your agent. All these people are stakeholders in how exposures are calculated, priced and offered in your product.
- One of the biggest things we’re seeing is a lack of proper documentation. How you arrive at a financial settlement is based on the facts of laws. If you don’t document your facts of laws or ask the right questions, you’re not going to get those facts of laws based on which you need to make objective decision points – which are very important for you to present in a court during litigation.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I owe my career in the technology space to data.’
‘Claims are the promise of the insurance contract. It’s here you get to know how the exposures you priced at the beginning are performing at the end.’
‘Some exposures that are beyond your control, like the weather and climate, but the exposures and severity behind that are huge.’
‘Attorneys being brought into the process are third parties that nobody benefits from.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Sri Ramaswamy: Over 22+ years of experience in advanced analytics and artificial intelligence.
Founder and CEO of Charlee.ai, the insurance industry's first NLP-based predictive analytics solution. What makes Charlee unique is our patented, proprietary and pre-trained claim language model. It adds the context to the predictions, provides deep insights-based alerts, reserving patterns, prior trends based prioritised claim lists for enhanced claim workflows.
As a certified associate in risk management, I have a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities in the P&C insurance sector, and I am passionate about leveraging unstructured data to drive financial outcomes and innovation.
I have architected and launched data analytic solutions for underwriting and claims, and patented Charlee.ai's AI, NLP, and ML-based technology that can extract and analyse all sources of data, including documents, files, third-party, and social. Charlee.ai helps insurers lower claim costs, manage reserves efficiently, and improve risk selection, through individual claim insights and aggregate claims analytics dashboard. I am a thought leader and speaker on operational use of unstructured data, and a mentor for the InsurTech community. I also enjoy learning about astronomy, hiking, and yoga.
Read the article on Claims Ligitigation Management
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Venture Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world, working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Amrit Santhirasenan, Co-founder and CEO of hyperexponential (hx). With a unique blend of actuarial expertise and software engineering, Amrit has spent over a decade in the Lloyd’s of London market, shaping the future of insurance analytics.
We'll delve into the world of insurance pricing for complex risk decisions and explore the transformative potential of decision intelligence.
Amrit will share insights on how hx Renew is revolutionising how pricing models are built and deployed, offering an unparalleled user experience.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I was one of the few idiots who graduated at the time of the dot com bubble bursting in software engineering and thought it would be a bad time to be a software engineer. I found myself in insurance and I’m a huge maths nerd as well as a technology nerd, so people said I should become an actuary, and I found that I loved it.
- I love insurance, I’m an insurance nerd, I think insurance is a huge societal pillar; There are no rockets launched, large buildings built, planes taking off without insurance. Without the mechanisms by which we can absorb risk, we can’t take it. When we take risks we reap the rewards of those risks and society moves on.
- Insurance is a fascinating sector that intersects technology, mathematics and human judgement in a way that’s very unusual. You have people that are tasked with working out how risky something is. By definition, if it’s perfectly predictable, it’s not risky. You analyse risk in lots of different way with tools and techniques and it’s a wonderful place for people who love solving hard problems in a variety of different ways.
- The essence of ‘decision intelligence’ has been around for a really long time. It’s important to distinguish between decision intelligence as a mindset and a way of solving a problem, and the technology side. The area in which hx has been novel is in crafting a technology solution around obtaining or applying decision intelligence to the problems that you’re solving.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I tell everyone who comes to work at hx that they have to love insurance: Come for the fun opportunities, stay for the insurance.’
‘We’ve crafted the technology to take away the boring database manipulation or building algorithm container and webforms to let our clients focus on the problem they actually care about.’
‘The past isn’t meaningfully a guide to the future for emerging risks in the same way that it has been for more established risks, like fire.’
‘In a competitive landscape, the best thing you can do is increase the amount of information to make the decision, that’ how markets become fairer, more effective, and more efficient.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Amrit Santhirasenan is the Co-founder and CEO of hyperexponential (hx), a pioneering analytical technology firm revolutionizing decision-making within the financial sector, particularly in specialty insurance pricing.
With a background as a qualified actuary and computer science graduate, Amrit brings extensive expertise in reserving and capital modelling, specialising in pricing and the integration of modern techniques and technology to create practical, impactful pricing systems.
Amrit remains deeply engaged with the insurance community, addressing the broader challenges of developing superior pricing solutions in an increasingly data-centric and technological landscape.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Eveline Ruehlin, a true visionary in the realm of fashion technology and emerging trends. As a champion of advancements in digital health, artificial intelligence, and fashion technology, she brings a unique perspective on how Gen Z is revolutionizing the fashion industry.
In today's episode, Eveline will take us on a journey through the eyes of Gen Z, exploring how this tech-savvy generation is reshaping fashion trends with their sustainability-driven preferences and digital-first mindset. We'll delve into the exciting world where AI becomes a fashion statement and discuss how emerging technologies are transforming not just what we wear, but how we interact with fashion itself.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI is immolating the brain. I decided I need to be influencing in neuroscience as well as fashion. I’ve always been interested in smart textiles, functional textiles was always a big thing in Switzerland.
- When designing my own clothes with a designer from Project Runway, I saw the beautiful craft of pattern making – it’s an art that should never be lost. But with ecommerce, I saw the integration of technology and my university was right at the forefront of teaching this.
- Especially with AI or quantum computing on the horizon, we are going to find so many cures. AI has influenced, sped up, replaced and helped so many doctors, especially during the pandemic. Surgeries can be doing online with a doctor in another country, the digitisation of the industry is phenomenal.
- I was trained as a ‘nose’ when studying in Geneva, olfaction is a very big issue for me and I love how it influences your wellbeing. Digital health is picking up on that, perfumeries are working together with health experts for mental health purposes. The senses can change a person’s wellbeing and attitude.
BEST MOMENTS
‘In-bound social media traffic can improve how quickly you can sell and get recognition.’
‘Brain-computer interfaces, near-eye computer interfaces, moving into spatial computing, all this is coming.’
‘The best quality is still handmade in my opinion.’
‘AI is trying to emulate the brain, but I don’t think it ever will because there are new studies coming out every day about consciousness, where memories are stored, etc.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Eveline Ruehlin is a dynamic and multilingual innovator at the forefront of global emerging technology. With a remarkable career as a top influencer and brand ambassador, Eveline champions advancements in digital health, artificial intelligence, fashion technology, and sustainability. Her extensive experience with international organizations equips her to bring unparalleled value to enterprises seeking to navigate the complexities of global trade and diplomacy.
Passionate about fostering a sustainable and circular economy, Eveline is a staunch advocate for smart city design and digital twin architecture. As a continuous learner, she delves into cutting-edge fields, including machine learning, blockchain, quantum computing, and cybersecurity, always with an eye on the digital transformation heralded by the 4th and 5th industrial revolutions.
A fervent supporter of mentoring the next generation, Eveline is committed to sharing her knowledge, positive mindset, and leadership skills with young professionals entering the tech industry. Her personal interests in skiing, hiking, and outdoor activities mirror her professional ethos of resilience and exploration.
Eveline's thought leadership extends to the realm of fashion tech, where she explores how AI and emerging technologies are reshaping the industry. She is particularly interested in how Gen Z and Gen Alpha influence fashion trends through their tech-savvy perspectives and sustainability-driven preferences. Eveline’s insights into the integration of AI as fashion statements continue to drive conversations about the intersection of technology and lifestyle.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Emanuel Rose, CEO of Strategic eMarketing, who has led numerous successful marketing campaigns for companies through authentic storytelling and direct-response advertising.
On today’s episode, Emanuel will share insights on differentiation and humanisation strategies for startups. Scaleups and captive insurance companies. We’ll explore best practices around targeting, testing messaging, and scaling for growth. We also talk about why startups founders must focus on becoming social CEOs. Emanuel will also discuss key lessons from his book on how solitude in nature can benefit mental health, leadership, and creativity.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI is a tool of marketing and, like all tools, it has to be deployed correctly and with the intent of the campaign and the focus of the brand. It’s complicated to use, but I think it’s amazing, I love it, it’s forever changed my marketing. At this point in time, it still takes a human to drive it, though that might be different in time.
- As marketers, we’re taking and identifying a problem and from that we come up with a solution, which is what we’re selling, and maybe agitating it a little bit, triggering people and offering a call to action. I like to make it as frictionless as possible which I think has become lost in digital marketing, since the internet we’re back to pop-ups and interruption trying to get email addresses and phone numbers. I think that’s a huge mistake that doesn’t build long-term brand value and makes everything transactional rather than client based.
- The negative side of AI is there’s a lot of “spray and pray” happening instead of starting with your ideal client profile, finding some people who fit it, understanding what their needs are, and developing a conversation and qualifying that person to your service/product and yourself to that person. The relationship is what people are missing with this inauthentic rubbish.
- I want to encourage people to use tools that are organised around getting a lot of information from the prospects that they’re talking to so that there is publicly known personal information from social profiles/blogs/other content they’re written or participated in. This should be part of every AI tool you use, but then you need to do your own research, so when people are interested take a few minutes to see how that individual aligns with your ideal client profile.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The difference between a client and a customer is that you care about the client and their concerns, whereas you’re just doing business with a customer, it’s just a transaction.’
‘Interruption marketing has got to go away again because it’s counterproductive.’
‘We’ve forgotten that our job, as a service provider, is to serve our clients.’
‘Make sure that you talk to people. If you’re in a marketing department, get on sales calls and hear the answers for yourself, understand what the pain points are, and how you can feed better information into the model you’re using.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Emanuel Rose is an accomplished marketing expert and author based in Reno, Nevada. With over 30 years of experience in the industry, Emanuel specializes in direct-response advertising, content marketing, and branding strategies.
As the CEO of his digital marketing agency Strategic eMarketing, Emanuel has worked with numerous clients and helped them achieve business success through authentic storytelling. His unique approach to marketing has resulted in outstanding outcomes for many companies.
Beyond his profession, Emanuel is an avid outdoorsman with a deep passion for nature. His latest book "The 7 Principles of The Magic Rock" explores the profound connection between spending time outdoors and mental health.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Magda Ramada, Senior Director and InsurTech Innovation Leader at WTW's Insurance Consulting and Technology, where she spearheads the company's engagement with InsurTech startups and blockchain initiatives worldwide. With over two decades of experience, she has become a prominent voice in digital transformation, advanced analytics, and emerging risks within the insurance industry.
Today, we'll be exploring Magdalena's journey in InsurTech, her views on the challenges and opportunities in the industry, and her vision for the future of insurance technology.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I got into insurance and technology by chance. 10 years ago I took on a project for a large insurance company whose CEO wanted to look at lobbying risks and macro-economic risks, which I was an expert on. I felt self-conscious talking about risk to the CEO, so I studied like I’d never studied before, and it was a great experience. After that, everything I did was around insurance which led me to blockchain technology, and I realised this was going to change the way we can neutralise risks. I don’t think I’ll ever leave.
- Technology is an enabler. It doesn’t need to be AI-based or shiny or a startup, as long as it’s the right kind of solution to transform the industry. In insurance, the applications of technology and the needs and functionality are very different from personal lines to motor, home or pet insurance. It’s a world with a lot of complexity.
- What are the tools that enable me to use and analyse more data, leverage the data we already have, and how that data can travel from very different functions and allow a very different target operating model where the technical functions converge to work as one. There are a number of specialisms around that that go deep, like generative AI, natural language processing, OCR, where you become an expert in a niche and you don’t need to know insurance.
- The first thing you need to understand is how a technology is going to affect what you are doing. Then there’s the augmentation with everyone in the value chain (the claims handler, underwriter, customer, online customer, agent), these all need different interfaces and types of insight for the different personas to enable timely, better decision making. Not every technology will enable you to do that.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Every time I had the choice of choosing insurance economics as an elective, I chose something else!’
‘I like being on stage, it’s the closest I can get to teaching.’
‘One of the things that makes us different from other species is our ability to imagine how things can change and be radically different. Technology can help us with that.’
‘What is my insurer client going to need in 5 years? What is going to be critical? What is going to allow them to compete with others, to outperform and become front runners?’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Magdalena Ramada Sarasola, PhD, is a trailblazer in the global InsurTech landscape. As Senior Director and InsurTech Innovation Leader at WTW's Insurance Consulting and Technology, she drives the company's engagement with InsurTech startups and blockchain initiatives worldwide.
Dr Ramada Sarasola's expertise spans from microinsurance and financial inclusion to emerging markets and multinational enterprise strategies.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Nicole Peck, president of ITC Vegas to dive deep into the highly anticipated ITC Vegas 2024 conference, taking place from October 15-17.
In this episode, we'll explore the groundbreaking themes of ITC Vegas 2024, including tackling climate change or the ethical use of GenAI and data. We will also talk about the new ITC Vegas format which includes the neighbourhood to create smaller communities within a larger conference setting. Nicole also shares her insights and strategies for navigating these changes and preparing for a future reshaped by innovation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I joined ITC last September, just before ITC 2023, to help guide the team to the next evolution of growth and opportunity. This event has been a rocket ship since it started and now we’ve moved into our ‘teenage’ growth years and we need to focus to ensure we’re delivering the best possible event for the community that we serve.
- This will be the 3rd year we’ve tackled the topic of climate tech. 3 years ago we were probably too early to the party and people weren’t ready to talk about it or use the terminology. Last year it really picked up steam and we’re starting to see traction on both what our audience has identified as topics that they’re interested in as well as our sponsors being interested in learning more about it.
- We have set out to create an event this year that has evolved and is different from years passed, because we recognise we’re in a ‘growing-up’ phase where we can do more for our community. We took a hard look at the feedback from the event last year and found that the event had become too big and difficult to find the right people or topics that people were looking for. To address this we’ve created more neighbourhoods on the show floor and made it easier to navigate. We also changed how our content and agenda was displayed on the website with clear tagging.
- I’ve been on events for the majority of my career and most have a very clear buyer/seller relationship. It’s not clear at ITC, ITC is a “supermatrix” event. We distil the people that attend our event into 3 cohorts: Industry incumbents (carriers/reinsurers), Investor community, and innovators (startups/entrepreneurs). Those 3 are constantly in flux from year to year, industry incumbents is strongest right now, but there a nuances at the event that speak to each one of them.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I was brought onto ITC to bring some of my New York City energy into the event and the team.’
‘It’s important for me, as a parent, to leave the planet in a better place than when I lived in it.’
‘The Founder’s House is invite only and where VCs can meet with the startup community.’
‘Our objective is to facilitate as many meetings and connections we can for the carriers.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Nicole Peck is an innovative business leader with more than 27 years of experience driving commercial success through strategic B2B marketing and sales initiatives. She is a results-oriented executive who combines process efficiency with a relentless focus on customer outcomes.
A master of forging powerful partnerships, Nicole excels at uniting diverse stakeholders to achieve shared goals. Her leadership style is both decisive and inclusive, knowing when to lead from the front and when to immerse herself in the details. Her calm demeanour under pressure and talent for fostering collaboration make her a sought-after partner, both within her organization and externally. Her unique strength lies in her ability to activate and inspire those around her, empowering teams to excel and achieve their highest potential.
Nicole serves as an advisor to event technology startups and is a respected speaker on leadership, team building, and digital innovation. Her insights into emerging event trends are widely recognized and valued. She resides in New York City with her son.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Jeff Abbott, CEO of Ivanti who, alongside his global team, brings insights shape the future of work. As the leader of a company dedicated to providing innovative IT and security solutions, Jeff brings a wealth of experience and insight to the discussion of the evolving workplace landscape.
Today, Jeff will be sharing key findings from Ivanti's 2024 Everywhere Work Report – a comprehensive study that explores the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities in the distributed work environment.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- If you think about where some of the most successful platforms are, Salesforce.com has brought an amazing platform to sales and marketing, Workday is an amazing platform for HR. CIO's and CISOs have not had that. Our quest at Avanti is to bring that platform, and in this transition we're in right now, the global business community at large, I believe it's the most important evolution in contemporary business we've seen in the last 25 years. It's going to be the basis for our economic wellbeing for the next 50 years, if we get this right.
- It makes sense for leadership teams to take active steps to dig a little deeper into this divide. With remote work becoming more prevalent, surveying your employees, I believe, is more and more important, this idea of remote leadership and keeping up with the ‘vibe’ of the company in this remote world to understand the experiences and challenges of employees and the executive suite with different mode of work.
- Over 90% of leaders we surveyed say that employees have the tools to be productive in a remote or hybrid work environment. But, of those employees, just 57% say they need better tools and better access and don't have the smoothest experience from a digital culture perspective.
- What we're observing is that IT teams aren't fully bought into the value of DEX (digital experience platform). IT teams are less likely than leadership to say improving the digital employee experience positively affects productivity, retention and satisfaction. Additionally, those IT professionals don't always get to experience the benefits of the digital employee experience that they actually help power. As a result, they don't buy into it simply because they haven't had a positive experience themselves. Applying the promise of DEX should really start with IT, because they're the ones enabling it.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The biggest challenge is engaging in the Everwork policy and technical adjustments in the safest and most secure way. You can't rush this. You got to get it right. Just can't wing it.’
‘Threats from bad actors or cyber terrorists is as bad as it's ever been. It's getting worse. These days, it's a persistent threat, they don't just come and knock on the door with phishing, it's a campaign, it’s nonstop. Vigilance is so important.’
‘Both the CIO and the CISO have to lock arms and enable IT to understand how they can truly impact productivity with the DEX platform by having transparency and visibility across the landscape of the company.’
‘Ultimately, where we’re headed is no longer operating IT over here, security over here, we see these organisations starting to converge. That's why this platform is so important for the future.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
As CEO of Ivanti, Jeff oversees all aspects of the company’s growth strategy and direction. Before becoming CEO of Ivanti in October 2021, Jeff was Ivanti’s President since January 2020. Jeff has over 25 years of experience working for enterprise software and services companies, including Accenture, Oracle, and Infor. Jeff holds degrees from the University of Tennessee and Georgia State University. He sits on the National Alumni Board at the University of Tennessee and has previously held board positions with the Georgia Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the Posse’ Foundation.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Nick Telson-Sillett, a renowned entrepreneur, angel investor, and public speaker based in London. He has an impressive track record in the startup ecosystem and has made significant contributions to the industry.
Today, we will dive deep into Nick's journey as a startup founder, his role as an angel investor, and explore his latest project, trumpet. We'll discuss his strategies for evaluating investment opportunities, his advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, and gain his insights on the current startup landscape.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- If you just look at the reservation market you’d think you find an open table at a restaurant, reserve the table, etc. We drilled in a bit further and found the niche of bars which you couldn’t book into in 2012. We went to the industry and pitched the idea of an app like Open Table that worked for bars, they and the customer base were positive about it and we went and built the software and signed up all of the best bars in the UK because there was no other app out there that was catering to them at the time.
- Because we’d built such a flexible booking system for bars, there was a boom in casual dining which didn’t exist back in the day for experiential, different types of restaurants which needed the flexibility. We then made a play for that niche.
- Early start-ups: Don’t get distracted. Focus is so important, everyone promises you the world, partnerships, sponsorships, all these things only add noise. Surround yourself with the work, 3 hours in front of my laptop is more worthwhile than going to a founders event. Becoming a founder has become a fashionable sport, people forget the being a founder is really hard work building your business and putting your head down.
- I love the start up world, I was mentoring founders so Angel Investing was an obvious route to go down because I can help financially as well as mentoring or helping the companies that I’m financially invested in. A lot of founders I’ve met aren’t investor-ready, and the first thing I say to founders is have you thought what you want out of your business? If it’s just you and you don’t need to raise money, and if £3m is lifechanging to you, you can build a business worth £3m and you hold 100% of the equity and then you can sell it.
BEST MOMENTS
‘You can’t please everyone: If you build a product and you’re at the whim of your customers you’ll never have clarity or be able to build strategically, you’ll aways be chasing your tail.’
‘We were the first app to introduce putting your card down or pay a deposit because we found no-shows was a big problem.’
‘Sales is going to be the new engineering, finding great sales people that know what they’re doing is tough, determine your ICP (ideal customer profile) and go after them specifically.’
‘Learning to say no to people doesn’t have to be rude, it’s about preserving your time to drive your business forward.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Sillett is a London-based entrepreneur, investor, and public speaker. He is known for co-founding DesignMyNight, a B2C platform that attracted over 8 million views per month and a B2B platform with over 5,000 clients. DesignMyNight was acquired by The Access Group in November 2017 for $30 million.
After DesignMyNight's successful exit, Nick Telson-Sillett continued his entrepreneurial journey and co-founded Trumpet, a buyer enablement software solution.
He is also the founder of Horseplay Ventures, a venture arm that invests in startups, and has invested in over 55 startups as an angel investor.
Nick Telson-Sillett is actively involved in the startup community and has hosted his own podcast called Pitch Deck, where startup founders pitch their businesses to him and guest angel investors/mentors. They discuss the pitch, the business itself, and the investment opportunity.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Richard Gunn, Chief Revenue Officer at hyperexponential, who is at the forefront of revolutionising the insurance industry through advanced pricing decision intelligence and driving the adoption of hx Renew, a cutting-edge Pricing Decision Intelligence platform designed specifically for commercial insurers in Europe and beyond.
On this episode we'll explore how hyperexponential is changing the pricing paradigm for insurers, the importance of advanced pricing decision intelligence in today's rapidly evolving market, and Richard's vision for the future of the insurance industry.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Advanced pricing decision intelligence refers to the use of advanced algorithms, data analysis, and technology to gather, analyse, and interpret pricing data for the purpose of making informed spricing decisions. It involves monitoring and tracking the prices of products or services, analysing market trends, and understanding competitor pricing strategies
- Advanced pricing decision intelligence is important for businesses because it allows them to make data-driven pricing decisions, remain competitive, optimise profitability, and react In real-time.
- Advanced pricing decision intelligence involves the use of advanced algorithms, machine learning models, and software tools to gather, analyse, and interpret pricing data. These tools leverage technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics to provide deeper insights into pricing strategies and market dynamics. Some common techniques used in advanced pricing decision intelligence include: data gathering, data analysis, machine learning models, and automation.
- Advanced pricing decision intelligence involves the use of advanced algorithms, data analysis, and technology to gather, analyse, and interpret pricing data for the purpose of making informed pricing decisions. It is important for businesses to remain competitive, optimize profitability, and react in real-time to market dynamics and competitor actions.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The benefits of advanced pricing decision intelligence include: improved decision-making, increased competitiveness, optimised profitability, and real-time insights.’
‘hx Renew offers a value proposition to insurers by providing insurance pricing software and a pricing decision intelligence platform.’
‘By leveraging hx Renew, insurers can eliminate the manual data collection process, saving substantial time and resources. This can result in annual savings of up to and beyond $100,000.’
‘hx Renew provides insurance professionals with a dynamic environment for real-time rate change monitoring and decision-making. This allows insurers to transition from relying on outdated information to making informed decisions based on up-to-date data.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Richard Gunn is the Chief Revenue Officer at hyperexponential, a company known for creating hx Renew, a Pricing Decision Intelligence platform specifically designed for the insurance industry. In his role, he is responsible for driving revenue growth and ensuring the company's financial success. With a deep understanding of the insurance market and a passion for leveraging technology to solve complex problems, Richard is instrumental in helping insurance companies make informed pricing decisions through the use of hx Renew. His leadership and strategic vision continue to propel hyperexponential forward in the competitive insurtech landscape.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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In this episode, Sabine talks to Karrie Sullivan, a change management expert with a keen interest in psychology and the development and leveraging of AI. Karrie talks in depth about why AI is disrupting the world of change management and the innovation it is creating, including her work with AI personality assessment. They also talk about the general adoption of new technology and how to recognise resilience and innovation within leaders and individuals.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Self-knowledge and introspection are both key components to personal development, which is essential when trying to promote change within and outside of ourselves.
- Whilst parts of our core personalities may be ‘fixed’ our ability as individuals to develop and evolve is dynamic, this is where we can create the change we want to see.
- Karrie frequently works within the intersection between small start-ups and larger enterprises to find the right people and innovation to create the best practice framework for all.
- Find the 7% of people who can turn chaos into opportunity and remain resilient under pressure.
- There is value in trying various new technologies and then adapting them to what suits your business, not all technology will be the right fit.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We’re finding pockets of results and resilience so we and our customers, our clients can do a really good job of adoption and transformation”
“How do we help ourselves become better humans?”
“We work with those result drivers who can solve problems very fast, to adopt something new, so what they’re doing is creating best practices”
“It’s actually a very small amount of people able to manage the change”
“They want to see a culture, they believe in culture and they’re looking for other resilient mindsets to surround themselves with”
ABOUT THE GUEST
Karrie Sullivan is a seasoned expert in change management and organization design, with a keen focus on leveraging AI personality assessments to drive successful transformations.
With a background in large-scale transformations, Karrie has honed her skills to address change management and organization design challenges specifically.
She is adept at helping organizations adopt new technologies, such as Microsoft Copilot, by hyper-targeting adoption efforts based on employees' mindsets and resilience levels.
Karrie's innovative approach to hacking the change curve has significantly reduced the time it takes for organizations to become high-performing after undergoing transformation.
You can discover more about Karrie using the links below.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karriesullivan/
https://culminatestrategy.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sean Languedoc, a seasoned tech entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience building & scaling companies across borders. Sean shares the lessons he learned from scaling five companies, how Outforce.ai is transforming outsourcing, when startups should consider leveraging external teams, and his thoughts on how emerging technologies like generative AI or quantum computing are accelerating development cycles. He also offers advice for non-technical founders looking to build MVPs in a capital-efficient way.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Each business started not because of a technology that I wanted to build, it started because of a problem I saw in an industry that I needed to solve, & I was enabled by technology to solve it.
- You can’t just walk into an industry like InsurTech & disrupt it with technology, technology changes a lot faster than behaviour & infrastructure. The lesson there was if things go wrong, the agency is blamed & I’d be fired. It’s nothing to do with technology, it’s all about people.
- Across all businesses you have to look at who are you disrupting & how influential are they in the decision-making process? Who wins & who loses & who can you embrace for your winning approach & get momentum behind those.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Everyone will tell you you have a great idea until you ask them to pay for it, or until you understand the culture of the industry itself.’
‘For good operators who were really interested in optimising we got a lot of momentum, but for the companies that were horse-trading favours, not so much.’
‘The industry standard is 39% of projects that go to outsourcing don’t work out. I’d say another 20% on top of those end up working out only because of brute force, relentless effort by the client to teach the outsourcing agency how to do it.’
‘You can’t afford to take the risk of getting it wrong, you need to go in with data & research & get it right.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Sean Languedoc is a seasoned tech entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience building & scaling companies. He has founded five tech ventures across various domains, successfully taking two of them "south" from Canada to the US.
Currently, Sean is the CEO of Outforce.ai, a company that transforms outsourcing from a daunting task into a strategic asset for venture-backed startups. Outforce.ai aims to be the catalyst that propels tech ventures to their next phase of growth by connecting them with the right engineering teams globally.
Beyond his role at Outforce.ai, Sean is deeply involved in the startup ecosystem as a mentor, guiding entrepreneurs through the complex landscape. He serves as a board member at A100 & a Charter Member at C100, underscoring his commitment to fostering tech innovation and entrepreneurship in Canada & beyond.
With his extensive expertise in international collaboration, recruiting, & navigating cultural nuances, Sean brings valuable insights on scaling teams, leveraging outsourcing effectively, and adapting to the rapidly evolving tech landscape.
His unique perspective, shaped by building companies across borders, makes him an insightful guest to discuss growth strategies for startups and & future of work in an AI-driven world.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Edward Brawer, co-founder and CEO of PodcastAI, a groundbreaking SaaS platform that's revolutionising the podcasting industry.
In this episode, we'll explore: Edward's entrepreneurial journey and the origin of PodcastAI, how AI is transforming the podcasting landscape, the future of content creation and distribution in the digital age, strategies for entrepreneurs looking to leverage podcasting for growth, & the challenges and opportunities in the rapidly evolving podcasting market.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Our previous startup was with a video platform, we looked at what we could do with AI & the models were pretty expensive. It could take the titles of YouTube videos & it would give you new titles which isn’t super useful. The real Aha moment for everybody was ChatGPT because it wasn’t a technological development, it was realising how to use the technology. It was at that time I realised that there was no limit to what you could build with this which led me to start PodcastAI.
- In February I started playing around with AI voice models & I realised that I could create a parody of an episode of the All In Podcast. I posted it on Twitter & it was reposted by them & went viral, hitting 600,000 views. We did 6 in total & people wanted to know if it was real, if AI had produced the podcast, they asked for the code and GitHub repository. That’s when we knew we could do it & we now have a product called ‘The Magic Pod’ which creates a podcast for people who aren’t comfortable with being in front of a microphone, it creates a completely automatically generated podcast based on a blog, news sites in your voice.
- Podcasting can be as simple or complicated as you want it to be. At its simplest, you can have a Zoom recording a put that out, PodcastAI can level up your production quality by automating all the post-production, distribution & promotion. At the higher end it’s more like a scripted TV show. Everybody is able to do this.
- A100 years ago, the percentage of the population engaged in farming was easily double digit, now maybe 1% has to be engaged in farming because there are tractors etc. Not everybody became unemployed, they went on to do even greater stuff & increased the standard of living for everybody and earned higher wages.
BEST MOMENTS
‘For most podcasters the interview is the fun part and the rest is less fun (pre- & post-production, editing, promotion & distribution, website CMS), Podcast AI makes podcasting effortless.’
‘Magic Pod is a whole new game. You don’t even have to do the recording part, just give it a 3 minute sample of your voice, upload it into our system & it automatically goes out on the day & time you want.’
‘Today, podcasting is a $28billion market. In 5 years it’s going to be $100billion.’
‘You’ll have more throughput, higher quality overall outcomes of the work produced & agencies are going to be able to scale in a way they haven’t been able to, it’s going to become an enabling technology.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Edward Brawer is the co-founder and CEO of PodcastAI, a cutting-edge SaaS platform revolutionising the podcasting industry through AI-powered automation. Launched in 2023, PodcastAI offers a comprehensive suite of tools for podcast creation, post-production, & distribution.
Under Edward's leadership, PodcastAI has secured venture backing, with Jason Calacanis' Launch fund as the lead investor. The platform offers innovative features such as AI-generated ad reads, fully automated podcast episodes, & comprehensive post-production services, positioning itself at the forefront of the rapidly growing podcasting market.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Jeannette Linfoot, a distinguished corporate CEO turned entrepreneur, board advisor, mentor, & investor, renowned for her ability to guide business leaders, C-suite executives, & entrepreneurs through complex business challenges & towards scalable growth, whose career is marked by her 'Brave, Bold, Brilliant' ethos, which she has successfully translated into a top-tier podcast that reaches audiences in over 120 countries.
On this episode she shares insights from her extensive career, her transition to a portfolio career, & her passion for personal development & growth.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- In my mid- to late-40s, I took stock of where I was, I loved my corporate career, but I wanted to have more freedom, choice & flexibility in my life. Now, having a portfolio career gives me more choice around being able to travel more & ultimately, I call the shots.
- When scaling up, what got you to where you’re at now won’t necessarily get you where you want to get to in the next phase. Having a clear, differentiated position in the market is really important when you scaling, otherwise you’re just competing on price against your competitors. Be clear on your proposition to the customer & know where you want to take the business.
- There are only 24 hours in a day & you’re only one person, your success in whatever field you’re in will often be dictated by the talent around you. As you scale you may find there are certain functions that you didn’t need before that you do now, or a combined role may now be at a scale where it needs to be separated & more resources need to be brought into the business.
- In any business it’s great to have a mix of talent, experience, some of which is age related: the older you are the more experience you’re going to have. But, the younger generation will have fresh thoughts & more energy. Everyone contributes to a team. With Gen Z, it’s important to understand their motivations in terms of flexibility, they tend to be more values- and purpose-led & they’re choosing who they want to work with on how they align with their morals & values
BEST MOMENTS
‘There’s never an easy time to scale a business, there will always be something that will challenge you, so really get clear on why you’re scaling up, start with the end in mind & work backwards.’
‘If your systems, processes, the boring stuff is not solid you won’t be able to scale, it will fall over at some point. Map them out now & understand which areas you need to strengthen.’
‘Don’t feel you have to scale up, it might not be right for you, you’ve got to want to do it yourself because it’s a hard thing to do. Prepare before you start on the journey of growth.’
‘The formula for success is: belief + purpose + action = results.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Jeannette Linfoot is a distinguished corporate CEO turned entrepreneur, board advisor, mentor, & investor, renowned for her ability to guide business leaders, C-suite executives, & entrepreneurs through complex business challenges & towards scalable growth.
Transitioning from a full-time corporate CEO to a portfolio entrepreneur, Jeannette now manages three businesses: a property investment business, an advisory business for corporate clients & business owners, & a one-to-one mentoring business.
Jeannette's podcast, "Brave, Bold, Brilliant," has evolved into a comprehensive brand & framework for executive leadership development & strategy, focusing on leading oneself, leading the business, & leading teams.
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Podcast: YouTube, Spotify, Apple
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Bessem Ayari, Head of Innovation Strategy & Scouting at ERGO Group AG, where he leads transformative initiatives that shape the future of the insurance industry. With a dynamic career dedicated to fostering innovation and collaboration, Bessem is a pivotal force in the InsurTech landscape.
Bessem shares insights on how the Ergo ScaleHub is redefining the innovation ecosystem & helping bold entrepreneurs scale new heights in the insurance sector.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- In these times of rapid change & digital transformation, the insurance industry is compared to any other industry, everyone expects the same service & speed as Amazon, Netflix, etc. That’s what drives me. Innovation strategy is about a culture that we need to shape & create to be on a good path but also to provide the means & tools to do so.
- We have a very broad & on point innovation portfolio where we are very near to the core, really trying to solve today’s challenges. Innovation is about delivering valuable impact & we can only do so by tackling the challenges we have today. In our portfolio we also have the ability to look into the future at the trends in the business & technology side so we can see very early where the market is evolving & where we should dig deeper.
- We’re pretty good when it comes to tech incubation, we have scaled RA process mining, AI and GPT initiatives as well as metaverse, VR, etc. We’ve created competency centres internally for these.
- I truly believe in physical collaboration, having physical touchpoints really helps to get a better understanding, to understand Ergo, the processes, the people behind it. At the end of the day it’s a people’s business & you need to build trust. Trust is built by having a proper conversation face-to-face or having dinner together, getting into a boardroom & cluttering the whole space with ideas and concepts to be worked out.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I’m passionate about innovation, driving meaningful impact at work & giving something back to our customers & employees.’
‘Innovation is about delivering valuable impact.’
‘You don’t learn a technology from Power Point, you need to get your hands dirty, try it out, make it tangible, test it & derive a decision out of it quickly.’
‘Getting direct connections to corporates is super valuable, as a startup you need to understand how the corporate functions.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Bessem Ayari is a dynamic leader specializing in innovation strategy & scouting. As the Head of Innovation Strategy & Scouting at ERGO Group AG, he leverages his extensive experience to drive forward-thinking initiatives & foster collaboration between startups & the corporate sector. His passion for mentorship & a keen eye for identifying emerging trends in InsurTech position him as a pivotal force in shaping the industry's future.
Known for his strategic vision, exceptional leadership, & commitment to nurturing innovative ideas, Bessem has consistently brought tangible value to his organization. His expertise spans innovation management, strategic leadership, & startup mentorship, making him an accomplished innovation strategist with a proven track record in fostering innovation & collaboration. At ERGO Group AG, he leads the innovation strategy & scouting efforts, identifying & integrating cutting-edge solutions to maintain the company’s competitive edge.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Andrei Mincov, founder and CEO of Trademark Factory, a company that specialises in trademark registration & protection.
On this episode Mincov shares his insights & experiences on the importance of trademarks for entrepreneurs and businesses, and the common mistakes and misconceptions that people have about the trademarking process. He will also explores the role of IP in business growth & success, & the strategies &best practices for protecting & leveraging your ideas & brands.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- My dad was a famous composer in Russia. A radio station that stole a song he wrote & turned it into an ad for Samsung without his permission, at the time I was attending law school & he asked me for help. I didn’t know anything about IP but in 1996 nobody in Russia had any idea about IP because Russia had just changed from Soviet law into free market law, so I gave it a shot & as part of that journey I became passionate about helping people who created something to protect it from others who want to steal it from them.
- Trademarking is mostly the same around the world, there are small differences here & there & you need to understand them to be successful in those countries. But, this isn’t something I think entrepreneurs should care about, that’s why providers exists who can navigate them through this. What you should know are the basics, it’s not as complex as you might think: What is trademarking? What are you protecting? What do you need to show to the government to prove it's a brand & not a cute name or image?
- The biggest misconceptions I see with trademarks is that you don’t own the word or the image you own the mental association between that work, phrase or image & specific products & services that you sell.
- Why trademark? If you plan to be in business for several/many years, the brand will become the most valuable asset of your business. It makes it easier t=for you to attract better talent, attract better leads at a lower cost to advertise at lesser cost. Even if you file your trademark a day before someone else does, you’re good. The problem is you don’t know when someone else will file for a trademark, so you should do it early or else someone else will do it and you won’t be protected, even if you came up with the name first.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The trademarking process takes a long time & I’ve seen a lot of entrepreneurs being taken advantage of by unscrupulous firms that claim to be able to trademark their brand for $49.’
‘The success rate of your trademark application is directly related to your willingness to understand the basics.’
‘On a general level, what trademarks protect is the brand, whether it’s the name, tagline, logo, or some combination.’
‘Trademarks is the only type of IP that you can own, in theory, forever. Copyrights, patents, industrial right expire, if you renew your trademark every 10 years you can own it forever.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Andrei Mincov, the founder and CEO of Trademark Factory, is a renowned expert in intellectual property law. With a career that began with a fight to protect his father's music, Mincov has since written multiple books on the subject, including an international bestseller, & has helped thousands of entrepreneurs and companies protect their IP. His passion for ensuring that hardworking entrepreneurs are not taken advantage of led him to found Trademark Factory, the only firm in the world that offers trademark registration services with a guaranteed result for a guaranteed budget. When he's not helping secure trademarks, Mincov enjoys living in Dubai with his wife & 3 kids & playing his one-of-a-kind DrumDesk.
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Email: andrei@mincov.com
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Nick Pester, founder of Beyond Legal, who is on a mission to revolutionise the way startups access legal support. But Nick's impact goes far beyond just providing legal advice.
Throughout his career, Nick has been a trusted mentor and advisor to countless early-stage businesses. From navigating the challenges of international expansion to securing major funding rounds, he has been in the trenches with founders, helping them scale their ventures to new heights.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- You have to balance the need of competitive advantage, moving quickly, & first mover advantage, which is super important and which I always try to support with the businesses I work with, against the harsh reality of doing something wrong or making sure you’re not being unnecessarily exposed and that you’re keeping yourself in a structure that’s attractive to investors.
- If you compare 2021 where capital was much more freely available and people could be more fast & lose with how they did things, to where we are now where capital has dried up and VCs are focused on existing portfolios, you need to be tighter and more organised in terms of your structure & corporate admin has become much more important.
- The best lawyers I’ve ever worked with are the ones who, alongside their technical legal knowledge being very good, have an ability to see what the business is trying to achieve & marry the legal requirement with the businesses objectives. Getting those types of people involved at the outset, even if it’s just a sense check, is so valuable.
- Collaboration is key, we need to get away from the mindset that 2 opposing parties are adversaries. It’s a partnership & the best lawyers are the ones who recognise that the horse trade isn’t just “you give us A and we’ll give you B”, it’s figuring out where the value lies for each individual party & marrying them together in a way that’s fair & respectful of each party’s interests.
BEST MOMENTS
‘There’s a tendency for startups to chase the shiny ball, it’s easy to get distracted by spin-offs of what you could do, businesses that succeed in the long term are those that have patience, dedication & control.’
‘Founders & business have a tendency to view lawyers as naysayers or box-tickers, people underestimate the value of a good commercial lawyer.’
‘If you’ve got a good commercial lawyer in your team, empower them, give them the chance to lead on things & you’ll see the value they can bring beyond the legal side of things.’
‘When selecting a lawyer to work with find an individual that works for you, don’t just go on simple recommendations by name.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Nick Pester is a seasoned legal professional with over 20 years of experience, specialising in FinTech & high-growth technology companies.
His passion for supporting the growth of innovative companies led him to found Beyond Legal, a venture that leverages his extensive experience to provide high-growth technology businesses with an alternative to traditional legal services.
Beyond Legal's primary offering is fully flexible, on-demand, fractional 'GC Services', which allows companies to access top-tier legal support without the commitment of a full-time hire or the high costs associated with external law firms.
Website
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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Do you want exclusive bonus content for free? Please fill out this survey to get just that as well as getting your say about the future of this podcast including content ideas and future guests.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Colin Sanburg, a seasoned entrepreneur & the Founder of FinElevate, an innovative strategic finance firm that is changing the game for small businesses.
On this episode, we dive into Colin's entrepreneurial journey, explore the challenges faced by small business owners, & learn how FinElevate is revolutionising small business finance.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- If there were 10 things that could kill a company, the very first business I got involved with was doing 9 of them! It was in really rough shape. But, from the hardships of figuring out how to stop it being so bad & eventually getting better, I became obsessed with finance & how to build a better business.
- Now there are a lot more entrepreneurial groups & masterminds, but earlier in my career I went years without knowing other entrepreneurs. They were the hardest years where I was trying to figure things out. Luckily, I got turned on to a couple of books. After I got through that & connected to other entrepreneurs, the second stage of my career began.
- When people hear “fractional CFO” they think of a really experienced person who is C-Suite level who’s going to give them a complicated 12-page plan of all the things they should be doing that they don’t have the time to do. That doesn’t work for entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs want freedom, their business to do better than ever & live a better lifestyle. It’s hard to do that, but we get in your business to help improve it
- The reality is, most businesses need to do some of the same things. We can train your team & get in your business &, instead of giving you a 12-page plan, we can say for the next quarter we’re going to focus on these areas based on your goals, thus making progress.
BEST MOMENTS
‘You can get trapped in a bubble of small business & limited mindset, but once you break out of that & work with other entrepreneurs it’s so exciting.’
‘We’re training your leadership team. The fear when you ask them to make more profit is that the team hears: “Make me more money”, when we come in we teach them how to grow their career as well as the company.’
‘The goal is not to do 450 things at once, it’s to have 450 things mapped out so that we know the next thing to focus on.’
‘You need to understand how your business makes money & you can describe that on a napkin.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Colin Sanburg is the Founder & CEO of FinElevate, an innovative strategic finance firm that helps small business owners leverage their financial data to drive profitability & growth. With an MBA & extensive experience as an owner & CEO of manufacturing, distribution, & service businesses, Colin has developed a passion for demystifying small business finance & empowering entrepreneurs to achieve their dreams.
Colin's passion for connecting with & supporting fellow entrepreneurs led him to start several mastermind groups, where he became the go-to person for financial strategy & advice. He pursued an executive MBA to further enhance his skills & knowledge. Through his experiences, Colin has gained invaluable insights into the financial challenges faced by small business owners & is dedicated to helping them navigate the complexities of business finance to achieve long-term success.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Brian Childress, a seasoned technology executive & fractional CTO with over 15 years of experience helping businesses in healthcare, finance, education & more develop and scale their technology solutions.
In this episode we dive into Brian's journey to becoming a fractional CTO, the most common challenges he sees businesses facing with technology, his advice for non-technical founders, and his predictions for the game-changing technologies of the future. We'll also explore topics like how to mitigate the risks of outsourcing development work, best practices for application security & scalability, strategies for closing the tech talent gap through global hiring, & the importance of collecting the right data to leverage AI effectively.
Do you want exclusive bonus content for free? Please fill out this survey to get just that as well as getting your say about the future of this podcast including content ideas and future guests.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Fractionality is a trend where you’re trying to find access to a high level of expertise even though you may not have the work or capital to employ them full-time. If we’re honest with ourselves there’s not 40 hours worth of work to do in a lot of organisations or in a number of roles, so if I can come in & make high impact in an organisation for a fraction of the cost, that’s really valuable.
- One of the biggest things that’s helped me is that day-to-day I do software engineering work, but through most of my career I’ve been freelancing & moonlighting on the side, so I’ve doubled the amount of exposure & experience I’ve been able to gain in my career by working with a number of different organisations, teams, projects & technologies. I’m drawing on ever single one of those experiences to help & support the teams I work with.
- One of the biggest challenges I see for non-technical founders is understanding what advice they should be following. Technology can be a black box that’s really hard to understand & for non-technical founders there are a lot of people that look & sound like they understand technology & unfortunately they could be giving bad advice.
- We make things too complex too early, many of us think we have the next great idea & it’s going to be huge right out of the gate & we need to build so we can support millions of customers from day 1. That’s never the case. But, a lot of the guidance that’s out there is from the Googles and the Netflixs of the world & we build our architecture around these organisations. But, we forget that they have thousands of people to support those architectures & complexity, & they have millions of users to support.
BEST MOMENTS
‘It’s a fraction of the cost, not the expertise.’
‘Don’t follow the advice of the first person to come to you, it puts a lot of founders and companies in bad positions.’
‘Building in complexity from the outset hurts us all the way through the growth of our business.’
‘What is the most simple set of technologies & solutions that we can put together that solves a real business need? A lot of those boring technologies can be scaled up to support millions of users & billions of requests, we just have to be smart about the way we do it.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Brian Childressis a seasoned technology executive & fractional CTO with over 15 years of experience helping businesses in healthcare, finance, education &more develop and scale their technology solutions.
As a technical advisor with a strong background in software engineering, cloud computing, & cybersecurity, Brian is experienced in helping CTOs & CEOs make the right technical decisions for their organisations.
Website
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Scott Ritzheimer, the co-founder of Scale Architects and author of "The Founder's Evolution".
In this episode, Scott will share his wisdom on breaking through the common challenges founders face, wanting to grow faster despite constraints, overcoming the limitations of being the bottleneck to scaling, and building an organization that can thrive beyond the founder's direct involvement.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Business is hard, there are challenges that come up of course, but at one point while the company was growing really fast the challenges started popping up faster than we could fix them. It felt like it got really hard again, which didn’t make sense because we were doing the same things that spurred the phenomenal growth for the last 5 years. The year end financials started dropping for two years in a row despite making cutbacks. We had no ideas how to fix it because there wasn’t one obvious reason for it.
- Every organisation goes through a stage called ‘whitewater’, where the complexity of the business causes us to cause problems; there’s no one problem to fix it’s the complexity of everything has built up and it’s exceeding our ability to manage, lead, delivery consistent quality for our customers. That gave me hope when my business felt like we were flailing.
- There are things you need to do organisationally, but you need to change how you show up personally as a founder, CEO, leader and how you need to build, structure and architecture your organisation. You have to do both. By doing this my company tripled its bottom line in a single year & went on to open 2 multi-million dollar business units & increased profit margins by 5% for the next 2 years.
- For founders/entrepreneurs/CEOs/leaders, there’s so much more on the line than just us. When we get it wrong it’s not just about my profit margins, it’s about my life, my family’s life, my leaders’ lives, my teams’ lives, it’s about our ability to deliver quality for our customers & their experience. The opportunity we were able to create after getting to predictable success was night and day from the struggle that we had in whitewater.
BEST MOMENTS
‘If you don’t have profit, you don’t have anything to invest with.’
‘Folks need to know how & when to hire a coach & what to look for when they do.’
‘I don’t want any founder out there to not know what their next level is.’
‘Predictable success is the set of 7 stages that every business goes through, by understanding it we can accurately predict what challenges we’ll be facing & the highest leverage strategies we can implement.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Scott Ritzheimer is a seasoned entrepreneur and co-founder who has helped start nearly 20,000 new businesses and nonprofits.
Scott founded Scale Architects to help other founders and CEOs identify and implement the essential strategies needed to fast-track their organizations to predictable success.
Through his work, Scott identified a universal pattern that consistently created success. He distilled these insights into the Founder's Evolution framework, which outlines the seven stages every founder must navigate.
This roadmap equips founders with the clarity to understand their current stage, intentionally plan their growth trajectory, and focus on the critical strategies for each phase.
Scott is dedicated to helping founders break through the common challenges of wanting to grow faster despite constraints, overcoming the limitations of being the bottleneck to scaling, and building an organization that can thrive beyond the founder's direct involvement. Scott’s unique blend of entrepreneurial experience and passion for enabling founders' success brings valuable insights to help listeners navigate their growth journeys with greater clarity and confidence.
Website
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to John Johansen, a senior technology executive & operational leader with over 25 years of experience in consulting & executive roles. She is also joined by Steven Abel, partner at Oliver Wyman.
In this episode, the two guests want to challenge & change current operational mindsets within large enterprises. They dive into the known tech challenges existing within our currently fast evolving digitalizing insurance space, why an experimentation culture is critical to drive the relevance & resilience business needs today, what are the most effective paths for evolution, reinvention & consideration, & insights on how businesses can leverage tech ecosystems to scale digitally-driven revenue models.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I started creating business applications when I was 13 years old & have been writing software ever since. I’ve been doing this in the insurance world for about 30 years. With Oliver Wyman we’ve been able to create a team that’s able to build tools at speed that really improve our clients’ businesses.
- InsurTechs have admirable qualities of being able to runs experiments & take them to investors & get feedback even in the early days then pivot on the back of those results. They can quickly create real, tangible products that people can touch, feel & react to which creates a new round of experimentation including more people giving feedback, more experimentation & more changes. We wanted to bring that into a corporate environment that didn’t have the experience of that agility.
- The idea of responsible innovation is super important. There’s nothing wrong with the big corporate machine because it does a lot of things well. It protects the risk agenda; it enables bullet-proof technology that’s very stable. We have a very large client that we’ve done innovation for & we’re beginning to scale that in the enterprise. We’re not thinking of this in three lanes: The innovation group, the BAU support group, and the enterprise architecture group.
- One of the things that’s fraught with peril in any IT organisation is when we go from development to beta tests, to launch, to productions support. Are we doing those things better? Is there less drama? Thinking through those early experiments & really demonstrating to people that the process is yielding that benefit/business change faster, with less investment, than an 18 month requirement process, an 18 month build & then a 12 month implementation. With the right experiments & stakeholder team we seeing those metrics trending in the right direction.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We’re still seeing some bureaucracy, which means it’s hard to maintain momentum. We wanted to break the bounds of the culture a progress in weeks not months.’
‘There’s a lot that we can do to improve business processes & be responsive to our business users by running small experiments.’
‘The most important part of measuring success starts with picking the right experiments up front.’
‘We can begin to measure by throughput: Is this process of experimentation actually getting us to faster, better business results, implementations, & hand-offs.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
John Johansen is a seasoned senior technology executive & operational leader with a proven track record of success. Based in Naples, he brings extensive experience in driving growth & innovation within the technology sector. As part of Oliver Wyman, Johansen specializes in helping legacy corporations leverage startup culture to foster agility, accelerate digital transformation, & unlock new opportunities.
Steve Abel is a dedicated partner at Oliver Wyman, leveraging his 25+ years of consulting & executive experience to help clients tackle intricate challenges & lead teams in delivering reliable insights. With a strong focus on smart technological implementation, Steve has a proven track record of generating value for organizations.
His extensive expertise encompasses program management, operations, shared services, enabling technologies, business process reengineering, finance best practices, insurance products & data, actuarial platforms, machine learning, artificial intelligence, cloud solutions, & business & technical architecture.
Steve's passion lies in assisting clients in achieving their strategic objectives & optimizing performance, all while cultivating a collaborative, innovative, & excellent work culture.
ABOUT THE HOST
There are over 140,000 FinTech ventures out there, including FinTechs, InsurTechs, HealthTechs, & WealthTechs, & the number keeps on changing every month. One statistic remains the same: 25% of these ventures have received investment and support from the financing world. 75% of these businesses still seek financing support from institutional & corporate investors alongside value-creating commercial collaboration opportunities with Global Fortune 500.
Through this podcast series, I would like to demystify the world of corporate venturing, including how corporations collaborate with growth ventures, how venture capitalists & corporate venture capitalists make investment & collaboration choices in ventures & give tech founders & entrepreneurs, the strategies, tactics, tools, & techniques to build, grow & scale their business by understanding how those with financing power think. So, listen in, share & comment as you see fit.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Brian McDermott, Chief Information Officer at Victor Insurance.
This podcast will be a little bit different. As Steven Abel is going to join us to highlight the value of the Oliver Wyman relationship with Victor Insurance, as a subsidiary of Marsh McLennan. Indeed, in the complex world of business, speed to value when delivering technology is critical & Victor Insurance has found a critical partner in delivering tech among others with the Oliver Wyman team.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- An MGA is a company appointed by the insurer, typically the carrier, to exercise supervision & oversight on specific & targeted insurance programmes. We do everything an insurance company does but we don’t source the capital, the carrier is the source of capital for us, they manage the risk in terms of the capital. We underwrite the risk on behalf of others & we do a lot of the administration on behalf of the carrier, claims processing, servicing, transaction processing, connecting with the broker, handling of insurance fees & processing of any financial aspects.
- We operate in 8 countries. The majority of the revenues & premiums derive from the US, around 80% left-side of the globe, 20% right-side. But, we do see immense opportunity on the right-side of the globe because it’s an untapped opportunity in territories with products & service offerings that we can provide. That’s a key strategic focus as we proceed.
- Typically, InsurTechs’ challenges include having great product but limited premium running through the platform because of the leverage they have with their carriers to bring those products onto the platform.
- We differ from Marsh McLennan in that we’re a full, front to back insurance company: We do placement of products through our digital portal experiences, policy servicing, claims processing, data reporting & analytics, & underwriting. Marsh McLennan are a re-insurance broker, they don’t typically do underwriting. Our technology environments differ in that they’re built for different scale – we’re low premium, high volume, March McLennan operate in a different market segment; enterprise, high-end businesses, we operate in small/micro market. We have to build scalable, fast products whereas Marsh is more of a heavy touch relationship-based business with their clients. So it’s difficult to align with them completely but there are a number of areas around complimentary services.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We’re trying to become the Amazon for brokers in the small, commercial & speciality marketplace.’
‘One of the key challenges I have is to make sure that we can modernise while we integrate as we go on our journey towards the future.’
‘We sit in the middle of the value chain with the broker on the left hand side, supporting the insured, & the carrier on the right, they provide the capital to us.’
‘We need to make sure that we harvest the data insights that we have: historical claims & underwriting data - & augment it with tools like machine learning, AI, data ingestion & enrichment.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Brian McDermott is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Victor Insurance, a leading global provider of specialty insurance programs & a subsidiary of Marsh McLennan.
Brian brings a wealth of experience to his role, with a career spanning more than 30 years in diverse industries such as retail, insurance, finance, & government.
Known for his disruptive thinking and innovation within the IT field, Brian is constantly exploring new ways to leverage contemporary technology & drive digital transformation within the insurance industry.
In his role as CIO, Brian is keen to embrace modern technologies & help drive the agenda within the broader Marsh McLennan corporation. His unique perspective, stemming from Victor Insurance's position as a high-volume, highly transacting business, enables him to provide valuable input on the digital connection between the market & the brokers & clients they work with.
As a partner at Oliver Wyman, Steven helps clients solve complex problems & lead teams to deliver insights that you can trust. Steve acquired over 25 years of experience in consulting & executive roles, delivering value to organizations via smart technological deployment.
Steve’s specialties include program management, operations, shared services, enabling technologies, business process reengineering, finance leading practices, insurance products & data, actuarial platforms, machine learning, AI, cloud solutions, business & technical architecture.
Steve is passionate about helping clients achieve their strategic goals & optimize their performance, while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, & excellence.
Oliver Wyman
ABOUT THE HOST
There are over 140,000 FinTech ventures out there, including FinTechs, InsurTechs, HealthTechs, and WealthTechs. And the number keeps on changing every month. One statistic remains the same: 25% of these ventures have received investment and support from the financing world. 75% of these businesses still seek financing support from institutional and corporate investors alongside value-creating commercial collaboration opportunities with Global Fortune 500.
Through this podcast series, I would like to demystify the world of corporate venturing, including how corporations collaborate with growth ventures, how venture capitalists and corporate venture capitalists make investment and collaboration choices in ventures and give tech founders and entrepreneurs, the strategies, tactics, tools, and techniques to build, grow and scale their business by understanding how those with financing power think. So, listen in, share and comment as you see fit.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Steve Abel, Partner at Oliver Wyman. In this episode, they dive into the insurtech world & determine how to reinvent the InsurTech space by Leveraging Commoditized Tech for a Competitive Edge.
On this episode they discuss:
- The common mistakes InsurTech startups make when investing in technology components with not well-thought-out architectures.
- How InsurTech startups can leverage commoditized technology to focus on building unique value propositions.
- The strategies for effectively orchestrating & assembling tech components into a symbiotic whole for faster go-to-market.
- How InsurTech startups can focus on monetizing their algorithms rather than building the full tech stack.
- The changing concept of differentiation in the InsurTech sector & how startups can leverage this to their advantage.
Useful links:
Cyber security and Captive Insurance
Self-insured actuarial services
Capital modelling
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There are a couple of errors that founders make. The first is that you need to hire technologists to build everything for you in an undifferentiated way. Most of what you’re bringing to the market is not the proprietary or unique. It’s a drag on money, speed & you may lose focus on what’s important to your business model. You don’t need to hire them; with the pace of change of tech, a year from now you’ll need different talent because the tech will be different, Rent tech talent at the beginning.
- Most innovation that occurring in the InsurTech space is from founders & companies that you may be innovating or own, you’re toe force of innovation in this sector. That’s important for your investors because they want a return on their investment. It’s important for the sector because the huge advancements in the distribution & carrier space, to your customers are because of you.
- Critically assess what technical talent is absolutely necessary to be core to your vision, it’s as important as thinking about your architecture & tooling in terms of what is generically available & what’s going to be part of your secret sauce.
- InsurTech’s burn through time & capital fast, how can you assemble your solution in a way that you can test a market as quickly as feasibly possible? A lot of founders lose time tripping up over boring, platform tech.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Modern tooling, especially cloud-based, already scales. The idea you need to buy a specialised infrastructure or server is no longer important as it once was.’
‘Getting something in you customer’s hands as fast as possible to find out what they’re going to find valuable & pay for.’
‘If you’re a founder with a great idea, everything that’s core to that great idea you need to own.’
‘In order to make money it’s important to understand how your product is going to be used & sold. These are not the same thing & that can be a very costly mistake.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
As a partner at Oliver Wyman, Steven helps clients solve complex problems & lead teams to deliver insights that you can trust. Steve acquired over 25 years of experience in consulting & executive roles, delivering value to organizations via smart technological deployment.
Steve’s specialties include program management, operations, shared services, enabling technologies, business process reengineering, finance leading practices, insurance products & data, actuarial platforms, machine learning, AI, cloud solutions, business & technical architecture.
Steve is passionate about helping clients achieve their strategic goals & optimize their performance, while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, & excellence.
Oliver Wyman
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Steve Abel, Partner at Oliver Wyman. In this episode, they dive into the challenges & solutions related to legacy debt & system modernization for incumbent insurers.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- A few decades ago there weren’t the number or complexities of systems in the insurance landscape. Generally, there was 1 or several admin systems which did everything. The cost & complexity of IT was relatively low compared to now. The proliferation of systems that solve business problems, the complexity of those systems has increased exponentially in part because of the sheer number of systems but also because the landscape has evolved to accept that implementing a claims/administration/finance system should take years or months.
- A lot of carriers have made successful bets in the past; they’ve bought a system, customised it & to a large extent, historically, they have fulfilled their promise to the business. Perhaps they were a little expensive or hard to implement, but at the end of the day the stakeholders got what they wanted.
- Take a hard look at your technology. A lot of these programme fail – between 30-60% depending on who you ask. Ask yourself: Is it worth the investment for my business? If you have a generic business maybe the cost of customisation is very low, but if your business customises a lot & when you’re done you have a lot of spreadsheets, maybe that’s not a great idea.
BEST MOMENTS
‘There’s an emerging opportunity for insurance carriers to leverage a new ecosystem of tooling & providers that isn’t as monolithic & doesn’t require so many months & so much costs to implement.’
‘In modern (mostly) cloud-based technology, it’s possible to think of data as an enterprise/ecosystem asset, so you can keep that data in a structure that works for multiple business processes/calculations.’
‘Speed is now more important than ever in thinking about technology in an ecosyetem. It used to be that you could pace your development choices in years, now technology is moving so much faster – years and months instead of decades.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
As a partner at Oliver Wyman, Steven helps clients solve complex problems & lead teams to deliver insights that you can trust. Steve acquired over 25 years of experience in consulting & executive roles, delivering value to organizations via smart technological deployment.
Steve’s specialties include program management, operations, shared services, enabling technologies, business process reengineering, finance leading practices, insurance products & data, actuarial platforms, machine learning, AI, cloud solutions, business & technical architecture.
Steve is passionate about helping clients achieve their strategic goals & optimize their performance, while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, & excellence.
Oliver Wyman
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL introduces the a series of podcasts featuring Steve Abel, Partner at Oliver Wyman, Brian McDermott, Chief Technology Officer at Victor Insurance and Esther Becker, Partner and Captive Actuarial Leader at Oliver Wyman.
The objectives of the following four episodes are to:
- create an all rounded viewpoint of what is happening in insurance
- demonstrate how an insurance managing general agent has grown its business to over 3 billion dollars in Direct Written Premiums (DWP)
- and how the world of captive insurance is evolving when emerging risks are so present in our day to day lives.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Legacy system optimization is crucial for insurance companies to not only reduce costs but also to enhance the value of existing investments. By addressing the historical oversights and implementing effective strategies, insurance companies and carriers around the globe can extract comprehensive value from your legacy systems.
- Insurers out there… You've made substantial investments in your core systems, but it's possible that some decisions that we made were not aligned with the best long-term outcomes of your business or enterprise. Revisit past decisions critically to assess whether they still serve your company's current and future needs. Look for signs as to whether you've been locked into proprietary solutions which may hinder adaptability or interoperability long term. I have talked about those with many insurers and this is certainly an area of concern today.
- Implement APIs that allow more flexible interaction with your core systems and introduce modular upgrades that can provide new capabilities without a complete system overhaul. These targeted improvements can significantly increase value and extend the lifespan of your core systems, helping you stay competitive in a rapidly evolving insurance market.
- Finally, I wanted to dive into the world of captives and self-insurance programs offer a strategic approach to managing emergent non-insurable risks. A captive’s ability to navigate complex technological challenges and optimize technology choices is crucial in reinforcing the relevance and efficiency of the captive’s operations.
BEST MOMENTS
‘To unlock the value from your core systems, adopt a three-pronged approach: Simplify. Innovate. Collaborate.’
‘When you invest in technology startups, scaleup and growth ventures… recognizing the common missteps is going to be essential to avoid them.’
‘In leveraging commoditized technology, your goal should be to build more relevant applications. Utilizing established technologies allows you to focus on innovation without reinventing the wheel.’
‘By proactively shaping your approach to these areas of advancement, you're preparing to meet the demands of 2030 and propel the insurance and insurtech sectors forward.’
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Romaney O’Malley, Group CTO at bolttech, an InsurTech unicorn that is quite literally electrifying the InsurTech space now spearheading solutions in 35 markets across three continents.
In today’s episode, we explore a multitude of topics, including: The Journey to the Top: What were the critical turning points in Romaney's impressive career? Master Strategist: How does Romany approach challenging strategic decisions at bolttech? Industry Titans: What's the inner fabric of companies like Bolltech also traditional companies such as AIG, Swiss Re, and GE Insurance?
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I made a decision together with my husband in 2008 that we would move to Johannesburg for him to take an opportunity with a bank in South Africa. That was a big deal to move away from London & a great job with SwissRe, but this was a really unique opportunity that ended up being one of the best decisions we’ve made for both of our careers. It exposed me to very different markets across Africa which was invaluable to the rest of my career. Taking risks is important.
- One of the fascinating things about emerging markets is that they can leapfrog the steps that have shaped mature industries in the past. The use of mobile technology & telcos in banking in many parts of Africa is far more advanced that we see in developed countries because they have skipped a number of the evolutional steps that some of the older economies have taken. Those markets & consumers are at the sharp end of innovation.
- You can’t approach things as 1 decision. Your leadership team/board is never going to make 1 series of linear decision, the complexity comes with multiple decisions & how those interact with each other. You should approach these problems as multi-dimensional & you’re always going to be balancing different things. Strategic decisions are about trade-offs & maximising the point at which you make sure you’re delivering a number of different things to different stakeholders without getting out of balance.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Moving to London from Sydney on secondment gave me the opportunity to see the scale & the size of the opportunity in the rest of the world.’
‘I always knew the future of insurance was technology-based.’
‘Play to your strengths but surround yourself with a team of people that are really good at the things that you’re not so good at.’
‘The stronger we can build and ecosystem across the opportunity in InsurTech the more effective insurance industry we’re going to have.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Romaney O’MalleyGroup CFO at bolttech, an international insurtech company that is revolutionizing the way we think about insurance and technology. Her unique blend of leadership skills and financial acumen is drawn from a 25+ year-career at the apex of the insurance industry.
Romaney's depth of experience is not limited to the insurance field alone; she has ventured into other sectors like reinsurance, finance, and consulting.
When the numbers are crunched and the strategies laid down, Romaney finds her escape in the great outdoors. Whether planning her next exciting travel adventure or unwinding through the meditative art of yoga, she's a perpetual explorer—of landscapes, of limits, and of life.
bolttech
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Anika Jackson who wears many hats with enviable finesse. Currently, Anika is professor, a VP of operations for Full Capacity Marketing, a full-service agency dedicated to uplifting workforce development and educational institutions.
Today, Anika will share with us her insights about growth, drawing from her multi-faceted experiences and achievements.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Everything changes every day with digital. AI has been around for 20 years, but only last year its popularity rose for everyone to understand what the technology is & start utilising it for marketing or efficiencies in our systems & processes. We have to keep on top of everything. My students range from 20s-60s & they want to learn how to manage everything that’s happening.
- Podcasting is the only omni-channel marketing that we have nowadays; you have video content, audio content, you can create blog posts, thought-leadership pieces, hundreds of pieces of content for social media. There are so many ways to utilise each episode. Not only that, it’s business development, every time I’m on a podcast or have a guest on my podcast not only do I learn something new from them but that’s another person I can now call on in my network.
- I’ve leaned into learning more about a lot of different things so I can better advise people on how to make the best use of their dollars. Especially for small businesses, it’s not easy to get financing unless you have someone already backing you – most small businesses don’t. We at the Intuit Small Business Council are going to speak to Congress in a couple of weeks about AI & small businesses & making sure they have access to tools – digital equity.
- A lot of people don’t want to use their own voice, but in this day & time everybody wants to know who are you? I’m buying into you as a person & a founder. Yes, you have the product that’s going to solve something, but I want to know about the person, the authenticity factor. You have to believe in the person & that their solution is really going to solve your problem. Don’t think about it as ‘you’, think about it as you’ve got something people need to hear because what you have to offer & the solution you’re providing is going to help revolutionise things, help with access to something, or change somebody’s life that’s really important to them at this time. Take the ego out of it.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Who are you & what are you doing here? That needs to infuse everything that you do. It helps people decide if they take a job, can work with you, if you’re aligned with them. ’
‘I’m learning as much as I’m teaching.’
‘This is a world where you have to think omni-channel, you have to be integrated, & you can’t be siloed, you have to work together, that’s the world we live in.’
‘Reserve all of the names across the socials but don’t scatter your attention, really be focussed and niche down.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Anika is a mother, community volunteer, philanthropist, marketing and communications professional, podcast host, and graduate adjunct professor at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. As a marketer, she has done it all including experiential marketing/ event production, launch marketing, public relations, digital, and influencer throughout her multiple decade career.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Nektarios Liolios, a true FinTech trailblazer, a passionate entrepreneur, and a dedicated mental health advocate.
In this episode, we'll dive into Nektarios' wealth of experience and insights on the evolution of FinTech, building thriving startup communities, investing in early-stage ventures, and fostering a more inclusive and mentally healthy entrepreneurial landscape.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- When I started the accelerators we were riding the first wave of glorified entrepreneurship in 2011-13. Startups were cool, & we created artificial pressure around building things faster than in the wild. There were glimpses of people struggling, but I really didn’t take them too seriously. The real understanding of how bad people's mental health was affected in the early stages of building a business wasn’t something I was fully aware of. But It became clearer to me as we progressed with building these programmes.
- In 2018 I lost my Dad the day after I finished work at the accelerator, I had to deal with the mess that comes with leaving behind a big chunk of my identity. I thought, perhaps there’s room to do something about this & I joined a woman I knew who had started Founder Anonymous within the VC fund she worked with to give founders the space to talk about how hard it actually is.
- There’s a bag of things: Identity, loneliness, imposter syndrome, co-founder conflict, there are so many things that naturally happen in life that are concentrated within the world of building a startup & these people are completely left to their own devices & deal with these challenges. I got into entrepreneurship in my mid-40s, so I already feel I was a little more prepared for these things than younger entrepreneurs who haven’t had a lot of life experience. But, I wasn’t expecting my identity to be so messed up.
- The challenges between someone who works in the corporate world compared to someone who works in the entrepreneurial world are different, especially for founders. You don’t have the same support system. In the corporate world, you can take some time off, and talk to HR, there may even be support initiatives. But founders are very specific kinds of animals, it takes a particular type of makeup to become one in the first place. Research shows that entrepreneurs are more likely to have anxiety, depression, and neurodiversity manifestations (ADHD, bipolar) in their family history.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The outside picture is that startups are cool & the hustle is cool & you need to ruin yourself because the potential returns of a successful startup isn’t comparable to corporate life, I want to demystify that.’
‘We were part of the problem; we cared about the business, we didn’t care about the people behind the business.’
‘We want to build a business where we don’t want to kill ourselves. That doesn’t mean we’re not working hard, it means being allowed to say I’m struggling. Authenticity is important.’
‘There’s a link between wanting to be your own boss & experiencing certain mental health issues.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Nektarios Liolios is a visionary FinTech entrepreneur, investor, ecosystem builder, and mental health advocate with a passion for driving positive change.
His work has taken him around the globe, closely collaborating with hundreds of entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses in London, New York, Singapore, Dubai, Amsterdam, and Melbourne. His dedication to entrepreneurship, collaboration, and improving lives has earned him recognition as a FinTech veteran and a spot on the Pride in FinTech Powerlist 2023.
Innovate Finance
The Future Farm
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Nicky Billou who shares his expertise on how startup CEOs can leverage thought leadership to accelerate business growth, stand out in competitive markets, & create lasting impact in their industries.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- My parents took us from a legacy of tyranny, in Iran, to a legacy of freedom in Canada. This is a very profound & important thing for an entrepreneur to understand: Entrepreneurship is only possible where you have free enterprise, free enterprise is only possible where you have free expression, free expression is only possible where you have freedom. The bedrock foundation for the success of any entrepreneurs in an environment that allows for freedom.
- We are living in an era where for you to really make an impact, for you to have your brand/organisation to be known, you can’t do things the way they’ve always been done. People are smart now, they can see when you’re being disingenuous. What all people crave, everywhere, is authenticity, being real, being honest, coming from the heart. As a founder/CEO you need to understand that & it must be first & foremost in your mind.
- Elon Musk is somebody who has taken the time to create for himself a persona, a brand. Everyone knows Elon Musk. Why? Because Elon Musk stands for something more than “I want to sell more cars.” He got into Tesla because he wanted to change the world. DO you want to be the unknown CEO of your company or the Elon Musk of your industry?
- Being a guest on a podcast is like doing a TED Talk; you’ve got 18 minutes, you can’t waste 1 word, & you need to know what you are & aren’t going to say. Podcast guesting is an important tool in thought leadership. You also need a team to put out your content in the form of videos, written quotes & longer-form posts. CEOs should also have their own podcast but it shouldn’t be about your business, it should be about you so you raise your profile. Finally, you need to write a book (you could hire someone to co-author it with you).
BEST MOMENTS
‘It takes an immigrant to show people the value of freedom. There are a lot of people in the West that don’t appreciate how precious & wonderful freedom is & how it doesn’t exist everywhere.’
‘Life is about people, even business is about people, not money. The purpose of business is to solve problem for people for a profit.’
‘My superpower is I’m a professional believer, I believe in people, I pour into people, I Love people.’
‘If you want to sell more, have the best employees working for you, have access to investment funds to grow & scale, thought leadership is the accelerator that will get you there faster than anything else.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Nicky Billou is an author, thought leadership expert, & host of the Thought Leader Revolution podcast. Over the past decade, Nicky has established himself as a leading authority on personal branding & business growth strategies.
As the founder of eCircle Academy, Nicky runs a year-long mastermind & educational program, working with entrepreneurs from various industries to position them as authorities in their niches.
His insights have helped numerous entrepreneurs add 7-9 figures to their businesses & build powerful personal brands. With a passion for helping startup founders & CEOs become thought leaders in their industries, Nicky draws inspiration from visionary leaders like Elon Musk. He believes that by developing a solid personal brand, entrepreneurs can attract more investors, customers, & top talent to their ventures.
Website
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Yannick Even, a visionary at the intersection of AI, analytics and Generative AI. With over two decades of experience in transforming global organizations into data-driven powerhouses, Yannick's journey has taken him from the corridors of management consulting across Europe and Asia to pioneering roles at Swiss Re, where he led the charge in integrating innovative tech and data insurance products into the market.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Insurance is very traditional. Even 15 years ago there were a lot of forms, paper, very siloed. Nobody could really track a customer throughout their journey, everyone was very focused on their part of the journey. This is also true in terms of technology and data. It created a lot of misunderstanding for the customers & even the brokers about the future of insurance & how to leverage technology & data. This resulted in a lot of data gaps in the core of the system, from CRM to data management. It’s taken until recently for the industry to realize we need to do much better.
- In the last 5 years at Swiss Re, I’ve witnessed & been part of a transformation to a data-driven company. We built a common data foundation where we agreed on even the common definition of data, built a catalog of data and assigned data custodians. On top of this foundation, we built the governance layer & tried to take out the silos making data available to everyone, not stuck behind barriers. The most important layer was the cultural layer, around the people, we upskilled them around data and AI literacy.
- You need to really understand the market, I've seen too many people build fancy solutions with the latest technology available, but not spending enough time checking the product is what the customer needs.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Customer expectations are used now to have a much more engaging, personalized digital interaction with banks, retail, restaurant, any service which is at their fingertips.’
‘Data transformation is the base to start the journey in AI enablement. If your data isn't in the right shape, you can't leverage the value AI can bring.’
'We look at where tech & data can augment & bring value at scale into the way we do business.’
‘Not every problem will be solved by GenAI, there are a lot of problems that traditional AI will solve. It's also important to understand which problem will be solved by which technology & make it efficient across all the different parameters.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Yannick Even is a distinguished expert with over two decades of experience in transforming global organizations into data-driven powerhouses, emphasizing the responsible use of Data & AI. His journey in the realm of management consulting spanned 18 years across Europe and Asia, including a significant tenure of 5 years at KPMG China.
Recognized as a thought leader in Insurtech, Generative AI (GenAI), & Responsible AI solutions, Yannick has garnered a following of over 12,000 innovators worldwide. Currently based in Zurich, he is leveraging his vast expertise in dual endeavors. He is at the forefront of developing top-tier Generative AI upskilling programs for corporates, including The Digital Insurer Global GenAI Explorer program supported by Microsoft.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Website
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Simon Guest, CCO at The CareVoice, who has been instrumental in pioneering a differentiated approach to growth in the healthcare sector. Under his guidance, The CareVoice will focus on creating multifaceted platforms that benefit from the network effect, where each new user or partner amplifies the cumulative value and utility of the ecosystem.
Join us as we dive into the intricacies of orchestrating growth ecosystems for market differentiation, the power of behavioural science in healthcare, and the innovative strategies that have positioned The CareVoice as a leader in personalized health engagement. Simon's insights promise to be invaluable for anyone looking to understand the future of healthcare and the role of digital ecosystems in driving sustainable value creation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I’ve spent more than 20 years working in life & health insurance in various roles & countries. On one hand you become a bit frustrated that some of the problems are still the same, but the advancement of technology & the macroclimate of the focus on health & wellness brings opportunities to bear for life & health insurers. They need to look fundamentally at changing their proposition into digital health and wellness not only for brand & marketing purposes but to change the relationship with their clients & have an impact on their results.
- What’s important, in our experience is that you find someone that has an open ecosystem approach, that has the best services that you can find inn the market & will constantly evolve that. We think that we’re playing that role between build & buy but in the end the end consumer gets the best & most critical experience.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Life & health insurance companies have to move to a situation where they are offing end-to-end prevention & digital health cure services in one orchestrated way & then provide the insurance behind that if their client needs it.’
‘There are not that many products where you ask people to pay a lot of money for 20 years in the hope that they never use that product. Fundamentally we have to change the value proposition for customers in this industry.’
‘When it comes to health you can’t make any mistakes.'
ABOUT THE GUEST
Simon Guest is CCO at The CareVoice which provides Digital Health & Wellness Solutions for Insurers. Simon's journey in the insurance industry is marked by significant achievements & a deep understanding of Life and Health Insurance. His tenure at global giants like Generali & AXA has endowed him with unparalleled expertise in leading Global Protection & Health Business lines. This experience has not only honed his skills in driving strategy & commercial results but also provided him with a comprehensive view of insurance markets worldwide.
Between 2014-2022, Simon helmed Generali Engagement Solutions as its CEO, where he was instrumental in forging and leading a groundbreaking partnership with Discovery. This collaboration brought the Vitality shared value wellness proposition to seven European markets, showcasing Simon's ability to leverage innovation, partnerships, & ecosystems. His 'start-up' mentality has been key in delivering exceptional customer propositions, setting new benchmarks in the industry.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Denzil Eden, founder & CEO of Smarty, an AI-powered productivity assistant. With degrees in computer science & AI from MIT & an MBA from Harvard, Denzil has been at the frontier of harnessing AI's potential to transform work. She has held roles in engineering & product management and is now the founder & CEO of Smarty.
The pair discuss her founder journey as a solo technical female, how to provide advice for startups navigating economic uncertainty, insights on how she sees AI continuing to shape the future of work over the next decade, & practical tips for founders & professionals to help them start implementing today to enhance productivity.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I started coding at 8 years old & fell in love with building. That passion stayed with me & I enrolled at MIT where my passion thrived. I got a degree in computer science & did a Masters in human computer interactions building an app like Slack for classrooms. I thought that being a founder wasn’t for me, that I wanted more stability & I’m not sure where that mindset came from. I explored a lot of different careers & eventually went to business school to round out my education, while there the idea for Smarty came to me.
- This is the time to develop your AI literacy, to play around with AI tools, to understand how they think, work & how they can make your life better, how they can augment the work that you’re doing. We’re in such an early period of what technologies & tools are going to come out with AI, but the faster you start immersing yourself in that world the sooner you’ll be able to understand how to prompt/talk to/leverage an AI tool.
- There’s a lot that goes into responsible & ethical AI, we should be attributing where the data is coming from for these AI tools, the original artists should get credit, there should be some sort of system to track who was the original creator of a piece of work. On the other side, a lot of artists are standing on the shoulders of giants that came before them in terms of being inspired by things that came before & trying to create something new from that. I think AI tools can help speed up that process of experimenting with their own work.
- I’ve learned so much over my founders path & specifically about being a woman in AI, because AI is so based on previous data it’s been fed, it’s really important to provide AI tools with diverse sources of data. What I’m seeing right now in the AI space is there are no female speakers at events. Not just gender, but source of information need to be diverse in race, culture, socio-economic class, diversity is fundamental to the way AI works.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I was overwhelmed in most areas of my life & I realised that the majority of the things I was doing & had on my plate could be easily automated with existing technology, so I started building Smarty for myself.’
‘I use the same pitch I started with in 2018, but the appetite for the pitch is so different today. It shows you that timing is everything. Don’t be dissuaded, have internal drive over external validation.’
‘I think AI is going to be a transformational tool in every industry, every job from tech to farming to music. It’s such a magical time & I’m very excited to be part of that movement.’
‘You don’t have to understand the ‘black box’ of an AI tool & how it works, you just have to learn how to use it & in 5-10 years’ time you’ll be the expert.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Denzil Eden is the founder & CEO of Smarty, an AI-powered productivity assistant that helps professionals plan their days & automate mundane tasks. A trailblazer as a solo female technical founder, Denzil earned degrees in computer science & AI from MIT before getting her MBA from Harvard.
Denzil has an extensive background in technology and entrepreneurship. She started coding at age eight & has worked as a software engineer, product manager, & now founder and CEO.
Denzil has been at the forefront of harnessing AI to transform everyday work life for over 5 years through Smarty. Backed by Pear VC and other investors, Smarty has helped thousands achieve peak productivity by creating structured routines, automating administrative tasks, & maximizing time efficiency. When she's not using technology to make people's lives easier, you can find Denzil playing piano, writing sci-fi stories, or searching for the perfect cup of tea.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Rich Edwards, CEO of Mindspan & former product leader for IBM Watson. He has a knack for demystifying complex topics like machine learning & getting to the heart of how companies can drive real business value.
In our conversation, he shares a contrarian view — the biggest differentiation won’t come from algorithms but rather a company’s first-party data assets.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Seeing where AI & machine learning was going, it wasn’t quite a mainstream adopted technology in 2017, but it clearly was going to be. Where was the interesting part of that to look at? A lot of the value was going to come from data, particularly first party data, that even now is sitting untapped. Eventually that search led me to the company I’m at now, Mindspan, which is a small business which I eventually bought.
- The information that they’re entrusted with (when used correctly) can be very, very valuable & allow them to provide very high value services to their customers. The trick is making that come together with the compliance element required in the banking and insurance sector. A lot of the organisations that we work with don’t have the technical skills to build it up which is where a lot of the differentiated value comes from.
- AI isn’t one thing. Science fiction has portrayed it as a monolithic thing that’s all knowing. In reality it doesn’t work like that, it’s component pieces that work together in a pipeline/flow handling things. It’s more like the summer intern, the person that comes to you from university who is diligent, eager, literate, can follow instructions, can write but doesn’t know anything about your business or background, & has no context or experience to base it from, but can answer simple questions.
- An important issue that we as a society are stumbling into with AI is similar to healthcare or the extension of credit: Areas where there’s a lot of personally identifiable information that’s out there that businesses have about the people they work with that could be misused or exploited. There’s a lot of regulation around healthcare information in the US that states clearly who’s allowed to possess that information & what they’re allowed to do with it. There’s a lot of stuff we haven’t even thought of yet with AI, for example facial recognition. Data is a valuable asset & requires a level of care around it that isn’t just protection but governance.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I had no business being around AI, based on my background, but I was the guy that had been around IBM long enough & knew how to get things done. That afforded me the ability to be at the forefront of this.’
‘For many use cases with generative AI, the differentiation between the providers is getting less & less & less. It’ll be a thing that you buy, but it won’t be a thing that’s going to make you stand out.
‘Anything we can do today is machine learning, anything we can’t do yet is AI, but the line between the 2 is blurry.’
‘AI is a superpower that you can give to people that are most responsible for an interaction/experience that your customers have.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Rich Edwards is a veteran technology leader with over 20 years of experience working at the intersection of data, AI, and business strategy. As former product management lead for IBM Watson, Rich helped global banks and financial institutions leverage artificial intelligence to uncover growth opportunities and gain a competitive edge. He currently serves as CEO of Mindspan, a firm focused on helping community banks and credit unions transform through data-driven technologies.
Under Rich's leadership, Mindspan turns client data into an operating asset to boost differentiation, create personalized customer experiences, and future-proof their business. With his extensive background in regulated industries like finance and healthcare, Rich understands the importance of building trust and maintaining rigorous data governance. He offers a unique perspective on AI ethics, data privacy, and the responsible use of generative models like ChatGPT.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Chris Miles, an unconventional financial advisor who has an incredible backstory; he left the industry disillusioned in his 20s to become a passive real estate investor, achieving financial independence and retiring by age 28.
Since then, he has taught hundreds of entrepreneurs his formula for generating enough passive income to be "work optional" and then positioned to work by choice not necessity. During this conversation, Chris shares his incredible personal story, lessons learned overcoming major financial setbacks during the Great Recession when he found himself over $1 million in debt, alternative investment strategies beyond just real estate to generate passive income, and actionable advice to start taking control of your financial future.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I realised that when I was in the financial advisor industry that I was just a salesman in a suit; I was selling people financial products, but I wasn’t really helping people become financially free. It became my mission to debunk that, to get people to go a different route that’s been proven to work. Don’t deal with financial advisors because they suck!
- After quitting being a financial advisor in 2006, I looked at a friend who I trained to become a financial advisor who had gone to do real estate investing. So, I started going into the alternative investment route. Later that year, at almost 29, I was able to retire because I had enough passive cashflow coming in to pay my bills. That blew my mind because the financial advice world teaches you to accumulate/save all this money to live on less than the interest in retirement.
- I don’t want to invest in apartments right now. I might wait 6-12 months before I start investing there again. But, residential real estate (depending on where in the US) is still cash flowing, there are still good, solid returns. Not only owning real estate, but investing without owning the property by lending to people who are renovating/flipping/renting out properties & make a financial return of 10%+.
- I could send the rest of my life relaxing, but I believe that god puts you on this planet, gives you certain gifts & abilities that you can develop here to use to bless others’ lives. I really felt it was a responsibility of mine to bless lives. That’s why my company is called Money Ripples.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I was always taught that there wasn’t enough money. I wanted a different life that wasn’t just paying bills & then dying.’
‘My clients couldn’t retire early off my advice, I couldn’t & even experienced financial advisors could retire early off their own advice after 30-40 years.’
‘When the student is ready, the teacher appears.’
‘I have friends in real estate who say the last couple of years have been the worst years financially – even worse than 2008. But the key is, they’re talking about commercial real estate, not residential.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Chris Miles is a leading authority on helping entrepreneurs & professionals get their money working for them today. He earned the nicknames "Cash Flow Expert" & "Anti-Financial Advisor" thanks to his contrarian perspectives & proven track record.
Chris hosts the popular Money Ripples Podcast, sharing unconventional money tips & insights. He's also the founder of Money Ripples, a firm dedicated to helping clients maximise cash flow.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sally Gimon, an absolute superstar in the world of real estate investing and financial education.
After getting hit with a $79,000 tax bill from her wholesale real estate activities, Sally uncovered an incredible secret used by the mega-rich to save BIG on taxes.
What she found led her down the rabbit hole into the realm of Spend thrift Trusts which have been tucked away in the tax code for over 100 years & used by families like the Rockefellers to shield assets and minimise taxes legally.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I help US business owners save at least 90% on their Federal income taxes legally, year after year, generation after generation. In 43 states where there’s state or personal income taxes, I help them save money too. That’s money that can be used to pay off the mortgage, help a family member out, go on vacation, save for retirement, or give to charity.
- The Rockefellers’ trust is called The Office, they hire 26 CPAs (they can afford it), & it goes from generation to generation, it’s complex, it’s discretionary – meaning the trustee can make the rules for the beneficiary, someone who is not a beneficiary can sign up for the trust & the become a trustee for 5 minutes – someone at a law firm or myself can do this for them for free. It’s has been in front of the Supreme Court twice & both times has been honoured. This is in the IRS tax code, it’s legal but not many people know about it.
- The Rockefellers, DuPonts, Carnegies, OJ Simpson, Robin Williams, they all have a Spendthrift Trust meaning Robin Willimas’ 3 grown children will pay no royalties for his TV shows, movies, comedy acts. If they can do this, everybody should do this. This comes from England hundreds of years ago, though it has a different name.
- With the Spendthrift beneficial trust, if the average person joining my real estate group is a 56 year old man who is wholesaling or fixing & flipping a house & makes $50,000 on that deal & are on 24% filing jointly (1 of 7 tax bracket in the US), they will save over $12,000 on that first property. If they do 2 properties in one year, they pay for that trust for generation after generations. On the business trust side, I recommend someone who is making at least $80,000 gross, you will save about $17,000 a year or more depending on the state.
BEST MOMENTS
'If the Rockefellers can do it, why can’t Sally?!’
‘Since November, 5 of my businesspeople who have the business trust have started the beneficial trust because they were saving so much money that they wanted to start lending money to real estate investors.’
‘This is not taught in schools and universities. There are 1 million active attorneys, only 4% are trust attorneys who work for very well-healed people, I’m just trying to help the average person.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Sally Gimon, a seasoned Medicare broker turned real estate investor, epitomises the transformative power of financial literacy. Her journey began in late 2018, amidst personal challenges, when she pivoted to real estate investing to secure her future.
Sally's acumen shone through as she wholesaled seven properties in 2019, erasing her debts & earning acclaim within her real estate community. However, a staggering tax bill in 2020 was a wake-up call that led her to a profound discovery: the Spendthrift Trust.
Sally delved into the strategies of the affluent, uncovering how such trusts could shield investors from hefty capital gains and other taxes while maintaining privacy & asset protection.
Find out more about Spendthrift Trusts framework and approach and to reach out to Sally.
You can find out more and set up a call with Sally here
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Steve Selengut who has over 40 years of direct investment management experience & is one of the few investing book authors who has actually managed client money for decades.
Steve is here to share the fundamental principles behind "income-focused investing" laid out in his book “Retirement Money Secrets.” His approach can help investors confidently replace their paycheques with portfolio income streams that grow regardless of markets or rates.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- 25% of my money was always in the bond market, which included closed-in funds, mortgages, real estate, notes, loans, short-term, long-term, in the country, out of the country, a great, diverse portfolio. I stuck with stocks individually for a longer period of time & they all paid dividends which became an income stream over time.
- IN the first 5 weeks of 2024 my own personal accounts have generated over $20,000 in income. I’m not bragging about it, this is the possibility. Not only is it throwing out dividends every month, but the capital gains are like getting a cheque in the mail from your rich uncle & having something more to reinvest.
- After learning all the foundational rules about investing, people should focus on the income produced by the shares, bonds, etc, instead of their market values. You can’t spend the market value, you can’t spend a gold brick, you can't spend cotton futures, but you can spend cash. The companies are giving you cash because they appreciate your value as an owner, utilities companies were always very good at this. But most companies, especially in the tech sector, want to grow.
- Mutual funds were developed & began to get popular after the crash in the 20s, the great depression because everybody was afraid of the stock market at that point. Mutual funds gave people a diversified portfolio, you could own part of all the companies & participate in the growth of the economy again without the fear of 100% loss if a company goes bust. That bought a lot of money back into the marketplace. There isn’t an investment advisor out there that would deny the fact that diversification is the key elements of risk minimisation that you can employ.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Big companies influence advisors, it’s not just economics, there’s a lot of politics in there too.’
‘Bonds are a much safer investment than stocks by their nature, & they pay income.’
‘If you see a $100 bill on the sidewalk, do you walk by it hoping it’ll be $150 tomorrow? Pick it up & reinvest it, it’s new capital’
‘I’ve been through too many crashes to take for granted that every great company is going to continue to be a great success.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Steve Selengut is a 44-year veteran investment manager & advisor specialising in income investing. Over his career, he directly managed over $110 million in individual investment portfolios in the US and abroad.
Steve has now distilled his experience into the book: ‘Retirement Money Secrets’ which explains the principles behind income investing. He also provides coaching services to both individual investors & financial advisors on implementing income investing using customised security selection. His goal is to get people to a sustainable, growing income level that makes market volatility & interest rate hikes a benefit rather than a problem.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Lisa Wardlaw, a trailblazer in the insurance sector, a digital strategist, & an innovation enthusiast. She's a global leader with a knack for creating sustainable revenue streams & reinventing business strategies through technology & abstract thinking.
The pair talk about Lisa’s career in insurance & technology as well as their new programme, the “Authentic Identity Masterminds”, that they devised alongside their colleague Jessica Ewart. This programme is all about empowering professionals to craft and communicate their authentic professional narratives.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- My best experiences are these moments of zen that you probably didn’t realise in the moment that they were. You feel energised. For me, it was when I was when no one confined me to a box & I didn’t care about my title. I got to sit in an amazing time of transformation, above all that, figuring out how to drive business forward using algorithms and AI, 5 years before it generative AI became a thing.
- As all good ideas do, the idea for Authentic Identity Masterminds happened serendipitously. You, me & Jess were sitting around discussing the misunderstanding of the more experienced you are in your career the less guidance you need, you’ve got it all figured out. I was 45 when I had to totally reinvent myself. I felt that if you work hard & pay your dues you earn it. I’d earned my title, job & income, but in those days I was so into the work I didn’t own my own identity, the one thing that was mine & mine alone.
- When my favourite role was eliminated I looked at the clock trying not to cry & it took less than 3 minutes for my phone, emails, contact – my whole work identity – had been eliminated. I went to a career coach who asked me how many followers I had on LinkedIn, & I didn’t know. I didn’t go on a wild “connect with me” session, but I started to build an authentic engagement with people who had the same interests as me.
- We’re not here to tell you how to be on social media. Who you are is not you title or your role, who you are, what you show up for, your purpose & mission is something deeply intrinsic. I like to use all my experience, curiosity & conceptual ability to solve problems that other people can’t solve at scale. I’m a breaker of the status quo, my purpose is to show people that the impossible is possible.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Early on I would work 80 hours, 23 hours a day, & I’m not glamourising that, the body needs rest.’
‘I’m much more of a spoken person than a written person, which is where I came up with the Insurance Unplugged Podcast.’
‘Don’t think this can’t happen to you, it can.’
‘You don’t get to be, discover or emulate who you are & how you show up has to connect to that.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Lisa Wardlaw stands at the forefront of digital innovation in the insurance sector, wielding her expertise to forge new, sustainable revenue streams that bolster competitive advantage.
As a seasoned executive, Lisa's mission is to revolutionise business strategies through the power of technology & creative thinking.
In an era where digital interaction with customers is paramount, Lisa champions proactive engagement to drive digital customer conversion.
She believes that the financial services industry is ripe for genuine transformation, advocating for leaders with bold visions to embrace the tools of tomorrow for radical change.
Lisa's passion lies in crafting groundbreaking business strategies that defy convention, utilising emerging technologies such as AI, blockchain, & machine learning to redefine business models.
Her liberal arts background fuels her commitment to lifelong learning and continuous improvement, challenging the status quo with a curious mind & innovative approach.
Authentic Identity Mastermind London
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks about the world of authentic personal & corporate/business branding and their synergies to drive authenticity in 2024.
In this episode, she discusses the importance of authenticity in personal branding & how it can make or break your reputation, the role of storytelling in crafting a compelling personal brand narrative, the power of emotional intelligence in shaping your personal brand & fostering meaningful connections, the impact of digital presence on your personal brand & how to manage it effectively, and the art of reinvention & how to evolve your personal brand as you grow & change.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- As businesses evolve to meet the expectations of the digital era, they look for individuals whose personal brands resonate with their ethos & market positioning. Therefore, it is essential for you to craft a personal brand that not only demonstrates your unique value but also complements the corporate branding you are aligned with. This synergy is increasingly expected by companies as they navigate the complexities of authenticity vs authentication, ensuring that the digital identities of their employees enhance their brand's integrity & public perception.
- Authenticity is the currency of trust in the digital environment. In an era where digitization has penetrated every aspect of life, your genuine self is what distinguishes you in a sea of curated personas. When you prioritize authenticity, you are choosing to align your digital presence with your true values and beliefs. This alignment not only helps you navigate the digital world more effectively but also ensures that your brand resonates with your audience on a deeper level.
- A Your personal brand identity needs to resonate with your professional ethos, even in a remote work environment. To do this effectively, focus on the consistency of your online interactions, messages, & visual presence across digital engagement or platforms. Essentially, the experiences you create for others in your digital communications should align with your in-person interactions. This requires a keen understanding of user experience principles to ensure that your personal brand is both approachable & authentic.
- bring your networking to the 21st century by engaging through social media platforms where industry conversations are happening. Engage & post regularly to ensure your presence grows alongside your brand. Utilize networking to your advantage by joining & fostering growth ecosystems.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Your digital identity is not just a by-product of online interactions but a carefully curated persona that stands for your values, skills, & character. Authenticity in this context means being true to oneself while adapting to the digital modes of expression.’
‘In the wake of digitization & digitalization, aligning your personal brand with a corporate brand has become more intricate yet crucial.’
‘Your digital identity is now a cornerstone of personal & professional interactions.’
‘The virtual landscape heavily influences how you are perceived in both social & professional circles. So, remember to key both of those very much aligned.’
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Leandro DalleMule who brings a dynamic perspective shaped by nearly 30 years of driving growth through data and AI. As Global Head of Insurance and General Manager at Planck, Leandro spearheads the most sophisticated generative AI platform serving commercial insurers across four continents.
Through the "Scouting for Growth" podcast, Leandro will unveil his playbook for activating cross-industry partnerships and investments to future-proof success. His globetrotting career stands as a testament to the power of bridging geographic and sector divides to drive innovation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- We’ve been using large language models since the beginning of the company; they just weren’t very popular because ChatGPT wasn’t around. But now we can now open the black box. It’s very addictive once you ask the chat part of it questions.
- There are two major pain points we solve with technology: Efficiency is super important for underwriters as margins are very thin in any line. Accuracy is also important, how precisely are you finding the correct information rather than misleading or wrong data. The beauty of the technology is that it can work from multiple sources, bring it all together & make sense of that information.
- Before I give an overview of large language models, I always ask: “How many of you have heard of ChatGTP, generative AI?” It’s about 50% in traditional carries (higher in the digital NGA space) surprisingly, or not – insurance isn’t a very innovative space. Then I ask how many have used it & the number drops to about 30%. There’s much more room to grow.
- Generative AI is the future, it’s coming from all directions, not just insurance, we’ll be seeing more and more natural interaction with technology rather than it being distanced from us.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We went from being a data provider, at the very early stages years ago, to providing a risk & underwriting insights workbench with an AI co-pilot to help underwriters be more productive.’
‘For anyone that’s used ChatGPT once it’s impressive, it’s surprising the amount of investment in such a short period of time & the adoption, which surpassed the launch of any other product, ever.’
‘Once people start using AI they understand the power of it.'
‘Talk to your kids, they’ll know.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Leandro DalleMule has nearly 30 years of experience helping businesses in the retail, energy, manufacturing, telecom, and financial services industries achieve sustained increased profitability through data and analytics. Leandro is the global head of insurance for Planck, a leading artificial intelligence data platform for commercial insurers. Previously, he spent six years as the chief data officer for AIG. Prior to AIG, he worked in several senior leadership positions such as the senior director of big data analytics for Citibank and head of marketing analytics for BlackRock. He also worked in Deloitte's advanced analytics practice. Leandro holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, magna cum laude MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a graduate certificate in applied mathematics from Columbia University. He has published several articles on analytics, risk, and economics, the most recent ones for the Harvard Business Review on data strategy and analytics.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Alex Taylor, Global Head of Emerging Technology, QBE Ventures at QBE Insurance, who firmly believes that the next decade will expose the insurance industry to the greatest upheaval it has seen since the establishment of Lloyd's of London.
In this episode, topics discussed include: the key trends in Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) for 2024, QBE Ventures' approach to scouting for growth, the role of technology in QBE Ventures' growth strategy, & the challenges and opportunities in the insurtech space.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I've always been a technologist as far back as I can remember. And it's interesting that when you look at the context behind the applications of technology to a multitude of industries, you start to realise that it's not about the technology, it's about what we can do with the technology.
- 2023 has been a tough time. And talking to a lot of younger companies, it's a bit of a bloodbath out there. What we're going to see as we go into 2024 is the survivors of that time, the ones that did manage to demonstrate the value that they offer, start to see the light of day.
- More & more, organisations are appearing that help us to specialise products specifically to the risk that particular organisation represents. The risk that we run here is that if we specialise & personalise too much, then we're essentially not going to be in an environment where we can cover a risk that we know with almost certainty will result in a loss. We need to balance what needs to be created between the ability to utilise data insurance lines & the need to preserve the thing that makes insurance special, which I strongly believe enables the economic environment we operate in. Without insurance, people can't take risk in any arena.
- Your exposure to ransomware is directly related to an understanding of the backups that you have as an organisation. So you cannot have your access to your data removed if you have an air gap backup that you perform on an hourly basis. If you do get hit as an organisation, you can simply go back to your backup and restore it.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Technology doesn't matter unless it has an application to what you're working on, to something that's meaningful, to something that can deliver results, not just to an organization, but to the customers as well.’
‘The whole point of an insurance product is to protect against a risk that yourself can't mitigate directly. We're starting to see a partnership between the identification of a risk, an insurance product, & the resilience against that risk through remediation.’
‘There's a lot of blank space that can be exploited in looking at ways to grow products through simplification.’
‘As climate change starts to take hold, as our understanding of the historically static nature of physical risk starts to become a lot more dynamic, the value of understanding what may be is starting to become a lot more relevant.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Alex Taylor is a futurist & innovation specialist with over two decades of experience in the insurance and technology industries. As the Global Head of Emerging Technology at QBE Ventures, Alex focuses on identifying disruptors & leading investments into companies that are reshaping the insurance landscape.
QBE
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
TikTok
Website
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Antony Elliott, Global Lead for Digital R&D at Zurich Insurance, who is pivotal in driving the exploration, exploitation, analysis, & early-stage adoption of disruptive technologies, shaping Zurich's digital transformation journey.
In this episode they talk about his role at Zurich, the company’s strategic themes for 2024, the future of InsurTech, the challenges of adopting disruptive technolgies, & his advice for young ventures looking to collaborate with Zurich or break into the InsurTech space.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I fell into the insurance industry in 1999 & I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I saw a stat that around 80% of British CEOs were cratered accountants, so I thought that seemed like a good qualification to have and applied to the Big 5 & ended up getting a job a PwC thinking I was going to be rich. But, when I got there they told me I’d be working in insurance. I realised that there were lots of things in insurance that needed fixing & could be better, which is why I ended up staying in it & what I’m still trying to do.
- We’re using computer vision to monitor and assess some of the 5 million commercial buildings we insure around the world to reduce our carbon footprint. We also use it in physiotherapy to make sure people are doing it & doing it correctly to help people to be physically well either with posture & core strength, or to recover from injury quickly.
- We start by identifying either the problem or the opportunity & we involve a lot of stakeholders, from the most senior down so we can see a consolidated view across the group that this will solve challenges that they care about. We then use our network to find the best startups in those spaces & that they know about out Innovation Championship to apply for it. We choose the top 10-12 and put them into a validation phase to get them to prove how it can create business value for Zurich & the startup.
- I see huge potential in the Internet of Things in insurance, we haven’t quite got to the tipping point with it’s value yet. I’d like to see startups working in that space, whether it’s in commercial insurance or more personalised insurance. Taking sensor data to understand the thing we’re insuring & offer risk insights to the customer & to us as underwriters to prevent the claim happening or know about it happening soon is an area with huge potential.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I like insurance because I think it plays a really important role in society.’
‘I focus on innovation, how new technologies & ideas can create value for Zurich.’
‘I expect we’ll see generative AI native startups coming through this year which will create amazing value.’
‘Be very clear& concise on what your value proposition is and that it’s a major part of your elevator pitch. You can have the best technology in the world, but if you can’t articulate it in a short period of time it’s very difficult for people to understand that.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Antony Elliott, a seasoned professional with over two decades of experience in the insurance industry, currently serves as the Global Head for Digital R&D at Zurich Insurance. His role is pivotal in driving the exploration, analysis, & early-stage adoption of disruptive technologies, with a focus on their desirability, feasibility, & viability.
ZIC 2024
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
TikTok
Website
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL dives into her top trends to watch for in 2024. Staying ahead of the curve necessitates a keen understanding of these anticipated trends & Identifying them early will enable us all to strategically plan the year, maximise opportunities for growth & business value.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- As we approach 2024, I'm noticing specific technologies gaining traction that have the potential to revolutionize industries & create new opportunities for growth. For example, advancements in generative AI, new paradigms in cloud computing, cybersecurity in the age of AI, & sustainability tech trends, these trends are reshaping the landscape of digital innovation.
- As we look towards 2024, 3 key areas stand out in the changing market dynamics: the continued growth in E-commerce, cutting-edge advancements in healthcare technology, and the significant transformations within the education sector. These areas are critical for businesses seeking expansion and better value in the approaching year.
- A In 2024, the landscape of work is reshaping significantly, influenced heavily by evolving work models (hybrid & remote working and technologies), technology advancements, and the growing emphasis on employee experience. My focus here is to unpack these core aspects of Workplace Transformation.
- In 2024, I recognize that to drive growth & business value, one must focus resolutely on the customer. Customer-centric strategies are key, involving enhancements in customer experience & innovative approaches to personalization in marketing.
BEST MOMENTS
‘From the integration of generative AI to the importance of customer-centric strategies, the trajectory of market dynamics promises a landscape ripe for innovation and competitive advantage.’
‘Anticipating market shifts is crucial in developing customer-centric strategies that drive value.’
‘Flexible operational models and technological advancements offer new avenues for growth.’
‘Staying current with upcoming trends enables focused strategic planning.’
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Tom Kereszti, a seasoned leader with a wealth of experience in starting and scaling companies. Tom has been instrumental in numerous M&A activities, helping startups structure their operations for successful exits.
He has also navigated the unique challenges of starting a company independently, as well as within large organizations. His insights will be invaluable for YOU, whether you're an entrepreneur, investor, or corporate leader.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Any individual should be able to answer these 3 questions: Who are you? What are you passionate about? What are you good at? If you have clarity on those, you can live your calling instead of having a job or a career. I’m a servant leader and I’m passionate about making companies and people better and I’m pretty good at leading and mentoring.
- A series of doors open and close through your life. Any time one does you should look at it with discernment and prayer and ask: Is this an opportunity that makes sense? Is it something I should pursue, if I do, what happens in 3-4 years?
- Leadership is not having a title or a corner office, leadership is your ability to influence others about what you’re representing, that perhaps you have a better idea and other people follow you. The 4 keys that help you influence other people and help them buy in to you are: Who are you? Have a great vision. Have a strategic growth plan. Who’s in your inner circle – you become who your friends are, so surround yourself with people that are uplifting, there to support you, and you should always support them, it’s not a one way street.
- When you’re in a workforce you have to have relationships. We’re human beings not human doings, but a lot of us get caught up in the human doing stuff and relationships take a back seat. I made the mistake of separating work and weekend life with different sets of friends, as I went along I realised that you have to have relationships at work where you care for them and their families. It creates empathy.
BEST MOMENTS
‘When talking about work life balance, balance is a point in time where nothing moves. When you achieve perfect balance you become stagnant. I’m not sure that’s healthy.’
‘Success means different things to different folks… and if you know what that is then you can start working towards it.’
‘If I have clarity on who you are and what you stand for, I won’t necessarily follow you, but there’s a change I will because I buy in to you.’
‘A team of 10 is manageable. I always find a banker and a lawyer.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Tom Keresztiis a seasoned industry influencer, author, coach, speaker, educator, and mentor with a wealth of international experience. Tom's expertise spans across various sectors, including Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), where he has been involved in numerous activities, buying companies on behalf of larger organizations. He has also started companies for himself, providing him with a unique perspective on the differences and challenges in starting a company independently versus within a larger organization.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaskereszti/
https://www.leadershipdisciples.com/culture-force
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Ari Katz, Managing Partner at BEA Ventures and Co-Founder of bolt, now known as bolttech, which metamorphosed into the powerhouse bolttech.
On this episode they discuss strategic vision and market positioning, startup acceleration and value creation, data and technology, future outlook and collaborations, and much more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The unique angles that we provide include identifying the companies that we want to look at and validating the market acceptance of their idea/solution. We have hundreds of customers/prospects/partners that we can tap into to see if it’s of interest to them and help take it to the next step.
- Areas we’ve seen that have a lot of action or potential is the creation of data and insights and how we can imbed that into our offerings. Another is personal cyber, we are very big in device protection and distribution in 35 countries around the globe, there are similarities between device and cyber protection and awareness of cyber is getting more and more.
- There are cases where people don’t want to buy data because they’ve been offered data so many times, they paid for it but didn’t see any returns for 1000s of reasons. There can be cases where you can offer it as a profit share rather than as a service, change the things that you offer even though the product is the same.
- Insurance is a data business and has been gathering/analysing/learning from data forever. A successful company is one that is managing to leverage their data and doing proper underwriting, pricing, etc. What we are seeing are all kinds of data companies of all sizes that are not necessarily adapting to new changes and capabilities. We bring all data capabilities into one place where we can enable to carriers on our platform who we work with to leverage the ones they need or want.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Typically, young companies need more fundraising (Seed A) and more handholding to improve. This is where our thought of creating an external VC came into play.’
‘It’s rare to see a company that hits the right product market feed from the start.’
‘We want to help companies to avoid making the same mistakes we did when we were starting out.’
‘In Asia there are bigger ecosystems that insurance is part of which is not the case in Europe and the US, big brands have distribution and sell insurance as part of it. I think this will be an area of growth in 2024 in Europe and the US.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Ari Katz is a seasoned entrepreneur with 30 years of experience founding and managing software companies with several successful exists. His track record includes over 20 years of creating pioneering insurance solutions revolutionizing the insurance landscape, solutions designed to meet consumer demands whilst offering a competitive advantage and sustainable commercial growth.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ari-katz-537737/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Franklin Manchester, Global Insurance Strategic Advisor at SAS, who, empowers and inspires insurers in 75 countries, including 90% of the Fortune 500 insurers, to make data-driven decisions.
On this episode they discuss insurance trends for 2024, the role of technology, particularly generative AI, in shaping the future of the insurance industry, and how to navigate the talent gap.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I see the enormous potential for SAS and other technology providers, curators of AI, to remake, reimagine, reinvent the insurance industry. Insurance exists because a loss happens and indemnification is that promise. I believe there is a different promise: Prevention, pivoting from indemnification to a value proposition where we can help you before the loss occurs, and that will change the world.
- Even though I work at a technology corporation, I’m an insurance underwriter. When you’re going through your knowledge building phase to become an underwriter, you realise that the art of what we do is more important than the science. That starts with curiosity, asking the question and imagining the possibilities. You can’t be an underwriter if you’re not curious about the things that matter most.
- I get to have a lot of conversations with people in the global insurance industry about things that are going on. For example, what telematics can do to prevent incidents of distracted driving. The assumption is that teenage and inexperienced drivers are most likely to get distracted while driving, but the vast majority of those of us who need help with distracted drivers are not teenagers. One company experienced a 10% reduction in distracted driving when they recommended silencing your phone while driving for ‘x’ reasons. That’s a result, and an enriching discovery.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I got my start in insurance because I was in a car accident… I found the process incredibly interesting’
‘I believe in the promise that the industry provides; we come at the moment when people need us the most.’
‘The journey is more important than the destination.’
‘I feel like I’m an explorer and every day is a new discovery.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Franklin Manchester is a dynamic and passionate leader in the insurance industry, currently serving as the Global Insurance Strategic Advisor at SAS. Known as an "Insurance Super Nerd," Franklin leads the Market Strategy and Engagement for Insurance within the Global Financial Services Industry Marketing team at SAS.
Franklin holds a BS in Finance and Banking, Risk and Insurance, and a BA in French. His journey in the insurance industry spans nearly two decades, including a significant tenure at Nationwide.
Franklin is not just an insurance expert but also a thought leader, regularly sharing his insights on industry trends and early career tips. He has been a guest speaker at various industry events, including the Gamma Iota Sigma Rho's Fall Speaker Series.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/franklin-manchester-cpcu-52910321/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to George Morris, a lifelong entrepreneur and business coach who has not only weathered the storms of the entrepreneurial journey but has emerged as a guiding light for others on their path to success.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- My biggest mistake was abdicating responsibility when I should have delegated responsibility. Towards the later stage of one of my companies I was going through a divorce. I thought that everything was good & didn’t see myself as integral in the company anymore, so I turned everything over to my business development lead & the team while I checked out to deal with my personal problems. About 18 months later I didn’t know what decisions had been made & what direction the company had gone. I couldn’t blame them, I was accountable. I should have taken the time to delegate and clarify all the things that needed to be done and check in on people.
- If I come across an owner or CEO that’s frustrated or overwhelmed, I have them create 3 columns: Love, Loathe, Indifferent. I get them to write down everything about their business into these columns and get them to focus on the ‘indifferent column to figure out how committed they are to do these things to help the organisation and get them to get help for the things they aren’t committed to so they get done.
- Startups tend to want to look for unicorns, the person who is an expert in a particular skillset, hiring for talent rather than fit – the ability to trust or even have conflict with each other. All these talented individuals butt heads, don’t see eye-to-eye, aren’t committed to the same outcomes. For me it’s a bout the team, getting the right people in the right seats and getting things right. This is the first things companies should do.
- I am equally as excited about AI as I am terrified of it. It’s going to impact every single job in the next few years. To what degree, I don’t really know, but if we can get to a point of AGI (artificial general intelligence) that will be game-changing because it will be very human-like. It’s tool that we need to incorporate, bring into our skillset and adapt to it but right now we can’t quite see where it’s going to go, in terms of strategy & how it’s going to impact our companies. But, it would be remiss of us to ignore it.
BEST MOMENTS‘I go into companies and give them a framework to work with that they adapt & make their own & we build it from there so that they have a system that they can run on.’
‘Richard Branson is very good at figuring out what he’s great at, delegating everything else & letting people do what they can go do, he doesn’t seem like a micro-managing leader.’
‘Make sure you’re developing the rich culture in your team & getting the right ethos in your culture.’
‘I use AI to help teams accelerate different elements within their companies.’
ABOUT THE GUESTGeorge Morris is a lifelong entrepreneur and business coach, known for his unwavering commitment to helping individuals and organizations reach their full potential. As a single father of two, he embodies the values of dedication and perseverance both in his personal and professional life.
https://gmorris.com/connect/
ABOUT THE HOSTSabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Kamran Hedjri, CEO, Chairman, Advisory board member, Entrepreneur in FinTech and Payments at PXP Financial.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I started my journey in payments in 1994, I never wanted to be in this industry, it was just something that happened. I was working in IT and programming, was in a couple of startups at the start of ecommerce. There was a lot of new and cool technology being developed and it was the best 5-6 years of my career for learning.
- AI is being used to automate processes and get a better, smoother, & more intelligent way of dealing with finance activities including customer service, onboarding, KYC & all those processes to get to a point where you can assess a customer.
- It took us a few years to get a unified way of approaching and understanding different sectors. There are differences between the verticals and the approached that we need to apply & we should not try to unify too much, you need to have the specifics for each sector & add your special nuances for all of those sectors in the language those sectors understand.
- Don’t be afraid of failing. Fail a lot and early and try to learn from them quickly & work harder.
BEST MOMENTS‘One of the good things about open banking & finance is that the APIs are getting more & more slim-lined.’
‘Intelligence should be in front of you making things more intuitive & less complicated & burdensome.’
‘The journey’s always ongoing, you’re always learning, building new technology & adapting it.’
‘It’s our job to simplify complexity in a way that can be used in an easy & cost-efficient way.’
ABOUT THE GUESTCEO, Chairman, Advisory board member, Entrepreneur in FinTech and Payments. Kamran has 20+ years of experience in holding C-level roles in the fintech & payments industry. He has built companies across the payment value chain in Europe, North and South America and is currently on the board of PXP Financial Group and C2D Payment Solution. He has always been focused on driving innovation, accelerating growth, and building a great customer experience.
LinkedIn
https://www.pxpfinancial.com/
ABOUT THE HOSTSabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Monica Eaton who embodies resilience and strategic foresight.
This conversation covers: origin stories and multifaceted skills, tackling ecommerce pitfalls, business strategies and ethical practices, and predicting the future and human capital.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Part of being an entrepreneur is deciding of who you want to be and who you want to affect, and it becomes a journey of constant trial and error, but the dots never connect in the way you anticipate. My vision with Chargebacks911 was to be the next eBay and I failed my way to success in international business.
- I became an expert at chargebacks not because I loved it but because it was unavoidable. I started getting calls from the merchant providers that we did business with, even the ones that closed down my account because I had too many chargebacks. They asked me to give advice on the challenges they were having. So, I set up a website as a consultant.
- I’m believe in exposing people from all walks of life to technology if they like it or not. I had no interest in computer programming at school. But one of the high schools I attended didn’t have arty subjects to enroll in, so I was forced into 2 computer programming courses, I found I had an aptitude for it and I fell in love with it.
- Any problem you’re solving in business is a combination of reorganising what currently is, creating an environment where you look outside the box, and figuring out the formula for success.
BEST MOMENTS‘It was either lose my business or figure out what the source of the problem was and solve it.’
‘It feels good to be on the other side and rant at someone about the problems you’re having, but it feels even better to actually help someone.’
‘Solving problems is a form of art, it’s creative.’
‘With technology the impossible is possible, it just takes a little bit longer.’
ABOUT THE GUESTMonica Eaton, a successful entrepreneur since her teenage years, exited her first business before turning 20. This marked the beginning of a multifaceted career, and she is now a key leader in transformative business initiatives. In 2011, she founded Chargebacks911 to address a market gap, evolving it into a high-impact solution for online merchants. Today, Chargebacks911 is an industry frontrunner, known for delivering accountable outcomes. Monica also launched Fi911, providing tech-centric solutions for chargebacks and merchant lifecycle management, aligning with her vision for a seamless and scalable payments industry.
https://monicaec.com/
ABOUT THE HOSTSabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Terence Bennett, CEO of DreamFactory Software, brings with him a decade's worth of insights into cybersecurity, adversarial simulations, and API advancements. He's a veteran, both in serving his country and in protecting digital domains.
Today, we're delving deep into Terence's illustrious career, the current cyber threat landscape, and the role of emerging technologies in shaping our digital future.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- If you spend enough time with computers I think you just figure out there’s a whole other world in this application of computing and technology.
- I spent a lot of time in hacking forums online in the early 2000s, through that I got into early web development and learning the different ways to use the internet in ways it wasn’t intended.
- 10 years later I came back around to cybersecurity as a professional.
BEST MOMENTS
‘RedTeaming is about simulating an adversary as they go about the process of trying to get into a network, computer, or facility.’
‘As cybersecurity, as a field, has matured you’ll find very specific signatures to different kinds of attackers in the way the actually go about doing that.’
‘The challenges are, first and foremost, having enough people with the right skills to actually build APIs. Public facing APIs account for 14% of the total number of APIs that teams are buildings, and in some cases they account for 50-75% of a company’s revenue.’
‘Ransomware attacks are the 800lb gorilla in the room when it comes to threats… as we see organisations accelerating through digitisation/monetisation strategies, they’re connecting more and more data and systems that used to be offline and you can’t avoid that.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Terence Bennett is the CEO of DreamFactory Software, a leader in API code automation based in Northern California. He has over 10 years of experience in cybersecurity, REST APIs, operations, and leadership. Previously, Bennett was the COO of Integrate.io and a member of Google's offensive security "RedTeam".
At Google, he helped craft realistic cybersecurity exercises to test the company's defences. He has deep expertise in cybersecurity, penetration testing, and adversarial simulation. Bennett served in the U.S. Navy for over 8 years as a Naval Intelligence Officer and Surface Warfare Officer.
He was deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and worked at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Master's degree from the U.S. Naval War College.
Bennett is passionate about giving back through public service. He serves on the Board of Directors for the American Red Cross - Northern California Coastal Region and the Board of Advisors for Shields & Stripes, assisting veterans with PTSD. As a leader in API automation, Bennett frequently speaks on how code automation is changing software development. He aims to simplify complex integration challenges and help companies go to market faster.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/terencehbennett/
https://www.dreamfactory.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Roi Agababa, CEO of Novidea. From brokers and agents to MGAs and corporate risk management operations. Novidea is setting new standards in how insurance professionals leverage technology for growth, efficiency, and compliance.
On this episode the pair dig deep into the workings of Novidea's platform to look at how it navigates the maze of challenges that insurance professionals encounter daily, what role does plays in enhancing the distribution journey and the customer experience, and how it adapts to various levels of digital readiness while ensuring data security and compliance.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I started my path in technology in software development, mostly around data and metadata analysis. When we started Novidea we looked for an industry which is flooded with data and has data technology requirements and gap. This is how we came up with the idea to focus on insurance and insurance distribution market specifically.
- We have one platform that can serve multiple geographies, compliance and regulations to offer insurance companies that operate globally one consistent technology stack rather than a fragmented one.
- Novidea is a platform that covers everything in one technology stack. What we offer to our customers to increase operational efficiencies is around automation and business process management across all 3 pillars in one streamlined process.
- There are layers and protocols that Novidea has implemented for data segregation between multiple legal entities that use the platform. We have all the governance and controls in place to safeguard that information.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We have a data driven approach: Everything in our platform allows us to measure and improve, we offer our customers the ability, in real time, to get a hold of and understand the data and transforming that into knowledge.’
‘Our platform is futureproof; it’s updated and upgraded continuously.’
‘No longer do you have to go to a data warehouse to get an understanding of what’s happening and the trends, you’re getting access to information in real time so you’re making better and more educated decisions.’
‘We see Novidea as the core platform to manage the entire insurance journey, from the prospect all the way to the renewal and all the financial transactions.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Insurance technology entrepreneur Roi Agababa is the founder and CEO of Novidea, a provider of data-driven and SaaS technologies and best practices to insurance distribution professionals and their customers. The company serves global brokerages, agencies, bancassurance and corporate risk managment operations servicing more than 10M policies worldwide.
- Roi Agababa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roi-agababa-28900712/
- Novidea: https://novidea.com/
- Get in touch with the team: https://novidea.com/book-a-meeting/
ABOUT THE HOSTSabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine talks to John Rossman, a pioneering force in the digital era and the mastermind behind Amazon's Marketplace. His time at Amazon has deeply ingrained in him a unique set of leadership principles that he now shares with the world through his best-selling book, "The Amazon Way”. John's mission is to empower others to make their own 'big bets' and achieve lasting impact in their respective fields. His work is a treasure trove of insights for anyone looking to understand and navigate the complexities of the digital era. So, get ready for an engaging conversation as we dive deep into the world of 'big bets,' digital transformation, and leadership the Amazon way.
- KEY TAKEAWAYS
I’m an engineer, a problem solver, and that’s what I love to do with my businesses, my clients, with leaders. - I was an early leader at Amazon (2002-5) where I led the launch of the Amazon Marketplace business. When I left there I started working with clients on strategy, problem-solving, digital capabilities and models.
- I’ve now written 4 books about how to insert Amazon thinking into your business to compete and win in the digital era.
- There are 16 leadership principles at Amazon that really make a difference: The first is Customer obsession – leaders start with the customer and work backwards, they work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust.
- If we’re truly going to solve hard problems, innovate, be agile, test things out, we have to be able to push against and persecute ideas early.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Sometimes the idea is just not quite the right idea, and so you learn, adjust, and move forward.’
‘The Amazon Way translates Amazon's unique culture and management practices into insights and opportunities.’
‘Amazon believes in internal competition. It's very Darwinian.’
‘Simplifying processes, procedures, requirements, jobs, technology, projects, everything is super hard work and it’s super critical if you want to scale. Delete, delete, delete is the mantra I impose with clients to take away the calcification of things that build up.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
John Rossman is a renowned thought leader and expert in digital strategy, known for an audacious decision-making style that he refers to as 'big bets.' His approach has been instrumental in shaping the careers of industry titans like Jeff Bezos and Satya Nadella. John's expertise stems from his time as an executive at Amazon, where he was instrumental in launching the marketplace business model. John is a prolific author. His book, "The Amazon Way," is a deep dive into leadership principles which drive Amazon's success. He is a sought-after consultant, helping businesses transform strategies to thrive in the digital age. He is a popular keynote speaker, sharing insights with audiences worldwide. John's mission is to empower others to make their own 'big bets' and achieve lasting impact in their fields. His upcoming book, "Big Bet Leadership," will be available for free on Kindle. John is a catalyst for change, inspiring others to make audacious decisions and come out winners in the hyper-digital era.
LinkedIN
https://johnrossman.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Alex Shevelenko, the CEO and Co-Founder of Relayto, brings to the table a compelling narrative of how transforming mundane PDFs and presentations into interactive web experiences is not just an upgrade but a necessity.
Today we will weave through Alex's entrepreneurial voyage, his insights on leadership, the genesis and trajectory of Relayto, and a gaze into the future of digital content experiences. Alex’s perspectives to our dialogue will bring both foresight and actionable intelligence on harnessing interactive content management platforms like Relayto. We unmask the potential of interactive AI-led content management platforms in reshaping enterprise communication and how leaders can leverage this technology to foster better engagement within a world of digitalization.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- At my first job, an internship at Microsoft Office in 1997, I discovered the pdf was taking over PowerPoint and Word as the main medium which the customer wanted.
- The medium we’re advocating is a consumer-centric medium. They start with the end-recipient in mind and, in the process to make that process a vision we tend to use AI and no-code software.
- The more valuable the idea for progression, the worse it’s communicated. The more trivial ideas have a ton of click-bait-y ads that try to get you to buy stuff that you don’t need and solve problems you don’t really have.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Entrepreneurship tends to call on you.’
‘Fundamentally it’s about the consumer of your content… what do they want to do? Increasingly they want a conversation rather than be pummelled with information, they want to be engaged and make the interaction their own.’
‘It’s a privilege and a joy to work on something you really believe in.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Alex Shevelenko is the CEO and Co-Founder of Relayto, a document experience platform that turns conventional PDFs and presentations into interactive web experiences.
With over 20 years of experience in the technology industry, Alex has worn many hats across global organizations like Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP SuccessFactors, and Oliver Wyman consulting. His career reflects his passion for innovation and his innate ability to lead and inspire teams.
Alex holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. He has also completed executive education at Harvard Business School. As a serial entrepreneur, Alex founded the management consulting firm Glocal Partners, where he advised international companies on growth strategies and innovation.
This experience laid the foundation for his current venture, Relayto. Since co-founding Relayto in 2017, Alex has rapidly grown the company. Relayto has raised $500K in funding to date and hit $1.6M in revenue in 2022. Under Alex's leadership, Relayto transforms how enterprises communicate and engage with digital documents.
When he's not building Relayto, Alex is an avid reader and movie buff. He also loves to travel the world, having been to over 29 countries across 6 continents. Alex brings a unique blend of leadership, innovation, and global perspective.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shevelenko/
https://relayto.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.co
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
Sabine VdL talks to Pravina Ladva, Group Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Swiss Re. Pravina’s career reads like a playbook for digital transformation and has answers that could redefine the way we look at insurance economics.
This conversation is not just timely, it’s urgently needed in a world where data is the new oil and AI is the new electricity. Pravina tells us about why Swiss Re is taking the lead with its groundbreaking Sigma Research Report from the Swiss Re Institute, what are we – as an industry – standing to gain or lose, uncovering the blueprints for the future of insurance, digital risk, and how technology could either be the ladder or the snake in this high-stakes game of digital transformation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Today you can’t turn a corner without talking about AI, tech and data. This means there’s a huge amount of opportunity that’s been untapped. There are a whole load of new business models that we haven’t even dreamed of yet.
- Digitisation is taking the analogue world and putting it into a digital system so that it can be transmitted around the world both in terms of data and conversation in a digital context as opposed to a paper context. Digitalisation is how you take that information and apply it to your business processes.
- Many organisations deal with some kind of legacy technology, you need to be aware of you digital environment and work within that as well as what are the opportunities to change it and where some of it is OK, because not all legacy is bad.
BEST MOMENTS
‘If you type digitisation and digitalisation the come up together on autocorrect, it shows we really have a mixed view on what they both are and mean.’
‘Every one of my peers that I speak to are all facing the same challenge: There is a war for talent because we all want the same kind of people to come and do similar kinds of things.’
‘No organisation on its own can achieve what it wants to achieve, you need to be very open minded about who you’re partnering with, whether that’s InsurTechs, large global service providers, whoever it is in the end-to-end ecosystem to really bring the value in the right way.’
‘It’s not about your core technology, it’s about what you do with it and how you operate it that makes a difference.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Pravina Ladva started her career at Abbey National/Santander, gaining experience in the financial technology sector, with responsibility for various areas from strategy to delivery and financial results. She joined Barclaycard in 2008 and held various roles including COO Digital Marketplace and CIO Barclaycard Business Solutions. During this time, she led B2B and B2B2C technology and change teams, as well as the build and launch of a digital marketplace platform in the UK.
Pravina Ladva joined Swiss Re in 2017 as Chief Technology and Operations Officer for iptiQ, Swiss Re's digital white-label provider of property & casualty and life & health insurance, and in July 2020 assumed the role of Swiss Re Group Digital Transformation Officer. Pravina Ladva was appointed Group Chief Digital & Technology Officer and member of the Group Executive Committee as of 1January 2022.
https://www.swissre.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Jonathan Green, an AI maven and the mastermind behind ChatGPT Profits. Jonathan Green's story is one of radical transformation, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of excellence. From once being fired during a blizzard to becoming a bestselling author with over 300 books under his belt, Jonathan has not only recovered but soared to new heights.
In this episode, we'll delve deep into the world of AI and business acceleration. Jonathan will share insights on how to leverage ChatGPT for immediate revenue generation, the role of AI in building mailing lists, and how ChatGPT enables a remote island lifestyle, while running a thriving online business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There are a couple of reasons to start your own business; financial freedom, decision-making freedom, and locational freedom.
- When we were kids using a calculator in math class was cheating, since then calculators have become mandatory. How long before AI becomes mandatory?
- If you give a computer bad data you’re going to get a bad result. If we say “Chat GPT do this…”, the AI will obey you precisely, even if given a bad command. Instead, ask the AI what information it needs you to provide, based on your end goal.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Whenever I meet someone who’s travelled I can always tell because they have a stronger sense of self, ego, more self-confidence, they’ve been in tough situations and survived it. There’s a lot of growth that comes from meeting people from different cultures and having different experiences.’
‘Most people who wait to learn to use AI are going to go out of business, people who learn to use Chat GPT are 40% more efficient. That’s a huge differential, an insurmountable edge.’
‘The more tasks that I can push down to my AI tools, the more I can accomplish every day.’
ABOUT THE GUESTJonathan Green is no stranger to radical transformations. Once fired during a blizzard, he didn't just recover; he soared. Now, he's the bestselling author of over 300 books and the maestro behind ChatGPT Profits. From his serene island base in the South Pacific, Jonathan masterminds AI-driven solutions through platforms like MidJourney, Claude, and Leonardo.ai. With a robust mailing list of 100k+ subscribers and a podcast showcasing 250+ episodes, he’s an indisputable authority in leveraging AI to catapult online businesses into success stories.
His initiatives, AI Freedom and Fractional AIO, are not mere training programs but transformative experiences, designed to generate quick revenue for startups and optimize businesses. No, you won’t find a 9-5 mindset here. Jonathan teaches you to replace that limitation with scalable, high-ticket offers, and automated revenue streams.
Passionate about democratizing AI, Jonathan also uses his expertise as a celebrity ghost-writer to guide entrepreneurs in storytelling that not only sells but turns them into industry heroes. He’s not just in the business of building revenue. He's in the business of building legacies.
For Jonathan, it’s more than just business—it’s a revolution. A revolution you can join to change your life, exponentially.
Links:
ChatGPT Profits
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Dr Andrée Bates, neuroscientist and founder of Eularis, an AI-centric company that serves as a catalyst for innovation in healthcare.
The pair delve into the pivot points that drive innovation, the ethical implications of widespread AI adoption, and the tangible ways in which artificial intelligence is reshaping healthcare as we know it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Eularis was created to look at mathematics on commercial activities within pharmaceuticals.
- Generative AI takes elements of real data, looks at the database which it’s been trained on, makes new connections and generates something new.
- We’re going to have to get to a point where we have some kind of digital certificate in our voice, our video, images, that authenticates whether it’s actually us or not, almost like a digital fingerprint
BEST MOMENTS
‘AI is a broad term, there are so many different types of techniques which are classified as artificial intelligence and under each one there are different types.’
‘We can use AI to repurpose existing drugs – and this happened with Covid.’
‘I’ve recently come across AI that is predicting with very high accuracy whether a drug will be successful or not in the long term. That’s set to revolutionise the industry.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Dr Andrée Bates stands at the intersection of artificial intelligence, healthcare, and entrepreneurship. A seasoned neuroscientist and a disruptive tech innovator, she has trailblazed the healthcare industry since the early '90s. Dr Bates founded Eularis, a vanguard firm leveraging AI to address healthcare's most pressing challenges, back in 2003. Under her leadership, Eularis has catalysed growth for all the top 50 pharmaceutical giants, driving profits and expanding market share through AI-empowered projects in clinical trials, R&D, and medical affairs.
After launching her career in academia, Dr. Bates made a seamless transition into the corporate sphere, where she continued her legacy of firsts. She is credited with establishing the world's first digital health company in the 1990s, followed by the pioneering of commercial AI applications in healthcare. This entrepreneurial spirit has positioned her as a go-to advisor for an impressive roster of healthcare CEOs.
Her influence extends to academia and industry circles alike. Dr. Bates is a sought-after guest lecturer in prestigious MBA programs including INSEAD Business School and Fordham University, where she instils the next generation with a nuanced understanding of healthcare innovation and AI. A prolific author, her works have graced peer-reviewed journals and industry reports. Her international speaking engagements span continents, ranging from Europe and North America to Asia.
Never one to limit her impact, Dr Bates actively champions female entrepreneurs worldwide. She serves as a mentor through Thrive Mentoring, contributes to the programming committee of the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association (HBA), and is a founding member of Chief, a network designed for women leaders.
Find out about Dr. Andrée Bates and Eularis
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-andree-bates/
https://eularis.com/
ABOUT THE HOSTSabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Emily Tsitrian, Fintech powerhouse, seasoned leader, and the author of 'Make Me The Boss,' a transformative guide and toolkit for millennial managers navigating the new complexities of leadership in our current social climate. A world defined by Covid, #BLM, and #MeToo.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I think a lot of people in my generation have had an experience where, in your early 20s, you're interested in doing big political/social things, however the way to actually change things is to work in technology. Overnight you can make an app and see how thousands, millions of people change how they work, live and exist due to technology.
- Payments technology has largely been considered to be a commodity, because almost every business needs to accept payments. In the past 10-15 years the payments layer of the entire Fintech stack, from payments to accounting, to accounts receivable, to reconciliation, to tax ultimately has now become more of a strategy rather than something that is an afterthought.
- The dynamic in the American workplace has shifted quite a bit and has changed how we work. Do I want to be doing 9-5 work if there’s things like climate change and social upheaval that feel more real and present to me?
- The worst thing that can happen is that you fail. Failing at a company is not a big deal, it’s OK if it doesn't work.
BEST MOMENTS
‘At a fundamental level it’s all about risk, and managing risk. I think there’s going to be a lot of crossover over the next decade or so.’
‘What you set up in the early days can become very entangled with your downstream systems and it can be hard to disentangle as you scale, it’s something you want to put a little bit of thought and strategy into as you’re starting out on your entrepreneurial journey.’
‘If somebody had told me I was going to be an entrepreneur I would have laughed, even a year ago. I always loved working in really big companies doing really big things. And rubbing shoulders with VPs and executives and very much saw myself climbing that corporate ladder. It’s funny how life works.’
‘I never want to be laid off again ever, and the only way to truly ensure that is to become an entrepreneur.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
In a Fintech universe often viewed through the traditional lens, Emily Tsitrian is the game-changing asterisk. A seasoned leader with over seven years in tech management, Emily has captained teams across diverse terrains—from established public companies to explosive unicorn start-ups, including almost two years with the Fintech behemoth Stripe.
As the co-founder of Yeeld, a consulting firm specializing in payment implementations, she's not just navigating the complex fintech landscape; she's helping redraw the map. But her expertise isn't confined to fintech. She's a professional services manager who doesn’t just manage, but leads—guiding teams with strategic insights that go beyond spreadsheets and quarterly reports.
Discover Emily
https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilytsitrian/
https://theyeeld.com/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Make-Boss-Surviving-Millennial-Corporate/dp/0578971836
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode, Sabine VdL talks to Mark Fidelman, founder of SmartBlocks.Agency, and a globally recognised thought leader with over two decades of tech-fuelled wisdom.
Whether you’re a CEO pondering your next strategic move, a CTO looking to harness emerging technologies, or a CDO keen on transformative solutions, buckle up! We’re about to deep-dive into a world where the token is mightier than the sword.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- It's always more fun to join up and coming companies before big businesses come in and take over, but I quickly realised I wasn't building anything by doing this.
- The crypto I tend to focus on is the tokenisation/fractionalisation of assets where you break up real estate or something really valuable and you allow the democratisation of that asset to anyone that wants to invest in it.
- Tokenisation is much safer than crypto. There’s no such thing as ‘hacked wallets’ because everything’s white listed, it’s attached to you, so if somebody steals those tokens out of your wallet you can go back to the issuer and say “cancel those and reissue mine”, you can’t do that with crypto.
- To me crypto is Monopoly money, what I’m doing is real, with real money.
If you were to invest £1,000 every single month in one of the projects that are paying 10-15%, in 10 years you’d have a £30,000 per month income for life – some of that is because the real estate was sold, but on average it works out this way.
BEST MOMENTS
‘For young entrepreneurs the top 5 areas are AI, engineering (like SpaceX), cryptocurrency (find a niche), Ecommerce, and tools and technologies (SaaS-based products that solve a really nuanced problem that no one else is solving).’
‘I chose tokens when I fractionalise businesses because it’s a lot easier to set up, then you have a blockchain that does all the management, you’re not working with the stock exchange or have expensive systems in place.’
‘It’s the future, if you look at Black Rock, Bank of America, Citi, they’re all saying the same thing: everything’s going to be fractionalised. They’ve already tokenised billions of dollars of bands because you can then trade that anywhere in the world, you’re not subject to local laws.’
‘95% of crypto is just a scam, they’re worthless, they’re not backed by anything, they’re just a big ponzi scheme. Though there are 5% that will change the future, we just need to better educate people on what’s what.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
As the founder of SmartBlocks.Agency, Mark Fidelman is a pivotal player in crypto and ecommerce with a career spanning two decades. He's not just a veteran; he’s an industry influencer—endorsed by Forbes and celebrated as a Top 50 Social CEO by Huffington Post.
Mark is a growth catalyst, having spearheaded initiatives for NFT trailblazers like WAX.io. His credentials go beyond mere business acumen; he's a respected keynote speaker, a Forbes contributor, and the mastermind behind the YouTube channel, Cryptonized!, where he dissects the hottest trends in crypto.
You can discover what Mark’s about further below:
http://twitter.com/#!/markfidelman
https://www.cryptonized.substack.com/
https://www.smartblocks.agency/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fidelman/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Jerry Fetta, who is on a mission to demystify wealth management, making it accessible and relatable for everyone. As the brains behind Wealth DynamX, Jerry's fingerprints are on numerous success stories across the US, helping countless individuals lay the foundation for solid financial futures.
Beyond his role as a financial expert, Jerry has penned three books. In the latest he lays bare the trials and tribulations he faced, both personally and professionally and how he overcame these, showcasing a resilience that's nothing short of inspiring.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I grew up with a lower income experience, my parents didn’t have a lot of money. When I was 8 years old my parents got divorced, we lost our house, the car got repo’d and both my parents became homeless. I didn’t have a lot of examples of people succeeding with money or as entrepreneurs. At school I learned I wanted to be a business owner, to have control and try to right some of those wrongs that I experienced growing up. But, I really wanted to understand money.
- Sometimes, there’s an advantage to growing up without money. It instilled in me hard work and as an entrepreneur I’m a lot more comfortable with risk because I’ve come from a place where I’ve had nothing and am not afraid to go back there if I need to because I know what to do to rebuild from that position – not that that’s the plan!
- We have a philosophy, as a culture, that we go to school to get the grades, then college to get the degree, then we get the job, then we save up n our retirement accounts, and then we try to pay off the house and build up a nest-egg, and at 60-65 years old we can finally enjoy what we’ve put together. My Mom was my first client and we did all that and at 60 she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and she passed away 6 months later. As a son it was a shocker, but as a financial professional I saw the plan unravel and I didn’t want to have that client experience again or experience personally, I want to enjoy life now. That’s really shaped the way my company works with clients. We're really focussed on how you can win with money today.
- I have to do some form of hard work, I can’t just sit in my ivory tower all day. As CEO, my day-to-day is a lot of observing, I like to shadow my staff members and be present on their calls and Zoom meetings, watching and being a fly on the wall. I take notes, I see what’s happening in the organisation. I can then take that data and combine it with a lot of study. I do several hours a day of reading and studying business and administration and how to be a better business executive. With all that I can fine tune the organisation to make it better, and I’ll put that into a written plan.
BEST MOMENTS‘Wealth DynamX helps families, individuals and entrepreneurs in North America achieve greater financial education, stability and freedom in the future.’
‘I became a bodybuilder and thought I’d do that forever, but I started to get into the financial industry at 18, got all my licences and the rest has been a natural progression of evolving and growing and putting my vision into reality over the last 11 years.’
‘School is necessary, we need to learn the basics, but I think it does a really poor job on two things and is an area where we can simply improve is telling people the purpose of school. It’s a very long period of our lives where we don’t really know why we’re there.’
‘As a CEO/founder, you want to spend your time either in the marketplace with your people (watching, seeing and being part of what’s going on), or you want to spend it dreaming up new ideas, or spend it thinking of how to make those ideas become reality. I try to keep my time inside those zones.’
ABOUT THE GUESTJerry Fetta is a beacon in the world of finance, with a mission to simplify the complexities of wealth management and make it relatable to all. As the visionary Founder and CEO of Wealth DynamX, Jerry has dedicated his career to assisting numerous clients across the U.S. in building a solid financial foundation. Jerry's unique approach, rooted in authenticity and applicability, has set him apart in the industry.
Get access to Jerry's free book "The Blueprint to Financial Freedom."
https://jerryfetta.com/b2fpromo
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Megan Bingham-Walker, Co-founder and CEO of Anansi, a cutting-edge company on a mission to revolutionise the goods-in-transit insurance industry.
Today, we will dive deep into Megan's journey as an entrepreneur, her vision for the future of goods-in-transit insurance, and the unique approaches and strategies that have propelled Anansi to success.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- This is not an obvious place for me to be because my background is very mixed. I spent a few years working with the Government, 5 years in venture capital specialising in CleanTech investing in early-stage startups. I got really excited there about what you could do with data and tools to improve industrial processes which a lot of InsurTechs now use. I really wanted to found a business in the area of machine learning and data and how you could solve problems using them. With my co-founder, we’re working to bring more continuous and enriched data into insurance products.
- At Anansi we built a platform to essentially automate the process for goods-in-transit insurance. The problem retailers face at the moment is that it’s a very manual process, they may not even know when an item is lost or damaged until a customer tells them, so even having an early identification of that is a big step up in terms of providing an excellent experience for their customers.
- There’s often a very big fraud risk. If you’re just one retailer you may only know about the fraud that you deal with, whereas from our perspective we work with multiple different retailers and different fulfilment centres, so we will be able to learn the fraud across the market and apply the learnings between the different retailers that we work with.
- Insurance is about information, essentially we are an information industry. The foundation of a lot of our products is in statistical analysis on top of the data that we can gather. The new aspect of what we’re doing, specifically on the goods-in-transit side, is bringing this transactional data so that we have a very quick turnaround of 60 days max between when an item is shipped and when we process the claim, and the contract is completed. This is what the industry has lacked in the past.
BEST MOMENTS‘The biggest problem we’re solving for the retailers is admin.’
"We've all experienced something going missing or getting damaged-in-transit, it’s the number 1 cause of customer complaints and never purchasing again. Having a bad purchase experience is a real decision point for consumers.’
‘Anansi is a West-African folklore character – I have some family connections to West-Africa and the Caribbean – it’s a spider character which is the keeper of knowledge.’
‘What’s exciting about the insurance industry is that there is so much opportunity for innovation and there are still so many areas where you can bring new data and processes, particularly on the claims side, to improve things that I think it’s a very rewarding industry to be part of.’
ABOUT THE GUESTMegan is an award-winning entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of Anansi – a company on a mission to make goods-in-transit insurance faster, fairer and more flexible for retailers who thrive on bringing innovative new technologies to market.
She is also an Ambassador of the charity Pump Aid which is empowering communities, transforming lives, with a mission to end water poverty in Malawi by 2030. In her spare time, she loves weightlifting, formula one, dancing, hiking, and skiing.
About Anansi: Goods-in-transit insurance platform Anansi creates tailored, embedded, and low-admin insurance products for retailers, logistics providers, and marketplaces. Its open API and web app solution digitises manual processes, including claims, with parametric claim triggers automating repetitive processes. Its integrated platform uses Open Banking to allow customers to pay for cover and receive claims payments directly and instantaneously into their accounts. It is the only automated solution in a $33 billion market to offer data-powered signup, parametrically triggered claims and pay-outs when a parcel is lost or delayed, and a simple damage submission process.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialisation of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Jacqueline Legrand, a name that resonates with transformative leadership in the global insurance industry. From orchestrating the radical transformation of Brokerslink to co-founding Maptycs, an InsurTech firm that is redefining how we perceive weather risk analysis and risk exposures, Jacqueline's legacy is nothing short of extraordinary.
With her finger firmly on the pulse of digital transformation, she advocates for a harmonious marriage between technology and insurance. We're about to delve into a narrative beaming with transformative milestones, insights into the potential of geospatial analytics, and the challenges and triumphs of revolutionising an industry full of tradition.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I started my career in corporate with IBM in technology, after 8 years I moved to insurance, fell in love and spent a big chunk of my career as a broker working with big clients, complex property programmes which is where the idea for Maptycs (mapping and analytics) was born. At the time it was difficult to have a handle on climate risks.
- I really believe that independent broker networks have a very compelling proposition today in the global brokerage industry because the local brokers are deeply rooted in their local industry and culture, and they usually have steady teams and they are focussed on local services with a long term perspective which is not always the case with large alpha brokers.
- The big thing I’ve learned and will always use is: What is the vision and the value proposition for each and every stakeholder? What is the business model? What is the execution plan? What is the road map? Always with a realistic approach. Then I send that to get the buy in of the board – 12 guys who are each CEO of their own brokerage in 12 countries. Then I travel the world to get the story and the buy-in of each of the members at insurance markets. It was exhausting but fun and I enjoyed the journey.
- We saw an acceleration in natural disasters because of climate change, and at the same time an explosion of high quality location intelligence data. Now we could solve a problem that had to be solved now. Timing is key in any startup company. The challenge was with all these claims and losses – which is not stopping any time soon – and all this data that could be used to make better assessments, pricing, and risk mitigation, how could this be used with legacy systems that usually aren’t fit to integrate all this complex data in many formats? This is what we do at Maptycs; integrate the portfolios of our clients alongside a la carte external data.
BEST MOMENTS‘Make sure, as a global broker, you build programmes for your client/global reach manager that are not only in line with their strategy, but also align with the local market practices and regulations.’
‘Your colleagues on the ground play a critical role, and you need them whether it is to negotiate local coverage or to work on a claim with the local expert or adjuster.’
‘We really enable corporate insurance brokers to have a good assessment of their product risk exposure because now they can see either one location at a time or accumulation across their portfolio and they can mix and match their data with risk data.’
‘Our tool really came at the right moment to help risk professionals to underwrite assess property risk and also for risk mitigation and for event response.’
ABOUT THE GUESTWith a footprint that stretches over 30 years across the global insurance tapestry, Jacqueline Legrand stands as a testament to transformative leadership in the industry. From the bustling markets of the US to the dynamic terrains of Brazil, France, and Portugal, her journey in C-suite and Board-level roles has solidified her as a luminary in the realm of insurance.
As the CEO and co-founder of the groundbreaking InsurTech firm, Maptycs, Jacqueline is at the forefront of revolutionising property risk exposures. Through the lens of advanced geospatial analytics, she's reshaping the way commercial lines of insurance providers approach weather risk analysis.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Sabine talks to Michele Cimmino, CEO of Lasting Dynamics which, far from being a generic software firm, epitomises precision and coding to partners' distinct needs in order to ensure an exclusive synergy for mutual growth.
Michael discusses visionary leadership at Lasting Dynamics, championing quality and innovation, ensuring a diverse tech mastery, and building a global force in the startup ecosystem.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Lasting Dynamics was started in 2013 with the idea that we wanted to provide the IT market with quality – an alternative to the many-chip-solution providers that were on the market then and unfortunately still are. They don’t always follow a totally transparent process of development and sometimes they deliver something that is not really what the customer needs. Now, Lasting Dynamics is not only a software provider but also is a group which includes real estate and educational academies.
- Large enterprises usually target a span of 12 months to deliver an MVP (minimum viable product), by the time an MVP is delivered to market in 12 months it’s already too late, it should be launched in 4-6 months maximum. You’ll get feedback faster, avoid waste in budgeting, and learn from the empirical experience of the data that is collected and the usage that’s made of the application so that it can be expanded. The mindset and execution should be agile.
- When you have good engineers that understand the practices about cybersecurity when it comes to every domain – front end, dev ops, back end – then it is easier to eventually be compliant with policies. Because, when you build something from the ground up, or start integrating the pieces into a digital product, with a forward-looking mindset you can definitely place everything so that you will not waste months in additional testing or getting a list of items to become compliant and then adapt. This is an engineering mindset called “bottom-up”.
- If you work hard and show commitment and demonstrate that you can actually bring value with your knowledge, experience, skills, even ramping up some situations that are sometimes outside of the scheme; so you have to adapt very quickly, that is in the agile mindset. React quickly to the problem rather than trying to prevent it, that’s agile. It pays be a lot in the way that customers started to trust us and gave us more and more responsibilities. Where other companies might see an upsell opportunity, I see it as a way to reinforce our business model and partner up to grow together.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I truly believe that if we want to stay in the insurance and even banking industries, the customer experience is everything.’
‘Quality assurance is also about analysing the requirements, it’s not only about executing some tests, it’s about understanding what will be needed and how this can be provided.’
‘The most important part of the game is to be transparent and loyal to your partner or customer. That always pays back.’
‘I like the idea that the most important goal and value for everyone on a project should be the final result of the product and everyone should sacrifice a bit of personal interest towards that goal.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
In the dynamic world of software engineering, few names resonate as powerfully as Michele Cimmino. As a master of full stack web and mobile development, Michele's leadership at Lasting Dynamics has carved a niche in the tech spaces of Spain, Italy, and Norway. Dive deeper at Lasting Dynamics and you'll discover a hub where innovation meets commitment.
Not just confined to his role as CEO, Michele is a force in the startup ecosystem, wearing hats as a shareholder and advisor across Italy and North Europe. His mantra? Hard work and daily dedication as the unparalleled formula for tangible outcomes.
A champion of quality, Michele's passion drives him and his adept team to consistently re-evaluate and refine their methodologies. They are agile, experimental, and always ahead of the curve, drawing insights from the latest in automation, innovation, and QA processes. His current explorations into Agile, OKRs, SCRUM, TDD, and the principles of Shu Ha Ri demonstrate a ceaseless thirst for knowledge.
Lasting Dynamics, Michele's brainchild, isn't just any software company; it's a boutique, meticulously crafting code to fit partners' unique needs. This exclusivity ensures mutual growth, as they partner with only a select few each year.
But there's more: The Academy, another feather in Michele’s cap, streamlines the onboarding process, a testament to his visionary approach. Moreover, under his guidance, the launch of SaaS platforms like Roundrush for workflow management and VetrinaLive for e-commerce adds to his impressive portfolio.
With a tech stack that's as expansive as it is impressive, ranging from Node.js to Python, React to Vue.js, PostgreSQL to AWS integrations, Michele's proficiency is unquestionable. He's been at the helm of AI-driven mobile apps since 2015, dabbled in the realm of blockchain and cryptocurrency from 2017, and from 2019, has steered Lasting Dynamics towards Growth Hacking, seeking out every opportunity for growth.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sara St. John, someone whose unique entrepreneurial journey embodies the essence of growth and innovation.
As the brain behind several startups, Sara has used her experiences to pen books, run a blog, and most notably, host the well-regarded podcast 'The Frugalpreneur.' Through these mediums, she’s been inspiring and equipping individuals with the knowledge and tools to kickstart and maintain their online businesses even under tight financial constraints.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Amy entrepreneurship journey started in 2008. I’d had 6 different jobs that year and realised that working for other people wasn’t my thing, so I decided to start a photography business doing weddings and portraits but it was expensive to maintain equipment and software, so I started an online business model and tried several different things because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. This led me to write ‘Frugal Entrepreneur’ which was about the different ways to make money online and how to do it on a budget. I launched the podcast to promote the book, but got more leverage through the podcast and I’ve kept it going for a few years now and have started a podcast production agency. I’m all in on podcasting now, but it took me 10 years to get to that point.
- One misconception that people have about building a great podcast is that it’s expensive. I started with a $60-80 USB mic that plugs straight into your computer and you can record in Zoom for free, then all you need is a podcast host to distribute your files to the platforms which is as little as $5-20 a month. It’s the best way to get more exposure.
- Everyone should have a website. People think that having a social media page is enough – and you should have social media too – but you need to have your own site, because you never know what’s going to happen with social media. You should also get an email service provider like SendFox which every time you publish content it’ll automatically create a newsletter and send it to your email list.
- Shiny object syndrome is a big problem that a lot of entrepreneurs have, whether it’s that you have a million different business ideas and you’re always moving onto the next one – which takes up a lot of time and money. It could also be new gadgets and tools. You need to recognise that you have shiny object syndrome and reign it in. Try to use free tools and all-in-one systems like Systeme.io or Clixlo which will have everything you need for one price in one place.
BEST MOMENTS‘Whether you have your own podcast or not you should guest on other people’s podcasts because you’re basically leveraging and getting access to their audience who might come and check out your podcast or become a client.’
‘A lot of people assume their podcast is going to take off right away. If you’re a celebrity already it probably will, if you’re a regular person it’s going to take a while.’
‘When you’re starting out, try to go the free route with software as long as you can and then only pay as you need to. AppSumo has a one-time payment for various softwares.’
‘I try to keep my budget to under $100 per month for software and the basic maintenance of an online business. It might go a little more if I’m running an ad but, even then, I try not to spend more than $100 per month. But everybody has their own amount.’
ABOUT THE GUESTSara St. John Sara St John is a seasoned entrepreneur, prolific author, avid animal lover, and an ardent globetrotter. With an entrepreneurial career spanning over a decade, Sara has birthed and nurtured several successful startups, honing her expertise in budget-friendly business management. Her journey has imbued her with a wealth of insights and strategies which she generously shares through her podcast, The Frugalpreneur.
As the host of The Frugalpreneur, Sara brings a fusion of rich business acumen and an infectious passion for budget-conscious entrepreneurship.
Sara's mission extends beyond practical advice. She is a passionate advocate for the power of podcasting as a business tool, and she relishes every opportunity to delve into this topic on her show.
If you want to know more about Sara, check her LinkedIn profile and her “preneur” series here.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
Charitable: https://chrt.fm/track/D19185/
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Frank Mendoza, a revered figure in the realm of data analytics and AI strategy.
His contributions to Fortune 500 companies like Nike, Kelloggs, Keurig Dr Pepper, and Jim Beam as the founder of Catalytics have revolutionised the way these organisations leverage big data, artificial intelligence and advanced analysis.
Frank offers practical recommendations to implement AI, making this seemingly daunting technology accessible and actionable demystifies AI, shares his strategic insights, and helps us scout for growth in this exciting field.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Over the last 8 years I’ve worked with some really top brands to introduce analytics concepts like machine learning and chatbots. The hype has really got big in the last few months around what’s called generative AI, which is a little bit different from what we’ve historically called AI or machine learning, but in a nutshell it’s got people really excited and companies really want to take advantage and be able to demonstrate a competitive advantage to some of their competitors. It’s a really exciting time to be in this space.
- One of the challenges/constraints all companies face, large or small, is time. Big companies have the ability to throw money at it, small companies don’t have that luxury, but they really need to focus their attention. When I approach a company to talk about the potential of leveraging AI, I want to focus on where exactly they’re going to be using it and making sure there’s a direct tie to business value. There are so many tools that have been thrown out onto the market it’s caused a lot of analysis paralysis and businesses are struggling to figure out which tools they should use, where, why and who should be using them. You really need to have a strategic approach to how you’re leveraging these technologies to make sure you’re getting the biggest bang for the buck.
- Customers have given you the privilege of providing you with information about themselves that’s very important to them, but for you as well to grow your business. How you use that information, where you provide that information to models, all those things are very vital to ensure that you’re doing the things necessary to protect that information. OpenAI and Chat GPT have the ability to retrain on the questions that you’re asking – those are situations where you really want to provide guard rails/guidelines to your organisation about what you’re allowing them to put into there.
- Generative AI solutions have been trained on publicly available data, images, etc. Our society is moving - I believe – in a positive direction, but it has not moved all the way to where it needs to move. The net result of that is that there is a lot of information out there that’s still filled with biases, hate, etc. You want to make sure that when you’re leveraging these tools that you take into account these biases and those inherent challenges with leveraging these models and ensuring that you have a level of human judgement in the loop.
BEST MOMENTS‘We’re now shifting the paradigm from inventing with tools to tools inventing. There are things the tools are doing that are creating something that hasn’t existed before.’
‘One thing that no organisation can waste is resources and time.’
‘Every organisation is unique and the applications of AI are going to be unique to those as well.’
‘The ability for you to execute AI is predicated upon your quality of information. I encourage organisations to start looking at that and take advantage of “data enablement” to enable businesses to move forward. It’s a daunting task but you don’t want to boil the ocean, that’s where I help organisations understand where exactly they should put their focus, energy and effort.’
ABOUT THE GUESTFrank Mendoza is a highly respected and award-winning analytics leader with over 20 years of experience in Strategy, Customer Experience and Data Science.
He is the founder of Catalytics, a service company that helps Fortune 500 companies like Nike, Kelloggs, Keurig Dr Pepper, and Jim Beam to execute actionable AI and Data Analytics strategies to solve their toughest business challenges.
Frank shares that 2023 is the year of AI and AI is becoming more prevalent in various industries. However, many companies are still intimidated or confused by its use and capabilities. Frank is there to help implement AI into any business and helps identify the best approaches to do so via practical recommendations as AI should be a tool that augments and empowers companies to grow and innovate.
Frank can be found here.
And you can also reach him at Catalytics
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
Charitable: https://chrt.fm/track/D19185/
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Benjamin Friedman who, over a 20+ year career has navigated the perilous waters of startup finance and operations, riding the bumpy waves of startup growth and guiding his companies through successful M&A transactions, equity raises, and debt financing.
To cap it all, Benjamin is a firm advocate for values such as collaboration, optimism, and open communication, and has consistently strived to connect company goals, team initiatives, and individual performance in his roles.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- At graduate school I’d studied nonprofit management and worked at a nonprofit for a few years and found it was very process driven, we kept talking about what to do but never actually trying things. I’m much more results oriented, so I moved into an e-commerce company which doubled every year and it was an amazing ride. I became addicted to the startup journey.
- A lot of startups have a unique journey, every founder is an individual, but there are some common themes. Successful startups have founders that are clear on who they are and what they’re trying to accomplish. That might seem easy, but it’s actually very hard work to regularly check in with yourself. The other application is around vision and values; those will remain constant even as the business pivots, evolves, changes and challenges occurring. The final piece is feedback loops, successful founders are constantly seeking advice from advisors, investors, other founders and their team, they’re constantly seeking feedback – they may not act on it every time – new ideas and how to get things done.
- Align outcomes, results and activities. A lot of people get worked up by working really hard and spending a lot of time and effort but activity alone won’t generate the outcomes that you’re looking for, you have to see what results are coming from that activity and then you have to see if those are affecting the outcomes that you desire. Are you looking at it through industry metrics, internal metrics? You need to be constantly running experiments to see if ‘x’ improves your quality, your efficiency for you or your customers. You have to constantly evaluate your process but aligning your activity results and outcomes is really critical.
- Bringing in fractional experts can do a number of things; they can help you look holistically across the business and make connections between different functions, how do sales, marketing, finance and product all connect and what are the ways to optimise them collaboratively to grow your business. How have things been done in the past and how can they be applied to your business in order to grow as fast as possible? Cost and risk are considerations as well, by looking at fractional resources you’re mitigating both; you pay people who come in much less than someone doing the job full-time, especially if you don’t know how they’re going to work and how they’ll fit with your team.
BEST MOMENTS‘Being open to other people’s opinions is going to make you stronger on your journey.’
‘It’s very important to balance strategy and implementation.’
‘We often think about productivity as running fast, but if you’re not sure of what direction you want to be running, it doesn’t matter how fast you’re going, you're going to be heading in the wrong direction.’
‘Unsuccessful founders keep doing the same thing their customer needs, successful ones ask “what is it you need now?” and they’ll provide that.’
ABOUT THE GUESTBenjamin Friedman, the mind behind Build Scale Grow Inc., is a seasoned entrepreneur with over 20 years of leadership in finance and operations. Throughout his career, he's skillfully navigated the entrepreneurial landscape, leading successful M&A transactions for five companies in the last decade.
As the founder of Build Scale Grow, Benjamin is committed to helping startups overcome challenges and scale quickly, offering solutions to resolve immediate problems while installing long-term, scalable systems. His work is steeped in experiences from diverse roles, including Chief Operations Officer and Chief Financial Officer, extending to areas such as sales, marketing, people operations, legal, technology, and product.
LinkedIn: Benjamin Friedman
The company: Build Scale Grow
The Book: Scale: Reach Your Peak
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Saagar Govil, Chairman and CEO of Cemtrex Incorporated. With a tenacious spirit and an unwavering focus, Saagar has led Cemtrex from its initial days of making under $3M in revenues to a thriving powerhouse raking in over $100M, with over 350 employees in 6 offices worldwide.
Under Saagar's vision and leadership, Cemtrex is a diversified technology company that's relentlessly driving innovation in an array of sectors, including smart technology, virtual and augmented realities, advanced electronic systems, industrial solutions, and, most intriguing, intelligent security systems powered by AI.
In this episode, they dive into the world of AI and security and explore Saagar's inspiring journey, mission, and passion for technologies, from IoT to space tech.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Cemtrex started out as a small family business and over the last 10 years we’ve focussed on driving growth. We started out as a small environmental technology company and we struggled to grow in that industry because the appetite for that in the market has only come to fruition recently. I figured out the best way to grow was through acquisitions of businesses that had bigger potential, because you get more reward for the hard work you put in.
- We’re seeing a transformation of the security industry as we look to adopt and implement AI systems into the market. The unique thing about what’s happening today is that for the first time ever computers can now see better than humans. What that allows is for companies to use and leverage technologies in a way that’s never been possible before to drive better security outcomes. That could be from preventing incidents from happening to responding to them better in real time and to more accurately apprehend the suspects after an event occurs.
- CCTV cameras with advanced features in the past used to be triggered by motion and they would trigger events, alarms, etc. The challenge with that is that if a tree is swaying in the background it could trigger these alarms which is frustrating for operators. With the advent of AI you can track specific objects more accurately and clearly so that if a certain asset in the frame is moved then send an alert. That solution is really easy to implement out of the box today.
- Unfortunately, the world is more and more dangerous. 90-95% of schools have CCTV and yet we’re still hearing about mass shootings taking place all the time and it’s a tragedy. This tells me that a) the basic tools are already installed and b) they are actually not that effective. The ways we can implement AI today to drive better outcomes is apparent in that we can do better with identity management using facial recognition, we can track who should be at school at a certain time, we can send out the right alerts if there is a disgruntled person on the premises or tap into sex offender databases to alert the authorities that they’re on the perimeter.
BEST MOMENTS‘Sometimes it’s not about how hard you work, it’s about where you’re spending your time and your effort.’
‘AI is definitely going to make businesses and specific assets safer.’
‘When you have a security co-pilot that can understand what’s going on on the video feeds you can start to interact with that GPT/co-pilot, you can manage security needs much faster or in real time, that’s where we’re going to see the industry moving in the next couple of years.’
‘There are ways to build these types of technologies that maximise people’s privacy but also ensure the safety of those that are occupying the space at any given point in time.’
ABOUT THE GUESTSaagar Govil is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cemtrex Inc., a company that owns and operates multiple businesses building industrial solutions and intelligent security systems.
Saagar is a serial entrepreneur interested in IoT, Wearables, Robotics, Advanced electronics, and Space Tech. In his leisure time he enjoys watching the Knicks, golfing, travelling, and sailing.
CemtrexCemtrex, Inc. is a diversified technology company that's driving innovation in a wide range of sectors, including smart technology, virtual and augmented realities, advanced electronic systems, industrial solutions, and intelligent security systems. Cemtrex Inc. owns and operates multiple businesses and they are building industrial solutions and intelligent security systems.
Website: www.cemtrex.com
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Dr Melissa Sassi, CEO and Co-Founder of Skills Hustle, a pre-seed edtech company committed to closing the skills gap and transforming learners into earners. Skills Hustle's platform takes an innovative approach, offering gamified, interactive, and practical modules that engage learners on a deeper level. With a focus on community building, the platform provides access to thought leaders, networking opportunities, and real-world challenges such as innovation challenges and hackathons, enabling learners to develop practical skills and solve real business challenges.
In this episode Melissa shares her insights, experiences, and innovative ideas in leveraging technology and education to drive social impact and foster sustainable growth.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I’ve spent the last 10 years of my career working between Microsoft and IBM, and I’ve always created my own jobs, I’ve never flowed through the ‘right’ career progression plan. I ran startup accelerators; at Microsoft it was all about building internet and energy access solutions around the world and bringing digital skills to connect it. At IBM I focussed on data protection, privacy and security in heavily regulated industries like FinTech, HealthTech and InsurTech. I’ve also had a couple of stints on Wall Street and had my own nonprofit teaching tens of thousands of kids to code in 12 countries. Currently I run a venture studio with my partner.
- One day my daughter, who was living in Tunisia with her father at the time, said she didn’t have access to a computer in her classroom. They had one shared across 40 kids. I realized there’s no way that she’s going to be prepared for the future of work and the digital economy. I could get her devices for home, but what about all the other kids in her classroom? So I went on a mission to get computers for the class. But as I did this I realized the bigger picture that access to tech, skills, the internet and what role they play – including affordability – in driving outcomes in healthcare, education, economics, getting a job, everything we have and do centres around tech. I realised half the world isn’t connected to the internet and I looked at what I could do to change that.
- My partner and I are still working on how to demystify what a venture studio is or what a venture builder does versus a VC, an accelerator and an incubator. We combine all those things together.
- In the future I’d love to see situations where my founders raise a shit-ton of money, come up with amazing solutions that are powering the world, changing things that make the world a better place but also making money at the same time. I believe in doing well while doing good.
BEST MOMENTS‘Everyone is a FinTech these days, including Timbaland.’
‘I had it ingrained in my soul that I needed to work, to be productive, independent, to be able to take care of myself. From hard work comes outcomes in life that are financial in nature, it may be experiences, but you’ve got to work to achieve.’
‘I was part of a broken system and I perpetuated a broken system without knowing it.’
‘We focus on growth from 3 perspectives: Technical enablement, thinking about what the business model is, and access to partnerships.’
ABOUT THE GUESTDr Melissa Sassi has dedicated her career to the intersection of technology, education, economic development, social impact, startups, and sustainability. With extensive global experience, including visits to 60 countries, she brings first-hand knowledge of the challenges and opportunities in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Melissa's doctoral thesis focused on the transformative role of digital inclusion in solving the SDGs. As the CEO and Co-Founder of Skills Hustle, a pre-seed edtech company, Melissa aims to bridge the skills gap and empower learners to become learners. Skills Hustle offers an interactive and practical learning platform, with a focus on gamification and real-world application. Through live sessions, mentors, innovation challenges, and hackathons, learners acquire valuable skills while solving authentic business problems. The platform also features a community portal for ongoing engagement, networking, and access to thought leaders and opportunities. Core content areas include digital skills, habits and attitudes, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissasassi/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Brenden Kumarasamy, founder of Master Talk, a platform dedicated to nurturing top tier communicators in diverse industries. Breneden has honed his craft coaching executives and entrepreneurs helping them ascend into the top 1% of communicators in their fields.
Brenden also runs the popular Master Talk YouTube channel where he has democratised access to his communication tools.
In this episode we dissect Brenden’s journey, his philosophies, the art and science of effective communication, and his vision to transform the way we communicate.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- My journey started in college where I studied accounting where I created presentations around numbers. Somebody told me that if I wanted to work for one of the big four accounting firms, I needed to participate in these things called ‘case competitions’ which are essentially competitive presentations where you present in front of executives and the best people get jobs.
- I started coaching the other students on how to communicate (mostly for free) to help them win competitions and I accidentally developed a gift for how to speak. While working for IBM I was making videos for fun in my basement, just as a hobby. But that hobby turned into something a lot bigger than I initially thought it was going to. After two and a half years I made the difficult decision to quit my job and do Master Talk full-time.
- YouTube is the hardest one out of all the platforms to grow, but it’s also the most beneficial one if you stay in it the longest. The 5/20 rule: If I post 1 really good piece of content that’s long form every week for the next 10 years I’ll be successful on YouTube. I’ve already written all my content for 2024 that I’ll film with my production team in the next 3 months. That’s how forward thinking I think about the brand. Never miss a week.
- There are parts of education, consulting, helping other people transform industries that AI will make better. For example, search queries, so I might not need as many people on a research team. But what AI cannot automate is education. No one is going to spend $2,000 to fly out to a conference to watch an AI speak, the human is really important in this situation.
BEST MOMENTS‘I did not want to be an entrepreneur, I wanted to be an executive. ’
‘A big mistake a lot of content creators make is when they think about personal branding, they focus a lot on what’s hot: Linkedin, Tik Tok, etc. I always thought about my personal brand in decades not days. Who do I want to be in 10 years?’
‘People focus way too much on having 1000 followers, not 1000 conversations. If I do 10,000 podcast interviews, it’s impossible for me to not have 100,000 followers. Luckily, I didn’t need to do 10,000, it took 500.’
‘If you 10 years from now had the chance to look back at your life right now, what would they disagree with you on? Oftentimes it’s not information, it’s implementation that’s missing.’
ABOUT THE GUESTBrenden Kumarasamy: It all begins with impact. Despite all the presentations I’ve given over my life, I still remember to this day how scared I was to post my first YouTube video. I didn’t look like anything in my workshops or presentations, but I went ahead with this project for one reason: Impact.
A wise friend once told me that I couldn’t possibly coach every human being on Earth with the limited time I had in my life, so I needed to go on video to share my message with the world. I got over my fear, practised 100’s of times on camera until I was finally able to say that I was “YouTube Ready”.
All’s to say that when you care about others and only want to add value, you’ll be able to overcome any fear/obstacle in the service of others.
Website: https://www.mastertalk.ca/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendenkumarasamy/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Brandon Leibowitz, the mastermind behind SEO Optimizers, a dynamic company that's been assisting small to medium-sized businesses in getting noticed online.
Brandon’s passion for growth and his unwavering belief in the power of digital marketing is why we invited him today. In this episode the pair explore the steps businesses, big and small, must consider enhancing their digital marketing efforts, from defining clear goals, understanding your target audience, optimizing your website, and creating valuable content, to leveraging social media, utilizing paid advertising, and measuring your campaigns' success.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Digital marketing today is the constant evolution and changes in algorithms and ranking factors that search engines use to determine website rankings. This makes it challenging for businesses to keep up with the latest trends and adapt their strategies accordingly. Additionally, there is a lot of competition in the digital space, and it can be difficult for businesses to stand out and reach their target audience effectively.
- To become better at digital marketing, both large and small businesses can take the following steps: Define clear goals, know your target audience, optimise your website, create valuable content, leverage social media, utilise paid advertising, measure and analyse, stay up-to-date, seek professional help.
- Every few months Google will have a big update and that’s where you have to find out what they want because they don’t really tell you what they’re looking for so that you spend money on paid ads, they don’t want to you master SEO.
- You’ve got to stay ahead of things one day at a time. Who knew ChatGPT was going to come out and make such a disruption in the market a couple of years ago? It’s tough to predict what’s going to happen, just stay up to date, read different blogs and forums, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos and stay in the weeds as much as possible learning as much as possible from other people and figure out what might happen in the future. There’s no real way to stay ahead.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I have been involved with digital marketing since 2007 and want to share my knowledge about SEO, Social Media Marketing, and Google Ads.’
‘Identify what you want to achieve with your digital marketing efforts. This could include increasing website traffic, generating leads, improving brand awareness, or increasing sales.’
‘Consider partnering with a reputable digital marketing agency or consultant to help you develop and execute effective digital marketing strategies that achieve your goals.’
‘Key words are so important. You can build a website, but if you don’t market it it’s going to be hard for people to find it. I make sure that when people search on Google that your website pops up.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Brandon Leibowitz runs and operates SEO Optimizers, a young company supporting small and medium-sized businesses to get more online traffic and become visible to their target audience, which in turn converts into clients, sales, and leads.
Brandon started in digital marketing in 2007 after graduating from college with a degree in Business Marketing. In my first job, I handled the marketing aspects of an e-commerce website. He helped companies get ranked at the top of Google by using search engine optimization tactics and bringing in traffic via social media and paid ads. In 2008, Brandon realized that most businesses would need a website to stay competitive in the future. Having a website is only one piece of the puzzle. Ultimately, these companies need someone to help market their website to bring in traffic that will, in turn, convert to clients.
Since then, Brandon decided to stick with digital marketing and started his own company, SEO Optimizers. One of Brandon’s stories: a friend built a website for him in exchange for doing SEO for his insurance website. Brandon ranked him above government websites for all his essential business keywords.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonleibowitz/
If you want to know more, check Brandon’s free gift below: https://seooptimizers.com/gift
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Per Axberg, an entrepreneur with a rich background in building customer-facing support solutions in Web3. Clemens spent over 5 years building Bitpanda's customer community department from scratch and scaling it from pre-seed to unicorn status. And it is important to understand that the power of web3 is in building unique communities.
During their deep dive, Clemens and Sabine talk about: His interest in Web3, Bitcoin and Crypto, why he believes that those 3 components are key to build unique communities, and Clemens shares a few tips for those of us interested in learning and trialling such technologies.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- From 2017 to 2022, I led and set up customer support at Bitpanda, the first Unicorn in Austria and a neo-broker that offers all asset classes from cryptocurrencies, stocks, and commodities to almost four million customers 24/7, 365.
- In my youth I played a lot of computer games and realised that you could earn money because people were selling items. So I launched my first business, an online shop for virtual items. Though this I discovered my passion for customer support and keeping my 1,000-2,000 clients happy. This biggest mistake I made was relying on 1 payment method. Then a friend of mine showed me BitCoin and that was the solution to my problem. After that, I started purely focussing on cryptocurrency.
- The most important thing that people need to realise when building a unicorn, especially in the crypto industry: Crypto is 24/7, it’s not like the stock market that closes on a Friday afternoon it’s also on the weekends. Out key success factor was being based in Austria and we had an impressum, which is not that typical for the crypto industry, people never knew where the location of their finances were, but this gave us a transparency and also trust from our clients. It meant we were always reachable with 24/7 support.
- Bitcoin was the first of the cryptocurrencies and I would say the only really decent one, all the other cryptocurrencies are copies because the source code of Bitcoin is open source and everybody can publish and own cryptocurrencies. They symbolise companies, so investing into Bitcoin and into cryptocurrencies are two very different things and have different risks. People need to do research before investing.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Last century private currencies had been predicted, so the concept behind Bitcoin is not that new, it’s just beautiful to see how it’s now come into practice.’
‘In Web2 you log in to a page and there’s a Google SSO with just a username and an email, in Web3 you connect with your wallet, you can transfer financial data on the blockchain.’
‘Bitcoin’s uptime is still amazing: Over 99.9% with only a few outages of a few hours or so, the last of which was 10 years ago. When compared to traditional payment methods like Visa, Mastercard or even Swift, Bitcoin is doing great. ’
‘Make it as easy as possible for your customers to complain, because the biggest issue to any business in Web3 is when you have people who silently quit and don’t tell you why. When you receive a complaint see it as a last chance to convince the person to stay.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Clemens holds a BSc degree in Economics and has a rich background in building customer-facing support solutions in Web 3. He spent over the five years building Bitpanda's customer support/community department from scratch and scaling it from pre-seed to unicorn. His knowledge in the field is extensive and he is known for his strong analytical and managerial skills.
Website: https://web3cx.io/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Per Axberg, CEO of Legly – a revolutionary platform that leverages the power of artificial intelligence to provide critical insights on B2B contracts, both before and after signing. This helps sellers, purchasers, and lawyers engage in efficient and accurate contract review, thereby saving precious time.
During the discussion, they dive deep into three fascinating topics: Learning about Per's journey and the inspiration that led to the creation of Legly, and what it was that spurred him to set up this AI-driven platform for B2B contracts? Explore why SaaS platforms for legal contracts are not just an added convenience but an essential tool for today's entrepreneurs, and how they play a role in supporting and streamlining business operations? Delve into the three most crucial best practices that entrepreneurs and legal departments can adopt to make the most of those platforms, particularly when scaling their enterprise.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- We built a platform where you can match lawyers and use their spare capacity. We can buy the time that they haven’t sold already, they spend less time selling themselves and they still make a profit from it. We can also sell their time for less money to startups. Global companies started using this service, they needed lawyers to check incoming contracts – bulk, boring tasks – to see if there are risks, if there’s anything that breaches their preferences and guidelines etc.
- Technology has started to get better and AI has started to be able to do things for commercial purposes, at the same time we met with the head of law at one of these big companies who made a WILD (warranties, indemnity, limitation liability and delay) card for his sales people, he said if we focus on these four things we’ll get rid of most of the risks. This was the beginning of Legly, today it’s much, much more than that.
- Legly is a robot that acts pretty much like a lawyer would. You can upload one contract for free to try it and you will get the document back in a minute or so with highlights in different colours and comments on the side telling you what to focus on, what is important. You could also tailor that to what are the breaches of your guidelines and so on. It helps companies to check contracts pre-signature. We can also take this machine and apply it to contract portfolios for law firms checking on legal due diligence when you’re buying or selling a company to look for certain things in the documents.
- Legly helps you to find lots of things in the documents, helps you to go through contracts much, much faster. Particularly it helps lawyers to find things in the contract before signing that they may not be used to checking for, to be able to find breaches to the preferences before involving the rest of the organisation, before waiting fort some weeks for the legal team to come back with feedback and so on, and thereby be able to handle much more of the contract process.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Before, you had to read through the documents, and there could be thousands of them, but now you just drag and drop, pretty much, and you get a list directly.’
‘Usually sales people are the people who see the documents from their customers and they are the ones who know the deal, know the business, knows who the customers are and their relationship. They are much more suited to check these documents, as far as they can.’
‘We’re not replacing any lawyers. Rather than them having to check the whole document, they might just get 2 or 3 questions. That’s much more efficient.’
‘You have to start testing these tools and gaining an understanding of it so that you can structure your work in a better way that suits these kinds of technologies because they will become a ‘hygene factor’ in the future.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Per Axberg is the CEO and co-founder of Legly. Legly has developed a contract review automation tool that uses AI and ML to review and provide feedback on B-2-B contracts before signing. Legly is a great example of how legal tech not just make legal counsels sleep better, but also can increase capacity of non-legal experts such as co-workers at sales and purchase teams.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/per-axberg/
Legly uses artificial intelligence to review and provide feedback on B2B contracts before signing. This way sellers, purchasers and lawyers can do a better contract review in less time.
You can discover Legly: https://www.legly.io/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Cyrille Godinot, an industry titan whose career spans over 32 years across Marketing, Sales, Business Development, and Service Operations.
Currently, Cyrille is contributing to the tech powerhouse, Schneider Electric, where he has spent nearly 11 years. His significant role involves developing solutions and services, directly impacting the digital transformation of the electronic, insurance and Inspection ecosystems.
His responsibility also lies in leading marketing deployment activities towards strategic accounts to leverage Schneider's EcoStruxure IoT solutions, ensuring they provide safe, efficient, available, and cyber secure electrical infrastructures.
On this episode they discuss: Cyrille's illustrious career, his insights into evolving market trends, especially regarding the adoption of new technologies and the influence of digital transformation and IoT on the B2B services sector, Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure IoT solutions and understand Cyrille's vision for the future of the industry.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I’ve been boots on the ground directly with customers, I’ve been involved with service operations, and I came to realise that the best way you can build a long-term relationship with customers is by delivering their expectations. You need to listen a lot, that’s how I moved into marketing.
- When you are going through digital transformation you have to consider all the impact that it raises. If you start from historical products, they now need to have sensors and must be able to communicate with an upper layer that understands the sensors. You have to agree on a data model to collect the data, how that data is represented. Then you need to define how you’re going to leverage that data and build value for asset management, performance, sustainability, safety, availability, all the value you want to bring for your customer. Transformation is very much about aligning everybody according to one structure of having the right data coming to the right place. At the same time, our partner’s ecosystems need to evolve to tackle the new complexity of digitisation.
- One of the big challenges right now is the unification of the data model. Electrical current could be measured in amps, miliamps or kiloamps. Which unit you use may change depending on the device, so at some level you need to be able to represent the same data with exactly the same thing otherwise it will be confusing when you go to analytics to compare them.
- Ecostruxure is opening opportunities in leveraging data from new business models. In this we see a tree domain that is very interesting related to risk management and insurance. When you collect a lot of data on a property you’re going to have something that is a proxy of telematics in car insurance. This could be used for risk prevention, underwriting scoring, looking at track records about claims and operations, most of that will be leveraged by anyone that has a use case for that data, to improve the relationship with the end client for example where messages can be sent when a discrepancy arises to alert them. I could leverage that data myself and build analytics and only propose a risk score for example. Another model is how to bridge a product to embedded insurance which will enable us to consider new services that we can build in partnership with risk management companies.
BEST MOMENTS‘In the digitisation transformation that we’re all going through there is a huge opportunity to create a new business model to disrupt the existing one and it all starts with collecting data.’
"We're coming from an industry where historically competitors were not in a mode of aligning and each one had their own model, but at the end of the day current remains a current and being able to express a unit that is understandable is inevitable.’
‘It starts with risk prevention. Because we collect data continuously, we are able to provide alarms. This is most of the value, how it differentiates. Live data can give immediate reaction for the site manager and the insurance can be aware of the situation so that they can take action and mitigate.’
ABOUT THE GUESTCyrille Godinot has been in Marketing, Sales & Business Development and Service Operations since 1994 in various Industries and successfully achieved fast growth across Europe, Asia and USA.
Specialties: Business Development, Strategic Marketing, Partnerships, Deal Closing; Offer Creation, Digitization, Photovoltaic s, O&M Services, Sales Management, Outsourcing, Maintenance, B2B Service Operations, Spare Parts
Cyrille leads marketing deployment activities towards strategic accounts to leverage EcoStruxure IoT solutions and provide them with safe, efficient, available and cyber secure Electrical infrastructures.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cyrillegodinot/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Stephen Lathrope, a seasoned executive and proven business leader who has worked as a partner, CEO, and executive director, of private equity-backed financial services and technology businesses. Stephen has also lead large teams within a very well known consulting firm.
Today Stephen leads the insurance practice at ICEYE, a geospatial data provider to the insurance and government sector. According to a report produced by MarketsandMarkets, the global geospatial analytics market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 12.2% from $68 billion dollars in 2022 to $120 billion dollars by 2027. One of the main drivers is the increasing demand for location-based services across various industries, including transportation, construction, and agriculture but also for urban planning and management, disaster response, and environmental monitoring.
Over the course of the podcast, they explore what is geospatial data used for? How does geospatial inform the future underwriting and claims? Deep dive into examples as to where geospatial data is best used, and Stephen to give us some advice for insurance companies looking to incorporate geospatial data into their underwriting and claims processes.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- ICEYE has been around since 2014 as an organisation that is one of the growth ion new space technologies. The founders miniaturised synthetic aperture radar technology and were able to put them onto miniaturised satellites. The first use case for that for monitoring ice flows in the northern seas for freight planning, hence the ‘ICE’ part of ICEYE. What it does today is build and operate its own constellation of radar-enabled satellites, and for insurance we use those to observe hazard and damage related to natural catastrophe and we can also monitor assets on the ground. We can measure very small movements in vehicles, buildings,the surface of the Earth.
- The opportunities around catastrophe events like that for insurers are really significant. What we can do with new technology is provide a much more rapid insight into where the water is and where the high-water mark has been very quickly within an event. We can provide our customers with an initial view of where the water is within a few hours, we provide a very detailed reports of flood depth and the depth of water with a very useful degree of accuracy.
- Our customers associate that with the perimeter of individual buildings and that enables them to very quickly identify which of their customers need assistance most urgently, how much water is likely to be around a property causing how much damage and where to allocate resources on the ground. The kind of data we provide is used to size the overall cost of an event and the individual potential damage cost associated with individual buildings.
- One of the very common challenges that we have to work through with our customers is to ask “do you really know where the properties that you’re insuring are?” It’s a factor just how often we can say the water is at 1 metre depth at a particular latitude and longitude and the insurer is trying to work out where that is relative to the properties that they know they have that are affected by the event.
BEST MOMENTS
‘ICEYE is bringing wholly new technology to bear in an industry that has got loads of opportunity to do things differently and better for customers and stakeholders using the insights that we can provide from space and with data and analytics.’
‘The majority of what we’re doing in insurance, and with government, is around natural catastrophe: response, and near-term preparation for events that look like they’re about to happen.’
‘There’s only going to be more frequent, more severe flooding. As we speak there’s a fairly major even happening in Mississippi which we’re capturing images of from our satellites and reporting upon right now.’
‘We’ve just launched our beta for insurance and wildfire that’s similar. Again, the ability of the radar to see through smoke, cloud, day or night and report while the fire’s still burning means insurers can have data that’s really detailed, really rapidly.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Stephen Lathrope is a proven technology / financial services business leader with 10 years’ experience in CEO and executive director roles on boards of Private Equity backed, international financial services / technology businesses, and 20 years’ experience in business and technology consulting.
Sales / growth specialist, with track record of delivering sales-driven growth in software / services across UK and international markets.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-lathrope-8128046/
About ICEYE
ICEYE is a Finnish microsatellite manufacturer. ICEYE was founded in 2014 as a spin-off of Aalto University's University Radio Technology Department, and is based in Espoo.
Website: https://www.iceye.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Gary Garth, an experienced entrepreneur and the author of ‘The Zero to 100 Million Sales Blueprint’, a book targeting the entrepreneur that wants to scale their business with a replicable, reusable and scalable sales methodology.
On this episode, the pair discuss how Gary found himself living in Medellín, Colombia, developing the Zero to 100 Million Sales Blueprint, what is Elev8 Media and when did he realise that work pressure may lead to addiction and mental health issues, and Gary’s tips for sustainable growth.
Make sure you listen until the end of the episode because Gary has a very nice surprise for you all!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I exited a very successful business in 2020 but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So, I took a sabbatical year where I travelled around the world trying everything from plant medicine to figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to do something different and make a lager impact. Columbia had always been on my mind and Medellín had a vision of becoming the Silicon Valley of Latin America. So, I went to check it out and now I’m all in with several offices, an incubator, an accelerator, a marketing agency and some real estate investments. This is home now. I’m the Viking of Medellín.
- It’s a hard journey. A lot of entrepreneurs have this fantasy vision of what it takes and 8 out of 10 cease to exist into year two and only one of those entrepreneurs makes it beyond $1 million in annual recurrent revenue. What’s shocking is that most of those that become successful is that they experience burnout. When you dive into a venture like that you have to be prepared mentally, physically, spiritually for what’s ahead; the adversity and how to overcome that.
- A lot of companies that pitch to me often have ground-breaking concepts, great ideas and they have prepared everything and anything you can consider, they’ve almost gone into analysis paralysis in terms of how the product should be shaped and so forth. But sales is left to the end of the equation. I ask what’s your estimated cost of acquisition, what’s the total addressable market, how are you going to penetrate that, who are your competitors, how are you going to differentiate from them? They don’t have the answers to any of those questions.
- I’m giving back through my book where I talk about training thousands of reps over my career, over 200 re-sellers in a previous project, I’ve worked closely with Google’s and Microsoft’s sales teams, so I’ve been able to see what patterns occur, what works and doesn’t work, and what it takes for folks to sell and create a true revenue machine. I’ve also created a planner to combat burnout where you can focus on gratitude, set goals, build habits and all the tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years.
BEST MOMENTS
‘There’s all these social media tips and hacks on how to be the next Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, but it’s 16-hour days, there’s no short cut.’
‘To be successful you need to put sales and revenue first. If you don’t have cash you’re out of business.’
‘Every entrepreneur has the desire to change and shape the world. The only way to do that is sustainability, to become profitable, that’s how you can grow, reinvest and expand.’
‘Double down. Don’t back down. Things may seem uncertain and there’s a lot of scepticism in the market, but I think there’s a lot of opportunity. If you’re hesitant about launching, expanding to a new market, if you want to wait for x, y, z scenario changes don’t wait. Go for it.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Gary Garth is the Founder and CEO of Great Dane Ventures, Elev8 Media, and Accelerator Platform™.
He also leverages his resources as a sales leader and angel investor, helping high-potential startups go-to-market, scale, and become profitable via 360 degrees sales and marketing support, incubator programs, advisory services and proprietary technology, engineered with the purpose of empowering entrepreneurs.
He has been featured in Inc., Forbes, Success, and many other prominent publications. A serial entrepreneur since 2002, Gary has started and successfully exited six companies, including large outbound sales call centres, radio advertising networks, and an award-winning, eight-figure digital marketing agency.
Born in Denmark, Gary now lives and works in Medellín, Colombia.
You can discover Gary Garth here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garygarth/
About Elev8
ELEV8 is a Digital Marketing Agency and Growth Accelerator Program exclusively designed for the Addiction Treatment and Mental Health Center industry. ELEV8 solutions are engineered end-to-end with proven marketing and sales strategies, full transparency, and a meticulously data-driven ROI approach. With ELEV8’s solutions, clients drive admissions at a consistently profitable rate via 360 degrees digital marketing, sales enablement, CRM, and tech stack implementation. With newly founded offices in the heart of Medellín, Colombia, the ELEV8 team is composed of international A-players in the digital agency space, are all working towards one shared vision— to become the world-leading digital marketing agency for Addictions Treatment Centers.
Download the book: The Zero to 100 Million Sales Blueprint
Check out the site: https://elev8.io/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Amy Buchan Siegfried, an experienced founder, CEO, entrepreneur, investor, and speaker. Amy is the Co-Founder of Last Night’s Game, a platform that breaks down sports in an easy-to-understand way, through email and weekly podcasts. She also serves as the “on-air talent” and face for the company.
From creation to execution, Amy has managed organisations and significant initiatives, including fundraising, marketing, program development, and community relations to empower others with ideas, information, mentorship experience, and resources.
Sports Tech includes over 17,000 startups ventures 30% of which have raised $35 billion of VC funding with 11 active unicorns. Business models range from fantasy sports, eSports or Casino games to Fitness and Wellness tech often used in health insurance.
On this episode the pair discuss Amy the investor, the entrepreneur and the women in tech, why Last Night's Game, niche markets yield success, the challenge and the opportunity for women entrepreneurs, and tips and best practices.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I love to recognise the talent of those that are out there hustling trying to make things happen, and making those connections and making things happen for them. You want to support those who have the ideas, what’s 15-30 minutes of my time for somebody who’s trying to make their thing happen? Getting things started and taking the first step is the hardest part, if you can give that extra vote of confidence or ideas or connections, that can help them be successful. The ideas to differentiate yourself only come from talking to others because, when you’re the founder, you’re stuck in your own head and don’t see all those other things. Be a sounding board, be available.
- Last Night’s Game was set up about 20 years ago. I was working as an intern at the Arizona Diamondbacks MLB team and one of my girlfriends asked why certain things were happening and I thought she was really missing out on an opportunity to connect with her co-workers. We were working in a male-dominated industry and sports is a common language that allows you to level the playing field in the office. So, I thought about how to teach her about sports in an interesting way. My brother and I devised a way to make sports approachable so they could use it in day-to-day interactions, or dates, etc. But it took until 14 years later before we had the time to work on and launch it.
- I’m successful because of what I learned in the corporate world. It was a good structure for me. So often now the corporate world is depicted as the bad character in a movie, but it’s not, there’s a lot we can learn from it. You learn to work as a team in the corporate environment, you have to work in someone else’s structure, alongside personalities that are not like you. There’s still a way the corporate world can evolve, and we should all be evolving no matter how big your business is so that we don’t end up as a ‘has-been’ company that nobody wants to work with.
- The foundation of having relationships is still critical today. We’re more connected than ever but more removed than ever. How do we maximise and humanise that connection? Get out and meet people, build relationships. If you’re not comfortable being the people person, hire someone who is. It’s the same as building a team around you that isn’t like you, doesn’t think like you, doesn’t live on the same block as you. A diverse team brings a different perspective, and everyone has their different talents.
BEST MOMENTS‘Sports is like food: It’s a common language that we can all speak, everywhere you go has a national dish and a national sport and everyone’s really proud of that.’
‘How are you making yourself different from everybody else? That is how you get funded, if you’re different that’s an excellent thing.’
‘The biggest challenge in investing in businesses, from an angel investor viewpoint, is that everyone wants to be everything to all people. You can’t be, it’s not possible. Identify your target market.’
‘Our whole goal is short and sweet. We all know we have information overload, but we crank out a lot of content.’
ABOUT THE GUESTAfter seeing how the ability to talk sports gave her the upper hand as a woman in business, Amy and her brother Scott created Last Night’s Game to give their friends the same advantage. Last Night’s Game empowers its readers to join the sports conversation, even if they don’t know the first thing about sports.
Her career has included working for a Major League Baseball team and in other male-dominated industries. A third-generation entrepreneur, Amy once flew around the world in 58 hours and 37 minutes, has lived internationally and is a master of small talk, bringing people together and the handwritten note. You can often find this married lady working with the entrepreneurship community nationwide and teaching her toddler about sports, food and other things he’ll have to use to make small talk one day.
Reach out to Amy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amybsiegfried/
About Last night’s gameEmpowering you with the latest sports and pop culture news, so you never have to resort to talking about the weather. Last Night’s Game empowers its readers to join the sports conversation, even if they don’t know the first thing about sports.
The conversation doesn’t have to be that painful. Having worked in the sports and corporate world, Amy knows how sports can level the playing field and how helpful it is to have a team behind you. Last Night’s Game goal is to make it easier for you to stand out in the crowd. Follow updates on the sports and pop culture world so you never have to be left talking about the weather.
Discover: https://lastnightsgame.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Chris Hutchinson, CEO of Canopy, a company on a mission to revolutionise renting and help people grow, both financially – by creating a better life for themselves – and easier financial resilience.
As the CEO of Canopy, Chris is an optimistic result orientated senior leader with clear interest in building highly effective teams.
During the course of the podcast, the pair discus how Chris moved from his CFO role to landing the top seat of Canopy, why financial resilience is such an important topic across markets, and the three most important takeaways from scaling a startup during an economic downturn.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- It’s really important to have a background with numbers. Businesses are inherently all about delivering a product for your end customer. But, fundamentally a business isn’t going to be viable and successful unless it comes down ultimately to numbers. The other key thing to remember is that a lot of the finance people (CFOs, Finance Directors, Head of Finance) are often second in charge to a founder of a CEO prior to moving into the CEO position and as such have a much broader breadth of understanding of a company than most people in an organisation do before they take that hot seat.
- One of the things I absolutely love about the modern age of business is that it feels that we’ve really moved on from negotiation, win/lose economics, and being taught to get one over on the competition, even in a partnership scenario, into something which is far more prevalent like a win/win partnership solutions where you both benefit.
- I’m very good at seeing quickly which ideas are worth executing and then executing and delivering on it. I feel this is powerful because it’s a skill often overlooked in startups where vision is always seen as incredibly valuable and the passion of the founder is undoubtedly one of the most important things that gets it off the ground. Inherently, the reason most startups fail between seed and series A stages probably isn’t because they don’t have a great idea, it’s because they are unable to execute on that idea.
- Canopy is trying to shake up the rental industry in the UK initially, but then broadening to international expansion in the future. Essentially we’re a tech-driven company that improves the lives of letting agents and tenants by offering a solution that identifies the right tenant for the right property really quickly, really easily. We then help build a brighter future for those renters by building their financial health, resilience and trying to create an equal opportunity for them whatever their background and goals.
BEST MOMENTS
‘As you grow in your career in finance you have a relatively unique position where you’re involved in pretty much every area of the business while also sitting on top of big, key, strategic positions and decisions.’
‘Are you building a team because they’re going to deliver for you and you’re going to demand everything of them and they’re going to need to meet those expectations, or are you hiring people who are really, really good at what they do and they have the expertise that you don’t have?’
’70-90% of renters aspire to being a homeowner, but lots of them just want to enjoy their lives while living in a property, have a little bit more money in their pocket, to save up for a holiday/car/etc.’
‘You can definitely do more with less. Whatever you think you can do, you can do more with the same amount or you can definitely do the same that you’re expecting to do now but with less. You’re spending too much money, you’re definitely doing stuff that you don’t need to do, you can optimise, you can cut down, focus prioritise and deliver more return on investment.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Chris Hutchinson: Results driven. People focussed. Eternally optimistic.
Strategic senior leader with significant experience in the FMCG and Financial Service sectors.
A proven track record of success across diverse roles in both Unilever and Bupa Global now driving start-ups through sustainable growth and funding.
- Worked Canopy. Advisor
- Startup CFO
- Started career with BUPA.
About Canopy
We’re on a mission to revolutionise renting and help people grow, both financially and towards a better life. That means making things faster, easier and fairer for everyone – renters, agents and landlords alike.
At the heart of our system is the RentPassport, a totally free digital profile that takes the hassle out of house moving. Renters can create a profile in minutes and use it every time they move, and agents and landlords can instantly pre-screen tenants – saving everyone’s time and cash and getting renters moving faster. We believe every new move is a chance to grow.
That’s why we help renters grow their credit rating by tracking their rent payments – improving their financial wellbeing, one month at a time. It all adds up to a comprehensive profile that reassures landlords – and turns the house-moving slog into a stroll in the park.
Want to join the movement? We’re growing fast and always looking out for the next bright spark to join the team. Check out our job listings below, or just drop us a message and say hi.
Canopy, InsureStreet and Insure Street are trading names of InsureStreet Limited which is an appointed representative of Resolution Compliance Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 574048) to carry on insurance distribution activities.
Website: https://www.canopy.rent/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks Sean Boyce, an expert product builder who helps companies, large and small, realise their vision when developing and owning world class SaaS products without needing to make all the mistakes that are typically made by most product companies.
Sean has successfully scaled his own product companies including StaffGeek and Podcastchef. Today though NxtStep Sean helps B2B SaaS businesses to build the products that matter most for their target audiences.
On this episode the pair discuss: FinTech trends, automation, and Chat GPT, market challenges and what is happening within current capital access needs, why it’s essential to democratise access to drive financial inclusion, and Sean will share some thoughts on how to build good SaaS-based B2B product offerings.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I’ve always been involved with and fascinated by technology, both hardware and software, but I got very excited about the possibilities of software earlier on in my career, particularly automation. It has the possibility to out the people in the process in a better position to be able to leverage the technology and software to make incredible leaps forwards in progress. I worked in corporate and startups, building companies of my own in tech and finance.
- I like to spend time diving deep into industries, spending time with subject matter experts and better understanding from them the progress they’re trying to make and what’s holding them back from making that progress. Usually there’s a bottleneck in the process somewhere, and I look to try to figure out what is the fastest, most cost-effective way that I can leverage technology or put a strategy in place which enables them to make considerable progress in a shorter period of time, much more cost-effectively than however they’re trying to solve that problem today.
- Chat GPT is pretty remarkable and has made its way round the world relatively quickly since they released some of their latest updates. That’s really interesting in terms of what that product is capable of. I think we’re going to see a new ‘gold rush’ leveraging tools like that based on what people have been able to see it’s capable of in order to use as a tool, or a component to build other tools and resources for people to get a lot of value out of. One of the most revolutionary elements of Chat GPT is that it’s a leap forwards in progress in how we access information – or it’s going to be, as it get continually polished – as opposed to most people’s current strategy, which is to leverage a search engine like Google where I’m presented to a list of results after I ask my question, some of which may or may not get what I’m looking for based on how I asked the question and whether or not that information is out there and available yet.
- You have to update and evolve your strategy for innovating and investing in your company based on the implications of global changes are for your organisation. As money is no longer as accessible or cheap as it once was, fundraising and gaining access to the capital you might need to do what it is that you want will probably be a bit more difficult which raises the bar for who is going to receive capital and when, making competition more fierce. Try to make as much progress on your own with the resources you have, if you can. It will usually end up being advantageous in the future.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I’ve always looked to automate the time-consuming but error-prone elements of any processes that we might need to do so that people can leverage the technology in a better and more empowering way, so they can make considerable progress with a lot less resources much, much faster.’
‘I’ve seen Chat GPT being used in everything from automating significant, time-consuming elements of content creation and copywriting all the way through to using it to write code for you to build applications and building blocks as opposed to writing anything in a customer fashion.’
‘Whenever possible, making processes that are really important simpler ultimately makes them more effective.’
‘.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Sean Boycehelps SaaS businesses realize your vision of owning a world-class software product WITHOUT needing to make all the mistakes that typically sink most product companies. Sean has already made those mistakes as he has successfully been able to scale his own product companies (staffgeek.com and podcastchef.com).
Sean loves to received questions on how he can help founders and their products. Just email him at sean@nxtstep.ioor booking time to discuss whether it would make sense to work together using the link below.
https://nxtstep.io/
ABOUT CONNECTIV
Connectiv is a live events studio that for the past decade has dedicated itself to creating industry-leading gatherings. Our passion and our expertise are owning and operating at scale, vertical-specific conferences.
The events we have created attract more than 15,000 people each year. In 2021 we will be bringing to market two new vertical shows including Manifest - the future of logistics. Where industry transformation is front and center, while the change in industries is inevitable what will never change is our mission to help facilitate face-to-face interactions. We believe the in-person experience is the best way to push conversations forward as well as discover disruptive trends that are changing content consumption and consumer behaviour.
Website: https://connectiv.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Jay Weintraub. If there is a term that describes Jay over the past 15 years are the words "event entrepreneur. Jay transformed his early digital marketing domain expertise into an industry-leading event shaper.
Today, Jay’s portfolio consists of: Blueprint (real estate tech), Manifest (logistics tech), Medicarians (age tech), and Cumulus (agri / food tech). He has delivered four exits, and his passion for thoughtfully connecting people – Connectiv – a portfolio of industry-defining events.
While events are what the communities seek, Jay wants to serve unique experiences. He shares that success is not measured by the number of attendees or sponsors. Instead, the team at Connectiv judge ourselves by our impact on some of the world's largest, most complex, and necessary global industries.
On this episode the pair discuss: Jay’s main areas of interest post-InsureTech Connect, why industries? What purpose? How does Jay serve sectors by delivering highly engaging conference experience and meet face to face? What can we learn from cross-fertilizing learnings from attending other events from problem solving to collaboration.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The beauty of an event is, oftentimes, you’re trying to capture a movement, you’re trying to find appoint in time where the world is changing and when that is. There’s so much uncertainty. Simply face-timing with the right people can add an immense amount of value.
- Is the movement in InsureTech about new product, new ways to underwrite, different ways to do claims, was it back to customer service or engagement? It could be everything. The question is: Which one is right for you?
- If we can find ways to make things predictable and repeatable we can do more and more scale-ably. That’s one of our goals. For a company like ours that convenes large scale events, the milestone is about how we touch more lives. For us, touch more lives is connecting more industries in the same way. There’s almost always some company that touches multiple verticals.
- No one wants to be first, everyone wants to be first to be second. The hardest part about what we do is that, like everything else, scale matters. It’s really hard to get to a 7,000-10,000 person show starting off at a 300-500 person show. What makes the challenge is that everyone thinks it’s super scalable (like tech), in our type of business it’s not just about raising a ton of money, getting the biggest sales team with the biggest funnel, it’s not a single widget that you can scale across an infinitely large team. It’s about the one-on-one connections which is more akin to scouting, venturing or startup roles, there a lot of not-so-glamourous work: research and figuring out who’s is relevant.
BEST MOMENTS
‘One of the magic things about insurance is that it’s impossible to name something that insurance doesn’t touch.’
‘We’re trying to get more connected as a whole.’
‘Data itself is a commodity, you can buy a list of companies. But you’re not going to advance your company by buying that big list and trying to mail that big list. The only way you’re going to do it is by asking: “Is this person relevant?” It’s the personal outreach and understanding your goal.’
‘Who do you want to be? Sometimes you have to accept you can’t be everything to everyone. The best companies do this, especially in insurance, there isn’t anyone who’s number one in every line of business.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Jay Weintraub: If there is a term called "event entrepreneur," that certainly best describes my last 15+ years. I transformed my early digital marketing domain expertise into an industry leading event. Four exits later, and my passion for thoughtful connecting forms the basis for Connectiv – a portfolio of industry defining events.
While events are what the communities we serve experience, our success is not measured by the number of attendees or sponsors. Instead, we judge ourselves on the impact we make to some of the worlds largest, most complex, and necessary global industries.
Today, our portfolio consists of Blueprint (real estate tech), Manifest (logistics tech), Medicarians (age tech), and Cumulus (agri/food tech).
I have been fortunate enough to speak across the globe and am an investor in 60+ companies as well having been an advisor to a dozen more.
Should you wish to connect, feel free to email jay at connectiv.com.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayweintraub/
ABOUT CONNECTIV
Connectiv is a live events studio that for the past decade has dedicated itself to creating industry-leading gatherings. Our passion and our expertise are owning and operating at scale, vertical-specific conferences.
The events we have created attract more than 15,000 people each year. In 2021 we will be bringing to market two new vertical shows including Manifest - the future of logistics. Where industry transformation is front and center, while the change in industries is inevitable what will never change is our mission to help facilitate face-to-face interactions. We believe the in-person experience is the best way to push conversations forward as well as discover disruptive trends that are changing content consumption and consumer behaviour.
Website: https://connectiv.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Nathan Stuck, an award-winning leader in the B Corp community and the Founder & CEO of Profitable Purpose Consulting, a culture and impact consultancy that helps companies certify as B Corporations. He also founded and chairs B Local Georgia, a non-profit dedicated to growing the number of purpose-driven businesses in the Peach State.
Nathan teaches an experiential MBA course on B Corps at the University of Georgia and serves on the board of B Academics, a non-profit committed to research and experiential B Corp learning opportunities around the world.
As of March 2023, the latest available data indicates that there are over 6,435 B Corporations in over 159 industries and 88 countries worldwide. The number of certified B Corps are steadily increasing with the largest growing number in the US. 48% of all B Corps are publicly traded companies and B Corp employs half a million workers worldwide.
On this episode the pair discuss: Why Nathan decided to focus his attention on B Corps, what does B Corp mean, why does B Corp movement matter, and what does it take to become a B Corp?
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I always knew I wanted to work in business since high school, later I got an international business degree. By 2012 my career was going pretty well but I went through two lay-offs in six months in 2013. Then I tried to figure out what I was going to do next in my early 30s. I was working gig jobs while waiting to start an MBa and saw a lot of other people doing the same while trying to raise families and there was no hope. It was eye-opening to see what capitalism had become. I discovered B Corp in the second year of my MBa and the sky opened, and the angels started singing, and I realised I’d found my business community of people who believed in using business as a force for good in society.
- I’d invested so much in myself: late nights, early mornings, things that I didn’t get paid for, but I paid in time, equity, tears, sweat. I was finally starting to see the reward and I decided it would make a good book. It had to sound like me, I make fun of myself and talk about the stupid things I’ve done in my life, jobs that I took, times when I failed miserably, stretching outside of my comfort zone not well. I didn’t want it to be like every other business book where “I’m the most successful human being ever born”, this is more: “I’m just like you, I’ve had a bunch of jobs that I didn’t like and here’s how to hopefully come out of all of that prepared for opportunities.”
- B Corps are for-profit businesses with a certification that is a lot like LEAN for a building – an outside non-profit comes in and looks at the business holistically: How transparent you are, your corporate governance, your workers, what kinds of benefits you offer, your pay multiplier from top to bottom paid employee, what leave you offer for parents and caregivers, your community impact, your environmental footprint, and your policies for your customers. It scores you out of 80 and validates that.
- As soon as Gen Z and Millennials found their voices they got together to say business as usual isn’t working for everybody. They’re fed up with why things aren’t more equitable, why we’ve allowed the status quo to continue when the status quo doesn’t work, and how do we leverage the business community to solve some of society’s biggest problems?
BEST MOMENTS‘It isn’t necessarily capitalism that’s evil, it’s what we’ve let it become. There’s a whole community of business leaders, owners, and changemakers that are trying to change the world through business.’
‘It’s fun to see where you’ve come from, and what you’ve faced, and how you overcame it. A lot of times it’s those moments that unlock the opportunity to find happiness and your purpose in life.’
‘Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.’
‘I like Mondays so much that I start working on Sunday.’
ABOUT THE GUESTNathan is an award-winning leader in the B Corp community and the Founder & CEO of Profitable Purpose Consulting, a culture and impact consultancy that helps companies certify as B Corporations. He also founded and chairs B Local Georgia, a non-profit dedicated to growing the number of purpose-driven businesses in the Peach State.
He has appeared on multiple podcasts, spoken at events across the country, and hosts the Be the Change Georgia podcast.
His first book, Happy Monday: Designing Your Career with Purpose, came out earlier this year.
Website: https://www.profitablepurposeconsulting.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Tunde Salako, an active entrepreneur within the Africa FinTech, HealthTech and InsurTech scene. Tunde wants to connect the dots between inclusion, insurance and technology In Africa.
Tunde co-founded HealthTech startup, Hadiel, to drive more health inclusion in Africa and is also the managing partner of the Africa InsurTech Lab, a platform aggregating InsurTech entrepreneurs, startups, corporates, enthusiasts, investors sharing trends on how technology is reverse engineering insurance on the continent and between continents.
Investment in the African startup ecosystem accelerated over the past two years with over $3 billion when investment opportunities fell for startups across Europe for instance.
During their discussion, Sabine and Tunde dive into 1) FinTech and InsurTech in Africa, 2) opportunities and challenges faced by the local market, and 3) drivers behind the $3 billion of investment made within the African market over the past two years.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- My background was as a medic, I trained as a physician, and for the past 16-17 years I’ve been on the insurance side of the fence despite the fact I remained within the healthcare system as well. In 2019, I started to go deeper into the insurance ecosystem after more interest was being taken in Africa, but there was no documentation or platform pulling it all together. So, we decided to showcase this to the world and build confidence in relevant areas, so Africa is not left behind.
- 10-15 years ago, if you wanted to build a website, you had to pay a high cost. By 2017 that changed. Now, building a website is something that’s a walk in the park for everyone, and there is a surge of technology hubs around the whole of Africa (over 700 today), which are very bullish on teaching, coding, programming, and building local talent.
- The international ecosystem is now looking into what is happening in Africa, particularly regarding FinTech. Despite the fact there was a slowdown globally, it took until quarter 3 of the year before we started to see that kind of slowing down in Africa because the investors and VC ecosystem are bullish about putting out investments into the local ecosystem. That translated financially into by the end of 2021, the total funding in Africa was about $4 billion, out of which about 55% of those funds were to the FinTech ecosystem, and in 2022 that figure rose to $4.8 billion, still with about 55% to FinTech.
- When you look at the next 3-7 years, we can churn out stellar innovation because of the technology that is now available in the insurance ecosystem. One of the things that is very clear is that now, with the major players in the industry and InsurTechs that are coming up with innovations, there are going to be more opportunities for partnerships and collaborations either by mergers and/or acquisitions.
BEST MOMENTS‘Africa needs to be heard. There's a lot of things going on down here.’
‘We want to put a spotlight on the growth and the capabilities that have been developed year-on-year in terms of technology on the continent of Africa.’
‘We now have local talent that can build solutions that are amenable to our environment and the key problems affecting the African ecosystem.’
‘Incumbents want to focus on how they reduce risk and how to provide value to the customer, while at the same time leaving the technology to the startups.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Tunde is the CEO of Hadiel, manages Africa InsurTech Lab and an advisory council member of Founders Factory Africa. You can find out more about Tunde below.
Tunde Salako: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tundeosalako/
Website: https://africainsurtechrising.com.ng/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Pablo Duarte and Hilario Itriago, founders of InsurLab LATAM, a fast-growing insurance technology accelerator for startups wanting to enter the Latam market via Miami.
Both Pablo and Hilario have been leading insurance innovation in LATAM for years. They both come from industry, and you will discover during our discussion that we are all in the fractional world of tech where we split our time across those projects that matter most to us. For instance, alongside supporting the InsurLab LATAM, Pablo is also director, client engagement at Bain and Company and Hilario is also the president at BOXX Insurance.
During the podcast they discuss the InsurTech ecosystem in LATAM, how they support the incumbent, broker, and startup worlds, InsurTech LATAM in numbers, and their InsurTech portfolio and opportunities across the LATAM market.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The insurance space as we know it has a phenomenal opportunity with the transformation that technology brings to it. There’s clearly a before and after technology that came into our world. That technology is now in the hands of consumers and we believe that is a massive change. One of the key things that we really want to make sure happens in our markets is that more people get insurance. We’re convinced that the more people that get insurance coverage the better their social and economic development will be.
- InsurTech has the ability to bring products closer to the everyday individual who can benefit from insurance coverage and do it in a very simple and efficient way. This is an opportunity that must be leveraged by both incumbents and InsurTechs alike – and they both have the ability to do so. As collaborative as insurance has been over the centuries, the opportunities of InsurTech are no different. We believe that incumbents and InsurTechs have the ability to collaborate across the entire value chain and the fact that we can promote and try to influence that happening more and more the better everybody’s going to be, from the industry insiders to the consumers.
- The InsurTech sector in Latin America continues to be very active, unlike what we’ve seen in other markets where valuations plummeted, we haven’t seen an effect in the LATAM market. There are over 400 InsurTechs in LATAM, the growth rate is about 20% year-on-year and about 6% of the companies die every year (just like any venture ecosystem). Some of the fastest growing markets are in Columbia and Brazil with one third of the market located in Brazil.
- We saw the early days of InsurTechs focussing on personal, distribution, that type of disruption which typically is the sexy aspect of where people want to go. But over the years you’ve seen that more and more companies are tackling the commercial space – whether it’s small commercial or more traditional, larger scale of commercial business. There’s a great deal of opportunity in the sustainability aspect of the commercial insurance space, we’re starting to see more and more opportunities there and therefore more and more InsurTechs, that’s one of the angles that’s going to make many of the economies in the region see more solutions and innovations in that space that could also be taken to other markets.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I've been on this InsurTech journey since 2016, back then InsurTech was just starting in Latin America so there wasn’t much activity going on and sometimes we even wondered if we made the right choice getting into InsurTech at that time!’
‘Through InsurTech, we see greater customisation and personalisation of value propositions. That is key because traditionally insurance has been very structured and hard to feed into the specific needs of customers.’
‘Argentina is a country that has been known for innovation way before FinTech and InsurTech, it’s a very entrepreneurial country and precisely because of the economic circumstances they have a very strong pipeline of solutions that are created and grown in Argentina but definitely want to go elsewhere for growth.’
‘In terms of smaller markets that punch above their weight, our first InsurTech unicorn comes from Chile. It’s a great balance between large pipelines of InsurTechs coming from big markets and smaller quantities but tremendous quality coming from the smaller markets as well.’
ABOUT THE GUESTSPablo Duarte: https://www.linkedin.com/in/duartepablo/
Hilario Itriago: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hitriago/
InsurLab LATAM: https://www.latam-insurtech.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It’s not easy for small and medium size businesses to find the right protection, despite the fact that there are so many more small business opportunities that have emerged since the pandemic.
Today, Sabine taps into the knowledge of two industry veterans: Jeff Shi of InsureTech Groups and Tim Lovett of The Hartford, and asks them to understand the current situation with small commercials in the US market.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The size of the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) market varies greatly depending on the region and the industry being considered. Globally, SMEs account for a significant portion of the economy, employing a large percentage of the workforce and generating a significant amount of economic activity. estimates suggest that SMEs make up over 90% of businesses in many countries, and they are often considered to be the backbone of the economy. However, due to their diversity and dispersed nature, it can be challenging to estimate the exact size of the SME market.
- Insurers may have pulled away from small commercial coverage in the past two years for a variety of reasons, including changes in regulations, declining profitability, or shifting business strategies, as well as increased competition, higher risk, new regulations in data and ethics, and shifting business strategies.
- The small commercial lines market can present several challenges for insurers, including: higher risk, increased competition, complexity of coverage, limited data availability, and pricing pressures. These challenges can make it difficult for insurers to operate effectively in the small commercial lines market, which can result in some companies pulling back from this segment of the market. However, despite these challenges, there is still significant demand for insurance coverage among small businesses, and many insurers are finding ways to overcome these challenges and offer competitive products.
- The products, services, and business opportunities that insurers are evaluating today within the small commercial insurance market include: technology-enabled solutions, specialised coverage, customised products, bundled products, alternative distribution channels, and risk management services. These products, services, and business opportunities are aimed at improving the customer experience, increasing profitability, and differentiating from the competition in the small commercial insurance market. However, it is important for insurers to carefully evaluate the viability and potential of each opportunity, as success will depend on factors such as market demand, competition, and the overall regulatory environment.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Small businesses often face a higher level of risk than larger businesses, and insurers may have decided that the risk associated with insuring small businesses was too high.’
‘Small businesses often face a higher level of risk than larger businesses, which can make it more difficult for insurers to accurately assess and price risk.’
‘Small business owners are often price-sensitive, and insurers may face pressure to offer competitive pricing, which can impact profitability..’
‘Insurers are exploring alternative distribution channels, such as insurtech start-ups, to reach small businesses and offer more convenient and accessible insurance solutions.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Jeff Shi is founder of InsureTech Groups where he connects consumers with top industry partners, using advanced processes leveraging innovative technology. Jeff helps consumers to better understand their policies in an effort to meet each of their unique needs.
Website: https://www.insurtechgroups.com/
Tim Lovett has been at The Hartford insurance group for nearly six years. Tim helps small and medium size companies make better choices. He has a background in claims management and distribution, both of which allows him to educate and assist agents in growing their small commercial portfolio.
Website: https://ir.thehartford.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Aaron Jones, an award-winning entrepreneur working in Artificial Intelligence. Aaron co-founded Yepic AI, a company in the generative AI space whose flagship product “vidvoice.ai” is a state-of-the-art video translation technology that dubs your lips in real-time.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Before I was an entrepreneur, I was a cameraman at K Productions, producing a TV show for Sky. I was also an assistant vision mixer adjusting the lighting on the cameras. I thought a career in acting was for me when I was younger, but then I realized that I wanted to make a difference in the world. Everything I’ve done since then has been around the idea of whatever I spend my time on. I want it to make an impact and change people's lives.
- At university, I started an ethical fashion brand which got me into eCommerce. I don’t care much about fashion, but I do care about people. There was a great story about people producing a product locally that was sustainable and recycled, and I started a foundation in Cambodia to fund education. The idea was that every time you bought a product, you’d be funding a child's education to get parents to earn more and children to learn to break the cycle of poverty. I did that for several years and received an honor from the Queen for my work and numerous awards. Like all great ideas, they evolve, and we realized that if we wanted to make an even bigger impact, we needed to make a place for other designers to grow their brands and sell more products so we could build more schools. That’s how the business evolved into a company called See Fashion – which was a terrible idea. Never work with fashion designers if you want to make money.
- We pivoted away from fashion to technology, enabling eCommerce brands with a product and a business to sell more. We did this by connecting all the stores as an intelligence web, using visual search as a hook to encourage users to show us what they were interested in buying by uploading photos to the app/store. It soon became an API business, and we sold APIs to companies like Yves Saint Laurent and huge corporations. The most valuable part of the business was the visual search. We did not own the IP, and because GDPR came in, our sharing network had to shut down as I had not sold the company when I had the opportunity for it to be acquired.
- That journey led me to meet with the Founders Factory team more than three years ago and started consulting on an eCommerce enablement project using Generative AI to enhance and generate imagery. It blew my mind that researchers were generating images from nothing, and I became obsessed. We've since created probably the first ‘stable diffusion’ before research papers made the subject popular. Still, ours wasn’t very stable and needed an extensive data set to generate the images. This means that, for an eCommerce brand, it wasn’t that feasible. After this, we got into video and formed Yepic AI.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Entrepreneurs are a bit of everything. Starting a business in a new and exciting space Is exciting, but it also requires you to wear many hats at the beginning.’
‘Don’t work with designers, take acquisition offers, do something meaningful.’
‘A problem that a lot of Generative AI companies are facing is when the hype burns away, to sell it to businesses as a click-through enhancement/ increase to drive more sales, you need to prove that your image drove the sale.’
‘There’s been loads going on in the background for a long time, but the public has suddenly become aware of it, and they’ve realized that Generative AI isn’t just deep fakes among others. You can create stuff. You can generate images in Canva now. You can edit people out of your photos using AI, the creative possibilities in the eyes of the public have opened up massively.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Aaron Jones is an award-winning entrepreneur working in Artificial Intelligence. Aaron co-founded Yepic AI, a company in the generative AI space whose flagship product “vidvoice.ai” is a state-of-the-art video translation technology that dubs your lips in real-time. Vid Voice is being used in business meetings, telehealth, live events, and film dubbing. It's the first and only service of its kind which will be made available via Zoom.
Aaron was recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours list, making him the youngest person to receive a British Empire Medal for services to Industry. He was also awarded Alumni of the Year 2018 by Essex University and shortlisted for Forbes 30 under 30.
https://www.yepic.ai/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Tristan Pelloux, An expert who is passionate about FinTech and Innovation. After several years in Corporate Strategy and Finance at Virgin Money, Tristan decided to launch Strategwhy, an independent management consultancy. He is also the Chief Pencil Officer at Fintech Review, online media on the Fintech industry.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I was producing lots of insights for Virgin Money (where I worked in corporate finance) trying to figure out what was going on in that world, the trends, innovations. I thought it was a shame that the audience was so small within the company, so I set up the media site in 2020 to spread my thoughts about what was going on. It’s evolved from a personal site where I wrote blogs to more of a platform with other people sharing FinTech insights and interviews with business leaders and entrepreneurs in the field. This is my passion work and I do consulting, which is how I pay the rent, where I work with companies across Europe and help them with their strategy and helping them to scale to reach a new level.
- I am Mr Organisation, I like to make lists, do tests, I like plans. I tell my clients we’re going to meet twice a week, this is the agenda of the meeting, this is what we’re going to do this week, this is what we’re going to do next week. It’s about maintaining order. This doesn’t mean you can’t be inventive or innovative, you just need to channel things and do it in a very planned way, otherwise your energy is going in too many directions and you’re losing time. If everybody is aligned, they know what’s going on, there is a clear plan, and you divide the tasks between people then you achieve much more.
- Things move faster and can evolve faster in a startup than in a corporate business where you’ve got access to a lot of experts and resources. It’s super interesting to see how you can do the same project in two different environments; you need much more adaptability in a startup and the goals are much more about growth, with corporates there are more structures and restraints where everybody needs to be on the page before you can move forward.
- One of the challenges in FinTech is there are too many companies going after the same customers and there’s not enough money to be made out of retail customers. It’s not enough to be making money out of interchange. This can be great for the customer to have so much choice, but it’s also confusing because there are so many players and it’s fragmented. Lots of FinTech’s are battling to become the ‘super app’, and we’ll see which will emerge. Still, so many of them don’t have good business models and are loss-making, it will be challenging for them with less funding available. But there are opportunities in the B2B space.
BEST MOMENTS‘The environment is very different now than it was two years ago. It wasn’t easy to sell but funding was easier, and it was easier to scale. The challenges are the same for everybody from startups to big businesses.’
‘What’s important for businesses right now is strategic focus and execution – instead of going in many directions at the same time, do one thing very well. That’s how I’m helping businesses.’
‘The next two years are going to be difficult for FinTechs because rounds will be down, some others will get no funding at all. There may be consolidation, so FinTechs in a good position will be able to scale faster through inorganic growth.’
‘Some services that were not economically viable to provide to the mass market now are through the use of technology. So, at which point are you going to provide some sort of personalised service when you can do it cheaply?’
ABOUT THE GUESTAfter over five years in corporate strategy and finance at Virgin Money UK in London, Tristan Pelloux launched Strategwhy, an independent management consulting company, to provide independent guidance and advice to business leaders and founders of startup and scaleup companies across the world.
https://fintechreview.net/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Michael Doyle, a brand and capital raise Guru who founded Brand Iron 20 years ago. Michael combines his branding and market making experience with his investment reporting analyst strengths to shape a company dedicated to creating congruent brands supported by strong financial and investment stories. With this approach Michael helped companies he supported over the years raise over $5 billion of capital.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Most people think of branding as how they present themselves and their company. I take branding beyond simply the message into something that produces tangible results. By integrating branding into all areas of business – Sales, Marketing, Operations, Finance… you can create a dynamic value proposition that comes alive, gets leads, and generates revenue.
- We work with companies to identify what’s unique about their brand, how we successfully package and communicate that, and how we put together and take them to market to drive real results and help them achieve their outcomes, whether that’s driving revenue, driving growth, expansion of a new product of service into the marketplace, or expanding into new geographies.
- The formula to raising $5 billion is really understanding your niche, how and why you’re better, and how to package that into a really clear and concise message. That’s the brand story. What most companies really have a difficult time with is telling a really sound financial story. When I start out with most companies they give me financials and spreadsheets, my job is to extract that information. The other side is communicating, highlighting and showcasing the team and their experience to effectively execute this plan and make investors feel comfortable that they know what they’re doing and confident that they’ll deliver and make this a reality.
- In order to make ‘x’ revenue we have to get so many people to make buying decisions. To make those buying decisions we have to drive so much traffic and convert them from interested into buyers by clicking on an ad, a blog or a video. It’s a mathematical formula. We need to understand what it’s going to take, what our message needs to be, what are the most effective mediums, what’s the timing? All these ingredients have to come together to deliver the results we want to deliver.
BEST MOMENTS
‘You need to understand what your ‘holistic brand’ is, it’s not just logos and websites – which are important – you’ve got to have a good culture and have the team that’s going to deliver, communicate, and convey the claims on your website and brand materials.’
"We don’t want our companies to be vapourware, we want them to be real and doing what it says it’s going to do. By doing this you can produce some really great results.’
‘Whether you’re a startup, SMB or a large enterprise, you should always start with the end in mind. What are the end goals you want to achieve?’
‘Nothing ever works perfectly. The key is starting out with assumptions and then adjusting and optimising and fine tuning it to where it’s producing your desired outcome and results you’re trying to achieve.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
CEO & Brand Champion of Brand Iron, a brand consulting & marketing firm that forges brands and drives revenue. Raised over $5 billion for clients. Helped 40 companies get acquired and 20 companies taken public.
I'm an advisor to PE firms, RE firms, and Tech companies, especially around capital raise efforts, branding, and positioning companies for acquisition. I also do much work with platform companies that PE firms own and help them grow and scale. I've been a part of 3 successful exits, including selling my own company and being part of an IPO. We own equity positions with some top-performing SaaS/Tech and Real Estate companies. We also have helped companies raise over $5 Billion in capital and have been advisors to over 40 acquisitions.
https://brandiron.net/process/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode of Scouting For Growth. Sabine talks to Axel Thibon about the evolution of investing, how investing is being simplified and streamlined for the masses and how digital platforms are revolutionising investing for everyone. This all sounds great, but are there any downsides to allowing anyone to invest?
ABOUT THE GUEST
Axel’s website - https://www.wizest.com/
With his team, Axel aims to make personal investing more accessible, more engaging, and more consistent with today's digital platforms and changing consumer behaviour.Today, people think that investing is complicated and intimidating. What if there was a platform to pair novice investors with financial experts?
Prior to Wizest, Alex worked in banking for over 6 years.
Led and guided4 M&A/integration projects for banks ranging from $300M to $15B
Led strategy/ transformation initiatives
Managed a digital Bank and launched a new bank from scratch
Renaud Nissan Mitsubishi (9 years)
Sabadell United Bank (5 years)
Wizest (4 years)
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Dennis Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Postalytics, a fast-growing software company that automates direct mail marketing, measures the results from direct mailing activity and connects such campaign to CRM and marketing automation systems to accelerate the way online marketing connects with offline marketing.
With expertise building VC backed businesses as well as self-financed businesses, Dennis is a 6 times entrepreneur with the businesses he built. He exited 4 of these businesses to larger corporations.
Postalytics has grown fast with no VC investment and today, is scaling in the US and Canada with aspiration to come to Europe.
During the podcast, the pair cover Dennis’ lessons building VC-backed and self-financed businesses, what PLG (Product-led growth) means and why every business needs to learn a little bit about it, and Postalytics’ proposition and roadmap to success.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I grew up on a farm where my family and I worked very hard and were entrepreneurial in trying to make extra money. I’d reach out to neighbours and people in the community to offer my services and help them with whatever it was they needed doing. Some of those lessons apply today, such as not being afraid to knock on someone’s door, tell them what you’re doing and how you can help them, and try explaining things in a clear way that they understand.
- Postalytics is a direct mail automation software tool which is designed to solve three big problems with the direct mail marketing workflow. This is a legacy marketing channel that has been around for many years and is still very useful and successful, but hasn’t had a lot of technology applied to it. We’ve taken some of the best practices from digital marketing and applied them to a software tool that enables marketers to rapidly deploy direct mail campaigns in minutes rather than weeks.
- We connect direct mail – a physical channel where a printed piece of paper is sent through the postal service – to the marketing tech stack (CRM, CDP) which drives and accumulates knowledge of what happens in a direct mail marketing campaign through Postalytics. Similar to the way that all digital marketing channels are driven from central locations.
- We’ve created a method of assigning a unique QR code to each recipient of a piece of mail. The opportunity is to use that physical piece of paper that offers you something while you’re holding it, and drive them to your website through the QR code – which everybody is comfortable with now.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Each time you participate in a startup there’s always tremendous learning and things that you can take away from it.’
‘One of the challenges with any offline marketing channel is, how do we measure what is successful, who is/isn’t responding? We’ve created some proprietary methods of measuring both the delivery of the mail as well as who’s responding and where they are going on your website.’
‘It’s impossible for the QR codes to be manipulated by a third party because each one is unique and fully encrypted.’
‘The cost of creating a very highly scalable, high performance platform in the cloud has plummeted. You’re able to do so much more without spending a huge amount of money. Our business model allows us to capture customers without a tremendous outlay of capital. We didn’t need to raise a huge amount of money to get this business off the ground, once the business got going it became self-sustaining.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Denis Kelly is CEO of Postalytics, a fast-growing software company that automates direct mail marketing, measures the results and connects it to CRM/Marketing Automation.
Postalytics evolved out of Boingnet, a software tool used by direct mail service providers and agencies to provide landing pages and email campaigns that complement personalised direct mail.
I was co-owner of Wireless City - a chain of 37 Verizon Wireless stores based in Florida, Massachusetts and Georgia. The company was acquired by Go Wireless in October 2011. Prior to Wireless City, I was CEO at Adesso Systems, an enterprise mobility software company. Previously, I was CEO and Co-Founder of Adjoin Solutions, Inc., an early market leader in the Web Services Management market. Adjoin was acquired by Computer Associates in July, 2003. Before founding Adjoin, I was VP of Web Services at Palm (PALM) leading the Palm.net wireless business, the MyPalm web and mobile portals, and other Palm web properties. Previously, I was COO & Co-Founder of AnyDay.com (sold to Palm), headed sales for Achieve Healthcare, the largest provider of enterprise software and services to the post-acute healthcare industry. and COO at Genesis Business Systems (sold to Achieve). Dennis holds a BA in economics from Colgate University.
Specialties: I build companies, typically having something to do with technology. My role typically spans product development, sales, marketing, finance and HR. I started off life as a sales guy, spent time building products, running data centres, have been CEO of angel and venture backed startups, and have built self financed businesses.
About Postalytics
Marketers use Postalytics to stand out from their competitors with automated direct mail marketing. Drive new leads and sales with personalised direct mail that complements email and digital marketing. Deep integration with HubSpot, Salesforce and other CRM/Marketing Automation tools enable direct mail to look, act and feel like a digital marketing channel that happens to produce trackable postcards and letters.
Website - https://www.postalytics.com/
About Previsico
Previsico is a surface water flood forecasting specialist enabling people and organisations to minimise the impact of flooding. Backed by Foresight Group and underpinned by two decades of research at Loughborough University, Previsico’s world-leading solution is used by insurers, businesses, and the government to reduce losses. Our mission is to be the leading global provider of cutting-edge flood prediction that saves lives and livelihoods while significantly reducing the cost of flooding. Having launched in January 2019, we have a growing team of ~25 people with offices in Loughborough and London.
Website: https://previsico.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to James Marshall, managing director of Spinning Fox, a product led design agency focused on helping large and small businesses solve problems more creatively.
James has 11 years of delivery experience and a proven ability to manage super large global accounts having worked for companies including HSBC, Nike, Unilever, PepsiCo, Adidas, Dyson, Samsung, Barclays and Ford. He has a huge passion for creating tech and operational solutions to solve business and consumer problems and drive opportunities much faster than traditional approaches.
On the podcast, the pair discuss: James’ journey into the design thinking and user experience world, why operational efficiency is so hot right now, the power of taking an outside in perspective, and good problem solving requires for us all to take calculated risk.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I wasn’t that good at school, it didn’t suit me very well, but things really clicked when I went to university to study graphic design. I worked in my early career as a designer, but I had ambitions to own my own company, but spotted quite quickly that I needed to develop more business skills. I moved to London to work in digital agencies and took a sidewards step into programme leadership where I worked with incredible clients. That’s where I found I had a passion for delivering digital product solutions.
- Spinning Fox was created after we witnessed digital product teams trying to deliver digital products and platforms and fail, which was quite common, and through those failures you get learnings. We wanted to build a company to create products and use those learnings we had to solve problems and create solutions for clients. Underlying that is a love for design and tech and using it to solve problems.
- At a high level, the approach we try to take is firstly around discovery, immersing ourselves in the world of our client and we can fast track that process through doing some mini-workshops, meeting with stakeholders, meeting the user, ideally, to understand the opportunity as quickly as possible. Then defining things, identifying the user’s needs, pain points, and starting to work out the solution. Then we move into rapid prototyping and getting into a cycle of testing and iterating, getting feedback from the user as quickly as possible before moving into implementation. We have full end-to-end delivery capabilities with our team of engineers and QA baked into our process.
- We’ve had instances in the past where the best solution for the client is actually something we can’t do, but we’ll work with them as a partner and find a third party to work with and help support in the delivery of that. We’re not afraid to say that, we won’t always engineer things to force it into the areas where we have great expertise and prior knowledge. It’s about being honest and transparent with a client.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I learned at an early age that if I wanted something I had to work for it.’
‘Spinning Fox is a collective of technologists, innovators, strategists, designers all with one shared passion: Solving problems. That’s how we deliver value to our clients.’
‘Everything we do puts the customer right at the heart of everything throughout the process to validate that we’re on the right track.’
‘There’s no time to stand still as a digital product agency, if you do then you’ll become a dinosaur in five minutes. You have to be very aware of what’s happening in the future. Being able to adapt your business model quite quickly is key.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
James Marshall is a delivery specialist with a passion for creating tech and operational solutions to business and consumer problems or opportunities. He is motivated by working in an environment of like-minded multi-disciplinary teams.
With 11 years of delivery experience James has a proven ability to manage projects with values in excess of £1m for global accounts including HSBC, Nike, Unilever, PepsiCo, Adidas, Dyson, Samsung, Barclays and Ford.
Programme management of projects including product and service design, experiential, interactive retail, digital within visitor attractions, large scale web/app builds, end-to-end customer experience strategy and business transformation.
Experience in implementing process and operational improvements and training teams to run projects using Agile delivery techniques. Fully certified ScrumMaster and DSDM AgilePM with strong Agile experience.
Strong client servicing skills through working as the main client contact across many projects and accounts.
Strategic thinker and problem solver with the ability to use knowledge and experience to generate new business opportunities and deliver against client goals for programmes of work.
Email: jmarshall@spinningfox.com
Website: https://www.spinningfox.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Guillaume Bonnissent, CEO and co-fonder of Quotech, a data provider and technology platform which aims to give access to the very best data to insurance practitioners - from executive decision-makers, brokers, underwriters, actuaries and even data scientists.
Guillaume has twenty years of insurance experience as both an underwriter and senior executive. Throughout his career, Guillaume encountered one constant issue: the poor quality of data available to decision-makers at all levels, mainly due to legacy constraints.
During the podcast the pair cover leveraging 13 years of underwriting expertise, delivering underwriting excellence in the 21st century, and growing and scaling Quotech – Guillaume’s roadmap to success.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Insurance companies must become better underwriters to remain competitive in the marketplace. Underwriting excellence is essential for an insurer to understand, price, and manage the risk of a customer to minimise losses from potential insurance claims. Achieving this balance between profitability for the insurer and adequate protection for the insured is becoming increasingly difficult due to the complexity of the insurance market.
- Our brokers give quick and insightful risk management advice to their clients whilst helping them fill in their application forms. Our underwriters access better, richer, and more consistent data and analysis to apply their underwriting judgement. Our actuaries and Underwriting Managers analyse and review the underwriting judgement as well as all the data and analysis reviewed by the underwriter.
- Our process includes automated collection and analysis of the most relevant data for each class of business, a complete audit trail of the data and decisions made against it, and management of the different authority levels, risk appetites and rating models.
- Underwriting excellence in insurance is the process of assessing, pricing and managing the risk of a customer to achieve the optimal balance between profitability for the insurer and an adequate level of protection for the insured. The goal is to deliver a product that meets the expectations and needs of both parties while mitigating any potential losses from an insurance claim.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Digital Insurance Platform estimated at $102.2 billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of $169.2bn by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 9% over the analysis period.’
‘Insurance companies must become better underwriters to remain competitive in the marketplace.’
‘Achieving the balance between profitability for the insurer and adequate protection for the insured is becoming increasingly difficult due to the complexity of the insurance market.’
‘Underwriting excellence involves multiple steps, such as analysing customer data and risk factors, assessing potential losses, and deciding on an appropriate price for coverage. Experienced underwriters must be able to review relevant information efficiently and accurately make sound decisions about each individual risk. Building strong relationships with customers is also important.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Guillaume has 20 years of insurance experience as both an underwriter and senior executive.
Throughout his career, Guillaume encountered one constant issue: the poor quality of data available to decision-makers at all levels, mainly due to legacy systems.
I've held different positions in Underwriting and Operations, both in the Lloyd's and Company markets, and have underwritten different lines of business from Credit Risk Insurance to Property Reinsurance.
I have a very keen interest in Data Science (proficient in R) and Artificial Intelligence.
About Quotech
Quotech is a data provider and technology platform which aims to give access to the best data to all insurance industry practitioners - from brokers, underwriters, actuaries and data scientists, to claims adjusters and business developers, all the way up to the Board of Directors. We want to help everyone in the insurance distribution chain to make better decisions based on accurate, material and relevant information.
Quotech creates truly useful insurance technology applications which make data-fuelled processes dramatically more efficient for commercial underwriters and brokers. Our founder is our difference. we’re led by an experienced syndicate and MGA underwriter who’s also a programmer. His first-hand understanding of re/insurance processes allows Quotech to deliver practical, efficient solutions that enhance and streamline workflows. Our systems ingest data from multiple sources, pull out what’s helpful, and store it in a unique Corporate Data Treasury to provide a single source of truth. They make the data that specific people need much more easily accessible through intuitive, practical applications, each custom-built for the client to meet their needs head-on. They work end-to-end, from data entry to documentation, with embedded tools that support pricing, distribution, administration, claims, and trading. Every Quotech installation is unique, flexible, and connected. Every Quotech customer is satisfied.
Website - https://quotech.io/
About Previsico
Previsico is a surface water flood forecasting specialist enabling people and organisations to minimise the impact of flooding. Backed by Foresight Group and underpinned by two decades of research at Loughborough University, Previsico’s world-leading solution is used by insurers, businesses, and the government to reduce losses. Our mission is to be the leading global provider of cutting-edge flood prediction that saves lives and livelihoods while significantly reducing the cost of flooding. Having launched in January 2019, we have a growing team of ~25 people with offices in Loughborough and London.
Website: https://previsico.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sara Simeone, CEO and Co-Founder of Niftyz (formerly Digital Oracles), and Co-Chair of Start-up Working Group, Crypto Valley. Sara is a strategist with a commercial mind, she was one of the first to publish a paper in 2018 on how machine learning and blockchain will have an impact on the future of digital marketing.
Sara worked with a portfolio of leading global accelerators, incubators and VC professionals to tackle company maturity and co-develop programmes that both nurture potential and offer innovative capabilities to early stage ventures.
During the course of the podcast they address the metaverse, NFTs and Web 3.0, why Sara launched and developed NFTs and where the market for NFTs is going, and what are the investment challenges and opportunities to deliver for the immersive internet in the right way.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I’ve been at the forefront of new technologies and new things happening on the web since the beginning of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. That’s what brought me to where we are today. I researched on how machine learning and blockchain will have an impact on the future of data and in 2017 I got in touch with Crypto Valley Environment and began to build a network in Italy and the UK.
- Web 2.0, which is the world we live in now, is dominated by platforms that we use to share content and information online. Sometimes, unbeknown to us, our information is sold online, it’s a business model that Facebook (meta), Twitter and many other publishers out there use to leverage in order to generate money. Web 3.0 in a container of new terminology. We’re looking at it as a decentralised web where we decide how our information is used and who we share it with, though there are still a lot of limitations from a technical point of view as well as a big knowledge gap.
- Metaverse and NFT are very much connected. Niftyz looks at NFTs as the keys that unlock specific content that is stored either on-chain or off-chain, unlock a lot of information, data, tools, features, badges, and exciting new things on the metaverse. If we don’t understand NFTs and how to use these new tools it will be very difficult to get access to the metaverse itself.
- We’ve been trained by the web and society that we have to monetise the outputs that we create. With Web 3.0 I see another angle, what I call ‘the input economy’ where I can start monetising at every single step that goes into the creation of that output. In this perspective we can see NFTs as empowering the monetisation of this process of value creation. For instance, if my brand creates mock-ups of my fashion items, I could potentially create an NFT version of the mock-up and ask my community to vote by purchasing the one they like the most. This is market research that can be used in the future to create a physical item that people want. From here, AMAs with the designer, virtual fashion events only for users, etc.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Niftyz is basically a platform that wants to enable businesses and brands of all sizes and industries that want to get into this new world of NFTs.’
‘Everybody’s trying to get into the Metaverse and brands are building teams with competencies around this, but it’s more of a PR/marketing play at the moment whereas in the future it will give some returns.’
‘NFTs have a bad reputation. In every phase of the internet there are cowboys trying to get rich quick, now NFTs have begun to be adopted by artists because they’ve found a way to get in touch with a different type of audience.’
‘Web 3.0 is creating a new value for our know-how, that’s the ethos behind Niftyz, empowering people, businesses and brands to monetise their know-how in a brand new way.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Sara Simeone is CEO and Co-Founder of Niftyz (formerly Digital Oracles) and Co-Chair of Start-up Working Group, Crypto Valley.
She is also a technology industry mentor, strategist and growth management specialist with a particular strength in the optimisation and commercial development of early stage, rapid-development tech businesses.
Her ability to predict commercial and technical challenges far ahead of critical milestones is proven. As a respected strategist, she works with a portfolio of leading global Accelerators, Incubators and VC professionals, tracking companies’ progress and maturity and co-developing programmes that both nurture potential and offer 360-degree support to innovative early-stage ventures.
Helping companies to structure an appropriate team and technology framework, Sara has a track record of propelling companies to the next level of profit and efficiency. She helps to break the classic communication silos between departments and accelerate growth.
With an ability to decipher complex business concepts and technologies, she creates data and KPI-based go-to-market strategies that really work. Practical experience includes: managing and mentoring senior teams; negotiating multi-million pound contracts; guiding companies to achieve maximum results without compromising team morale; P&L management.
In 2018, Sara Simeone published her master thesis on how machine learning and blockchain will have an impact on the future of digital marketing. She was one of the first marketers in the world to publish a piece on the topic.
This piece of research gave her access to several professional opportunities: mentoring startups at CV Labs in Crypto Valley (Switzerland); consulting for emerging technology companies in the UK and abroad; lecturing at Manchester Metropolitan University as Associate Lecturer of Digital Marketing Strategy.
Website: https://niftyz.io/#/
About Previsico
Previsico is a surface water flood forecasting specialist enabling people and organisations to minimise the impact of flooding. Backed by Foresight Group and underpinned by two decades of research at Loughborough University, Previsico’s world-leading solution is used by insurers, businesses, and the government to reduce losses. Our mission is to be the leading global provider of cutting-edge flood prediction that saves lives and livelihoods while significantly reducing the cost of flooding. Having launched in January 2019, we have a growing team of ~25 people with offices in Loughborough and London.
Website: https://previsico.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Dr. Avi Baruch, co-founder and COO of Previsico, and Jonathan Jackson, co-founder and CEO of Previsico. Previsico is a surface water flood forecasting specialist, enabling people and organisations to minimise the impact of flooding.
Flooding cost the global economy more than $82 billion in 2021, accounting for nearly a third of all losses from natural catastrophes, reports the Swiss Re Institute in a 2022 study. Estimates from Statista show that 29 million people were affected by Flooding in 2021. Flooding is the second largest weather-related peril after droughts.
During the course of the podcast, Avi, Jonathan, and Sabine discuss: 1) Flooding and the difference between natural hazards and man-made disasters, 2) Previsico’s four step-method to reduce flood risk, 3) build back better and why we ought to protect the small and medium-sized business from flooding, 4) protect, predict, prevent and 5) top tips to reduce the risk of flood.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- During the course of my PhD, I realized that academia wasn’t for me, but saw so much potential in the technology we were building to monitor flood water in real time to give early warnings. I felt the only way to really get it to be used effectively on the ground was to spin-out the company. We explored quite a few different markets to find out which would be served best by it and that’s where I met Johnathan.
- In order to reduce flood risk, there are four main steps we recommend you take: Step 1 – Understand your risk, there are a lot of really good risk-monitoring products already out there on the market. Step 2 – Invest in the right risk measures, these include flood defences or setting up non-return valves. Step 3 – Have a flood action plan, knowing what to do when you’re expecting a flood, moving stock, turning electricity off, who’s responsible for the response? Step 4 – Use an early warning system, this is the final part of the jigsaw when building flood resistance. If you take all those steps you can substantially reduce the risk and hopefully prevent a disaster from ever occurring.
- Resilience measures are often really simple things, like turning off the gas, electricity, water. That alone can save a huge amount. Moving your car to a safer place, really simple stuff that makes a huge difference. People in communities like Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, for example, where back in 2015 they were closed down for months after a flood are not reopening after three days, it’s a massive change because they understand what to do. Other communities that are not used to floods are more challenging because you’ve got to know what to do with the warning you’ve been given.
- COP26 made a big play around the fact that the UK government cannot defend the country against flood, the country has to learn to adapt to flood, and adaptation means starting to take responsibility for flood plans and resilience measures. That’s being backed up by the insurance industry making really important moves in terms of ‘build back better’, where a property has been hit by flood, that homeowner will be given up to £10,000 additional funding by a number of insurers to help them put in flood resilience measures to protect against flood going forward.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Flood risk is rising, there’s more extreme weather, the weather is more volatile, climate change is causing heavier downpours – particularly in the summer – and longer, wetter winters.’
‘There’s no such thing as a natural disaster. There’s natural hazards and human disasters. If you know where the hazard is going to be and you are able to prepare for it effectively, it doesn’t need to be a disaster.’
‘If people are used to having to cope with floods they tend to know what to do. Our solution is a great value-add that we can bring to that situation.’
‘We shouldn’t be building new developments on floodplains, especially when we haven’t fully addressed the impact that flooding will have on those properties.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Avi Baruch
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avinoam-avi-baruch/
Jonathan Jackson
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-jackson-a393102/
About Previsico
Previsico is a surface water flood forecasting specialist enabling people and organisations to minimise the impact of flooding. Backed by Foresight Group and underpinned by two decades of research at Loughborough University, Previsico’s world-leading solution is used by insurers, businesses, and the government to reduce losses. Our mission is to be the leading global provider of cutting-edge flood prediction that saves lives and livelihoods while significantly reducing the cost of flooding. Having launched in January 2019, we have a growing team of ~25 people with offices in Loughborough and London.
Website: https://previsico.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Jeff Williams, Managing Director for Kayrros USA, a technology-focused earth observation analytics company using unconventional geospatial data to bring new insights to the world’s biggest industries, including energy, commodity and insurance
Jeff has an incredible background in top 5 consultancy as well as M&A in the energy sector which he uses every day as he deep dives into the challenge created by methane on its impact on environmental change.
During the course of our conversation, the pair discuss: Kayrros as a series C scaleup focused on delivering solutions using unconventional geospatial data, Kayrros - Off the shelf… still, white box data analytics and scoring mechanisms to meet the need of today’s underwriters and regulators, and Kayrros as The long-term geospatial partner for the insurance sector looking at solving wildfire and other connected catastrophic events.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I got my start, like many Texans who want to get into technology, I started working for a large consulting company at the tip of the spear of energy tech. There I started working with large energy companies on data and I realised that all their data is spatial-related. They have assets all over the country, a sensor network that they weren’t leveraging, but more importantly, we were solving problems that were facing challenges of where to go and where not to go. I then started working with geospatial startups and realised there’s a robust amount of data out there that companies aren’t leveraging correctly. Six months ago I started working at Kayrros where they’ve made a real profit within the commodities and energy network. I fundamentally believe I can use that foundation that they built to work with the insurance industry and build off that foundation from the commodities and energy industry.
- We’ve built our insights to include asset monitoring for energy companies to detect climate data – tracking emissions. We’ve evolved from just an insights company to a climate data company. We see the cause of methane emissions, now we want to start tracking the effects which include wildfires and floods, and the industries that are really going to be affected by those issues are insurance and banking, which is why we’re really starting to focus on those as the next industries to work with.
- We track pre-risk, we have a risk score, and we’re using several different geospatial datasets – weather, landslide risk. We also track live monitoring, using satellite data to track live fires with very quick updates that we can give to our clients. Also, post-fire, we give a damage assessment. What we’re focussing on is not one specific thing, we’re affecting several parts of the insurance company, whether it’s underwriting, customer communication, claims.
- A challenge that we see with geospatial data is there has been insufficient refresh, really bad granularity, and a lack of transparency. The lack of transparency is something that’s really hurt the geospatial industry over the past couple of years. We don’t view ourselves as a black box, our potential customers just get handed a solution by other companies. What we want to do is work with our customers and provide a white box solution where they know exactly what all the data inputs are and we do that with them.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Companies like Kayrros really want insights and geospatial data really provides those insights for them.’
‘Kayrros got its name using satellite data to detect global crude tank levels, we used radar to detect how much crude oil was in tanks.’
‘Track climate data by using satellites, drones, AI, cell phone data.’
‘We’re fighting geospatial fatigue in the insurance industry. We’re doing that by positioning Kayrros to be a geospatial partner, not a vendor.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Jeff Williams is the Managing Director of Sales & Business Development for Kayrros, where he is responsible for driving the Kayrros North American growth strategy.
Kayrros is a technology-focused earth observation analytics firm using unconventional data to bring new insights to the world’s biggest industries. By harnessing the power of satellite imagery, natural language processing, machine learning and advanced mathematics, we deliver actionable intelligence on virtually any asset across the globe, in near real-time, for better decision-making
His roots run deep in Houston, as demonstrated by his love for the Astros. Last but not least, his greatest accomplishment is his family, which includes his wife and two kids, Lucy and Jake Williams.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreydwilliams/
About Kayrros:
We are a technology-focused earth observation analytics firm using unconventional data to bring new insights to the world’s biggest industries. By harnessing the power of satellite imagery, natural language processing, machine learning and advanced mathematics, we deliver actionable intelligence on virtually any asset across the globe, in near real-time, for better decision-making.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kayrros/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Federico Spagnoli, President and Head of Emerging Markets Ecosystems for Prudential Financial LATAM.
Federico is well known for his work launching Vitality in South America and providing health services to over 1.5 million South Americans, who can today download an App from their mobile device to get access to a multitude of health services.
During this podcast, Sabine and Federico evaluate 1) Federico’s vision about enhancing people’s physical, mental, and financial wellness, 2) where the world of health insurance is going regarding protection and prevention, 3) strategic distribution by augmenting the broker channel, and 3) tips for those interested in monetization models.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I joined Prudential 6 years ago doing an executive program with SAID in Oxford University focusing on disruption and innovation. Part of the theme of my paper was about disruption in the insurance industry because we haven’t seen this in the industry in many years. When I started focusing on the critical driver affecting our customers. I realized there were a lot of opportunities there for us to start thinking very differently about how we approach business today.
- These past six years have been the first time I’ve worked in the life insurance industry. I was asked why life and health insurance companies aren’t doing more to prevent conditions and situations that eventually will become a claim, like high cholesterol, which – in some instances – will include a pill that can reduce mortality rates by 50%. That led me to look at the aging population, which, along with global warming, is one of the biggest challenges we’re facing as a society. We need to look at the ability to retire comfortably and the ability to afford rising healthcare costs. This made me think about a lot of new technologies and data capabilities that are coming to market that life insurers could use to start preventing, anticipating, and mitigating bad conditions.
- Mortality risk is not top of mind for customers because today we live longer. The problem we face today is about an aging population and how we can reduce the risk of being unhealthy through behaviour change. Physical, mental, and financial wellness is the ability to understand your emotions around money, develop healthy emotions as well as literacy around money and wellness. Physical, mental, and financial wellness also encompass the tools and strategies that help you feel secure and in control of your personal life.
- The insurer can engage directly with the customer through the SuperApp where behavioural economics and gamification allow for the insurer to influence the customer’s behaviour providing annual physical checks and rewards through coins, integrated to a marketplace with choices for rewards, and continuously bringing fresh and interesting content to the viewer.
BEST MOMENTS
‘If you follow a customer-centric approach, we cannot view customers with one lens – not being able to afford healthcare could relate to mental health because I have anxieties and these also affect your physical health – all generated by limited financial means. We have to look at them altogether and provide an integrated single solution.’
‘We’re now shifting from life insurance protection to lifetime protection.’
‘New generations are thinking more about global warming, social impact, financial inclusion, and a more balanced lifestyle. For the insurance industry, we are already connecting with these customers over a long period of time, because of the nature of the insurance that we sell. We can start introducing a number of solutions as part of a platform that can address and be much more relevant to our customers’ needs and behaviours and influence them.’
‘Customers that are using the Prudential platform provide a Net Promoter score that is twice higher than those customers that don’t use the platform. The highest level of satisfaction has a direct impact on renewal rates, and platinum customers show higher life expectancy and lower claims ratios.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Federico Spagnoli is passionate about Ecosystem/Strategy and Innovation. General and Life Insurance professional with international experience. Expertise in re-underwriting insurance portfolios, strategic planning, M&A, and business development.
Over 6 years in Prudential Financial. PII Regional President of Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Peru (through the JV with ILC/Habitat AFP). Direct responsibility for Prudential Seguros Argentina and Prudential Seguros México.
Responsible for managing the PII's relationship with AFP Habitat and acting as the Europe - Latin America head of strategic business development.
Member of the Board of Directors of Prudential Seguros Mexico and AFP Habitat
Specialties: Ecosystem Development, Strategic Thinking, InsurTech, Innovation, Underwriting/Pricing, Portfolio Management, Multi-distribution management, Product Development, Direct Marketing, Strategic Planning, M&A
About Prudential Financial:
Prudential Financial (NYSE:PRU) was founded on the belief that financial security should be within reach for everyone, and for over 140 years, Prudential has helped our customers reach their potential and tackle life's challenges for now and future generations to come. Today, we are one of the world’s largest financial services institutions, offering individual and institutional clients a wide array of financial products and services. With operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, we are known for delivering on our promises to our customers and are recognized as a trusted brand and one of the world’s most admired companies. Prudential also has one of the most recognized and trusted brand symbols: The Rock®, an icon of strength, stability, expertise, and innovation. Prudential measures its long-term success on its ability to deliver value for shareholders, meet customer needs, and attract and develop the best talent in the industry. We offer an inclusive work environment where employees can develop to their full potential and give back to the communities where we live and work.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Alexis Cierra Vaughn, the Senior Director of Agency Marketing at Cowbell and the producer and host of the Cowbell Factor, a podcast that is rated at the top of its category across several key international markets.
Alexis is an outstanding professional and a mum with so much passion for business and enabling the success of others.
Alexis has been 13 years within the insurance sector and has built a strong expertise in explaining in simple words what Cyber security means AND why one needs to protect oneself against cyber risk.
During the course of the podcast, they discuss three main topics: 1) Alexis has been in insurance for 13 years. SO Let’s discover a millennial’s path into insurance, 2) Cowbell's journey to becoming a cyber security risk prevention leader, 3) How the product works and why it is essential to educate the user and... 4) the Cowbell Factor!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I started out my 13-year career in insurance as an agent, and within my first three years, I made a significant impact by being great at relationship-building. My background was in retail sales. I was asked to get into the insurance industry several times, but I thought it would be boring. I took a leap of faith and studied for a license to see if it interested me… I immediately fell in love with it. It was perfect for me.
- I then thought: “How do I help other single moms do this?” I didn’t want to keep all the diamonds and jewels to myself. I wanted to ensure I shared the wealth. So, I went independent and started my own agency with 26 single moms and taught them all there is to know about success in the insurance industry.
- I focus on creative approaches and different ways of getting the message out there about the importance of having cyber insurance, specifically to the small-and-medium-sized business market – anyone from $0 to $1 billion in revenue.
- Cyber includes fishing emails, fishing text messages, and how people take QR codes and swap them. In a post-pandemic world, we are all connected to the internet in some type of way. We’re literally in an interconnected environment where we’re always on our phones, iPads, laptops and moving so quickly that we’ll miss tiny things like one letter change in the domain – for example, websites with .co instead of .com. That’s so important. Your first line of defense is always your employees. You want to make sure you have multi-factor authentification in place. It might take an extra 5 minutes to log in, but, I’m telling you, it’s so much better to spend that extra 5 minutes rather than fork out $5 million because you’re a victim of a ransomware attack.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I took a networking approach, and within the first two years of having my agency, I grew my business from 25 to 1,165 clients off pure networking and building relationships in the community.’
‘I break everything all the way down and make such a complex product topic, like cyber insurance, becomes digestible for agents, brokers, and policyholders.’
‘I believe that the direction cyber insurance is going in should be the life insurance to a small business. If they don’t have cyber insurance and they are a victim of a cyber attack, it could put them out of business.’
‘As a millennial, our biggest thing is we want to make an impact on our community and globally. We’re constant learners, and the insurance industry really creates a space where there’s always something new on the horizon, every product is ever-changing and the cyber landscape changes on a daily, if not hourly, basis.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Alexis is a 13-year Award-Winning Insurance Expert and Senior Director of Agency Marketing at leading InsurTech Cowbell, where she oversees all agency engagement efforts for 18,000 producers appointed with Cowbell. Alexis is also the Host & Producer of "The Cowbell Factors" Podcast she created to bridge the gap between the Cybersecurity and Cyber Insurance industries. The show is ranked #28 in the US, #16 in India, #35 in the UK, #20 in Israel, and #100 in Australia on Apple Podcast Business News. The show is now available on iHeartRadio for national distribution after only five months on air and can be found on Spotify and all other streaming platforms. She is also a highly sought-after Cyber Educator in the agency community.
Cowbell is a pioneer of Adaptive Cyber Insurance, a leader in providing coverage for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that is adaptable to today’s and tomorrow’s threats and the advanced warning of cyber risk exposures.
Alexis was recently named by "Insurance Business America," as one of the top 85 trailblazing Elite Women in Insurance for 2022" and a top "Influencer" on the "Top 100 Insurance Innovators" list as well in 2022.
Alexis has over 16 years of experience spearheading sales, fundraising, recruiting, and marketing for companies in the middle of transition uplifts. Alexis has a very diverse background in Insurance, Cloud-based Technology, Benefits & Human Resource Consulting industries. Alexis has also managed Global Business Development Teams in the USA, Canada, and LATAM markets. Alexis has led countless marketing initiatives that increased market awareness, generate leads that have resulted in significant revenue in the Oil, Film & Entertainment, Government, Insurance, Logistics, Human Resources, Retail, Higher Ed, and Technology industries.
About Cowbell-Cyber
Cowbell is the leading provider of cyber insurance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the pioneer of Adaptive Cyber Insurance. Cowbell delivers standalone cyber coverage tailored to the unique needs of each business. Our innovative approach relies on AI for continuous risk assessment and continuous underwriting while delivering policyholders a closed-loop approach to risk management with risk prevention, risk mitigation, incident preparedness, and response services.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/cowbell-cyber/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Xavier Gomez, a Fintech Thought Leader and specialist of Investment Banking and Wealth Management with strong expertise in Fintech, Digital Assets and Private Equity.
Xavier writes and speaks about the emerging trends within our digital economy, with a sharp lens on what is disrupting finance, namely financial inclusion and regtech.
Xavier is also the co-chief editor of Invyo Insights, a Global Fintech Intelligence platform powered by Invyo. Xavier and his team partners with the best experts and entrepreneurs in the region to cover the latest trends in all topics related to Digital Banking, Payments, InsurTech, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Financial Inclusion, Financial Literacy.
Over the course of their discussion, the pair dive into the Digital Economy, FinTech and WealthTech trends which affect the world of finance today and in the future.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I started my career as an investment banker in equity capital, moving between top management positions, trading algorithmic, self-derivatives. I then moved into wealth management, so I have a good knowledge of the banking and finance sector, particularly in terms of digitalisation. Invyo is a data driven startup that uses machine learning to help private equity firms and VC to take opportunities of investment, to compare the data of the different kinds of investment they can do, and also to detect what is wrong in terms of competition. We provide a solution for everyone from VC, principle and partners to be driven and empowered by the data so they don’t waste time collecting the data themselves, they have all the elements possible.
- We have had so many opportunities in the last five years with the explosion of startups, business models and so on. It’s a lot of work for investment actors – especially as they’re all a little bit old fashioned – they invest in technology but they don’t apply the technology for them in order to be augmented by the data as investor and private equity actors.
- Being an influencer or influencing it doesn’t matter, why? I started by following others, who were all very kind to me and gave me advice and pushed me to publish more, and I just want to share my insight and knowledge to educate people in the ways of financial literacy. By chance, a lot of people like what I publish.
- AI will be an up trend for the next 10 years. With this kind of upwards trend it is clearly a big top trend for the coming years. AI will also augment nearly every job in every business across industries. It will be used to manage and automate the complex inventory management processes that happen behind the scenes. It’s amazing in terms of customer experience because AI/machine learning can improve their experiences and, more or less, with FinTech solutions, you can have a priceless experience.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We use a machine learning element in order to have solutions adapted to the investment cases. Each is a little bit different, the philosophy of one partner will be different than another one. This is the beauty of machine learning with data.’
‘I spent a lot of years in London and I know the French accent is very successful with women!’
‘Artificial intelligence will become real in organisations and enable any business to leverage its power to create more intelligent products and services. We saw this recently with the birth of OpenAI, this is the start. I didn’t expect it to come so early.’
‘The metaverse is a concrete application in the GameFi (gaming finance) industry, where we see a lot of big developments, it's a $300 billion market with a lot of exchanges of payments. I don’t care for the term “metaverse”, but it’s become a shorthand for a more immersive internet. It’s expected to add $5 trillion to the global economy by 2030 and we will see by the end of 2023 an indication of what kind of direction the metaverse will go for the next decade.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Xavier Gomez is a Fintech Thought Leader and specialist of Investment Banking and Wealth Management with strong expertise in Fintech, Digital Assets and Private Equity.
Xavier writes and speaks about the emerging trends within our digital economy, with a sharp lens on what is disrupting finance, namely financial inclusion and regtech.
Xavier is also the co-chief editor of Invyo Insights, a Global Fintech Intelligence platform powered by Invyo. Xavier and his team partners with the best experts and entrepreneurs in the region to cover the latest trends in all topics related to Digital Banking, Payments, InsurTech, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Financial Inclusion, Financial Literacy.
About Invyo
INVYO is a leading technology solution provider specialised in data processing and analysis. Venture Capital looking for a new data-driven approach? Discover today our newest solution designed for VC investment: https://marketing.invyo.io/en/vcdataasaservice See more www.invyo.io
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Meeri Savolainen, CEO and co-founder of Inzmo, a fast-growing European financial services provider, making renting a home affordable for everyone.
Inzmo is considered to be the fourth runner in creating a new standard for how people rent their homes. With more than 70,000 customers and over 400% growth in 2022, Inzmo has acquired recognition and investments from several insurers in Europe
As an entrepreneur by trade, Meeri is passionate about breaking new ground to lead social change. She shares that the core innovation lies in understanding customer needs, struggles, and their values. "At Inzmo, we design our services around this purpose - this is what makes us authentic. We put the customer first.”
During their discussion, they cover what makes Inzmo a leader in its category across European’s rental and cash deposit market, Meeri’s interest in communication, relationships psychology, and strategic intervention, Inzmo’s innovation journey across Europe… Opportunities and challenges, and Team Inzmo: What is next to scale?
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I was a corporate and tax lawyer for quite a few years at Ernst & Young, and I started thinking that I wanted to grow more, take more risks and become an entrepreneur. When I began Inzmo with my co-founder, we wanted to create a digital disruption in the insurance industry because it was lagging behind on the technology side. As things proceeded and developed, we wanted to create a strong brand in the insurance sector. We wanted to mediate our own products. We didn’t just want to be an IT company or an enabler for insurance companies. Since 2016 we’ve become more consumer-faced.
- We’re creating innovation in the insurance industry by automating processes in underwriting and, first and foremost, the whole customer experience. We believe success in the future for insurance companies and InsurTechs relies on customer success and experiences.
- We understand that the majority of our customers are also vendors, and 80% of those customers are living paycheque to paycheque. This means that they have a financial burden daily, and 40% of their income goes to pay for rent, utilities, etc. These are the people we want to help with our different financial and digital solutions.
- Insurance is a very male-dominated industry, though it is getting better. I’m proud to say that at Inzmo, 50% of the employees are women, and 60% of the c-level/ management staff are female. Being a woman gives us much more opportunities to stand out. It’s also good for PR – especially for a small company like Inzmo, which doesn’t have a limitless budget – to get visibility. It does, of course, have its downsides as well. Women struggle more to get VC funding because they need to prove their success more than men. After all, there’s still a strong bias, even though the data proves otherwise.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We’re always trying to find our niche. We don’t want to be another traditional insurance company or fight with the bigger companies.’
‘Renting rather than home ownership is a growing trend globally because people want a flexible lifestyle. We want to be an enabler in this new lifestyle.’
‘Inzmo means “insurance” and “mobile,” insurance that is always accessible – it’s instant, it’s always there, and very easy to follow.’
‘We’ve been focussed on the German market so that we could prove we’d done well in one very significant market, but in the next 12-24 months we’re ready to expand to other European rental markets, the most interesting to us are Spain, Italy, Portugal, and France.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Meeri, also called Mrs InsurTech, is strongly driven by innovation, meaning the development of new products, services, and processes within a forward-thinking world.
She specialized in developing innovative, creative and visionary products and services for the insurance sector.
A serial entrepreneur with a passion for breaking new ground to lead social change, with management experience and the ability to lead and build high-performing teams.
She is interested in communication and relationships psychology - currently focussing also on developing her knowledge in Strategic Intervention (also known as SI). SI is dedicated to extracting the most practical and effective forms of strategic action and communication from various disciplines: Ericksonian therapy, Human Needs Psychology, organizational psychology, neurolinguistics, psychology of influence, strategic studies, traditions of diplomacy and negotiation, and others. A practical method for acting strategically to get things done is also that human needs are fulfilled and elevated.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meeri-savolainen-b5a85b25/
About Inzmo
Inzmo is a fast-growing financial services provider in Europe, making renting a home affordable for everyone. The team’s aim is to become #1 provider of zero-deposit solutions for EU renters. We believe the core innovation lies in understanding customer needs, struggles, and their values. Inzmo designs services around this purpose - this is what makes the team truly authentic. Inzmo puts the customer first. Always. The team thinks big, takes risks, innovates constantly, hires the best, and strives to earn customers' trust.
Inzmo is the fourth runner in creating a new standard for how people rent their homes. With over 70,000 customers and over 400% growth in 2022, Inzmo has acquired recognition and investments from several insurers in Europe. In 2017, the company was recognized as the best fin-tech company in the StartUp Europe Awards by the European Commission, and in 2019 awarded as the Insurance Shaper of the Year. Inzmo's customers are renters, primarily for mid-term and long-term rental homes. Today, finding a home online might be easy, but the road to moving in is time-consuming as the 600 billion EUR annual private rental market in the EU is still operating offline. To finalize a rental agreement, one must provide proof of income, a cash deposit (3 months rent), home contents, and liability insurance. This takes 1-2 weeks and thousands of euros for cash deposit. Inzmo is solving all these four pain points with one insurance product that you can get in seconds online for a small monthly premium. As Inzmo focuses on covering each customer when he or she signs up for a rental home, the team sees this as an opportunity to serve the customer for the whole rental cycle with different insurance products and services.
More on Inzmo on their site and LinkedIn profile.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL shares some timely insights from the team at IBM. One of these findings relates to one of IBM’s strategic themes for 2023, as well as IBM’s new partner program.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Autonomous vehicles are expected to account for about 12% of car registrations and global car sales of autonomous vehicles are expected to reach some 101 million units by 2030. Autonomous vehicles or companies that are working on self-driving technologies include perception, mapping, and localisation solutions as well as cybersecurity risk prevention, testing, and fleet management solutions are doing very well. The autonomous vehicle market received over $51 billion across 500+ companies, meaning that, on average, each company received $102 million in funding.
- Many devices use embedded intelligent systems today besides car functionalities, like Point-of-Sale terminals, smart TVs, smart metres, video surveillance equipment, traffic light controls, digital signs, and aviation controls. This means we need to understand how embedded intelligence systems operate and how they allow new breakthroughs to emerge for established and new market players.
- For years, IBM Research and Centres of Excellence have invested in developing AI capabilities that are embedded in IBM software offerings. IBM's partnership strategy is combined into one organisation where all the pieces of the IBM Partner Ecosystem within the sales and distribution organisation operate. It is also consolidated under one single leadership and direction.
- IBM is making the same capabilities available to its IBMers accessible to its ecosystem of partners, providing them a more straightforward path to create AI-powered solutions and accessing engagement materials to ensure that each ecosystem partner can create bullet-proofed propositions aligned with IBM’s high standards.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Embedded intelligence 'is a term used for a system or program that can analyse and monitor their own operations and then adapt and optimise consequently in real-time their routines with limited human intervention. They enable companies to get more innovative in the way they deploy and use technology, identify market opportunities, and target new markets.’
‘The global embedded intelligence market is projected to reach a market value of $ 86 billion US dollars in 2032, increasing from $ 25.5 billion dollars in 2022 and expanding at a CAGR of 13% between 2022 and 2032.’
‘Today, the lack of expertise and skills in Artificial Intelligence remains the biggest barrier to adopting advanced programming techniques by businesses, large and small, while limiting biases and ethical issues.’
‘It is indeed crucial for data scientists, developers, sellers, and experts, among other types of users, to gain access to cutting-edge capabilities to learn new business development techniques and technological skills regardless of their level of expertise.’
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Elizabeth Lumley, an all-around FinTech expert who is currently the deputy Editor at The Banker, a company from the FT. Elizabeth has received State Street's UK Press Award for Journalist of the Year for Technology and Digital Finance in 2022.
For 20+ years, Elizabeth has been a global specialist commentator on regulations, risk, data, and technology in investment, retail, and global transaction banking. She is recognized internationally as one of the leading voices in FinTech and banking technology innovation as well as a well-established global conference speaker, as well as conference organizer.
During this discussion, Sabine and Elizabeth dive into the trends affecting FinTech in the upcoming year.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I’ve been in this industry for about 28 years – kind of by accident, I wanted to be a journalist, specializing in politics. Still, most of what I’ve done in this space is being a reporter or an editor covering how banks and financial insurance firms use data and technology. Now, I’m deputy editor of The Banker magazine as part of the Financial Times. It’s been an exciting journey through this really varied and immense industry of banking and financial services.
- I got on Twitter when it was first starting, and my voice became amplified. I’m full of opinions, and I can’t keep them silent, so I write blogs next to doing interviews with people, webcasts, and events, and I started posting on Twitter, and people really responded to that. Social media has been perfect for me and my career. This was also when smaller FinTech companies started emerging, it was a perfect storm.
- A lot of people are talking about where financial services are going with the metaverse and web 3.0 and how payments and services are going to be embedded in that world in the future. That’s an interesting conversation, but right now, it’s very innovative theatre-y, something to talk about on stage, and nothing is actually happening. What’s actually happening right now is that we’ve had so much growth over the years – not just in startups but in banks as well – there is a focus on efficiency, cost-cutting, saving money, and talent retention. It’s not a sexy thing to talk about, but I guarantee you that it's what every bank is working on right now.
- Insurance is one of those sectors where the sexiest part of it is that you don’t know it’s there. We’ve had insurance embedded into things for a very long time when you buy a car, for example. You only know it’s there when you need it. I think that having that service there for the customer when they need it is harder to achieve than people realize. I think the idea of owning the customer so you can sell them more stuff is the mindset of a lot of people in the industry, instead of acknowledging the customer so you can serve them better, which I think would actually make them more profitable customers actually in the long run. But that’s not the mindset a lot of people have.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Pick your investors wisely.’
‘Journalism has changed a lot in the past 30 years. I wanted to be a magazine editor, and I’m glad I didn’t go into that world because I probably wouldn’t have a job. You’ve got to pay for quality, which is why the FT and The Banker are behind paywalls.’
‘Social media puts you in charge of what you’re putting out into the world and the narrative you’re putting out into the world.’
‘To me, FinTech is any way of using technology to improve banking and other financial services.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Elizabeth Lumley is an all-around FinTech expert who is currently deputy editor at The Banker, a company from the FT. For 20+ years, she has been a global specialist commentator on services, regulations, risk, data and technology in investment, retail, and global transaction banking
Elizabeth is internationally recognised as one of the leading voices in FinTech and banking technology innovation, and is a well-established global conference speaker, as well as conference organiser.
Her expertise includes: technology installations and market data usage at global investment banks, retail banks, institutions and exchanges as well as the emerging FinTech ecosystem of new entrants and startups.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethlumley/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Steve Abel from EPAM, a dedicated, results-oriented executive with a proven hands-on track record and superior ability to build highly effective teams to deliver success within all levels of an organisation.
EPAM is one of the best-kept secrets, voted one of the leading and fastest-growing information technology companies in the world. EPAM today leads the charge in the field of global digital and physical transformation and digital platform engineering services. The company has over 61,000 employees across 6 continents and 50 countries.
In this episode, Sabine and Steve cover three main topics: Changes in the way innovation is delivered today, repairing broken processes with the right engineering mindset, and the requirements for building the business of tomorrow.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The way technology solves problems today is from point solutions to point solutions. This is a flawed way to solve the technology problem and build highly effective business models. Imagine if there were tools that had 95% of what a business needs to operate. You would only buy things that are available as part of the packages. As an insurer, you would be able to gain benefits as you would need fewer specialists. Buy, build, or partner? Pull widgets that could be your integration engine. Could be cheaper than what is available, and you could rebuild in a bespoke way that is unique.
- I was in a stable job at KPMG. When the pandemic hit, I worked on a project where there was no real choice but to deliver tech assets very fast. Then I decided to do some investigating and discovered EPAM. They loved my idea and then thought about new technology in new ways to solve the client’s problem with purpose in a different way. EPAM is multi-sectors and I sit within the insurance business unit.
- How do startups grow? One option is by using cloud-based assets that ease the creation of reusable assets. This is a profound change in how people think about technology and business; cloud-based tooling, data mash-up, etc. we can unlock the power of these tools and bring it together as a unified landscape.
- Carriers are struggling with geospatial because of their legacy systems and the way the carrier goes about integrating the data into the system. The carrier wants to know if they are getting unique information from you, but they don’t need the dashboard or data very often, they want to process an algorithm that gives them an answer.
BEST MOMENTS
‘A lot of commercialised software is not fit for purpose. Still businesses operate thousands of spreadsheets. This is not right for the employees and gives poor customer service.’
‘I love to wake up and ensure that customers do every day what they do best with others.’
‘If you have not thought on how to do so. Hire an expert to think through the problem in a new way for you. You will get to the optimum outcome faster and likely cheaper too.’
‘Get the right tools and get the right approach and you will be impressed.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Steve Abel is a transformation executive with a dedicated, results-oriented executive, a proven hands-on track record and superior ability to build highly effective teams to deliver success within all levels of an organisation.
Specialties: Program Management, Insurance, Operations, Shared Services, Enabling Technologies (Oracle, SAP, Workday, PeopleSoft, HFM, etc.), Business Process Reengineering, Finance Leading Practices (e.g., Procure to Pay, Record to Report), Insurance products and data, actuarial platforms (AXIS, Prophet, MG-Alfa, PolySystems, etc.), digital enablement, machine learning, artificial intelligence, cloud solutions, business, and technical architecture.
Steve worked with large companies such as Capco, EY and KPMG.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenabel/
Email: steven_abel@epam.com
EPAM: Since 1993, EPAM Systems, Inc. (NYSE: EPAM) has leveraged its advanced software engineering heritage to become the foremost global digital transformation services provider – leading the industry in digital and physical product development and digital platform engineering services. Through its innovative strategy; integrated advisory, consulting, and design capabilities; and unique 'Engineering DNA,' EPAM's globally deployed hybrid teams help make the future real for clients and communities around the world by powering better enterprise, education, and health platforms that connect people, optimise experiences, and improve people's lives.
In 2021, EPAM was added to the S&P 500 and included among the list of Forbes Global 2000 companies. Selected by Newsweek as a 2021 and 2022 Most Loved Workplace, EPAM's global multi-disciplinary teams serve customers in more than 50 countries across six continents. As a recognized leader, EPAM is listed among the top 15 companies in Information Technology Services on the Fortune 1000 and ranked four times as the top IT services company on Fortune's 100 Fastest Growing Companies list. EPAM is also listed among Ad Age's top 25 World's Largest Agency Companies for three consecutive years, and Consulting Magazine named EPAM Continuum a top 20 Fastest Growing Firm.
Website: https://www.epam.com/
ABOUT THE HOSTSabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Yann Barbarroux, CEO and co-founder of OTONOMI, about himself, his successes and about the recent fundraising round of $3.4million he and his team raised in an uncertain market.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Around 2003 – the onset of the internet bubble in the tech industry – I redirected myself towards financial services. I moved to the US and got a job in Wall Street in New York and I never left. I’ve spent my entire career in the capital market, risk management and technology at several financial institutions and brokerage firms. From 2013-2020 I joined CitiGroup in downtown Manhattan doing risk management for structured credits and emerging markets, but more interestingly, in 2017 with the digital asset ramp-up that we encountered, I got involved with emerging tech, deep tech and blockchain within the Citi Ventures innovation arm and I got incubated as a startup within their innovation lab. I’m not the earliest adopter in blockchain, but 5-6 years of experience in this space feels like decades compared to other industries.
- Transitioning into entrepreneurship, what became very visible is a lot of the operations, pricing models and pricing procedure and processes within financial services became very obsolete and very heavy handed in terms of regulation, and there was a need for new, fresh products in the space. I was working on those items while I was in the innovation lab at the CitiGroup ventures entity. While I was working there I also came across deals in InsureTech and FinTech which was very exciting for me. That’s where I came across the fascinating space of parametric insurance – the equivalent of financial derivatives or other binary products in financial markets but in the insurance space. What we bring with OTONOMI is a binary event contract for the supply chain space.
- We fund-raised in 2021 for our pre-seed, or first tranche of our seed round, it was pre-product, pre-revenue. This year we expected to struggle tremendously considering the circumstances: high inflation, rampant inflation trends, the political climate between Ukraine and Russia and the East side of the globe. You would expect an early stage startup would be struggling enormously for funding, but it turned out our fundraising campaign was more productive this year and we managed to close it out in 3-4 months. £3.4million raised and we’re very, very grateful for it.
- The starting point for us in 2021 was the rippling effect from the global supply chain breaking down. But for us, a few months beforehand there were two events that were very critical and instrumental. The first was the snow storm in Texas which was a 1 in 100 year event which has a lot of climate and weather components of parametric that ripples down into transportation. That created such a traumatic volatility in the market that it became visible that cargo players, freight, logistics, while being on the forefront of trying to operate as fast as possible, were constrained with huge financial liabilities that they couldn’t recoup from any traditional insurance contract. The second event was a few weeks later in the Suez Canal. Everybody saw it and talked about it. Again, the supply chain couldn’t function properly and insurance and financial contracts were not transparent enough to serve those players in due time. What was interesting for us was not just the parametric aspects but the binary delay of a potential delay/interruption of supply chains (which we cover) but also the facilitation of operations and payments.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I’m a nerd at heart but a financial engineer by trade.’
‘The turning point for us was when we actually visited Austin, Texas in person. We were in touch with a number of VC teams virtually, but the mere fact that we actually went to this conference, hand shaking, having coffee, having in person chemistry actually created much more interest, and they sent us a terms sheet two weeks after. This was a tremendous difference from the previous two years during the pandemic.’
‘The Insurance sector is wanting to take the leap of faith now with a number of projects in the space, us included.’
‘We believe that if we have the right infrastructure to collect premium, manage collateral and settle compensation payments within this very much ring-fenced and consistent infrastructure for digital payments then essentially we can be creating very streamlined processes.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Yann Barbarroux is CEO and co-founder of OTONOMI, an InsurTech focused on transforming the transportation and cargo insurance industry. He was born and raised in Marseille (France), went to grad school (graduated with a MS in Computer Engineering) in Paris, found his first job in Wall Street back in 2003, and never left NY.
He wants OTONOMI to become the one-stop-shop operating layer for parametric insurance policies (data-activated insurance smart contracts), with applications in air freight, marine, trucking, weather, and device coverage. First and foremost, alleviating the customer’s pain points of going through the lengthy claim adjudication process: OTONOMI compresses resolution time from 45 days to 45 minutes.
OTONOMI aims to be the de facto “detect, active, and pay” infrastructure InsurTech for all data sources that can be used to create parametric products: database server APIs, logistics analytics, and IoT sensors. For that, it works with data partners such as Chainlink which provides security and integrity to its event triggers.
Website: https://www.otonomi.ai/
Email: yann@otonomi.ai
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast. Sabine talks to Paul Roetzer. Paul Roetzer is founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute. He is the author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence, The Marketing Performance Blueprint, The Marketing Agency Blueprint; and creator of the Marketing AI Conference (MAICON).
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine and Paul talk about how Artificial Intelligence will evolve marketing practices in the Insurance Technology world. Drawing comparisons to how we use A.I in our daily lives through social media and marketing.
KEY MOMENTS
0:00 Introduction
3:56 What Does Paul Mean by Traditional Marketing Is All Human.
6: 02 What Are the Obstacles to Artificial Intelligence Adoption
8:32 How Did the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute Come About?
11:50 Paul Talks About the Revolutionization of the Market Today.
15:42 What Trends Should One Look Out For In Artificial Intelligence Marketing Technology
18:44 How To Make Artificial Intelligence A Part Of Our Daily Lives.
21:05 What Is The Gap Between The Business School And Learning Artificial Intelligence
23:06 What The Next Generation Need To Have to Lead Them To Success 10. 25:08 What Are The Metrics We Need To Look At In Artificial Intelligence Marketing?
29:12 Advantages and Disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence.
32:24 Five Steps To Implement Artificial Intelligence In The Marketing Environment
34:42 Tips on Tools To Use For Artificial Intelligence
38:42 Words Of Wisdom From Paul
ABOUT THE GUEST
Paul Roetzer is founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute. He is the author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence (Matt Holt Books, 2022) The Marketing Performance Blueprint (Wiley, 2014) and The Marketing Agency Blueprint (Wiley, 2012); and creator of the Marketing AI Conference (MAICON).
Follow Paul on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulroetzer/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/paulroetzer?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
The Marketing Institute - https://www.marketingaiinstitute.com
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models.
Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models.
Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Annap Derebail, IBM’s Global Insurance Industry CTO within IBM’S Global Business Services Unit. Annap’S FOCUS has always been on delivering impactful business outcomes by re-imagining user experiences. Today Annap provides trusted advice to influence revenue growth for IBM’s clients by considering architectural leadership to transform client’s business through technology innovation. In this conversation they cover the future of insurance and implications on operations, how technology becomes a key enabler of growth today, and how can insurers simplify operations to build resilient business models.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There’s a lot of market forces that are disrupting traditional insurance models. Firstly, around customer expectations. Customers are increasingly looking towards an Amazon- or Google-like experience when dealing with their insurance. The implications for insurers include creating some sort of personalised offerings, providing high levels of service and responsiveness.
- There are two key advantages that incumbent insurers have over new entrants to the market. Certainly, the new entrants are creating new business models and ways of attracting and approaching customers. But I think the advantages for incumbents are their huge existing customer base – keeping a customer is six times easier than acquiring a new one. Secondly, by virtue of having been in business for such a long time, they are sitting on tons and tons of data, they have knowledge of customer transactions/interactions. That’s a rich oasis with which they can develop a better understanding of their customers and what they need.
- Insurers really need to reinvent how they think about risk and what sort of a relationship they want with their customers. Reinventing that risk partnership and helping insurers with new risk experiences that offer personalised advise and demonstrating a new risk partnership between the insurer and the customer. Being able to harvest the data can be done by taking a fresh look at historically operating processes in the enterprise, critical processes such as underwriting claims, but also all of the support processes like billing, customer support, policy maintenance, etc. Just by paying attention to driving intelligence into those processes using data, we’ve been able to example reduce 15% of our customer churn by implementing a churn detection model.
- At the infrastructure level, what I see is a lot of incumbent insurers still operating legacy IT systems still working on legacy infrastructure. The immediate opportunity there is to migrate those onto a cloud-based platform. This brings inherent benefits like flexibility in terms of scaling up and down in response to demand and to market needs. You can access cloud-based services from anywhere in the world.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The insurance industry needs to adapt and respond to new disruptors and this response has to be driven by data and new technologies and using them to gain a business advantage in the market.’
‘Less than 10% of insurers have actually been able to meet what we call ‘the data dividend’, effective use of data in order to achieve competitive advantage because of a lack of knowledge of how to access data, how the data is siloed within the infrastructure of the business.’
‘We can help drive a step change in core productivity of incumbent insurers. About 60% of their costs goes into legacy IT systems, modernising by having multiple core systems in place and moving to a SaaS model reduces issues.’
‘The typical underwriting or claims process tends to have heavy human involvement and requires a large number of steps in order to make decisions. The scope there is to effectively use the mountain of data that insurers are sitting on to present the right data to the right decision makers at the right time – not just raw data, but insights drawn from the raw data. – to improve the process and categorise incoming cases that can either be automated or needs human intervention.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Annap Derebail has 20+ years of professional experience in systems and integration architecture, design, development and management of complex industry solutions. In his current role, he works with insurance customers worldwide to create innovative solutions for business problems leveraging microservices and API driven architecture, distributed, multi-tier systems and application integration architecture, AI/ML, blockchain, IoT, cloud computing and services-oriented architecture.
In the last five years, he has worked with worldwide financial services clients to provide trusted advice on their digital transformation initiatives, while serving as leader of the global IBM insurance industry architect community. His work with clients has spanned several application areas: Modernization architectures for insurance and banking, Blockchain applications in insurance, Enterprise architecture for aircraft systems health, Supply chain collaboration in automotive and retail, RFID based track and trace solutions, Product design-to-manufacture integration, and Supply chain optimization. Over the years, he has been IBM’s technical representative in industry standards bodies, including ACORD, BIAN, PDES Inc, STAR and AIA. He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering/Operations Research from Texas A&M University.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Christie Downs. A self-made entrepreneur and problem solver who started handdii with her co-founder Kathryn Wood.
After working as an executive in the construction industry, building deep experience and broad industry relationships, Christie saw an opportunity to use technology to improve the way customers connect with contractors when they are making property insurance claims.
This is the way handdii was born as a three-way digital platform, combining insurance, constructions and contractors, where contractors can easily connect, engage and promote their businesses.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I am a high-energy business leader who loves solving problems and creating exciting solutions that transform the way people live and work. After working as an executive in the construction industry, building deep experience and broad industry relationships, I saw an opportunity to use technology to improve the way customers connect with contractors when they are making property insurance claims, making it quicker, faster and cheaper for insurers, clients and tradespeople.
- We’re just at the starting line, there’s so much opportunity ahead. I think the early innovation in our sector has been pretty straight forward. How do we buy faster, make things convenient, streamline processes and save cost. Quite a lot of separate practical solutions. For example , right now there are many inspection tools and solutions an insurance company would use – virtual inspections, drones, AI and they might actually use a variety of tools all at once.
- Our vision is to make small property claims amazing. The industry has a cumbersome process for property claims with multiple people and approvals involved designed for large loss. This process is not designed to fast-track small claims and moreover the major suppliers to the insurance industry would prefer not to handle small claims. So, my Co-Founder and I set out to change that! Handdii is a really practical solution to a common problem. Any Claims leader can see the opportunity in their portfolio to improve the way small claims are managed. We’re really focused on our niche and when we partner with an insurer we make it easy to work with us.
- Our team has a solid property claims background, which is reflected both in the product and program we have built. This makes it easy for the insurer to work with us because we talk their language and understand their challenges while having the speed and the money to be an innovative partner creating solutions for them.
BEST MOMENTS‘My experience also includes being Executive of Carlton Football Club as the General Manager of Business Development introducing unique revenue streams, the creation of Carlton Respects program against family violence and Blue Skies program supporting diversity and inclusion in the inaugural year of AFLW.’
‘I think the future of innovation will become more and more integrated in our lives, activities and systems. Bringing all of these different solutions together, then once that efficiency is achieved we’ll look to bring innovation to achieve more purposeful outcomes around sustainability, inclusion and prosperity.’
‘COVID has made some things much easier and others more challenging. For example, onboarding contractors, meeting via video rather than in person, has streamlined how quickly we have expanded our contractor network across multiple states this year. Whereas meeting new insurance companies is more challenging, we are certainly happy the in-person conferences are kicking off again now.’
‘When working with large enterprises be patient, be persistent, be astute commercially – if you’re bringing great value, hold your line on your cost.’
ABOUT THE GUESTChristie Downs: I am a high-energy business leader who loves solving problems and creating exciting solutions that transform the way people live and work. After working as an executive in the construction industry, building deep experience and broad industry relationships, I saw an opportunity to use technology to improve the way customers connect with contractors when they are making property insurance claims, making it quicker, faster and cheaper for insurers, clients and tradespeople. I made the leap to entrepreneurship in 2018, starting handdii with Kathryn Wood.
handdii is a three-way platform where contractors can easily connect, engage and promote their businesses, insurers experience reduced cost and both and customers find their property insurance repairs are easier and cheaper to organise with better results.
My core career experience of ten years was as group sales director and board member of national construction company, Johns Lyng Group, ASX listed as JLG. I played a lead role in the national expansion and exponential revenue growth of the group from $12 million in 2004 to $350 million in 2015. During this experience I saw first-hand the problems people had with getting repairs done, often after stressful situations and experienced fantastic contractors who ran great businesses.
My experience also includes being Executive of Carlton Football Club as the General Manager of Business Development introducing unique revenue streams, the creation of Carlton Respects program against family violence and Blue Skies program supporting diversity and inclusion in the inaugural year of AFLW.
I am passionate about contributing to society and was Chair of Starball Committee Sydney for 3 years raising in excess of $1million for Starlight Children’s Foundation.
I love to share my experiences and learnings with #public speaking on value of diversity and inclusion, starting your own venture and how the #the insurtech industry is evolving.
About handdii
Having worked as a Director of a Construction company in the Insurance industry for 10 years, I know customer satisfaction in property claims is very low. This is because the traditional fulfilment process is complicated and takes 60 days on average to get a property repaired. Yet, 80% property claims are small and only require 1 or 2 trades.
For this 80% of small claims, handdii dramatically improves the customer experience by pairing the customer with the trade they need to assist in claim determination and complete works right away. Cutting claim life from 2 months to 1 week.
handdii makes workflow easy for trades through pre-agreed rates, opt-in scheduling, automated processing and payment. Minimising these friction points empowers the trades to focus on providing quality work and an awesome customer experience.
For insurance companies, handdii can provide claim lodgement and allocation, save 25% in claims cost and enable digital transformation for property claims. Significant positive impact on customer satisfaction (NPS) will lead to new customer acquisition and further product opportunity.
https://www.handdii.com/
ABOUT THE HOSTSabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL interviews Mark McLaughlin a respected figure in IBM and its insurance division to discuss the future of customer experience within a fast-evolving world.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- You must improve the way you engage with your customers whether this is through distribution channels (e.g., brokers or affinity partnerships) or directly. Your customers are demanding digital frictionless engagements and experiences. They are seeking transparent and optimum convenience in the way they access insurance products and services. They also want transparency in the way their data is being used. In the end, this is the way you earn customer trust.
- When data, intelligence, automation, and insights are combined as one, they augment decision-making among stakeholders but also require changes in skills, processes, technology, and cultures. Think about the “reconfiguration” of the internal fabric of the enterprise to deliver the required personalized experiences.
- InsurTechs are doing well. Over $47 billion have been invested in InsurTechs. Over 30 have become unicorns and more are expected to become unicorns in the years to come.
- Today, to realize such a vision and upgrade legacy systems and global delivery presence, IBM works with the top 100 carriers worldwide, bringing capabilities such as blockchain, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and cloud for flexibility and innovation as well as industry expertise to deliver unique capabilities able to yield differentiated experiences.
BEST MOMENT‘To elevate customer experiences and achieve customer-centricity and unlock new growth opportunities, insurers must identify innovative opportunities internally and external partnerships to reinvent the core of their business.’
‘We are in the days of “Risk experiences”.’
‘If insurers think about repackaging old format analog processes into digitised options, they are going to fail. Customers are asking for more. They want products and services aligned with their needs.’
‘We know that insurers are better placed at focusing on “risk” (e.g., algorithmic underwriting) while InsurTechs are great at building unique customer experiences (e.g., lemonade, Hippo, etc.).’
ABOUT THE GUESTMark McLaughlin is IBM’s Global Insurance Director, leading IBM’s Global Insurance strategy, solutions, and partnerships. Mark’s teams analyse trends in the insurance business and in technology, predict strategies for insurers, and build IBM insurance solutions to meet insurer needs. He also shares IBM’s point-of-view on insurance with business leaders, regulators, and conference audiences worldwide.
Mark is a 25-year veteran of the insurance industry. He has previously led business units in insurance distribution and analytics, technology infrastructure, CRM, and insurance business process. Mark has personally led implementations in strategy, program management, analytics, data warehousing, expert systems, commercial claims, and underwriting for multiple top 20 US insurers.
Titter: @mclmark
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mclmark
ABOUT THE HOSTSabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL talks to two renowned FinTech Influencers and respected voices in finance and insurance, Danielle Guzman – head of social media at Mercer who is an expert at activating employees and creating business impact on social media, and Theodora Lau - Founder at Unconventional Ventures, author, podcast host and public speaker who advises many startup ventures.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Danielle - The future of work is something I’m passionate about, both personally and professionally and the journey over the past years has been about reinventing myself and how to stay relevant in a world that is changing so radically. The pandemic has only accelerated that journey, not just for me but for everyone to be thinking about this a lot more, using social media channels to connect and make a difference.
- Theo – I spent the bulk of my career in telecom, not finance and banking, don’t hold that against me! What’s interesting is, when you look at high-tech, telecom, financial service industry, and FinTech and InsurTech startups, a lot of what we do inherently at the end of the day is about people. Technology is a means to an end and allows us to communicate and exchange ideas.
- As a broader society, we’re starting to realize that self-care is actually not self-indulgence. The conversations around mental health and well-being are now becoming what they should be. Health is embedded in every aspect of our lives, but mental health and taking time to invest in our own well-being have always been secondary things. It’s critical that now through organizations and leaders that it’s becoming a very real and daily conversation at the table.
- I grew up in a generation where you had a career, and now we’re part of a generation where you’re having career experiences. There’s so much that needs to be done for that to become accessible to everyone, there doesn’t seem to be an answer to that right now but organizations are trying to figure that out. That’s going to be a watershed moment for the future of work and one of the biggest changes that we will probably see in our lifetime and we’re at the beginning of that journey. At the crux of that is the concept of trust.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I like to look at everything as not making big changes all at once, but how we can make small, incremental changes that have a compound return over time.’
‘The past 18 months have shown, we might be in the same storm, but we’re not in the same boat. We have been very aware of a lot of the challenges and inequalities that exist in our society, but I hope we take away the learning from recent months that there’s a lot we still need to do.’
‘Longevity is a challenge, but it’s actually an opportunity. Since the early 1900s we’ve all gained an extra, healthy 30 living years. Living longer affords us to try different things in our careers.’
‘Are new solutions being created to mimic what we’ve always had in the past, or are they being created to support these new opportunities? Are there enough solutions out there to support small business owners and gig workers? I would say we need more.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
As the VP of Social and Distributed Content at Mercer, Danielle uses data to assess the viability of risky campaigns and predict the future of digital content consumption. Since diving head first into the world of insights-driven marketing and leadership, Danielle has seen data transform the careers of dozens of marketers—including her own.
Website: https://www.mercer.com/
Theodora (Theo) Lau is a public speaker, writer, and startup advisor, whose work seeks to spark innovation to improve consumer financial well-being.
As founder of Unconventional Ventures, she focuses on developing and growing an ecosystem of financial institutions, corporates, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists to better address the unmet needs of consumers (e.g. older adults and gig economy workers), with keen interests in women and minority founders. As part of her work, she regularly mentors and advises FinTech startups.
She is recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice for Economy and Finance, No. 1 Women in Finance by Onalytica, and Top FinTech influencer by various publications including Onalytica, Retail Banker International, and FinTech Finance. She co-hosts Rhetoriq, a podcast on longevity and fintech innovations, and runs a weekly blog on Irish Tech News. She is also a regular contributor for various top industry events, publications, and podcasts, including Harvard Business Review, MIT Tech Review, Money20/20, Finovate, RISE, American Banker, Breaking Banks, Financial Brand, Financial Revolutionist, Irish Tech News, Mercer, and INV Filter.
She provides strategic advisory services to a broad set of corporates; she advises startups and mentors entrepreneurs from different accelerators and incubators around the country. She is an advocate for diversity and inclusion – and frequently writes and speaks on the need for diversity on gender, ethnicity, age, education, and more. Her end goal is to help more financial institutions (incumbents and startups) focus on the needs of the forgotten demographics and build sustainable and inclusive business models.
Website: https://www.unconventional.vc/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Scott Gunther, General Partner at IAG Firemark Ventures, the corporate venture capital fund from IAG located in Australia. Scott has been at IAG for over 10 years and has been running the Venture fund for over 6 years. With strong expertise in marketing customer experience among others, Scott wanted to bring something new to the group, by opening his doors to the external world to ensure its resilience and relevance for the very long term. During this podcast, the pair discuss Scott’s path to CVC Land, and what IAG Firemark Ventures do to remain on top of its game. They also cover the topic of talent, talent, and talent, and what remote working means for Scott and his team. Finally, they discuss best practices for startups, scaleups, corporate innovators, and investors wanting to build their corporate venturing arm.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Everything we hear, see and experience in the startup world today is not new, it happened way back during the dot com boom. That’s where I started and I couldn’t ask for a more impressive grounding, working for one of Australia’s largest companies and trying to set something up – 90-day sprints to try to launch businesses, products, and services and thinking about the World Wide Web before it became the World Wide Web, eCommerce and the like. As a young man, at the time, coming out of university, I probably had no idea what the future was going to hold for me.
- A fundamental part of why we do what we do is to bring the outside world inside our own enterprise and try to transform how we deliver insurance. That means that every day is different because, as you’re starting to look at global, macro trends or at different markets to see what’s working, or looking at different parts of the customer journey. We’re working today with business-to-consumer businesses, Agritech, or AI businesses, there are no two days that are the same. The more that you can experience, whether it’s industry or role, function or geography, it really sets you apart from the rest to have this flexibility. Successful CVCs across the world are made up of teams that have got really diverse skill sets.
- CVCs fail or succeed depending on their acknowledgment that they’re part of something bigger and that the corporate HQ has its primary direction and purpose. At IAG our purpose is to make your world a safer place, we’re there to insure customers, their assets, businesses, livelihoods, and a whole heap of other different risks. But also, if an incident or a claim happened, to be there to help them to recover. Working for an organization that is very purpose driven gives you something to work backward from and something to aim for, like the North Star. Any CVC has to make sure that they’re not just a little adjunct of a corporation, they’re a really integral part of the business and as a consequence, you really have to know your business inside and out.
- When we put our investment thesis together we had to get razor-sharp on the things that you can and can’t do. You might want to invest in every market, look at all sorts of different stages of startups, and invest different amounts. When you first get going you need to give yourself guardrails, like not investing in series c stage scaleups for instance. For instance, our CVC does not lead investment rounds. We do not invest in certain markets. As we evolve, we will adjust, refine and expand our investment thesis which will change for the better over time.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I’ve always been a believer in breadth and depth of experiences and my journey took me to different parts of the business world but also into very relevant adjacent verticals too.’
‘Insurance is something you fall into and if you fall into it, you stay there.’
‘Those CVCs who are really intrinsically in tune with understanding changing business models, but also the relationships across businesses and our industry, are the ones that are probably more successful.’
‘Innovation is something that anyone in an organization should aspire to do. If you’re not moving forward you’re standing still and if you’re standing still, realistically, you’re going backward.’
ABOUT THE GUESTScott Gunther is a corporate venture capitalist (CVC) & startup enthusiast. Scott every day partners with business leaders to help them identify and understand strategic opportunities to achieve digital transformation and customer growth. With years of experience designing future state digital-first businesses and delivering transformation programs across multiple industries, Scott possesses the unique skills and experience of both strategy and execution - a differentiator at the board table for both blue chip and emerging businesses.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottdgunther/
IAG Firemark Ventures website: https://firemarkcollective.com/ventures
ABOUT THE HOSTSabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Henrique Volpi, one of the co-founders and the CEO of Kakau – one of the very first InsurTechs in Latin America. Kakau is an InsurTech and tech platform that delivers digital experiences while improving insurance operations and easing the delivery of complex financial services. Kakau's SaaS model is powered by machine learning and robotic process automation. Henrique is one of the co-authors of the InsurTech book and is also the co-founder and board member of the InsurTech association of Brazil. During the conversation, Sabine and Henrique discuss InsurTech in Latam and Brazil, selling insurance via the phone, Brazil's regulator approving subscription transaction models, NFT policies, and the future of tech-led business models.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Back in the day, people would question whether it was possible to sell insurance digitally. Insurance sales were only done by phone. Indeed, you could originate business via Google Adverts and so on. Still, the delivery of a fully digital experience wasn’t the case back then. So, we did the contrarian thing and went to design a digital-first platform as we knew this was a global trend. The first thing we did was to discuss the project with a very large legal forum in Brazil and asked them for their help because insurance is a regulated industry and we knew the importance of having a legal team, and we designed one of the first digital MGAs in Brazil.
- Since the beginning, we spoke to the regulator. This approach was very different from other startups that were afraid to go to Rio and speak to them. We just shot straight and said: “We want to do this. Is that legally OK? Can we move forward?” We took a different approach from the other startups. Over time the regulator told us that we could not engage with them that much. So, we went back to our legal partner and set up the first Brazilian InsurTech Association to help technology startups get access to the insight they needed to build their InsurTech right. We started with 4-5 companies and now we have more than 20 members.
- The first thing I believe we need to educate others is on finance and therefore insurance, especially in Brazil. This should be the same in South-East Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a whole. Individuals must learn how to make money and take care of their money because many people do not know. They have to learn how to lend money, they have to learn how to manage that money, and hopefully, they will learn how to save a little bit. Only later they will think about insurance. Typically, you start with lending and credit cards before going up the value chain to investments and then insurance. Insurance and InsurTech are probably 5-6 years less mature compared to FinTech in Brazil which is going very strong.
- Don’t be afraid to pivot your business model, you’re going to pivot many, many times around your journey and you have to be aggressive in terms of technology. We’ve seen around the world many, many companies that don’t really have a good tech stack, it’s just a front-end. What’s interesting though and I’m excited about this too, is when a market player realizes that it does not need to own everything then it can consider licensing. When you license the best capabilities that are out there you have a different perspective on how you serve your customers and users.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Even though it was very hard and there was a lot of work to do to prove the content, we proved that one can sell insurance policies digitally. Now it’s something that’s growing very fast in Brazil.’
‘We may be going through a crisis. Still, what’s happening now is very volatile. So, when growth opportunities return, the launch of digital-first businesses may return faster than a lot of people think.’
‘I’m very interested in the ramifications of cyber risk within our digital world. I think another trend we need to pay attention to is the monetization of value-added services. Some big carriers in Brazil are setting up services companies that will prevent risks from happening, especially around commercial lines.’
‘Go for it. The world needs people who have the courage to become entrepreneurs.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Henrique Volpi is known for having a positive attitude, execution focus, and servant leadership. Committed to making a positive impact, Henrique Volpi is the co-founder of Kakau, one of the first InsurTech startups in Latin America. A technologist for the past 25 years working in leading tech companies such as Servicenow, EMC/Dell, and BMC Software. Henrique co-founded and became the president of the Brazilian Insurtech Association. He is a co-author of the Insurtech Book.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henriquevolpi/
Kakau Technologies reduces the complexity of financial services and insurance operations through the efficient use of AI technology. By leveraging ML and RPA Kakau Tech delivers seamless SaaS solutions in Risk Model Management, NLP Claims Management, NFT Policy Management, and Churn Prediction. Kakau's technologies is a digital platform that uses artificial intelligence technology to deliver more accurate results in the insurance segment. Kakau delivers a fully digital experience seamlessly powered by machine learning across multiple product categories. The platform enables users to get insurance for various products like motorcycles, cell phones, digital devices, and bikes among others.
Website: https://www.kakau.co/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Dylan Bourguignon, CEO and SO-SURE. He is on a mission to restore customer trust in insurance, he has set up the digital insurer with a unique model that delivers win-win insurance. In this conversation the pair discuss his journey setting up SO-SURE, why he moved into insurance, how useful sales strategies and skills have been to scale the business and more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Having been an engineer twice over, I went into strategy consulting and then private equity for 10 years, picking up an MBA on the way. In the latter part of my time in private equity I was focussed on insurance and I got to understand the entire value chain of insurance and how there was a chasm between the consumer experience of insurance and the margins the industry was making. As an investor, I was looking for businesses that were addressing the issue, sadly there weren’t any so I decided to do it myself.
- Whenever you try to change the equation for consumers, if you just try to focus on a single element of them, whether it’s distribution, policy admin or claims, as individual segments of the value chain, you’re only optimising to a sub-optimal point. If you really want to have a step change in customer experience, you really have to take control of the entire of it and redesign it. That’s what we’ve done.
- Ours is not a pool, it’s a network model. Think about it as Mutual 3.0. The idea is that I buy a policy, I’m covered, I can then connect to my friends and family who I trust and every time I connect to them, me and my friends each get £10 added to each of our reward pots. We can all connect to as many people as we want until my reward pot is worth 80% of the value of my premium. At the end of the year, if me and my friends have not claimed, the money in my pot is paid out to me. My pot is not dependent on my friends' connections, only to the people I connect directly to.
- Embedded insurance is a bit of emperor's new clothes, it’s just dressing up something that’s been around a long time. Dixons was selling insurance with laptops in the 90s. The only difference is now the ability to make it part of the consumer experience when you purchase, as distribution partners you can also build a better understanding of their customers and you can use some of that information to provide a more relevant and bespoke solution for the customers in terms of insurance. There’s all sorts of charges that the industry needs to be mindful of, for example over-insurance, if you insure for loss/theft/damage of every single item that you buy – a couch for example – is that not covered by your home and contents insurance? The solutions that we’re creating for consumers need to be relevant and we also need to be delivering a superb claim experience that needs to be as seamless as the purchasing.
BEST MOMENTS‘For us, the key was having control of the customer experience from purchase to claim. What you quickly realise is that there’s no way of fundamentally changing the paradigm for consumers unless you have control over the entire value chain – policy admin, claims, distribution.’
‘Consumers don’t trust the promise that when things go wrong your back’s covered. It’s broken. Nobody has got the consumer’s best interests at the heart of what they are doing. We’ve addressed all those issues in our redesign of the consumer experience. It’s so critical to focus on what the customer’s experience is going to be when they claim and how it can be a good experience.’
‘Win-win means amazing if you need us (our insurance products are incredibly competitive, up to 40% cheaper than our competition, it’s very clear and written for consumers and when you claim we fulfil claims within 24-72 hours, 10 times faster than the competition) and rewards if you don’t (95% of people don’t claim on insurance, you can get up to 80% of your money back if you and your friends don’t claim). What’s not to love?’
‘Be yourself and don’t stop believing.’
ABOUT THE GUESTDylan Bourguignon: Disrupting insurance with SO-SURE. We are on a mission to restore consumer trust in insurance. We have developed a digital Insurer with a unique model that delivers win - win insurance: amazing if you need us and rewards if you don't.
Previously, 10 years in private equity investing and business developing across a broad spectrum of industries (consumer, media, industrial, financial services).
Special expertise in business growth drawing upon sales, strategy, negotiation, M&A, financing, project and leadership skills. Analytical and financial skillset grounded in MBA and Chartered Engineer status degrees. Worked in Europe with exposure to Asia and USA. Bilingual French-English with conversational Spanish and basic German.
Core Skills:
- Strategy and M&A – 12 years developing strategy and business plans for companies across sectors. Worked on over 40 acquisition targets in great detail and closed four. Analytical and financial skills grounded in MBA and engineering degrees.
- B2B sales – Led the sales for Growth 365 over the first 18mo, leading to Grant Thornton investing in the national rollout. Within the private equity industry, sourced 40 deals a year; relationships led to deals being executed.
- Leadership – Project and People Management. 14 yrs experience. Started as an undergrad managing team of 12 to redesign an airbus for BAE Systems. Subsequent strategy and private equity roles required managing staff, advisors, management teams to tight deadlines. Led team of 14 in building Growth 365 for Grant Thornton. Also held leadership roles outside of work.
- Negotiations – Successfully led or participated in negotiations: asset management firm’s restructuring, 9 acquisitions, service providers and debt providers for half a dozen deals.
- International – Worked on developing businesses organically or through acquisitions in the UK, France, Norway, USA and India. Bilingual French and English with conversational Spanish and German.
- Multi-industry – 14 consulting projects and 4 completed transactions in consumer, industrial, media and financial services sectors.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanbourguignon/
About So Sure.
With SO-SURE insurance you can have your cake and eat it!
SO-SURE makes it fast and easy to claim when you need us. And when you don’t? We reward you with up to 80% of your premium back.
Online platform offering insurance solutions such as phone and content for individuals. It offers coverage against theft, loss, accidental damage, water damage, and more. It also offers insurance premium reimbursement every year. It offers online claims processing services. It also offers replacement or repair once the claim is approved.
Website: https://wearesosure.com/
ABOUT THE HOSTSabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL interviews Janthana Kaenprakhamroy, co-founder and CEO of Tapoly, an on-demand gig economy worker InsurTech UK startup. In this interview, Sabine and Janthana discuss business model innovation, target market and customer segmentation, and what building a lifestyle brand in insurance means. They finally cover company culture, talent acquisition, and founding a business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Tapoly came about because I was so surprised with how backward we were in terms of offering insurance and the whole end-to-end process for gig economy workers and micro-businesses. This was an industry in which I thought I could add value.
- Tapoly is a very timely and much-needed platform because we are able to operate at a micro-premium level that some traditional players may not be interested or capable of delivering. Our fully-automated process where we use technology to drive our pricing and underwriting means it’s easier for us to gain that economy of scale and save costs even if the transaction is much lower than a traditional player would want to underwrite. This is needed because someone needs to serve these customers.
- We differentiate ourselves from our peers by our product differentiation, our approach – which is from the customer angle, looking at their profile and asking ourselves what we need to do in order to get the relevant insurance to cover our clients’ flexible lifestyles. To cover this you need to expand your product range and list of carriers, which is time-consuming and costly. The next stage is to grow our business.
- Gig workers could work three jobs, each job with a very different risk profile, so it’s very hard to buy coverage to cover all three risks. Offering an on-demand, usage-based solution relevant for a variety of activities will help the insured and us so that we know what risks we are taking as opposed to getting a surprise when the client claims for something which is obviously not covered by the policy.
BEST MOMENT
‘What’s needed in the insurance space is a joined-up system that tracks every single transaction from every single source. That’s why Tapoly has gone from being a reach-out player offering micro-insurances to moving up the chain.’
‘Our gig workers include either micro-business, sole traders or freelancers that are difficult to make a profit from but need insurance to cover core products like employer liabilities for businesses that everyone must have. There are also professional indemnity public liability and other add-ons that may be relevant to their business activity and risk profile.’
‘I’m a first-time founder as well as being a female, and on top of that I didn’t have much insurance experience when I started, and the profit margins are small on microinsurance products. A lot of investors would prefer to invest in a company with larger margins and at a more mature stage of development, still, we are hopeful that we can prove to them that we are one of the valuable platforms that they should invest in.’
‘I chose my co-founder, Sam, based on three aspects: Skill to add value, work ethic, and his ability to financially support the business when needed We both chose our team based on the talent that we know we needed, and individuals that we could coach and teach so they don’t pick up any bad habits. The experience was not necessary for us. An interest in the business and high work ethics were key.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Janthana Kaenprakhamroy is one of the Top 10 Insurtech Female Influencers as ranked by The Insurance Institute.
Founder of Tapoly, the first on-demand insurance platform for the gig economy in Europe, as seen in the Top 100 European Fintech Awards 2017. Chartered accountant and former investment banking professional. Janathana was also one of the co-authors of the InsurTECH Book.
Website: https://www.tapoly.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janthana-kaenprakhamroy-0b73546b/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Mike Minett, CEO or Chief Ideas Guy at Portabl. Portable is a platform and community which provides insurance, benefits, and savings products for freelance and self-employed professionals.
In this podcast, Mike and Sabine cover: Why Mike decided to move from consulting to building an InsurTech focused on the future of work, what Portabl’s focus and the core proposition are, what is required to build a gig economy-focused startup, and a little bit of ESG and the Future of Tech.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- We exploded out of the gate and got some opportunities in the US which was probably too big for us for where we were at in our journey. So, we made the decision to come back and technically build and launch again out of London. Then we got a bit of Covid interruption when we were due to close our first round of funding in March 2020 and things fell apart at that point, but interestingly Portable and our proposition to serve and support the independent, freelance, and gig world of work continued to be interesting and Covid accelerated everything. So, one the one hand we lost time, but actually I think the timing will work out even better for us as we prepare to finally launch into the market. It’s been a journey!
- We want to create a portable structure that wraps around the individual and follows them with whatever they’ve got going on, whatever pieces of work they might have on the go, for whichever client they might have on the books, and ultimately, across any geographies that they might be travelling to and working through. The old model is no longer fit for the way people are choosing to live and work.
- Building an insurance business has its challenges, especially considering the regulatory constraints and the risk profiling requirements, which is our secret sauce – ‘frisk’, our freelancer risk. People’s underwriting score and credit score both drop simply because they’ve become independent, yet this is the same person with the same network, the same skills, and experiences, and potentially the same career trajectory. Why should they face biases and penalties just because they are independent? The only reason is that the models are built for the old world.
- At Portabl, we’re trying to tackle risk profiling through data and analytics, getting a better understanding of these individuals, to present that story back to our insurance and credit partners on behalf of these individuals so they get a better and fairer deal. We try to free up a lot of time and stress for our customers so they can concentrate on their work.
- Insurance for good is a good thing, but people don’t wake up in the morning and say “I wish I had more insurance”, they don’t even know what they have, what they don’t have, what they should probably have, and that it’s a lot more affordable than they probably think. A lot of our insurances come with really nice features like access to a virtual GP, counselling and mental health support, physio, etc.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The fear of startups and the whole concept is that you need to be doing more faster and you’re constantly watching the clock.’
‘By 2023, 50% of the world’s workforce is going to be working independently in some shape or form. Who’s looking after this new 50%? While today they are few, they will become a major portion of the working population tomorrow. That was the genesis for the idea of Portabl.’
‘As an independent, it’s precarious, if you lose your health. Your health impacts your ability to earn. And if you lose your ability to earn, this also impacts your health. We really concentrate on the health and wellbeing piece by trying to keep our members happy, healthy, and productive.’
‘The laptop and the mobile phone are the most critical business tool for many of us, do you have them insured? You really should because all your data, your IP, and your knowledge are likely to be either on your phone or on your laptop. Independent workers don’t have the company to replace the phone or laptop.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Mike Minett is the CEO and founder of PORTABL.co, an all-in-one, data-driven platform providing portable insurance, benefits, and savings products to the world's freelancers and gig economies – nicely wrapped up in a single monthly membership bundle. PORTABL.co does the heavy lifting for these new and typically underserved markets, saving members’ time, money and stress with easy-to-understand and use risk and financial products.
Mike is no stranger to disrupting the market with unique perspectives on the twenty-first-century workplace – driven by a rich understanding of the impact of demographics. After a 20-year consulting and management career across fintech, insurance, and risk management for global investment banks, Mike launched The Positive Ageing Company, a SaaS-based data business focused on addressing the challenges and opportunities of the global aging workforce. That start-up was acquired by MMC Inc. (Mercer) in 2016.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeminett/
PORTABL.co is empowering the world's independent workforce and the future of work.
Portabl has built the world’s smartest platform and community providing flexible financial wellbeing, health benefits, and insurance products to the 50% of the workforce living and working as part of gig-based economies.
At its heart is our proprietary FRISC Score – set to challenge traditional underwriting and credit scoring of independent workers.
Never has our mission to better serve and support the world’s independent workforce been more important and relevant.
Website: https://www.portabl.co/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL interviews Naby Mariyam, CEO of Coverhero an insurance platform that provides cover for all types of gig economy hustle. The first product delivered by Coverhero, Hustlecover.com was recently launched to fill the gap of financial insecurity for the growing gig economy and self-employed generation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Before setting up Coverhero, the last two startups I did were in the gig economy and supply chain, so I have a bit of experience in building marketplaces and gig economy-based platforms. I launched Australia’s first ride-share platform, Ridehero, and a last-mile delivery platform, ZipMate. Before transitioning into tech I was a social scientist in academia for about 15 years.
- It’s very humbling to go into a whole different industry where you don’t know how it’s done after being an expert in academia. In my area, I was at the top, and then to go to a completely different industry and started from the bottom was deeply humbling. This is core to my existence, to who I am, I have to fight through these barriers pretty much every single day: I left the Maldives to move to another country and started over. I then decided to get into tech, tick all of the diversity boxes, and fought those biases. And to build what we have built at Coverhero is a huge accomplishment.
- There’s no other way for us but to build a customer-centric business. This is what was truly weird when I first started talking to insurance industry executives who design products around the actuaries or the loss/expense ratios, it’s very product-centered rather than customer-centered. I then learned how broken the supply chain of insurance is and that got me really excited because I really love solving non-sexy, complex supply chain problems. I wanted to find out how we build a product that customers actually wanted, as well as determine how we acquire customers, and retain them at a lower cost.
- Our philosophy is to build a really valuable piece of software that connects the insurer to distribution. There were a couple of things that led us to take this direction. When we first started we wanted to go direct to consumers and acquire customers that way, but along the way we realized that to build a company that can dominate a category you need to find a gap, then define, refine and refine again this new category. The category that we define is "work integrated life cover", which is for someone who has finished university and who decided to go into the workforce as a self-employed.
BEST MOMENT
‘I wasn’t really interested in insurance, but I had a life-changing experience where I got really sick and we had an insurance claim rejected. That process led me to be curious enough to think “why is this so difficult? Why can’t it be as simple as booking an Uber?”’
‘To leave academia to jump into the startup world was an existential crisis, I think.’
‘I’ve always been passionate about creating equity and opportunity for people that don’t have access to networks, this is something the world needs to do a lot more of.’
‘The last four years I’ve been in the space I’ve seen a lot of money being invested into ideas that may or may not work, and the bar that’s being set by the insurance industry is very different from the bar that is set for a startup that is not from the InsurTech industry.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Naby Mariyam says: Graduating with a Masters of Philosophy in Management at the age of 22, I have had 18 years of experience in a wide range of industries across Senior level positions spanning Academia (Business studies, Research Methodology and Design), Management Consulting, Documentary production, Travel & Destination Marketing, and Technology. Naby's Research background is in social science where she deeply studied human behaviour in her Academic career. Naby is currently taking a break from her PhD to focus on building technology-driven solutions that solve community problems. Naby shares that she is not a new face to the startup scene in Australia, with a number of her own startups, and Business ventures working closely with founders and catalysts of innovation in the Australian Startup Ecosystem in the last 8 years. Naby advised the United Nations Development Project on building start-up ecosystems and designed accelerator programs to drive innovation in developing Nations. Naby was an Australian delegate at the G20 Young Entrepreneurs conference in Berlin in 2017. Naby is a Keynote speaker, commentator, thought leader, and advocate for diversity of thought in the financial services and technology sector. She loves salsa dancing, poetry, and InsurTech (in that order). When Naby is not exploring her side hustles, she runs Coverhero, an embedded InsurTech startup focusing on revolutionizing insurance services focusing on the needs of Millennials and Gen Z. Coverhero Launched its first product www.hustlecover.com to fill the gap of financial insecurity for the growing Gig Economy and self-employed generation, and its smart home insurance API www.lucci.io in 2021.
Website: www.hustlecover.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nabymariyam/
Email: naby@coverhero.au
Instagram: @nabymariyam
Medium: @nabymariyam
Facebook: @nabymariyam
Podcast on Spotify: @hustlechat
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Iain Wilcox , CEO of GWT Insight a tech company focused on making cost effective commercial building data available to their owners, operators and advisers.
Iain is an entrepreneur, leader and visionary who successfully started new business operations from scratch balancing strategic planning and practical implementation. Over a period of 30 years, Iain worked with companies including AT&T and Cognizant, and 5 years ago he launched GWT Insight.
During the conversation, Sabine and Iain discussed four topics: What is GWT Insight from a company, brand, and team perspective? Why both, property and commercial building IoT, are unique markets around which to build a risk mitigation ecosystem. Benefits that are delivered to the property and insurance markets (including preventative maintenance to prevention). Lessons learned from moving to the entrepreneurial space after years of working for large companies.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I’ve been delivering consulting services for 13 years to large corporations and witnessed just how difficult it was for them to marry the need to provide the structure and control around their investments and to ensure that they do not hinder their innovation initiatives. There was a recognition by the Tier 1 carriers that they needed to start working with startups. I was working with a large India-based IT company and they recognized that both those organizations needed the agility and speed to market of a startup. This led to the formation of GWT Insight.
- When we were formed in 2017-2018, it was in the very early days of people understanding that they could save money around how they use and consume energy. Now, with rising utility prices, people are very focused on energy optimization and we see ourselves as not only being able to deliver on the governance part of an ESG model, with the risk management solutions that we develop with our partners, the insurers, and their brokers, but we’re also being able to deliver on commercial property owners’ desire to deliver a better understanding of how their buildings are performing and being able to reduce their costs.
- Property can account for 20-30% of the overall premium on a portfolio when you’ve got business interruption, public liability, and employee liability. You’ve got an area of the insurance paradigm and the value chain that impacts quite a wide area.
- We’ve got use cases across a whole variety of different examples and verticals. We’re picking up data in real-time from manufacturing units, offices, hotels, schools, hospitals, and central government departments (MoD and local authorities). Some of the use cases and benefits we’re looking at are picking up fire control data so you know that if there is a problem with the alarm it helps them to proactively go to their clients and warn them. We’ve also been able to identify loss events with our insurance clients and stop them from happening.
BEST MOMENTS
‘When buildings are built they have a number of IoT sensors built in, even a standard office will have 5,000-10,000 data points, we recognised that there was an opportunity to pick up that data by listening to the existing, in-house building management system. We developed the GWTI Observer to do this to create a better understanding of risk.’
‘Risk managers want real-time data because it’s about loss prevention. We’ve still got a little bit of education to go through in the underwriting community, a lot of them still have a very traditional viewpoint. With regards to owners, a third are bleeding edge and want to risk managing their properties, a third are interested but not ready, and a third that don’t manage that proactively.’
‘I think it will change the way insurance is sold, because when you’ve got the data you can make better, informed decisions about how you’re managing your property and your risks and how that impacts the rest of your business.’
‘In every building in every portfolio there have been areas where we can help improve the operational efficiency of the building and provide a better customer experience for their own customers, employees and stakeholders.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Iain Wilcox is an Entrepreneur, leader and visionary, has successfully started new business operations from scratch with software, IoT hardware and services companies in the UK and Europe. Primarily worked in the start-up phase for new entrants to market, building revenues and customer base from standing start.
Manages the delicate balance between strategic planning and the practical implementation of market entry, business development and revenue delivery (geographic or vertical sector) for new or established operations.
Specialties: New business sales & marketing focused on InsurTech & Digital Solutions including IoT, AI and Machine Learning Experienced in strategy formulation, new market entry and business development in particular focused on Financial Services, Banking and Insurance.
Set up GWT Insights approximately 5 years ago.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iainwilcox/
GWT Insight is a tech company focused on making cost effective commercial building data available to their owners, operators and advisers. Whether reducing risk, improving quality of customer experience or saving money, access to reliable, real time and relevant data is now underpinning new ways to improve business performance. With origins in the insurance industry GWT Insight has developed technology to provide the answer to complex data capture challenges in commercial buildings. GWTI's device is simple to install, working across open protocols and many of widely used closed protocol systems it is plugged into the building's BMS, once connected it listens to building systems, sensors or business specific equipment without affecting their operation. Unlimited data can be captured, classified, standardised, compressed and protected with advanced security protocols. The data then flows via the cloud to client information systems, dashboards and user interfaces including tablets, desktops and mobile phones in near real time. The unique approach to data management and ability to deliver real time data on what is happening, and critically inform ‘why’ makes GATTI's solution a highly cost-effective platform to drive material benefits for anyone involved in the performance of commercial property.
GWT Insights: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gwt-insight/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Henri Winand, co-founder and CEO of AkinovA, an electronic marketplace built to ease the transfer and trading of insurance and insurance risks. During the conversation they discuss the importance of strong taxonomy when moving into multi-party electronic placements, tangible and intellectual assets, transition risk, cyber risk, NFTs, and driving liquidity in illiquid markets.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The whole objective of building our marketplace is to see a large market. The market is there already and our goal is to help clients or anybody in the value chain feel that we could do a better job of providing transactional transparency. I’ve done that in the world of energy and in the world of transportation. I’m an engineer who likes to solve problems, more to the point, I really love to build teams that can help to solve the big problems this world has because you can only get so far on your own.
- The challenge for FinTechs and InsurTechs is sometimes you can’t always patent things because they fall in the business idea realm. Being able to then keep a trade secret – maybe with some patents around it -- which we are exploring big time by the way on a few of our concepts – is a way to not signal to everyone what you are doing, so that you can keep the trade secret for a while. But equally, there are some pieces that I believe, and patent attorneys also believe, could be patented. This is quite important because it gives you the ability to have a discourse with very large organizations. It is not about sticking a licensing reminder where you tell someone they’re infringing on your IP and they owe you money, that’s not the point. The point is you arrive with an asset that can be valued by clients and investors which then allows you to have a value-based conversation with your partners too.
- The question is: How do we, as an industry, attract the right talent? Our industry has to be exciting. I got into insurance by accident and insurance isn’t the first thing you think about when you get up in the morning unless you have to. What do we need to change to be part of the client's journey?
- If you break down insurance, you’ve got someone with a risk and they’re trying to reduce that risk. First, I’ve got to be able to make it simpler for that person who’s got a problem to understand that they’ve got one. Second, they also need to be able to articulate it well to ensure that it is well evaluated. I then need to be able to say what it’s worth and how well or badly it could go based on the information gathered.
BEST MOMENTS
‘An idea is a cost before you make money out of it. Once you start making money it can then become a profit center.’
‘Time is everything, not money or meetings. The only commodity we have as human beings is time, so invest it wisely.’
‘I’m hoping things won’t change for the worse in terms of the economy. Still, I think some clear fundamentals have changed. So let's make the best of what we know.’
‘The cleverest people in the room when you’re coming up with an idea are the ones that question the idea. So, if you want to look clever in a group, don't come up with an idea, come with critiques.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Henri Winand: I am a growth and change-oriented CEO with a passion for scaling up a broad set of technologies globally using different business models and team-based delivery. I now serve as CEO for AkinovA, an insurance technology company that I co-founded recently with a specialist ILS (insurance linked securities and related insurance products) London based City fund manager. Prior to this, I served as CEO of a British tech company listed on the London Stock Exchange Main Market (Intelligent Energy, a $1bn tech IPO) with in excess of $200m raised from a broad range of sources, leading to strong top-line growth, largely from internationally-based customers.
I served on several Boards in the UK, Singapore, India, Japan, and the US in the energy, software services, film content publishing, and automotive sectors. I also served on the Board of an EU funded €1bn+ PPP. I served on several advisory bodies to Ministers, Secretaries of State and Officials in the new energy, automotive and materials science sectors in the UK as well as on the Alumni Advisory Board of the Warwick Business School and of the University of Cambridge.
I have more than a dozen patents granted and pending and have several papers published in well-known, peer-reviewed, scientific journals, topics including composite materials, neutron diffraction, and processes to improve industrial product development cycles. I am regularly invited to speak at international conferences and spoke in the US Senate and French Sénat. I provide advice to selected major global institutional, venture capital and private equity funds. In addition to meeting several Heads of State, I have made several appearances on live and recorded TV and Radio programmes (e.g. Live CNBC TV, Live Bloomberg TV, Live BBC Radio 4 “The Today Programme”, recorded BBC and other programmes, provided thought leadership and quoted articles in broadsheets, e-newspapers and The Huffington Post.)
I am married to Anne and we have one child, Alexander.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henriwinand/
AkinovA is building an electronic marketplace for the transfer and trading of (re)insurance risks. By working in collaboration and partnership with the insurance industry, AkinovA helps optimize the risk transfer value chain by providing a capital markets grade, industry regulated, trading platform and clearing house. AkinovA provides valuable data and analytics to participants and regulators from the aggregated data that passes through the marketplace. AkinovA helps grow the overall size of the insurance marketplace by enabling new participants to enter and existing participants to transact more business. There is significant pressure from the Capital Markets wanting an appropriate mechanism to access insurance risks which are decorrelated from traditional bonds and equities. Creating an effective secondary market for (re)insurance risks, to enable these risks to be traded, will dramatically increase the volume of business that is transacted across the marketplace. AkinovA is working with a number of brokers, who act as key channel partners for the existing industry, to kickstart liquidity on the marketplace. AkinovA provides them with a venue to service their clients’ needs in a more efficient and timely manner as well as giving them access to new clients entering the market who would benefit from their advice. AkinovA’s goal is to remain an independent marketplace enabling it to attract and work with all trading parties without undue influence from industry participants.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/akinova-limited/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Simon Schneider – founding partner of Neoteq Ventures. They cover three areas: Simon’s path in VC Land, great minds not thinking alike, and sharing startup tips to make sure ventures do not get side-lined when the corporation’s strategy changes.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- It’s a coincidence that I entered the VC business in 2001. I’d studied to be a lawyer but decided not to become a lawyer because a friend suggested VCs needed someone like me who knows what contracts should look like and with an understanding of people. From the first day of my VC career it was fascinating to see all these founders, teams with great game changing ideas and technologies.
- Neoteq invests not just in InsurTech, we concentrate on early stage investments which are pre-seed, seed and Series A. We do not have a specific sector focus, but we look for technology-based startups. The most relevant question for us is which customer problem do you solve? It sounds like an easy question, but often when you meet founders and you ask them they have difficulty describing that, and if you can’t describe what the customer’s problem is, why would someone be willing to buy it? Market combined with team and technology are the three main parts of our due diligence that we look at before deciding if it’s an interesting investment target for us.
- Not every startup in our business is successful. There are always failures. Of course, investors have expectations and you have to fulfil them as a team when you get the trust of your investors, but not everything can be handled by the team, there are some things your team can handle and some things in the market that you do not have a handle on. You always have to look at why each case wasn’t successful in the end when it looked promising in the beginning. There are a lot of things going on in the world right now that are impacting startups. I expect that access to capital, especially in later stage finance rounds will be tougher than in past years which means valuations will go down a little bit. I expect the rounds will get a bit smaller and that has an impact on the M&A market, perhaps exiting will take more time than you’ve been used to, but if you’re an experienced VC you know it takes time (5-7 years or more) until you can exit your companies from your portfolio. The VC scene won’t freeze though.
- We are financially driven. Each startup, from our point of view, needs to have the potential to pay back our complete fund. If we do not see this potential it’s unlikely we will invest. Strategic returns are often combined with financial returns, at least from my point of view. But of course CVCs often try to get some kind of extra deals with the teams to get earlier access to the product. This is something I would highly recommend startups not to accept, in the end it’s always unhelpful, especially when corporations change their strategy – which can happen from one day to another – you are no longer relevant for them and the play is over. Startups that want to cooperate with a CVC need to have a starting workshop where you really create the goals on which you’d like to work with them and if you don’t find a common understanding then stop because it won’t be a successful partnership.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Over the last 20 years as a VC I’ve seen a lot of things, but the fascination of this business and having the chance to work with all these special people is still there. I still love my job.’
‘The fundraising process, especially during Covid was not easy. Meetings are no longer possible and investors do not decide through a Zoom call if they would like to invest in a new fund.’
‘Companies working on climate tech and sustainability are really interesting and I see a lot of potential in this sector because it’s relevant for all of us and the better the solutions are the more it will help our planet to survive, hopefully.’
‘Startups that started in previous crisis times often were more successful than companies that started in normal times. The big question is: Do we have normal times at the moment? I would say, definitely no..’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Simon Schneider has more than 15 years-experience as an Investment Professional in sourcing, negotiation, financing, support & sale of technology start-ups in the field of B2B/Cloud-Software, Digital Media, eCommerce, Insurtech & Clean-Tech; Years of M&A experience through trade sale of several portfolio companies; served as a board member for various companies.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sischneider/
Neoteq Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm based in Cologne, Germany, which invests in outstanding teams with exceptional, technology-based companies.
Website: https://www.neoteq.de/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/neoteq-ventures/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Kobi Bendelak, a 22 year veteran in insurance. Kobi is the CEO of InsurTech Israel which he established to promote and lead innovation within the Israeli Insurtech ecosystem.
Sabine has known Kobi for over 6 years. He mentored the startups in her European Accelerator and has always been the kindest individual for our startups and her team members to access for advice and mentorship.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- InsurTech Israel has four bases: Investment – We’ve already invested in 10 startups, all of them are Israeli InsurTechs, Consulting – we assist the startups to grow, Media and Events – we just held the ITC which had a big delegation of startups, and an Accelerator programme – Tel Aviv is the capital of the InsurTech world, but there was no accelerator programme in Israel so we started one with great mentors from all over the world helping startups to grow.
- To build an ecosystem is very hard, but if you have a success story it makes it very easy. We have four unicorns which assist us to build and grow the ecosystem and a base to grow the InsurTech industry here in Israel. For a good ecosystem you have to have a lot of early stage startups, not unicorns. It’s hard to build that because you have to find the entrepreneurs and they need to find you. Israel is very good with that, it’s a culture of entrepreneurship here.
- The insurance world is very orthodox, it’s a long journey for startups. Both B2B startups and investors need to be patient because there is no great success in the beginning, unlike B2C where you can succeed faster. Soon, it will be easier though because the entire industry will be digitised.
- The insurance industry is a very logical industry: yes/no, cover/no cover, something happened/nothing happened. This is a playground for AI. The Israeli army has great success with AI so the entrepreneurs that are coming up arrive young and with a lot of experience. They start looking for ‘the idea’ and they look for how to use it to solve problems. Israelis are the best at solving problems because we live in a very tough neighbourhood. InsurTech is not just technology, first it’s about solving problems with great ideas and then implementing technology to make it happen. Entrepreneurs with great skills in AI bring that to the InsurTech industry in underwriting for planes, for fraud, in healthcare.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I retired at 45 years old and after a few months it started to get boring, so I looked around for opportunities and the InsurTech industry was very interesting to me.’
‘Coming into work every day with passion is key.’
‘You need to have mileage and money.’
‘Every InsurTech startup must have insurance domain expertise in the team because it’s a very complex industry.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Kobi Bendelak is the CEO of InsurTech Israel that he established to promote and lead the Israeli Insurtech ecosystem. The company has four areas of activity, investments, consulting, media and acceleration programmes. All those activities make InsurTech Israel the leading and most active company in the Israeli InsurTech industry.
Previously, Kobi was the founder and CEO of Reshef Insurance Brokers, part of Migdal/Generali Insurance Group. He has 22 years' of experience in the insurance industry and holds a BA in Management and an MA in Law from Bar Ilan University and he is a Colonel (Reserve) in the IDF.
Website: https://insurtechil.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kobi-bendelak-a7011230/?originalSubdomain=il
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Farron Blanc, VP, Brokerage Distribution & Strategy, Legal & General America where he works with an amazing team to drive growth leveraging technology to accelerate opportunities within the brokerage channels.
Farron is an entrepreneur too. He started Gerry, a concierge Service platform that used data and licensed Social Workers to help thousands of Americans navigate requirements and support for long term senior care. Farron and his team sold the company in 2021 which is when he made his move to L&G America.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I’ve been at Legal & General for about three months, they’re the world’s 11th largest asset manager, but in the US it’s a really nimble business; we’ve invested so much in digital. One of the things I’m really passionate about is how to help the underserved get adequate, affordable protection – term life. You have to use technology to reach them and empower brokers to do that. I’m loving it!
- On the entrepreneurial side, in a venture-backed startup with $4, $10, &100million, money doesn’t solve anything because – until you’re Google or Apple – that money is an investment in the future and you will have to raise more capital in 12-15 months and the default mode is death because you’ll run out of money because you’re not profitable. Another thing people don’t understand is that when people give you that amount of money it comes with expectations, for some a $1billion exit isn’t big enough, even if they’re only writing a £2million cheque, they want to be in markets where companies can do £10billion exits. If you can understand those expectations as an entrepreneur you need to stay focussed and stay relevant while hitting all the milestones to get you there.
- Within a corporation the challenge is moving fast and nimble. You may have distribution, but you may not have innovation because you’re so efficient – you have processes, best practice committees, procedures and meetings that manage the process so it’s very efficient. Tech giants like Amazon, Netflix, Apple and Google do phenomenally well at attracting talent to be able to attack a problem internally and externally by buying companies.
- At L&G, we want to cover the most amount of families with affordable protection. The only way to do that is by using technology to digitise the process, personalise everything (rates, the experience, the journey that the policy holder goes through) both from applying to claiming the product. We’re probably the market leader on the application part but we still have so much work to do on the back end. You then have to work with partners in distribution. I’d love to be proved otherwise, but particularly in life insurance or mortality coverage, it is sold not bought. No one wants to talk about death. The best way to sell it is through independent distribution, reaching the customer how they want to be met. There’s no one magic bullet.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I’ve always been fascinated by problems and what’s the best way to solve them. Sometimes it’s a clean sheet of paper with no rules and sometimes it’s leveraging a 100 year old brand with a $40billion balance sheet.’
‘As long as you’re rapidly learning and re-assessing your challenges and assumptions, that’s the most enriching part.’
‘Within corporate venture you have a strategic return lens whereas financial VCs are purely gross IRR or total value paid in capital and multiples.’
‘The response to the global financial crisis of 2008 was to print more money to avoid a global depression. I think that worked, but it inflated asset prices and we were at a 0% interest rate environment for essentially two decades meaning long term contracts started to fall apart. What does the value of money mean now? It’s a debt obligation, but the rapid inflation we’re seeing means it’s going to be really interesting to see how we’re going to ride that out, how does being in an era of superabundant capital impact people’s subscriptions?’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Farron Blanc and his team help L&G America drive growth and leverage technology in the brokerage channel. Prior to that, as co-founder and CEO raised $3.75M of VC to start Gerry - a concierge service that used data and licensed Social Workers, helping thousands of Americans navigate long term senior care. We sold the business in the middle of 2021.
Farron was named by Digital Insurance as one of the 20 Insurance Innovators to know, as well as one of the top 35 young executives by Intelligent Insurer in 2017.
Farron is a recovering global reinsurer, corporate VC, life insurance carrier President, BCG Strategy Consultant, and insurance Chief Marketing Officer with deep Asian and North American startup and corporate experience.
Website: https://www.lgamerica.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farron/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Kristian Feldborg, founder of the Vesuvio Labs – a venture builder dedicated to FinTech startups and the InsurTech space in particular. Vesuvio Labs calls itself the digital rocket fuelling the insurance sector. In this episode they review Kristian’s journey as a FinTech venture builder and how he made the shift from the traditional tech world to the new world of tech.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I’ve always been interested in new things, startups and tech. For most of my career I’ve travelled, lived in different countries and worked with entrepreneurs. Eventually I decided I wanted to turn that into a business and create a lab and ecosystem where we were able to work with many entrepreneurs and help them execute the great ideas that they have.
- As a venture builder what you do is take some degree of risk in the clients and projects that you work with. That means someone comes to us very early in their journey and they do not necessarily have a lot of the business there yet, they certainly don’t have the capital, what we try to do at that very early stage is invest in those businesses through our work (sweat equity) until they have launched the first version of their platform and are starting to raise turnover for their businesses.
- We often are working on 15 projects at a time and there can be a lot of commonality between them. What we try to do is develop technology in a way that there is a greater degree of reuse between the different ventures that we have. We work hard on creating a shared baseline infrastructure that everyone can benefit from, therefore reducing the risk of getting it wrong as well as the time to market.
- Because we are blessed with working with so many entrepreneurs and businesses we also see a lot of situations where some great people have come together but haven’t invested the effort into figuring out the framework for how they’re going to work together, then it doesn’t quite work out. There are a lot of things that you should put effort into thinking about. The structure and the processes are really there to support you when things don’t go how you expect.
BEST MOMENTS
‘It’s all about finding great people with great ideas that perhaps do not have the technology expertise to execute on those ideas and see if we can partner with them and create great companies together.’
‘Insurance and financial services know something about that value chain and they know how they want to change/improve/disrupt that. We can help build the technology infrastructure around that.’
‘We want to allow people to focus more on the toppings, we provide the base and they decide whether they want to put pepperoni or whatever on top.’
‘You have to be quite conscious about what companies you select to work with. It would be natural to pick a lot of companies that look a lot like each other, but they don’t benefit from that. The ones that benefit are companies that have a technology fit, but more importantly they cover different aspects of the value chain.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Led by Kristian, the Vesuvio Labs team wants to change the insurance industry into a faster, cheaper, and more accessible one. And their focus is clearly on technical execution.
Website: www.vesuvio.io
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristian-feldborg-a78222/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sebastian Pitzler – managing director of InsurLab Germany, a leading tech accelerator for startups wanting to enter the German market via Cologne.
Before moving to the other side of the coin, Sebastian worked for a very well-known Insurance company, Ergo, a subsidiary company of MunichRe. He also has a background in IT strategy, board management and digital lab development.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Within our industry there has been a great mind shift within the last 5-6 years. When I was responsible for the lab in Berlin, in the beginning it was hard to talk with the procurement department to create a contract between a startup and an incumbent. The insurance industry was coming from an IT background which was focused on programming languages and self-developed software solutions. Then they began using standard software like Microsoft, SAP and others and finally then they were open to work and collaborate with startups.
- It’s great to have seen the number of startups doubling over the last few years, and that’s because there are a couple of trends coming together: The willingness and acceptance to support startups and the management attention that investments are necessary to build and grow these startup ecosystems. Secondly, to see that startups are able to help and find solutions to a problem in the short term, which is something we realised in Germany during the Covid-19 pandemic. We have been able to create a lot of win-win situations and success stories where we could demonstrate that a startup solution could help to overcome, for example, the bottleneck of internal IT capacity.
- Networking the Insurance Industry is what our InsurLab Germany is about: To build a strong and reliable network for the parties and enthusiasts who want to work on innovation and digitalisation. From the beginning the design of the initiative was that we needed insurance companies on board as well as startups, IT providers, consultancy companies, and universities to bring together different competencies to work on issues and topics like innovation and digitalisation. It’s also worth mentioning
- By setting up InsurNext, our goal was clear; that it’s not only about insurances, startups and tech companies, we also wanted to include the cross-industry and science dimensions because it’s logical if you want to develop innovation and digitalisation for insurances in an ecosystem economy, you need to involve different parties. It’s great to see how cross-industry partners are joining InsurNext like Garmin, Volvo and Lufthansa Systems all collaborating with our startups.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I’m not the classical insurance guy, I’m more of a tech enthusiast.’
‘Within the last six months we have supported 15 startups to develop and grow, we’ve supported them with over 60 mentors from our network on the insurance side and the InsurTech side. This has developed 40 projects, some that are up and running as products on the market.’
‘The corporates want to innovate, but avoid risks, and the startups want to grow quickly, but sometimes they speak different languages and we need to be a translator or build bridges between both those worlds to understand the different needs and perspectives.’
‘Digitalisation is about more than technology, it’s about mind shift, agility, customer centricity on a new level. That’s why it was so important, from scratch, to build InsurLab Germany as a network of different parties and drivers beside the member network that we have created and our partner network.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Sebastian Pitzler is Managing Director of InsurLab Germany since March 2018. Previously, he was head of the ERGO Digital Lab in Berlin and was responsible for setting up and expanding this innovation laboratory in the Berlin start-up scene.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pitzler/
Website: https://insurlab-germany.com/en/insurlab/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Matt Connolly, entrepreneur and platform builder to the insurance sector. He’s also the CEO of Sønr - the world's #1 InsurTech scouting and open innovation platform. On this episode Matt talks about himself, his idea to build the Sønr platform.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I always knew I wanted to start my own company, but I didn’t know what it was going to be or what I wanted to invent. The only relevant professional experience I had was working for a digital agency but my friend and I set up a web design company in 2003 that was going to deliver strategy, creative and tech for the web. Five years later the business was very successful and became the number one digital agency in the UK. It was a very unusual position to be in as a 20-something.
- I always wanted to push, push and push again. I’m never satisfied. They are terrible traits in somebody, but they are also great traits for an entrepreneur. I hope I’m able to do that with a level of empathy for those around me. Staff retention supports my belief that I’m able to create a good culture and be a good leader within my organisation. And, those traits really do drive me forward.
- Having control of the DNA of a company and setting culture is a great responsibility and one of the most important things to achieve as a successful founder. Once you have that right the rest of the business will flow. Fun has to be a large part of that. As a founder you start off with your feet firmly under the desk. You are involved in shaping the operation of the business, KPIs, growth metrics and all those kinds of things and you can forget about having fun, that’s where my co-founder, Matt Ferguson, is great at continuously reminding me and us, to remember the fun part of work. He makes sure we are going out, we talk and connect.
- You need to set a vision and have a purpose within that vision and ensure that vision is brought into, and possibly even co-created, by people within the team. If you have that and everybody buys into it and you set a clear pathway to achieving that – whether you’re ahead of it or behind it – then everybody will rally and do their best to make that happen. I’ve always felt it should be somewhat of a democracy in the culture of a business. Rather than employ people to fulfil specific roles, I’d rather employ exceptional talent, understand where they are best deployed and allow them to function with that intent. That allows them to do the thing they love the best, and invariably they’re the best at, to create the right resourcing landscape to achieve our vision.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Employ people that are more talented than yourself.’
‘You will always overestimate what you can or will achieve in one year, but you will always underestimate what you can achieve in 10. I need to remind myself of that, I’m an incredibly impatient man.’
‘Always check in with each other and have those “high five” moments and check in and look after yourself en route.’
‘I am much better at encouraging others to have fun than doing it myself. But if you’re not having fun and living another life outside of work you become a one-dimensional person and that’s never going to be healthy for you.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Matt is the CEO of Sønr - the world's #1 InsurTech scouting and open innovation platform.
Sønr is a subscription-based platform that houses the world’s most comprehensive source of innovation intelligence, designed specifically for the insurance innovator.
It is used by some of the best-known insurance companies globally including Allianz, Bupa, Generali, Munich Re, Tokio Marine.
Sønr connects its clients to innovation globally – the latest market trends, startups, and scaleups reshaping the insurance market. It provides insight into competitors’ innovation activities too... The critical intelligence needed to compete in today’s changing world.
It also has an in-built collaboration toolset that enables teams to work smarter, faster and be more connected. This results in less duplicated effort and ensures everyone is really on the same page.
Website: https://sonr.global/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wearematt/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Mark Dennis, a seasoned insurance executive with strong expertise in software platforms.
Mark was the Global COO and Europe CEO for MunichRe Digital Partners, one of the most renowned InsurTech ecosystem builders which has now been re-integrated within the core business of the MunichRe group. Today, Mark works with various young ventures and helps them with their scaling strategy.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- In my time we’ve partnered with 25-30 InsurTechs and we’ve invested in less than half, so we’re quite selective about where the capital has gone. The examples where we’ve got it really right are where we’ve blended out products well.
- In the early years we were probably more invested in technology and our assertion at the time was to offer the full tech stack of policy admin. In the middle of that five years period, we looked at the market and realized there were people out there who could do it a lot better than us, there were hundreds of policy administration vendors. You could pick whether you chose to buy rather than build. So we pivoted that model away from building everything to having a network of best-in-class providers that we could connect to our InsurTech customers. Later, we focussed more on data infrastructure and collaborating with our InsurTech partners to leverage a data advantage.
- It’s folly to seek perfect alignment, it’s better to seek out what everybody gets from the partnership, and it’ll vary and move around over time, but as long as everybody gets some kind of upside then that’s being in a good shape. Seeking perfection is nonsense really.
- Insurance has always been data-driven, even 4,000 years ago with the Phoenician traders. They’re always figuring stuff out based on data points (e.g. When’s the safest time to sail across that ocean to deliver goods?) Now we have the benefit of technology that allows us to process a lot more data and everybody’s trying to capture data points and gain a data advantage, though sometimes I think we don’t always know what we’re doing, we’re capturing data without necessarily a clear purpose. It’s much more around risk prevention and prediction rather than the cure. It’s more a force for good now though I don’t think insurance gets the credit it deserves. In a way, it certainly needs its own PR campaign!
BEST MOMENTS
‘The key for me is wanting to be a partnership business and we try to treat all our InsurTech relationships as partnerships, rather than too transactional.’
‘Without knowing it – because there wasn’t that much competition in the early days – we built the first InsurTech ecosystems, it wasn’t by design, it was just how it worked.’
‘It boils down to a few key questions: Is the team the right team? Are they balanced? Do they know the industry or are they being deliberately disruptive? Are they being positive with their disruption?’
‘You have to respect your insurance partner, they need to get something out of this and create value.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Mark Dennis says: In 2016, I co-founded and built out MunichRe's Digital Partners business from scratch to what is now a large, global operation employing more than 100 brilliant people. With our insurtech and disruptive partners, we have helped build more than 20 insurance businesses.
As part of my role, I introduced a flexible working model with employee wellbeing and care at the heart of what we do. For more than 5 years we have operated a flexible model with meeting free and wellbeing days, extended breaks, flexibility for working parents, and so on. I am proud to say that some of these ideas have now been adopted more widely in the other MunichRe businesses.
I am also passionate about giving people a chance. DP recruits people of all backgrounds and with diversity in thinking. I was also an executive sponsor on Munich Re UK's inclusion and diversity programme and for the Re:Connect charitable foundation.
I now lead an independent consulting business with a focus on insurtech scaling, operational resilience and change management. We also aim to work with more established insurance businesses in developing and executing their innovation ambition.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-dennis-07908313/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Jean-Charles Velge, one of the co-founders of Qover after spending part of his career in the private equity industry – half of his time in Europe and the other half in Hong Kong – he decided to become an entrepreneur.
Jean-Charles started as a consultant at Bain & Company, then joined the largest Benelux fund, NPM Capital, before moving to Redhorse in Hong Kong. Jean-Charles says that he runs the world's first Insurance-As-A-Service platform.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There are many different business models and how you can attack the value chain in insurance. Where we tried to be really innovative was on the business model itself and how you transform the insurance industry thanks to technology. Not just how to distribute a product, or how to use part of the technology stack to enhance the processes of an insurance company, but how to change the industry by applying technology. The model is more valid today than it ever was.
- Along the way insurance lost itself. What really makes insurance special is that it will protect you at the moment when you’re most vulnerable. That’s what we need to rebuild and make it possible. Technology is extremely well placed to make it happen at scale and in a pinpointed way.
- Tech is not a vertical anymore, tech is a horizontal that goes through all the verticals of the economy. When you look at all the winners on the tech horizontal, all those companies need insurance, either embedded to enhance their products, to cross-sell insurance or up-sell insurance. It needs to be digital and it needs to be cross-border. What we’ve done is create a platform that is basically a digital native company without the balance sheet that can build any non-life insurance product for any of those verticals in any different country.
- The complexity of tech companies working with incumbents, especially in the insurance industry is double. Firstly, insurance companies are not really digital so it’s difficult for them to build the right tools, the right stack. Secondly they’re very much local, traditional insurance companies would have a branch in the UK, France, Brussels but they don’t really talk to each other. A company that wants to do cross-border insurance has to rebuild block by block. What we try to do is marry tech and insurance so we’re as much a tech company as we are a legal and insurance company to be a single point of contact for your customer to be able to provide insurance digitally and cross-border and keep all the complexities at cover to make it simple for the customer.
BEST MOMENTS
‘When we started the company we asked “How can we hack insurance to make it as efficient and smart as possible?” It’s in the DNA of Qover.’
‘Our philosophy is to build the best policies possible with the best coverage possible with the best service possible. That’s what the industry needs to build to gain the confidence of the consumers back that may have been lost along the way.’
‘Well done insurance can be extremely valuable across the whole value chain of many different industries.’
‘We’ll be the biggest e-bike insurers in the Western world in the next few years because we’ve built a compelling product for all countries.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Jean-Charles Velge co-founded Qover in 2016 with Quentin Colmant. He spent his entire career in the private equity industry – half of his time in Europe and the other half in Hong Kong.
Jean-Charles started as a consultant at Bain & Company, then joined the largest Benelux fund, NPM Capital, before moving to Redhorse in Hong Kong. He has a Bachelor of Business Administration, a master’s in finance and an MBA.
Jean Charles calls Qover, the world's first Insurance-As-A-Service.
Website: https://www.qover.com/
LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-charles-velge-4345131/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Sebastien Gaudin, co-founder and CEO of CareVoice, an embedded HealthTech InsurTech platform that has gown fast to become a leader in their category across Asia through their platform the CareVoiceOS open platform which delivers a modern insurance infrastructure solution to connect and manage multiple health services providers to shape bespoke health engagement journey for micro-customer segments.
Sebastien’s mission is to reinvent the healthcare and insurance spaces. Merging the two to deliver tailored experiences for users and payers. Sabine and Sebastien talk about the recent category paper they wrote ‘Embedded Health: The next growth frontier for insurance’, discussing why embedded health is such an important topic for the health and insurance markets today? What are the winning business models we have seen emerge in recent years? What are the top capabilities needed to build a digital health ecosystem?
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I value patient-centred care, looking at the patient from a board perspective with multiple stakeholders. From my experience working in China's digital ecosystem, customer-centred, service-oriented approaches are everywhere and you can create more value and relevance if you aggregate services for people.
- We opened new distribution channels, new ways for insurers to commercialise products. All our experiences have led us to the category of embedded health. It’s about being able to provide targeted customers a range of relevant digital healthcare services together with insurance in one single integrated customer experience.
- Insurers are really making the move to embed health services with their insurance offering and then prevent or influence positively what may happen before a claim. Think about health players who can embed insurance and likely complimentary health insurance services to bring more value and protection to their customers but also all at once with a monetisation interest model for what they offer as a service. Lastly, noon-insurance, non-health players can also think about embedding health and insurance services as complimentary product offerings and revenues.
- We’ve been looking at how embedded health can really help to acquire customers. We see micro-insurance in the health space could be interesting because you start to see a number of players embedding micro-insurance and this gives new customers access to insurance that they couldn’t access before.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Working with insurers, we helped them to go beyond being a passive payer of claims and take a more proactive role, helping their customers navigate and find the right medical services at the right time.’
‘With a digital customer journey you can support the individual along the way with easy access to treatments and healthcare professionals.’
‘The opportunities that have opened up with this wealth of technologies that can impact people’s health. It’s true that digital natives are more suited to embrace this and most of the incumbents have been struggling because of their lack of digital capabilities.’
‘The past two years have seen a solid acceleration. It’s still difficult to see which model will win, we may have new models emerging, it’s likely there will be multiple winners within different sub-categories. The most important thing is that the needs from both consumers and all stakeholders are strong and the value creation by transforming insurance and improving health is limitless.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Sebastien’s career has been dedicated to healthcare. He is the co-founder and CEO of CareVoice, a leading Asian Health InsurTech expanding globally and dedicated to making insurance more humane, with health at its core. With an academic background in pharmaceuticals and business, Sebastien worked in Corporate Development, Marketing, and as a business leader in multiple therapeutic and geographic markets in the pharma industry. Since his young age, he has been involved in creating and growing several new ventures. Sebastien is also the co-founder and non-executive Chairman of the Board of blüüm, a Chinese tech-driven insurtech MGA that was spun off from CareVoice after graduating from PingAn’s Accelerator program. Sebastien and CareVoice received multiple awards and recognitions, including the Top Insurtech Leader 2021 in the category “Digital Business Ecosystem Builders” by ACORD, a non-profit industry-owned organisation to enable the success of the global insurance industry.
Website: https://www.thecarevoice.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Simon Torrance who is well known across the FinTech and insurance sectors as Mr. Embedded Finance. In December 2020 Simon wrote a very well-known article ‘Embedded Insurance, A $3 Trillion Market Opportunity That Could Also Help Close The Protection Gap’. He works with leaders, executives, and board members to create and implement new growth strategies based on corporate venturing techniques focused on the Platform economy and Digital Ecosystems to help large enterprises transform the business of today to me the needs of tomorrow.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The main problem is that digitization, which is happening across every sector, tends to shrink and contract traditional profit pools because you get new competitors, new entrants, new regulations, and customer expectations. So companies must spend more money to keep up with those emerging expectations. The old models that were absolutely fine in the analog world are coming under increasing pressure. Traditional players are increasingly feeling that pressure and need to do something different.
- When I was working in telecommunications, I started to think about the why. Why are those digital companies (Google, Facebook) so successful, and what could TelCos learn about them? TelCos have a lot of power in the market but they tend to focus on what they know best – creating the infrastructure – not so good though at creating services or new types of digital business models. In 2005-6 it was clear that the companies that were succeeding most in a digital world were those that were running ‘platform-based’ business models, they weren’t necessarily creating the end customer products themselves, but they were acting as an intermediary between the customer and the third party that had the solutions. That still is the most powerful business model in the digital world.
- I wasn’t interested in financial services, I hadn’t done a lot of work in it until about 3 years ago, but it seemed to me that it’s so important for the world, it underpins all our commercial and social activity – we can’t operate without financial services – yet there was something fundamentally broken with that industry and the gap between what people need and what they were being given was incredibly wide – there are so many people who are unprotected and have no insurance around the world – it’s so important for a small business to get a loan. The type of experience I have with my old bank is lightyears away from the new banks that are popping up now and no one’s really making solutions that look after my financial wellness, to help me understand how I need to save, borrow, plan for the future, I’m just left to access a few quite basic solutions from the incumbents. So, I thought, with these huge gaps and numbers of people excluded or badly served by the industry, there’s got to be some change needed.
- Embedded finance cuts across all the different business models and says: why don’t we enable other organizations that are much closer to the end-users, that interact with them more frequently than we do? We should do so in order to sell financial services because they have more regular interactions or touch points with the end-users, they’re often more trusted in certain contexts too. Why don’t we help them not only sell solutions but also embed them – use components that we’ve got to create new types of experiences that make their propositions more attractive. Digital technology has become much more sophisticated now, all those capabilities (products, data, underwriting capabilities) that were locked away within traditional companies are now able to be modularised and extracted into software technologies developed by tech companies. They are configured in ways that suit the customer better or more conveniently through unique experiences for the end-users.
BEST MOMENTS
'The business model is the most fundamental way that a company creates and delivers value for customers, captures value for itself, and increasingly shares value with others. It’s the most fundamental aspect of innovation and most companies find it very difficult to execute on their business model innovation promise because well-crafted business models address so much than what is often delivered right now.’
‘Digital companies have taught us that you do not need to create a platform yourself, you can co-opt developers and third parties to create solutions for your customers, as Apple does with the App Store. In so doing, you drive demand for your core business, in Apple’s case their phones.’
‘Over 50% of the big publicly traded financial companies were making zero or negative economic profit. There’s something wrong here, the customers aren’t getting what they need and the majority of those who are supplying financial products aren’t making any profit either. That suggests there is a fundamental business model problem in finance which is so important for everybody to live, work and enjoy the company of others.’
‘99% of a financial institution’s resources and money goes on digitizing, making more efficient and optimizing the existing business model. It is necessary but insufficient if that business model is going to deliver profits and economic returns to shareholders.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Helping companies transform their business models with digital platforms, ecosystems, and ventures, Simon Torrance works with leaders, executive teams, and boards to create and implement new growth strategies and ventures based on the new disciplines of ‘Platform Strategy’, ‘Digital Ecosystem Management’ and ‘Corporate Venture Building’.
Simon is the author/presenter of the New Growth Playbook (www.newgrowthplaybook.com) and co-author of a new book called 'Fightback' (how traditional corporates can win in the digital economy with platforms, ventures, and entrepreneurs): https://amzn.to/2RGZcAY
As we enter more deeply into what many are calling the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ – enabled by a fusion of emerging technologies that are blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological worlds – Simon believes that organizations in every sector need to radically re-think their role in the world and how they create and capture value.
Working in collaboration with a global network of subject matter experts and tech entrepreneurs he supports organizations with this transition via a mix of services:
- Advisory: helping clients develop and implement new strategies that transform their business models into faster-growing, more valuable platform-based models.
- Digital Ventures: helping incumbent organizations create portfolios of impactful new businesses.
- Executive Education: training leaders and teams on the topics of 'New Growth Strategies in the Digital Economy', 'Platform Strategy', 'Digital Ventures'. Simon's online course is at www.newgrowthplaybook.com
Simon collaborates with many leading institutions including World Economic Forum, MIT, London Business School, and Singularity University among others.
Website: www.simon-torrance.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simontorrance/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, and an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews FinTech and Blockchain Advisor Efi Pylarinou about why sustainable investing is so important, her view on the state of FinTech (and what the insurance industry can learn from it), sustainability in the context of Digital Transformation, what the emerging risks are and more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Switzerland is one of the biggest hubs in Blockchain for Finance, which comes out of Crypto Valley. It’s an example of how an ecosystem works: You need the regulator, the private sector, the capital and an international outreach for the recipe to work, and that’s what has happened in the crypto sector but it hasn’t happened in FinTech. Having said that, the crypto sector in Switzerland is more in the RegTech sub-vertical, which is related to data analytics and so on. That’s the high level at which Switzerland stands.
- There’s something that worries me that’s an indicator that we’re early with the insurance industry being interested in climate, the carbon footprint and how companies and individuals can reduce their carbon footprint. But we’re seeing a lot of businesses and startups offering services to trade credits. We need to get over that. A company can get a high ESG ranking on the climate front, but that might be completely negated because they’re doing something on another front in terms of labour practices for example.
- The ball has started rolling in the public markets, Black Rock is leading and making big announcements. But in the public markets this has to start from the seed, when the company is born: Is the company thinking sustainably and what does it mean? How do you treat your team? Is your mission completely segregated from society and nature? No, it isn’t, but we don’t think like that yet.
- Going forward we’re going to see more incumbent banks partnering with sustainable FinTechs so they can integrate it in their lending practices, corporate finances and commercial business banking processes, for example.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Innovation gets adopted, but before that happens, there needs to be a shift in the narrative. This is what is currently happening with sustainability. Still, we’re early in the journey.’
‘In December 2020 ESG net inflows surpassed £ 1 billion, a record number.’
‘Corporates still operate and make decisions in silos. Think about your borrowing needs, they are still separate from your investing needs. We haven’t put the whole picture together. Yet, centralized financing has to be part of the new culture, which is why it needs to start from the startups.’
‘We’re seeing a trend where digital banking and finance apps take advantage of the lifestyle appeals, whether they’re giving rewards to people or gamifying their offerings due to the fact people care more about the environment.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
- No.1 independent Global Woman Influencer in Finance & Data, a seasoned Wall Street professional with a Ph.D. in Finance with over 200,000 followers across channels.
- Work at the intersections of Business Development, Marketing, and PR for Brands involved in Digital transformation in various industries. Thought leadership campaigns through strategic collaboration, are one of my sweet spots as a B2B domain expert influencer with a passion for innovation.
- Domain expertise in financial services; Blockchain and Artificial intelligence are two main disruptive technologies that I focus on.
- Efi's global audience (c. 200,000 across all platforms) values her multimedia daily curation. I am a prolific writer, a host of weekly audio-video content, a creator of weekly visual content, and a passionate speaker.
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Efi's passion is creating content that supports her clients in their strategic business goals. You can connect with Efi on the platforms below
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Medium: https://efipm.medium.com/
- YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/EfiPylarinou
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/efipm
- Website: https://efipylarinou.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Erlijn Sie, a seasoned social entrepreneur, leader and social business advisor. Erlijn wrote a book on Reimagining Financial Inclusion, a must read for all corporate business leaders concerned with the future of our planet. In the book, Erlijn talks about the 5 levers that change and impact our financial system. They also talk about ESG with a focus on social innovation and how social innovators support companies in the achievement of their impact.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Maybe in the last few decades, we became a bit too focused on the monetary side of ESG and some companies started to forget their core relevance to society. We’re now all trying to find our way back to that societal value that we originally all started to build our organizations with. What makes social innovation (a person, a solution, a product) different from big corporations is that they do it in such a radically different way, taking an issue they care about, feel passionate about, and want to radically solve.
- There’s nothing wrong with taking a good business model to support social innovation, but I do feel it should follow a solution and what fits that solution best. You don’t start your business by monetizing social innovation. You start with the issue, analyze the root causes, and think about how others can contribute to solving that issue.
- Big powerful corporations still underestimate the potential change they could bring, especially financial resilience for those who need it most. Our former financial system was built last century when we didn’t have the digital technology we do have now. With such technologies and the speed of their development, we are way more able to financially include many more disadvantaged individuals or excluded people. If big corporations (not just banks and insurers) start to see the power of newer technologies, imagine how powerful they could be in the space by financially including so many more people, we can then start to really transform the system.
- We are currently dealing with a former financial system that basically serves half of the world’s population. That’s fundamentally wrong, we all know that financial services like being able to save your money in a safe place, getting a loan, insurance, pensions, all these financial services allow you to live your life to your full potential. If you exclude more than half the world’s population from that system, that’s a waste of talent! We need to reform the financial system in such a way that we include the other half. We can only do that if all companies work with us to tackle those flaws. Most of the flaws that are built into our former financial system are because last century technology didn’t allow us to include them affordably. Nowadays we can include the many if we truly want to.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I became a social entrepreneur by accident because I felt I needed more meaning in my day-to-day, that’s why I founded a micro-finance institution providing very small loans to the most excluded people.’
‘ESG stands for Environmental Social and Governance. I’m mainly focussed on the ‘S’, I feel the ‘social’ goes first.’
‘Most systemic issues are too big for one of us to solve, the solution needs to be co-created with the people you feel can contribute to solving the issue best.’
‘Entrepreneurial qualities are much more needed nowadays than they were last century. This has a lot to do with how fast change happens these days. The most important skill for all of us to learn is how to cope with change, how to be resilient, how to be able to constantly adapt to change.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Erlijn is a seasoned social entrepreneur, leader, and social business advisor to both the social sector as well as the business/corporate sector. Her background is rooted in business management and her focus is on social innovation and financial inclusion. She has supported a range of systems able to change social entrepreneurs, as well as impacted the corporate sector to develop new strategies, approaches and models to drive inclusion in society. Erlijn brings a combination of deep insights, hands-on experience and the latest trends in social innovations, blended business models, hybrid value chain and new ways of organising. She is dedicated to catalysing impact in general, and financial inclusion specifically, through connecting innovative and inclusive solutions with the challenges of corporations.
Website: http://erlijnsie.nl/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Susanne Chisthi, one of the leading names in the industry. Susanne started her career in finance before becoming an influential FinTech voice. Susanne is also renowned for her work with investors and FinTech startups through the FINTECH Circle which is a place where startups can seek education and angel investment. Susanne is also renowned for the wonderful books that she has written in collaboration with other co-authors and co-editors to educate the FinTech sector.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The unique thing about our books is that we crowdsourced the best knowledge, worldwide, because we believe in the power of the community. One person alone could never write such a comprehensive book on FinTech, RegTech, or InsurTech, for example. It would be impossible. But accessing knowledge from 70 authors globally, representing corporations, Tech startups, Tech scaleups, and thought leaders, all coming together and contributing their own expertise to the projects, makes these books extraordinary.
- Talking about the lessons we learned from lack of travel – when you buy products abroad you can claim the VAT back, sometimes large amounts. I never actually claim my VAT, because I never wanted to queue up at the airport to claim my VAT receipts. So I never claimed these back in my whole life. One of the FinTech companies I’m working with at present is putting this all online. Imagine the future of VAT claims. This is an example of FinTech hitting a pain point in B2C that millions of customers face worldwide and we can see already a huge impact when travel is back to normal.
- Diversity is a key thing for anybody in a large financial institution. The team should be diverse. When we think about the testing and development of AI, business leaders need to be accountable for it too. Particularly how fair AI-led decision-making is? Who gets accepted or rejected by an AI algorithm for a loan? Remember that those things can be very discriminatory if they’re coded wrongly. It is important for businesses to access a diverse workforce, to be able to develop AI-led technologies, and think about the use cases, how they can go wrong, and how to protect every individual through ethical AI. An ethical AI board is an important mechanism to ensure businesses are doing the right thing long-term and are avoiding renowned stereotypes. We have a responsibility as citizens to make things simpler and more transparent.
- We’ve seen lots of movement in the FinTech sector in terms of investment behavior, but the good news is that in the long term the FinTech sector will continue to boom and investors will want to stay in the sector. Investors will return and invest in ventures and deploy capital from the earlier stages to the later stages.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Our goal is to make FinTech a mainstream sector and, at some stage, to replace finance overall – there will be no finance without FinTech.’
‘Lots of banks are trying to figure out the best way to engage with the FinTech sector. It’s certainly easier said than done. The devil is often in the detail. If you acquire a FinTech company the key thing is to make sure you integrate the company into your organization well so that it still works after the acquisition without destroying its spirit so both the startup and the corporation can benefit.’
‘Technology is everybody’s responsibility, it’s mandatory for leaders to understand how technology can shape, empower and enable what they do from a strategic point of view.’
‘2020 was a year that shocked us all. I was in China in January of 2020 actually promoting a book. The effect of the current change will be profound. And nobody knows yet what the future will look like. So planning long term will remain challenging.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Susanne Chishti is the CEO of FINTECH Circle, Europe’s 1st Angel Network focused on fintech opportunities. Susanne is also the founder of the FINTECH Circle Institute, the leading fintech learning platform offering innovation workshops to C-level executives and online courses.
She is also the Co-Editor of the bestselling The FINTECH Book, which has been translated into 10 languages and is sold across 107 countries, as well as The WEALTHTECH Book, The INSURTECH Book, The PAYTECH Book, The AI Book, and The LEGALTECH Book (all published by WILEY).
She has also been a FinTech TV Commentator on CNBC.
After completing her MBA, Susanne started her career working for a FinTech company (before the term “FinTech” was invented in the Silicon Valley 20 years ago.) She then worked for more than 15 years’ across a number of financial institutions including Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, Morgan Stanley and Accenture in London and Hong Kong.
Website: https://fintechcircle.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Nicole Anderson, Founding Partner at Redsand Ventures who supported Sabine’s acceleration programs over a 5-year period by providing those startups with proposition design and go-to-market strategic thinking. These two skill-sets are so important to gain customers and access capital. On this episode, they talk about Nicole’s journey from a FinTech venture builder to a sustainable investor.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I have sat now, effectively, in almost every seat around the table when it comes to looking at what investible ventures look like, feel like, and what success should and could be. Thankfully, I’ve had to go through the toughest schooling to make venturing successful and break through some of the barriers in financial services. It has always been a big aspiration of mine to break down the barriers of consumerism and finance.
- The path I’ve been on is a perfect platform to learn how to access capital because there is money to be allocated in the world. There always will be. Still, it’s only when you’ve taken the journey yourself and been involved at the grassroots that you understand fundamentally what needs to be done. You can immediately see what the true impact of investment could be. I’ve finally got to the point in my life where I’m bringing it all together.
- I’m just a do-er really and I’ve always done things the hard way. Building ventures is very very tough and all the lessons that came out of that eight years prepared me for one thing: The biggest success factor in a venture is firstly knowing your market and not assuming it’s going to remain static. Secondly, thinking ahead of the market and remaining absolutely relevant with your value proposition. This requires a really strong degree of paranoia which then cascades down into how your business model evolves. Never make any assumptions that things are going to stay the same or you know your consumer/customer more than you think you do. Thirdly, everything fails without money. Money will always find a good opportunity, but never underestimate the runway you need to grow and scale.
- We are not a VC or private equity fund, we’re a private equity structure that uses very innovative project financing techniques to deploy financial instruments across a varied portfolio and absorb quite a lot of risk for that portfolio by the way we’ve engineered the allocation of money. We don’t invest at a very early stage, except in very strategic areas, but most of our work is in the growth phase of a venture, and we’ve moved well out of the area of financial services. I identified 5-6 areas – all verticals or industries – that I believe in. My goal is to build a stellar portfolio with one major investment in each one of them in order to make a significant impact in selected countries/regions, that’s the strategy we’ve taken.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Like anything in life, the best opportunities come to you rather than you chasing them down. Often, what you think you want is not actually good for you.’
‘I knew that if I was going to be successful I needed to sit on the money myself and be master of my own universe. By hook or by crook I was going to do what it took to find ways in which to build my own investment structure, so I set up a fund.’
‘The real frustration of many entrepreneurs is that their innovation which is often in the area of green innovation was being misunderstood. I wanted to fill that gap.’
‘We’re in an evolution phase. Anyone in the spectrum of grassroots investing right up to multi-fund structure is in the adoption phase of some kind of strategy linked to sustainability and ESG.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Nicole is a venture builder, investment (corporate venture, VC, family office, and token/digital asset) advisor. As a multiple-time technology entrepreneur (CEO & Founder) and an innovation thought leader, she has gained an in-depth knowledge of crypto technologies, blockchain, and green finance. Passionate about technology business models that are challenging the status quo and providing greater inclusion for people globally and having a positive impact on our environment, she has focused her lens on the intersection between emerging technologies and emerging markets both physical and virtual.
Her company Redsand Ventures, works with corporate visionaries and professional investors who are unfaltering in their execution of the green economy. It sits at the intersection of disruptive business models, and sustainable real estate as an investment opportunity. Redsand Ventures has built and exited over 10 disruptive ventures in financial technology in the last 7 years.
Voted Innovator of the Year, 2017 by the South African Chamber of Commerce, Top 100 Women in FinTech 2016 by Innovate Finance, and included in the Power Women of FinTech 2015, 2016, and 2017, Nicole is also active in the London and European start-up acceleration, incubation and growth arena working as an advisor and mentor to Level39, Startupbootcamp FinTech, London Tech Advocates – Women in Tech and FinTech workstreams.
Nicole serves as an industry thought leader and has featured on numerous panels and speaking circuits. She is a contributing author to The FinTech Book, exploring the role of corporate venturing as a catalyst for innovation in FinTech. She is also a co-editor of the InsureTech Book. Both books are published by Wiley.
She has an Honours Degree in Information Systems and Economics from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and graduated from the Institute of New Economic Thinking, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York specializing in the Economics of Money and Banking, and a Green Finance Professional from the Chartered Institute of Bankers.
Website: https://redsandventures.io/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Gwen Yu, an expert in sustainable finance with an understanding of transfer pricing too which helps international ventures to understand the best way to move internationally. Sabine talks to Gwen about how she made her way into sustainable finance, and how her past business and personal experiences have shaped her decision to support a better future and a better planet. During the course of the discussion, Gwen shares her vision, mission, and goals with regards to shaping a more sustainable future.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There is so much variety in everything that I’ve done in my career. It’s only looking back now that I see how all the different pieces fit together. If you take sustainability as a broader scope you’re looking at ESG in general, and transfer pricing is relevant when it comes to trying to figure out governance and how everything fits holistically within the puzzle. Everything from understanding your supply chain to trying to figure out where the demand goes.
- Early in my career a manager came to me and said: “The younger you are the more options you will have and it’s going to be really hard to make a decision to shut certain doors. But you shouldn’t look at it that way, you should look at it as that’s the path you’re going to go down now, and eventually, maybe you’ll circle back around. But early on, you need to define what’s important for you as a person. It doesn’t matter what that is, but you need to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and recognize the person you are.” That’s fuelled me through. I want to have a positive impact in whatever I’m doing and I want to leave wherever I’ve touched enhanced and better than if I hadn’t been there at all.
- To get a loan from a bank you would go through a credit committee which traditionally would check if the person is risky, has defaulted before, where are they placed, do they have a sound business plan, etc. To incorporate sustainability into what financial institutions are doing now, they’re looking at the sustainability rankings in terms of ESG (Environmental Social and Governance) of whoever it is they’re loaning to. Typically it’s mostly big corporations because that’s where the data is available (having proper supply chain governance, are they doing something harmful/positive for the biodiversity imprint that they may have, how are they doing the funding). This is now becoming more standard and will be rolled out so that when you go into the credit committee to get a loan, how sustainable you are will play a role in the type of interest rate that you get. If you’re not sustainable you’re a riskier client.
- Technology is going to be critical in driving sustainable finance change in the world. From the decision-making process, the inputs that are needed to go in in terms of data from the analysis will need to be pushed out, from the quality control that will need to happen to make sure it’s actually sustainable. I don’t think the big guys are going to be able to do it alone, the innovation will start out with small pockets and groups that have great ideas and push it through to ensure tech is doing good and serving a diversified community rather than a one-dimensional one.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I think transfer pricing gets a bad rap because one of the most important parts is trying to figure out the actual market price you should be paying for services as opposed to the negative connotation where you’re doing tax evasion.’
‘I believe the universe comes full-circle somehow and I’m not at the end of my circle, but I can see where all these interconnections happen.’
‘Purpose and impact has become much more important, much more than just what people want to say in their marketing, but actually drilling down to see how is what you’re telling me true? How are you doing what you say you’re going to do? Am I investing in companies that I feel are in line with my values?’
‘Sustainable finance is just adding what’s necessary in terms of is your money going good? Is it making a negative or positive impact? Is it going to serve the community or causes that you want it to serve?’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Gwen Yu is an expert in sustainable finance with expertise in transfer pricing and has worked with renowned companies including Sherpa and BNP Paribas. She also worked with the European Commission as a member of the data and usability subgroup.
Gwen can be found on LinkedIn under https://www.linkedin.com/in/gwen-yu/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Sam Evans, Partner at EOS Venture Partners, a Strategic Venture Capital fund and an InsurTech investment specialist with offices in London and Philadelphia. This is their 2nd interview as Sam appeared in episode 6 of Scouting for Growth. Here the pair discusses the topics of sustainability and ESG, the impact of urbanization, climate risk, and supply chain risk. Topics that have become increasingly important for many sectors of the economy with over 2.2 trillion searches on Google's search engine for the term ESG (as of May 2022.)
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- As a global economy, we’re facing a number of pivotal challenges. These include major weather-related events linked to climate change and other natural catastrophes, significant changes in terms of population dynamics in many parts of the world with aging populations, as well as the development of the right urban infrastructure to support people. With current urbanization trends, a significant proportion of the population is moving into cities, resulting in living and logistic issues. Insurance and InsurTech have a key role to play in supporting these major, macro shifts and changes.
- Equality, the access to healthcare, is going to be critical as we face growing populations. Here we’re looking at the ability to leverage different ways of thinking about insurance and making it less about a pure protection-driven product and more a protection-type focus to help them live healthier and longer lives.
- We’re going to see a lot more gig economy workers and we’re already seeing that traditional insurance solutions aren’t fit for purpose because they’re generic, they’re not usage-based, and they don’t align with the underlying behaviors of policyholders.
- Responding to natural catastrophes is an area where the insurance industry as a whole is already doing a huge amount of work and there are a lot of initiatives to try and reduce the protection gap, but clearly there’s still a huge proportion of vulnerable economies and populations that are lacking insurance. So, closing that protection gap is going to be important.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Clearly there’s a lot that can be done to make healthcare more affordable, easier to access, but also a lot more efficient.’
‘Close to 50% of the US population score badly from a credit risk perspective and are therefore penalised through the cost of their insurance. The ability to tailor usage-based coverage that switches seamlessly between personal and commercial usage – for example, if you’re using your vehicle for a ride-share scheme, this becomes very relevant for individuals.’
‘Energy usage and efficiency gains are going to become a lot more important. We have to be much more focused and smart around how we use resources. Technology can play a key role even from a home perspective on energy usage by using IoT, sensors and smart AI to improve behaviours, enhance efficiency and lower energy usage.’
‘Insurance touches every single part of the economy, so it’s a natural enabler for driving these initiatives.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Sam is a partner at EOS Venture Partners, a Strategic Venture Capital fund and an InsurTech investment specialist with offices in London and Philadelphia. EOS invests in Series A and Series B growth ventures with emerging business models and new technologies that will impact and transform the insurance industry.
Today EOS provides financing and advisory services to leading entrepreneurs building innovative businesses in the insurance sector. In partnership with RAW Capital Partners EOS offers a unique solution for growth stage InsurTech companies.
Website: https://www.eosventurepartners.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Nigel Walsh, Managing Director, Insurance at Google. Nigel is on a mission to make Insurance loveable. He spends his days helping insurance carriers unlock the power of Google Cloud and Alphabet, supporting startups, creating communities, building MGAs, writing papers, and much more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- In the last 15 years, I’ve truly fallen in love with insurance, I think it’s got a huge purpose, it’s massively misunderstood and mis-loved. You only have to step out of our little bubble of friends to your everyday friends – who don’t work in insurance – and ask them their perception or impression of insurance, and it’s not good. My desire is to turn that into something as joyful, delightful, and exciting as an experience of buying something online or engaging digitally in different ways.
- I love that the organization that I work for is so inclusive, beyond anything I’ve ever seen in my life. We have nine products that have over a billion active daily users, so you have to be able to manage, understand and design for everyone when you do that. Through an insurance lens, we have some of the smartest people on the planet that are thinking about things and help stretch your imagination in so many different ways.
- The platforms that we’ve got that surround our core technologies and cloud – like being able to look things up on YouTube, not just Google – give us the ability to help educate the world in a very very different way. My ambition is to string those pieces together to not just close the protection gap, but close the education gap, so everyone’s got accessibility and an understanding of what we’re doing going forward.
- Big corporations, and individuals, are physically transferring money into this new world (the Metaverse – which could be a fad like SecondLife and Clubhouse), then you’re also automatically creating risk and that risk could be or should be, protected. The most obvious thing to protect against in the Metaverse is cyber threats, which cost the industry billions year on year. And now we’ve opened up a whole new world and a new level of risk. We should now also spend some time exploring and understanding what these risks mean for customers and insurance carriers alike.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Our ability to enable large insurance carriers, small startups, and everything in-between with what we have, I felt like a stronger opportunity to be a force for good as we go to support consumers, corporates and so much more.’
‘Over the last couple of years, especially in lockdown, I found solace in the InsurTech community, who were sharing their success stories, especially in their exercise schedules. They’re always striving to move forward.’
‘I don’t read as many books as I used to, I love listening to podcasts because you can listen and learn while going about your day. We, as tech providers, service providers, and insurers, have to recognize how people choose to learn more and more today.’
‘Never before have we moved this quick, but never again will we move this slow. People will never want to go back when you think about our access to video conferencing and food delivery online. The question is how do we take more giant steps forward now?’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Nigel Walsh serves as the Managing Director for Insurance and Financial Services within Google Cloud division and the host of the InsurTech Insider podcast. He is on a mission to make insurance lovable.
He worked at Capgemini as Vice President, Head of UK Insurance, where he was responsible for building and developing the UK insurance operation and was a partner at Deloitte.
His interests include: Supporting startups. Creating communities. Building MGAs. Scouting new startups. Writing papers. Creating partnerships. Understanding the future of insurance. Deploying robots. Co-hosting podcasts. Creating propositions. Connecting people. Supporting projects in London, New York and Dublin. Building a global team.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nigelwalsh/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Andrew Cons, CEO of Bolttech’s European operations, who talks about his leadership journey, acquiring expertise over the years in strategy, business improvement, and founding his own venture.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Bolttech has grown from a PowerPoint to a unicorn within two years. It was different from the outset from anything I’d ever done before and that’s what really attracted me to the business, I had set up my own business before but this is unique in what we’re trying to do here. It’s a results-driven business and I’m a results-driven person, but I really love driving innovation and seeing that through to fruition, so when Bottech came to me I couldn’t really say no because it was such a great opportunity.
- The two big experiences where I’ve experienced great growth have been obviously here with Bolttech, building it from the ground up has been an amazing experience, and leading it from the front, setting the example, and building the culture in your own image is both exciting and a very privileged position to be in. Secondly, it was building out Asurion across Asia/Pacific, another big growth path that I took. Both paths bring a lot of pressure, but the pressure of growing a mature, stable business and doing that at lightning speed while simultaneously identifying and converting growth opportunities to make that happen is a privileged position to certainly be in.
- We connect insurers with distribution partners and then end customers. We’ve made a pretty good start on that mission so far, we achieved unicorn status with the largest ever Series A funding round for an InsurTech. To date, we’ve raised over $247 million from some key strategic investors. At the center of our business is the largest insurance exchange in the world, we now transact over $44 billion in quoted premiums annually.
- We see the digital ecosystem and ourselves as an enabler for our partners and our customers to gain the right protection at the time of need, which is really important. As a platform, what we are is the gel that sits and allows insurance carriers and distribution partners to deliver great insurance products on demand.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I fell into insurance but I’ve really enjoyed all the roles I’ve had as well as starting up my own venture and whether it’s leaving transformational change to building successful businesses from the ground up, I’ve certainly learned a lot on the way.’
‘I’ve been really lucky to build an amazing leadership team and organization that I believe is the best InsurTech business in Europe.’
‘We’re a many-to-many ecosystem for our partners and customers, we bring them together.’
‘Our mission is to become the world’s leading technologically enabled ecosystem. To deliver on that mission, we’ve developed the world’s largest insurance exchange, but on top of that we offer 5,000 insurance products – and growing – and we work with over 180 insurance providers to give that choice and quality of experience to our end customers.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Andrew Cons leads the Bolttech teams across Europe providing strategic and dynamic leadership as Bolttech builds the next generation of insurance services, protections, and ecosystems for Bolttech's existing and new partners in the European region. His experience spans a portfolio of businesses and a track record of results including extensive board-level leadership across technology, operations, and digital transformation.
Andrew leads an agile, future-ready team that is focused on expanding Bolttech’s reach by driving sustainable growth in Europe. Outside of work, he enjoys traveling, golfing, and spending time with his family.
Bolttech: https://bolttech.io/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Robin Kiera, the most renowned European FinTech and InsurTech influencer. He set up Digital Scouting in 2017 as a platform that now has 400,000 followers – which is not insignificant in this industry. Robin is a thought leader, an entrepreneur, and a senior leader who has worked in finance for years and gives practical tools and techniques around lessons to learn in the FinTech and InsurTech sectors.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Life can be ironic. I don’t like marketing agencies guys and I really despise consultants! I started as an insurance sale agent, from the ground up on commission for selling insurance policies on the streets of Hamburg. I always said, between me and the CEO of Allianz are 27 different levels of hierarchy, between me and the one below me was just the street. I saw a huge gap between what insurance can be: helping people, protecting them against risks in our lives, and the reality of selling insurance which didn’t have a lot to do with the desire and the demand of the buyer.
- At the beginning of the month, we had a list of clients to call, but the lists had nothing about their situations. We were not in the minds of our clients, they were going to banks and building societies. When I founded Digital scouting years later and we were crushing it on social media, we found our clients were standing in line. I remember thinking this is quite a different way to sell than I was doing previously. We started a blog with thought leadership pieces, went to conferences all around the world, and brought ideas back home from entrepreneurial start-ups so we can sell our policies like iPhone or other Apple products.
- We have very good, brilliant people working in the insurance industry. But it seems to me that most insurance ecosystems – in countries like Germany, France, Britain, USA – have nothing in common, no exchange, but there are so many interesting use cases in Britain, France, and the US that I really wanted to get to know what’s going on. I wanted to see the international trends. That’s what made me want to bring these great ideas back to Germany.
- When I announced that I was leaving Allianz to go into an online gaming company that has only been around for 3 years, people were calling the company doctor to see if I was feeling OK. How could I leave that security? Sometimes you lull yourself into a false sense of security. Once I decided to start my own business, I just had to do it because you can still go back to great stable and corporate jobs in this industry or another sector. I don’t want to regret anything when I lay my head on the pillow for the last time.
BEST MOMENTS
Everybody says: “We don’t sell products, we consult”. Yeah, alright, let’s talk at the end of the year.’
‘People tell me “Robin, you’re the rebel of the industry”.’
‘I think everybody likes frictionless transactions, not just Generations Y and Z. And their tolerance when it comes to incompetency and friction is certainly getting lower, which I think is just right.’
‘There were no downs in building my business, we always grew organically. Any downs were brought about by my own stupid mistakes, like keeping a bad tax advisor for too long... things like that.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Dr Robin Kiera is the Founder and CEO of Digital Scouting, a consulting and marketing agency based in Germany. Robin is an author, renowned speaker, entrepreneur, and top-ranked insurance, and finance influencer.
He started Digital Scouting as an after-work hobby that exploded positively and became a multimedia B2C, B2B, and B2B2C consulting and marketing agency – supporting entrepreneurs, c-suite executives, and start-ups in their digital transformations, market-entry, hacking the attention of customers and partners through digital media.
Before being recognized as the “Attention Hacker” in the insurance and finance industry he was labeled as the “Rebel of Industry” radically exposing the elephant in the room through targeted topics tackled via his on-stage rants, videos, and blogs. Being genuine with his contributions he was recognized in top industry rankings, supported by more than 140,000 followers when he started generating 16 million of reaches every month.
Digital Scouting: https://www.digitalscouting.de/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Minh Tran, founding partner of Mandalore Partners (and also her co-founder at Alchemy Crew) about the world of Venture Capital Funds. He has worked in the Corporate VC world for 30 years, most recently in financial services and founding Mandalore Partners 10 years ago.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- When you are a Corporate Venturer you have two models, one is to invest in VC outside – that’s not really a corporate venture, but you have that option, the second is to create your own team internally, for many reasons, this model hasn’t worked in the long run. I came up with a third model, which is how to externalize corporate venture funds – to reach out to startups with both a financial interest and a strategic alignment of corporates. This is Venture Capital as a Service.
- Resilience comes from lateral thinking too when investing. You can enter the market of your core industry, but you can also reach out to new industries that can impact your core industry. If you’re a retailer, you invest in your core business, but FinTech could disrupt retail finance, so you could reach out to FinTech ventures, not just retail. So you’re prepared for disruption.
- SIDE – Source, Invest, Develop, Exit. Each step of our process has been optimized. Source is the ability to source better than a corporation, we combine public data (Crunchbase) with private data (corporate assignments) to come up with a list of startups. We then invest like a VC. We develop a portfolio management plan like a VC, but I do things differently, more hands-on than VCs. Then Exit, again I use VC techniques to exit at some point with or without the corporate.
- Like any VC I look at if the market is growing, how the product would fit in the market, what is the business model/plan, and what is the team? I also look at a fifth element: The leverage we can access from the corporation. This could help accelerate the startup or the valuation of the startup.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The Mandalore Partners name came from a planet from Star Wars because I wanted to look to the future and I found out it was a good name to have because it was about mobility, globality, tech, and now The Mandalorian TV series.’
‘There’s a bad reputation to having a corporate venture fund in the market that has the same name as your corporation, this is why externalizing VC activities and having a different name is attracting more startups to our fund while also providing the returns the corporates want.’
‘When we talk to corporates when they’re looking to InsurTech and they want to be exposed to another tech, an external model can help you assess the new industries you seek where you have or you don’t have expertise.’
‘I focus a lot of work on where to invest to have the best impact tools and platforms.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Minh is the Managing Partner of Mandalore Partners, which seeks to create an innovative framework that enables investors of firms in early stages to achieve scale exposure to a range of traditional, alternative, and tech venture capital assets.
In addition to his experience as one of the founding team members at AXA Ventures, Minh was also an integral part of several other VC firms, including Nokia Ventures, Bertelsmann Ventures, and Truffle Capital.
Mandalore Partners: https://www.mandalorepartners.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Elisa Vlerick, a partner at Ninepointfive Ventures, the Venture Capitalist dedicated to Corporate Venturing. Elisa loves removing syntax complexity from the proverbial crap, applying creativity and execution to everything she does.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Corporate Venturing differentiates from traditional VC activity in the sense that you have the power/leverage of a corporate to scale faster, to have what we call an unfair competitive advantage in the market. That really attracted me to Ninepointfive.
- Often there’s a lot of resistance within companies to start cannibalizing their own business, to start new ventures that are often very small. For billion-dollar companies, it’s hard to start something new that is not totally fitting into the existing company. They also don’t always have the skills or the right people to implement a new business model and there’s sometimes not the appetite because the new business would be so small compared to the main business so it wouldn’t get the attention it deserves.
- The reason we build the venture together with the corporate is because this provides alignment with strategic interests. What we want to build together with them is a successful company with financial returns. If the strategic interests are not aligned with the financial objective that we have, usually we’re not the right partner.
- The assumption is that tech-y people aren’t female. It’s like doctors, 20-30 years ago 90% of doctors were male and 90% of nurses were female, nowadays it’s 50/50, if not more female doctors. I think it’s a matter of time, 1-20 years and it will even out in our industry. It’s said women are more risk averse or less daring – and maybe there’s something in that – but once this idea that it’s really challenging and daring to start a startup is gone, I don’t see a reason why this wouldn’t go up to 50/50.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Our team is very interesting because we come from different angles and that makes our decision making and investment processes more interesting and, hopefully, better.’
‘Taking the whole activity outside the corporate with our knowledge of building startups fuelled by the resources from the corporate makes a startup better placed in the market than a regular startup.’
‘The key to our success is finding the right people to make it happen. You can have a great financial plan, but it needs to happen and it can only happen if the team is there.’
‘Surround yourself with people that are better than you and will dare to go against the tide, or criticise the prevailing opinion, they’re going to make better decisions.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
When complexity threatens to get the upper hand, Elisa picks up her pen. With that pen, she cuts through the proverbial crap, and to the bone. Elisa is resolute in her belief that strong business ideas can only prosper when ambiguity and prejudice are left at the door. When things are clear, creativity can flourish. From there onward she’ll tell you: “le bonheur est dans l’action”.
https://www.ninepointfive.vc/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews IBM’s David Kwon about how insurance companies have had to navigate a decade of societal change. From the financial crisis and the rise of digital technology to changing consumer expectations, insurers face challenges that are fundamentally altering the very core of our industry.
Does the question remain whether property and casualty insurers will be able to keep pace with changes in society over time? Are they focusing on the right priorities? And what about life insurance – is BigTech making any headway here to challenge established practices?
In this episode they discuss these trends and examine how insurers can best position themselves for success during this period of rapid transformation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- To remain relevant, insurers must find ways to embrace change while also ensuring profitability despite the current blurred competitive boundaries. While some insurers have embraced the new environment with open arms, others seem reluctant to adapt or even acknowledge potential opportunities for growth.
- Mass-personalisation is the goal of every large insurer, not just for consumer products but insurers targeting B2B customers as well. The technology has evolved to a point where videos on a website can be personalized to each person, not just seeing your name on a website, but addressing you by your first name, referencing your family, etc.
- There are a lot of new risk pools, including self-driving cars. There are six levels of autonomy here, from level 1 being cruise control to full autonomy. Up to level 4 the liability is still with the driver, but AI is taking a bigger and bigger role in the driving, so insurance writers now have to begin to think about the AI as a risk, just like the driver. At level 5, where there’s no steering wheel, it becomes product liability and the responsibility moves from the driver to the manufacturer, which is a completely different business. It also impacts home and auto bundling. The overall auto market will start to shrink as more people buy autonomous cars.
- For insurers this is an interesting time, we’re beginning to see new risks emerging as the foundations of risk are getting more attention than before. There are 3 big disruptive technologies: IoT, AI, and hybrid cloud.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Covid has exposed the vulnerability of the interconnected world, the western world was hit first and suffered faster before it spread to third world countries.’
‘Science and technology are key to solving the toughest challenges in our society.’
‘The days of easily targeting users by buying third party data is passing us quickly. Insurers must now focus on first party data by engaging directly with the prospects and policy holders and get the data themselves through deeper engagement and better experience.’
‘Covid accelerated ecommerce by about 2 years. All businesses, even small ones, are relying on technology more than ever before.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
David Kwon is a sought-after Digital Reinvention Executive to IBM’s largest US and international insurance and banking clients. David is an associate partner within IBM business transformation services and a member of IBM Industry Academy.
David has delivered over 60 strategy and transformation projects as an engagement leader and in executive strategic roles ranging from digital strategy, customer experience, business case for change.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkwon1/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Dr Dietmar Kottmann, a Partner of Oliver Wyman in Munich and a member of the insurance, and the digital practices. Dietmar has more than 20 years of management and strategic consulting experience. During this time, he has led numerous projects on strategy, IT, operational strategy, organisation, and digitisation. He leads insurance in the DACH region and is the lead author of the “InsurTech radar” series.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- One of the most negative examples I had in my consulting career was in the .com days. We did a large ecommerce strategy project for one of the large travel players and the core strategy we recommended for them, we know today with hindsight that it was the right strategy because it was later executed by a startup, but the client was unable to execute it. Even though, intellectually it was spot on, we were unable to set up the client for success. That keeps me awake at night. Consulting is not R&D, or what you do at university, it’s generating real impact for your clients.
- Oliver Wyman – more or less – has three kinds of clients 1) financial sponsors who want to invest in (digital) insurance businesses, 2) customers who want to build something new in the InsurTech space, 3) helping our incumbent clients transform and become more successful in the digital world. This last one is our bread and butter.
- There are always three kinds of innovation: 1) efficiency innovations – reducing waste, 20 sustaining innovations – making the product better every year with features, coverages, engagement models, 3) market creating innovations – where you think about how the market is changing and where you position yourself for future success.
- When you think about a problem you have to start with someone whose life and existence you might want to improve – a company or individual. What progress are they seeking – functional, emotional, social? All three must be considered to help the customer. That is the most fun part of the business, really thinking about what we’re doing in a fundamental way and going much, much deeper and being much more interesting and playing to my curiosity than “how can I advance the next generation of my product”.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I started my career on the nerd side of the universe, playing with computers and programming on a Sinclair Zx81. Since then I looked for a career that allowed me to combine my passion with technology and computer science with effecting something in the real world: Strategy Consulting.’
‘There’s one big theme in my life: Curiosity, like a child. That’s the big driver that gives me energy and drives me forward so I don’t repeat things and am open to new things and new developments.’
‘Thinking about impact from day one, and embedding that impact into how you run your consulting project, I think that makes a difference.’
‘When you look at what makes InsurTech business successful, it’s one of two kinds of business: 1) those who are looking are actually working on an inefficiency in a market and launch something that improves that by a large factor, 2) platform business models, a technology driven business model that rents market access to customers like Amazon.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Prior to joining Oliver Wyman, Dietmar worked at the Boston Consulting Group in Munich and New York, where he led various major strategy, IT and operations projects across an array of industries. Before working in management consulting, Dietmar held a number of technology roles in IT project management, system integration, sales, and education.
Dietmar graduated from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) with a diploma and a PhD in computer science with honours and from the University of Hagen with a diploma in business administration.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dietmar-kottmann-19620a/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Tanguy Touffut, founder and CEO of Descartes Underwriting, a top of its space InsurTech company which is recognized as a top-grade growth venture in its category, parametric insurance. It recently raised $120 million in series B funding with the likes of Mundi Ventures, BlackFin, Cathay Innovation to name but a few.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- After graduating I really wanted to launch a company shares Tanguy, but lacked some of the skills and I wanted to increase my purchasing power, so I started in the corporate world. There are plenty of benefits when working for a large corporation: the resources, expertise, strong colleagues and you have less skin in the game. But the scope of things you can do as a startup is much wider. The venture capital market is quite bullish about the insurance industry, even if the valuations are decreasing. There’s lots of capital available and you can have a long-term view, compared to large groups who have a short-term view on profitability.
- There’s a lot of confusion about parametric insurance. It’s not a line of business or a product, it’s an approach to improve product features. It’s the result of years of frustration about insurance that opened up new ways of thinking within the corporate realm. Customers are poorly served in this space and the economics don’t work that well and there’s a lack of transparency, which was increased by the Covid-19 pandemic. "Parametric" has become a way to address these challenges by offering better product features to customers and improving the insurers' trust by making things more true, and more transparent.
- When you launch your own company with your co-founders, the team is the most important part of the equation: The most precious asset. You need to convince enough people to believe in you in order to build the best team that works well together. The first years aren’t that easy, you have to work extremely hard and be able to step back and criticize your own way of working. This is something you can’t achieve if you aren’t motivated and resilient, or able to take hits. But you always need to be surrounded by the right minds, energies, and beliefs.
- Brokers are definitely dominant in the corporate sector. They are very useful for clients to understand how insurance for corporates works. This is why we only want to work and ally ourselves with brokers for them to better serve their clientele.
- I believe that every link of the insurance value chain will be disrupted in the next 5-10 years. Think banking un-bundling and re-bundling! This is happening to us too right now. Some companies are going direct to consumers or corporates with their strategy (don't be fooled). At Descartes Underwriting, we think this is a mistake...
BEST MOMENTS
‘Working as an insurer in the sector of natural catastrophes and climate change is extremely rewarding.’
‘As a corporate employee, I used to use data to model the risk and process payments. Looking at wildfires – which is one of the fastest-growing risks in the world today due to climate change – we use AI neural networks to understand the locations and figure out how badly damaged the locations we analyzed were.’
‘Parametric covers can be based on the number of casualties, the number of shops that must be closed in a specific location due to a lockdown, and much more. Still, the goal is to use parameters to make people whole faster.’
‘There are plenty of conventions within the insurance sector. Most of all, insurance has a good reason to exist. Still, the industry was created 338 years ago. As an entrepreneur, you must evaluate and identify the rules that make no sense at all, break them and rebuild them better.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Tanguy Touffut was the CEO of AXA Global Parametrics and Head of Security & Agriculture where he worked for 8 years before becoming an entrepreneur.
In 2019, Tanguy set up Descartes Underwriting, an InsurTech and MGA working with brokers with offices in New York, Houston, Denver, London, Paris, Singapore and Sydney.
Descartes collaborates with brokers across the world to protect their corporate clients & governments against natural catastrophes, weather, and emerging risks, through a unique data-driven approach.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanguy-touffut-584b202/?originalSubdomain=fr
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews David King, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer of fast-growing InsurTech startup, Artificial Labs or Artificial.io to discuss the company's strengths and how sport influences David's choices and business outlook.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Artificial is very much focused on facilitating algorithmic underwriting within the insurance sector. That means that the Artificial team works with brokers and underwriters to get the data into the right format so that it can be shared between the two and, once it’s been shared... define what the process, pipeline and fundamentals should be to improve decision making and customer experiences and interactions.
- Insurance is an industry where data AND relationships are really important. We use technology (and algorithms) to help automate the decision making process. The number of variables that a human can take into account in order to make a decision is between 5-7 variables. If you keep on adding more to the decision-making process, then the accuracy of models and algorithms start to decrease. If a business is supported by the right technology, one can make a decision that’s either automated or presented in a detailed and informed assessment of risk. This enables human actors that would make key decisions to make the right commercial risk decisions, even if partly automated.
- It’s not just about the ability to train a model to assess risks to improve your underwriting performance and make it efficient, it is also about the ability to operate within ecosystems. Part of our secret sauce is that we have a domain-specific programming language that allows us to codify an underwriter’s appetite and to leverage and integrate with any data source or service in order to make a decision.
- More data are going to be available in future. It is a fact. Are underwriters going to have to be more sophisticated in the way they make decisions? Definitely. Is the market going to become more efficient and therefore does the operational cost ratio need to be lower? Even more... Yes. I think underwriters will need to work closely with portfolio managers, people with more maths skills – I don’t necessarily think that means machine learning/ data scientist type skills will become closer to the underwriting decisions on a day-to-day basis, but I do think that you may have a multi-disciplinary team that understands where the data is coming from and what’s driving true decisions.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I’ve always been quite competitive and love "sport." I like team sports probably because my own abilities are quite poor. If you’re a team player you can leverage the abilities of other people and I look to elite sport to understand what cultures drive performance and how people operate too.’
‘Technology won’t take over and make all the decisions. Still, you’ll have strategies that are set by very data-informed people and you can execute that across a broad spectrum of products, services, and classes.’
‘The models are only as good as the data you provide to them, but the models don’t exist in isolation, they also exist in a business that needs to be operationally efficient.’
‘You now need to operate while understanding that you’re not going to have all the components end-to-end, so you need to be able to play nicely with others. This will lead to greater efficiency that provides greater experiences to customers. This also means you keep them longer and can then sell them more things.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
David King has worked in digital media and technology since graduating from Nottingham University Business School with a degree in Industrial Economics in 2005. After spending a gap year as Troop Commander in the British Army, King spent time as a Digital Planner for Carat, where he worked with global brands such as Yahoo!, British Gas and Santander.
King moved on to become Director at Sure Insurance Services in 2009 where his knowledge of the digital space helped to bring innovative insurance products to market in the medical and health insurance sectors. It was here that his understanding of the insurance market grew, setting the stage for his later foray into space with Artificial Labs.
Following his time at Sure, King set up his own digital services company called Data Stripes in 2011. The company delivered highly polished, data-intensive, digital applications for some of the world's biggest brands.
In 2013, the success of Data Stripes led King to merge with Johnny Bridges' company ConceptMill, creating Artificial Labs. The company provided high-quality, data-led design to global clients such as BMW, Levi's and Betfair.
In 2016, Artificial pivoted into the insurance space, building partnerships with firms such as AXIS and Ambris. King's existing industry experience, combined with Bridges' previous work in insurance companies, meant that the company could take advantage of a growing need for high-quality data and digital platforms amongst insurance companies.
Since 2017, King has been steering the commercial ship at Artificial, helping to develop partnerships with global insurance brands such as Convex, Chaucer, Aon and TMHCC. With years of experience in technological innovation now under its belt, the company is prospering as a provider of algorithmic underwriting technology to the London market and beyond.
Websites: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malarkeyking/ and https://artificial.io/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Nick Pester. Sabine has known Nick for over 4 years. They met when Nick showed strong interest in the tech startups accepted within Sabine’s accelerator programs and was willing to mentor them with advice when he was leading the Financial Services, Insurance & InsurTech practices at Capital Law.
Nick moved from legal advice within a legal firm to becoming the group general of one of the leading InsurTech growth ventures in the UK. He is also an Advisor to the Chartered Insurance Institute and the Centre for Data Ethics & Innovation on Digital Ethics and the use of Artificial Intelligence in Insurance. On this podcast they catch-up to understand what the past 4 years has brought to him in terms of lessons learnt.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- I fell into insurance, the firm I applied to for a training contract was a media and entertainment specialist, which was something I was interested in at the time – advising big bands on tour around the world! But they had a really strong insurance practice and I really enjoyed the fact that there was a dual-layer to all the legal aspects we dealt with: The insurance layer and the underlying subject matter.
- My day tends to be partnership focused, there’s always something going on in the partnership front. There’s claims to deal with, but otherwise it’s running around responding to the fires as and when they arise, dealing with them as best you can and trying to have the headspace to look more than a week or a month ahead and think strongly about the strategy of the legal function and the wider business.
- Law firms and some other businesses tend to be far too fixated on the granularity of academics and qualifications. Of course, you need to be qualified, but actually what turns a good lawyer into a really great lawyer is personality and character. People who can roll with the punches, take something on the chin and move on, most importantly for lawyers, people who can accept being wrong. I don’t think lawyers as a profession are very good at admitting when they’re wrong, but in a startup environment, you need to be prepared to make mistakes, it’s part and parcel of learning.
- One of the biggest challenges in the insurance market with respect to data and the usage of data is transparency and fairness, which everybody wants to ensure, against commerciality and sensitive information. The most obvious example of this is pricing. The balance between using data to improve our products and services, and to drive greater revenue and growth against how much customers want to know about them. With AI, it’s a very difficult area in the context of regulated activities, because you need to have explainability, why someone has been priced in a certain way. It’s going to be very difficult to build a genuinely self-managing, machine learning intuitive system with the necessary explainability and insight that goes with that.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I like flying by the seat of my pants. I like a challenge, I like disruption, I’m very passionate about trying to improve things within the sphere of influence that I have in the legal and tech areas.’
‘Bringing a commercial eye to partnerships is incredibly important as a lawyer in-house.’
‘To build a sustainable growth venture you need three things: A very clear mission of what you’re trying to solve/address, spend money on getting the best people and focus on one thing/the key offering before moving on to something else.’
‘The trends I’m seeing is a greater focus on existing portfolio companies and investors looking after their existing stock. Lots of aggressive investment in already trading, sustainable businesses. People are finding it harder in Seed capital, which has been a bigger challenge in the last 18 months.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Nick Pester is responsible for the Legal and Compliance functions at Wheely, a luxury ride hailing service offering on demand professional chauffeuring at the touch of a button.
Previously he has been responsible for the Legal & Regulatory functions at the Zego Group, a market-leading InsurTech business focussed on commercial motor where he oversaw a growth period of 80 to 600 employees during which the business achieved unicorn status, completing a $150m Series C fundraise in early 2021.
Prior to that, he was Head of the Financial Services & FinTech practices at Capital Law, providing a more niche/specialist offering, grounded in a highly commercial approach.
As well, he was Advisor to the Chartered Insurance Institute and the Centre for Data Ethics & Innovation on Digital Ethics and the use of Artificial Intelligence in Insurance and also acted as an advisor and mentor to a number of individual FinTech & InsurTech businesses in the past, as well as wider accelerator/incubator programmes.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-pester-b2b13738/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Sid Chakravarthy, founder and CEO of StaTwig and a leading expert in emerging technology including The Internet of Things, Blockchain, Metaverse and NFTs. Sid uses these to develop solutions that have a large-scale social impact.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There are big problems with drugs and vaccines when you look at the last mile delivery system or indeed getting to the people who really need them. They get damaged, spoiled, stolen in order to be sold on black markets, so I thought I could use my ‘Bay-area skills’ to solve some real-world problems and that’s how I started the company.
- Supply chains are a very complex network of partners, so to speak, who are working together to bring a product to the final consumer. But there’s a lot of confusion and a lack of interoperability when it comes to sharing information with each other. They all track the product as it passed through their own company, but it stops when they had it onto the next partner. We provide end-to-end visibility of how the product is moving across the supply chain leveraging blockchain.
- The data that this technology makes available is scalable, it can be used by underwriters to figure out risks in each part of the supply chain: how much product is getting damaged? how do I write a policy for that? you can prevent specific claims from happening because you have full transparent visibility of key data points. And those show that there could be a failure in one part of the supply chain or another.
- The Metaverse and NFTs are not that complex at all. Think of a gamer, he is involved in and essentially living in a full-time game, talking to people, buying and selling things, etc. Scale that up to non-gamers, imagine an alternate world where people can plug in and do what they want: shopping, clubbing, travel, building a home, anything. The possibilities are endless. That’s the Metaverse, a digital reality where you can plug in any time and live fully in there. NFTs is a certification of ownership of digital art, 500 million people might have that digital art on their laptop, but there’s only one certificate that says “this is the actual owner of it and all the copies”. Think about your Picasso or Rembrandt. Can you prevent the copies? No, but you may be able to in the future with NFTs! This gives you access to use, sell, brand and rent that product (digitally) for any kind of commercial reason. Think about using your digital art and assets within the Metaverse.
BEST MOMENTS
‘When I started the company vaccines were a very boring product, Covid made it very attractive all of a sudden! But by then we already had a solution to solve some big problems with Covid.’
‘Internet access and blockchain technology have allowed the birth of a new kind of transparency and visibility. This could never have been done as easily before. Ans this because the customer is asking for it.’
‘Once the product moves from one touch point to another ("airport to courier" or "from manufacturer to consumer") we are annotating the journey and telling the story of it as it moves along its path transparently. Each item has its own tracking number and lots of tracking data about each individual product within each container.’
‘NFTs can act as a way of bringing your real-world products into the Metaverse by using what is called a true certificate of ownership allowing you to transact digitally within the new internet.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
StatWig is a platform that ensures the qualitative and safe supply of vaccines. The platform provides continuous visibility and actionable insights to ensure the making of real-time decisions.
Sid is a leader in emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain. He uses these technologies to develop solutions that have a large-scale social impact on the world supply chains.
Sid launched StatWig 6 years ago to record the journey of products across supply chains from manufacturer to customer to create an extra layer of visibility, transparency and authenticity.
The team has worked with customers such as UNICEF, Gavi, NASDAQ and the World Economic Forum among others.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sidchakravarthy/
Email: sidchaks@statwig.com
Website: https://statwig.com/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/statwig/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Tobias Taupitz, CEO and Co-Founder of Laka to talk about interesting points around business model innovation, leadership and culture, and expansion in new markets.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Why should you protect future losses when you can look backwards knowing exactly how much you need to charge to cover your costs of claims? We do so retroactively shares Tobi, so as not to incur a credit risk or payment default risk. It is all about balancing the risk, including actuarial risk. This way we know down to the penny how much we need to recover in a month, we can be fully transparent because we’re a high frequency, and a low margin player. Customers get a monthly breakdown from us showing what happened within their risk pool of like-minded people, and we split the costs among them. We have a cost-plus business model in insurance where we add a fee on top of every claim we settle – a success fee almost – so, ironically, the more claims we settle the more money we make.
- The Laka model, or whatever it will be called eventually – a credit-based insurance proposition – should be the status quo across the industry because it’s the only way in my mind that it’s a fair and appealing to customers. It will change the game.
- In a world where brand trust is at an all-time low and traditional insurers have commoditised themselves to the point of no return (thanks to the price comparison websites for example,) the next big buzzwords such as ‘embedded insurance' do not help create brand awareness. Such buzzwords become more and more interchangeable. We’re trying to build an insurance brand people can trust, that they want to associate themselves with, which allows us to do cool things like horizontal cross-selling, a ‘colour-in’ health product which is a modern take on personal accident cover and vertical expansion.
- To all founders: You’re not alone, there are many great people out there willing to help, but it’s up to you to express what you need and how you would like to work together. Be radical and say “no” to advice that doesn’t fit in because you’re the only person that knows your business, the way you do. Nevertheless, highly stimulating viewpoints (as always) are always great to listen to and learn from.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Why estimate when you can be accurate?’
‘Laka is the divine goddess of prosperity and hula dancing – we saw this a very fitting comparison about well-being and having some fun.’
‘We want to be the lifestyle brand within the mobility insurance.’
‘With 125 million active cyclists with a high-end or insurable bike in a growing market is a fantastic place to be. In England alone, 47% of people aged 5 and over owned or had access to a bicycle in 2020. If you focus efficiently, you can own the full supply chain from front to end. That’s what we’re building with modes around sustainable mobility in Europe.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Tobias Taupitz’s aim is to turn a century’s old insurance operating model on its head. He has spent years in the Corporate Finance teams at Barclays and KPMG, covering financial technology and insurance clients. Rediscovering his passion for insurance, he made it his mission to align customer and insurer interests, moving from premiums upfront to payments in arrears.
Tobias graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Insurance and Actuarial Sciences from the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and attended University College Dublin and the National University of Singapore to earn his CEMS Master’s in International Management degree.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobiastaupitz/
Website: https://laka.co/gb
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Allison or Ally Schneider who heads up venture partnerships at Vouch, a US business insurance platform for startups. Vouch raised over $160 million in investment funding so far with well-renowned investors including Silicon Valley Bank, Index Ventures and Y Combinator. Ally talks to Sabine about the company’s business model and helps us understand how Vouch helps founders like you grow and scale in the right way.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The product and experience have been very manual traditionally, we’ve been able to build a digital-first experience for founders to be able to obtain business insurance. They can apply through our site in 7-10 minutes through our questionnaire, which asks specific questions about their business that gives them a customised quote in terms of what coverage and limits we recommend, and they can adjust those parameters to suit them and their coverage will go live at midnight on the same day. This not only reduces the time for the startup founders but also provides a very easy self-service experience for those that want it to be self-served.
- When you think of legacy risk classification systems, they tend to be very broad and vague. We break it down into 70 niche codes (from connected home devices to B2B SaaS, AI/machine learning) to get really granular and customised about the customer needs in their different types of companies. That goes into our underwriting algorithm to be able to say these are the coverages that make the most sense for your business in terms of where you are today as well as the ones you might like to look at as the business grows and scales in the future.
- We have 10 proprietary lines of covers. We’re in the process of becoming a full carrier, which gives us a lot more flexibility to go direct-to-consumers, to do more from a discounting and bundling perspective, and flexibility from a timing perspective as well as to put coverage in place and bound the risk quickly. We also take a really proactive approach to risk management as well.
- A founder has so many responsibilities, to their business and people too. There are things that founders are incredible at, and having business insurance expertise typically isn’t one of them – and nor should it. We think about our role as to how we can make this process as painless, easy, cost-effective and high quality, as we should be able to save these founders time and energy so that they can focus their time and effort on the things that are really important to their business
BEST MOMENTS
‘The energy that you get spending your days surrounded by the most amazing entrepreneurs and founders, talking with them through the most interesting problems that they’re solving: That doesn’t get old.’
‘I get asked if I’m a corporate or a startup person, I actually really enjoy both environments as long as I can collaborate with the other.’
‘When business insurance matters, it really matters. It’s an area where it’s really high importance but low awareness. We saw the opportunity to build really innovative products and services that are really geared towards these types of companies as we really want to fill that education gap too: or why business insurance is really important for founders.’
‘Our insurance advisors’ expertise set us apart in terms of how we engage with our customers or the startup founders effectively and directly. They understand the inner workings of how startups operate and what it means to be an eCommerce business vs a SaaS business... the milestones those companies go through and the risks they face.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Allison Schneider is heading Venture Ecosystem Partnership at Vouch Insurance, she is relatively new to the InsurTech world with a background in corporate and startup collaborations. She started her career at IBM Waston on IBM's startup partnership programme, supporting startups that were building off IBM’s AI and machine learning APIs, offering them the technology, support and resources they needed to grow. Through that role, Alli fell in love with AI and machine learning, technology in general, and the possibilities and use cases of how these technologies can be utilised.
After IBM she spent some time at a venture-backed startup called x.ai building out their sales and business development practice, working with corporates from the other side of the table. She then went back into corporate, working at Principal, E*TRADE Ventures and Labs, leading the startup mission there while engaging and building bridges with FinTech and enterprise tech startups shaping proof of concepts, prototypes and commercial pilots.
https://www.vouch.us/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Roman Rittweger, founder and CEO of Ottonova – a digital health insurance provider for individual patients and self-employed people. Today, seven+ years after it was started, Ottonova has over 100 employees and has deployed a marketplace (or an end-to-end platform) that helps users register for and access health insurance coverage for medical services. By 2022, the team had raised over $145 million in Series E. Some of its investors include great names such as Early Bird Venture Capital and Seven Ventures.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Health insurance is one of the most complicated insurances to build. People asked me why I wanted to do this, build a HealthTech InsurTech and why I wouldn’t just want to be a service provider for a health insurance company? My answer is I already had been a service provider and I didn’t enjoy it much because you can’t steer the business your way. I wanted to be able to design the tariff, be the customer’s partner, make the sale at the very beginning of the engagement, manage the customer and make them really happy, as well as save costs at the end for all the parties involved. To do this you need to have the whole package.
- We work in two ecosystems: the insurance ecosystem where we are the most modern player in Germany, we have the highest net promoter score (67, where the number two has 34). At the same time, we sell our software in Germany and get into other areas and other ecosystems like life insurance where we’re starting to sell products and software to other health insurance providers.
- I definitely see that the lines are blurring between health and wellness. We have created a HealthX Club where, in exchange for taking part in market research with us, we give our users' bonus points to spend on their AppleWatch, fitness club, meditation app, etc. The German customers are insured with us, we want them to stay healthy. Also, we’re starting to work with partners in the fitness field, and even in cosmetics and dental as we figure out if we can add an insurance part to their product. As we’re digital and relatively agile, it’s very easy for us to build that for them.
- Our VCs were very much shocked by the amount of regulation and the volume of people we had to bring on board to become compliant and get our insurance licence. They were also shocked by the amount of money we had to invest. After a while, we started to look for other ways to bring financing into the company. We had to go via new routes including re-financing. Note that German investment leaders are not tech-savvy, so they invested with us because they wanted to learn from us. We know that corporate venturing (or the stage where corporates want to partner and invest) will always be there for companies like ours because it is part of the stages of any industry-led startup growth process.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I had to wait for the right time, and have a little bit of luck as well, to start Ottonova. This took me 10 years.’
‘Finding the right customer was the only easy part!’
‘We ask our customers what they want because what you think they might want isn’t what’s important for them. Here is an example, rather than getting medicine delivered before they need it by drone, they’d prefer for bills to be paid within 24 hours rather than 48 hours. Understanding such nuances is truly understanding your customers' needs.’
‘In our case, our direct chat and the service we provide day-to-day is actually much more important for our customers than the ‘sexy’ telemedicine engagement platform we created – we haven’t seen a big uptake in that for instance yet.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Roman Rittweger is a doctor by training, though he didn’t work for long in medicine, he worked as a consultant on the macro-level of healthcare and insurance, thinking of the customer and how to provide a better experience for them and how to make it more affordable by steering the customer towards the right kind of medical care. His first startup was a medical provider for health insurance helping the insured population to find the right physician or to work with their chronic diseases.
He sold this company to Germany’s largest private health insurer at the time and became a consultant again. He learned about marketing and sales because he’d realised through his experience that this is the most important thing. He eventually started looking for the next big area in which he could start more startups and six years ago he sold his consultancy and jumped into the world of digital health insurance, founding Ottonova.
https://www.ottonova.de/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Steven Mendel, CEO and Co-Founder of Bought By Many, an InsurTech startup that is really well known across the UK market with a new brand launched in the US under the brand name "ManyPets." Bought By Many is making the world a better place for pet parents through its tech-enabled insurance products and services.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The first startup I was involved with was in the investment consulting space in the mid-90s, from there I became a management consultant and went on to set up three more startups, all in the finance space but none of them directly to do with insurance. Bought By Many started off in the broader insurance space but over several years we narrowed it down so we only operate in the pet space now.
- For many years I’d been troubled by the poor way large corporates treat individuals – in particular in financial services – in contrast, they treat other corporates very very well. I felt I had to do something to redress the balance between corporates and individuals in financial services.
- We asked our pet community members to fill out a questionnaire to understand what they thought of the insurance industry, how they would have made it better themselves and asked what their perfect pet insurance policy would look like. We got 40,000 responses and created seven brand-new go-to-market products in September 2016. Instead of going live, we took the opportunity to reimagine every step of the customers’ insurance journey so that when we launched in February 2017 there was nothing about the experience that bore any relation to anything else that they would have seen in the pet space anywhere before.
- We became a double unicorn in eight and three-quarter years. But, in truth, I can’t get excited about the valuation at all. It doesn’t change in any way the business, the people we want to recruit, our existing staff, our focus on our customer base, our focus on the pets and our focus on the pet parents. It’s an important milestone, of course, but it has not changed us as a business one single piece of the way.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Our first TV advert was at the very beginning on direct to household advertising, and we were able to work with Ridley Scott’s production studio to create something genuinely different and quirky.’
‘The idea behind Bought By Many was creating communities of individuals who had similar but niche insurance needs and to help them get access to better insurance – price, product and customer experience.’
‘Our Net Promoter Score has never been below 70.’
‘Pet owners do talk, they want to know what pet food you use, what vet you go to and who insures your pet. Having members of ours who advocate in the marketplace is really important for us and has massive knock-on economic benefits, of course.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Steven has over 25 years of experience as an actuary in financial services which has included leading Close Brothers Wealth Management during the launch of their non-advised offering; creating the world’s first art-focused wealth advice offering for Christie’s; working as part of the team that formed Barclays Wealth and heading the McKinsey UK Savings and Investment Group.
Steven founded Bought By Many, which is disrupting the world of pet insurance through the innovative use of tech, and is building a business to become an irresistible employer that is obsessive about customer service.
In April 2019 Steven was included in the London Business School Review of 30 People Who Are Changing The World.
https://boughtbymany.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Helene Panzarino, author of Reinventing banking and finance, A Framework to navigate global FinTech innovation which was published in November 2020 on Amazon. The pair discuss the book and the key insight Helene provides to reinvent the banking business model.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- We assume banking has always been what banking is today. In the early days (1200s Italy) hyper-personalisation was going on for aristocrats and the like, now FinTech is the full circle back to hyper-personalisation but we’re doing it at scale, digitally.
- The industrial revolution had a very big impact on banking, as it did on every other aspect of society and economy. There’s now mass-servicing which took away some of the personalisation and the individuality of banking which intensified through the IT side of banking in the 1950s where we were able to use technology to store and process more data as well as begin to give more products and services to a wider audience. The more recent digital revolution and the internet allowed us to do our banking online and the smartphone brought that to its apex so you have a bank in your pocket.
- In five years’ time, we’ll be able to DIY our own bank and choose between different products and services, this is where FinTech will come into its own.
- It took banking ages to realise that the threat that came from outside, posed by the insurance industry, was greater than the threat coming from inside. Insurance and InsurTechs had a much better collaborative partnership relationship from the get-go, whereas banks and FinTechs were adversaries. FinTechs have now grown up and are aware that they need their parents if they’re going to scale and they’re working very well collaboratively now, but I applaud the insurance industry for getting there first.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Everyone must now have a global view, no one can stay confined in his/her geographical space.’
‘The pandemic has shown us the inadequacies for some banks’ desktops, platforms and apps. Consumers are now using those apps, including the non-digital natives who used to visit banking branches in person and weren’t used to digital engagements.’
‘If you’ve created a startup bank, you need to remember that you’re operating In a regulated industry and if you ‘colour outside of the lines’ the regulator is going to come down on you. So, make sure to bring in experienced people to your C-Suite or Board.’
‘Everyone knows how to innovate, but everyone does not know how to execute. You need to be given space and the finance to fail. It needs to be OK and not damaging to your growth path or career prospects if you’re going to fail too. Acceptance of different growth paths need to be accepted from the top, if that openness doesn’t permeate from the top-down then nobody’s going to try to grow smartly or differently.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Originally a Commercial Banker, Helene is an experienced FinTech Programme Director, exited entrepreneur, educator, and author. Her book ‘Reinventing Banking and Finance: Frameworks to navigate global FinTech innovation’ came out in Sept 2020, https://www.amazon.in/Reinventing-Banking-Finance-Frameworks-Innovation/dp/1789664098 Previously the MD of the global Rainmaking Colab FinTech Programme, a world-first, post-accelerator program for Series A+ FinTechs and Tier 1 financial institutions, Helene was also responsible for the Inaugural Programme of Education and Events for Innovate Finance. She is an Associate Director of the LIBF Digital Banking Centre, the Lead Fellow, and creator on a world-first FinTech Pathway in a Masters in Tech Entrepreneurship Degree for UCL, and co-creator and lead delivery partner on the Imperial College FinTech Executive Education Programme. Her specialist subject areas are Digital Banking and Alternative Finance (SMEs). She is also the CEO of the New Financial Laboratory enabling community banks and building societies to engage with the global FinTech community. A regular judge, speaker, and moderator for the banking and FinTech awards and conferences, Helene was a BSI FinTech representative for the UK in Brussels, named on the Computer Weekly 100 Women in Tech Award 2018-19 and on the Innovate Finance Women in FinTech Power List for 2019.
You can discover more about Helene's book here > reinventing banking and finance.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Spiros Margaris who discusses the pros and cons of working for a young venture, setting up a startup, as well as the best way to succeed in business. He shares insights on the future of FinTech and much more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- You build trust with founders by telling them what you think, honestly, but not always expecting them to do what you say. Trust is the basis of working together and with trust anyone can go far, even in difficult times.
- You have to play to your strengths. If somebody asks you questions – and startups will – and you don’t know the answer, you need to say you don’t know. But then call someone in your network that has expertise and will know the answer.
- A startup engagement is like any "relationship": you will have great times, you will have mediocre times, you will have bad times. It won’t always be this exciting thing people think of. Even if the job you do is extremely boring and repetitive, whichever job that is, that’s what will make you good at that job long term.
- The future of FinTech is embedded finance. Even non-financial companies will go into this space with trusted partners or develop their own FinTech solution, which will complement their existing offerings even better. They don’t need to make money through finance, unlike banks. The finance ‘cake’ is going to be split into more ways in the future, including financial offers and non-financial offers.
BEST MOMENTS
‘It’s a privilege to be recognised by your community, but at the end of the day, you’re only as good as your community. We grow together.’
‘Winning is about teamwork: Together we win, like a football team.’
‘Great young people want to work in great companies that give them responsibilities and let their voice be heard. They’re not so bothered about money yet. They want purpose.’
‘The nice thing about my job is that I talk to so many smart people. This means that I keep learning. Think about our world as a fantastic international digital school!’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Spiros Margaris is a venture capitalist, futurist, keynote speaker and senior advisor. He is the first international influencer to achieve ‘The Triple Crown’ FinTech ranking. He was ranked the international № 1 FinTech, Blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) influencer (05/2018) by Onalytica. Spiros once again was ranked the global № 1 Fintech influencer (02/2020) by Onalytica. He regularly appears in the top three positions of established global industry influencer rankings.
He is a keynote speaker at international FinTech, and InsurTech conferences. He also gave a TEDxAcademy Talk. He published an AI white paper, “Machine learning in financial services: Changing the rules of the game,” for the enterprise software vendor SAP. First non-IBM Keynote Speaker at the biggest IBM event in Europe “2019 IBM Systems Technical University” among others.
Twitter: @SpirosMargaris Linkedin: Spiros Margaris
www.margarisventures.com
Linkedin link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spirosmargaris/
Twitter Link: https://twitter.com/SpirosMargaris
Website Link: https://www.margarisventures.com/
Keynote Speaking Agent: www.gspeakers.com
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL reviews the four types of investment and who is winning the corporate venturing game as well as looking to the future to evaluate and imagine what is coming our way.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The four types of investment strategies: ‘Driving’ (strategic and tightly linked to operational capabilities), ‘Enabling’ (strategic and loosely liked to operational capabilities), ‘Emerging’ (tightly linked to metrics of financial importance), and ‘Passive’ (loosest connected to corporate capabilities and strategies).
- Winners at corporate venturing during the ‘Startup Phase’ have been identified as having 3 core elements: A clear and defined vision that drives a clear charter and operating model; A strong and experienced team that combines both internal operational knowledge and external understanding of the Venture Capitalist’s drivers; Established expectations and milestones to measure and ensure performance.
- Winners at corporate venturing during the ‘Expansion Phase’ are seen to have a slightly different set of core components: Agility in how they refine strategic investment or the focus of the portfolio; Tailored approaches to recruiting and retaining the Corporate Venturing team over time; Institutionalization of the Corporate Venturing operating platform.
- Winners during the “Resiliency Phase” have found ways to industrialize and democratize their learnings. They have been identified as having the following common characteristics: The Corporate Venturing program plays a strategic role and continually influences parent growth; There are purpose-built well-established end-to-end investment platforms; They have intelligent community management and communications capabilities.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Consider Driving and Enabling investment paths at the earliest stage of formation, moving to Emergent investment. This means that Passive investment in the latter stages of the CVC model and probably the best option to drive long-term financial returns.’
‘CSAA Insurance Group, for instance, provides insurance products across a range of personal areas to AAA members as they built their own Corporate Venturing arm.’
‘Having an agile platform is crucial’
‘Innovations are creating seismic scale changes to our business landscape across multiple big industries. These evolutions and changes are made possible through corporate venturing.’
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Sam Evans, a Founding Partner with Eos Venture Partners, who has spent the last four years investing in InsurTech startups. He is an active speaker and top 50 InsurTech influencer.
Prior to establishing Eos, Sam was a partner at KPMG where he led the Global Deal Advisory business for insurance. During his career, Sam has worked on over $75bn of insurance-related transactions and has worked in many of the large mature and high growth insurance markets around the globe. Sam lived in great countries and locations including Australia, Hong Kong, and Switzerland. Today, Sam lives in the UK.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There’s so much happening, it’s a super exciting time. One of the key areas for us at Eos is in relation to the digital economy and the gig economy. First, it’s difficult to properly serve the gig economy worker with traditional insurance solutions because they’re not usage-based, not connected, and often backwards-looking. Still, the gig economy worker has become a huge and growing market, especially off the back of the pandemic. It’s also underserved. Second, the ability to transition from protection to prevention within life and health, leveraging technology to proactively manage risk and embed medical, health and fitness technologies to prevent the deterioration of conditions. Third, think about emerging risk classes such as cybersecurity risk combined with embedded insurance mechanisms, these new risk classes are increasingly coming to market.
- The pandemic has accelerated the industry’s adoption of ‘digital’ by at least five years, which is quite a staggering statistic. Demand from pretty much all our portfolio companies has increased significantly, so we’re seeing it in real-time. The industry’s maturity has also accelerated; overall fundraising levels are increasing but they’re being more and more dominated by a smaller number of companies making larger rounds.
- The first half of 2021 saw more funding than the whole of 2020, so we’re still on a very significant upwards trajectory in terms of appetite and capital flowing in. We are in an environment with inflated valuations too. The InsurTech bubble hasn’t burst yet. It’s deflating though, and this may not necessarily be a bad thing. It’s all part of the maturing journey of a sector.
- There’s a significant amount of capital looking to be deployed against excellent business models. We’re always keen to talk to companies that are either on the path to or have reached the series A stage. If you look at the market as a whole, we’re at least 10 years behind FinTech in development, so we’re still at a very early stage of development. This is going to be something that dominates the industry for the next 20-30 years, this is a fundamental change and shift in how insurance operates.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Key to our philosophy is working in partnership with the industry, rather than adopting a pure challenger model, which is where we saw the greatest value could be created.’
‘Connected vehicle insurance enhances safety by improving driving quality and highlighting accident hotspots. Insurers today get better results as they can use the data to enhance risk selection and pricing.’
‘A lot of InsurTech startups are going to struggle and fail. That’s part of the natural evolution of a sector. I think Covid-19 has accelerated that to a certain degree due to the fight for quality, and the lookout for those startups that are likely to do particularly well.’
‘Incumbents shouldn’t see regulation as something that’s going to protect them from new entrants. We’ve seen, even in our small portfolio, companies moving from an MGA into a full-stack model with the blessing of the regulator.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Sam is a founding partner of Eos Venture Partners, a Strategic InsurTech Venture Capital fund with offices in London and Philadelphia.
Eos is an independent specialist InsurTech investment and advisory business.
Eos is today a Series A and Series B investor with a focus on new business models and new technologies that will impact and transform the insurance industry.
Eos provides financing and advisory services to leading entrepreneurs building innovative businesses in the insurance sector. In partnership with RAW Capital Partners, Eos offers a unique solution for growth stage InsurTech companies. Founders are choosing to work with Eos because it is an independent specialist and active InsurTech investor with a strong track record and excellent relationships across the insurance sector.
https://www.eosventurepartners.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Florian Graillot, an investor and co-founder of Astorya.vc or Astorya. Astorya invests in Seed InsurTech startups across Europe. In this conversation the pair cover topics including who he is, why he started Astorya and how he sees the world of corporate venturing today and tomorrow.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There is a trend beginning where there is direct competition between Tier 1 insurance players and reinsurance companies working directly with InsurTech startups able to bypass specific insurance providers across the value chain. The latter has a massive impact on how the market is being restructured behind the scenes.
- Florian built Astorya with co-founder Jan Kastory because he saw a gap in the market. As an investor, Florian shares that Astorya’s focus is investing in entrepreneurs first, utilising his team’s financial and entrepreneurial background. Because of this context, it makes sense that Astorya attracts great tech entrepreneurs. At Astorya, Florian states "we understand how to grow businesses as we do just that ourselves every day."
- FinTech investors only commit 10% of their time to InsurTech. Astorya only does InsurTech explains Florian, meaning that 100% of Astorya’s time is dedicated to insurance tech ventures. And this is why Astorya’s limited partners invested in the firm. The Limited Partners know that the Astorya team will spend 100% of its time on the InsurTech topic every single day of the week.
- Don’t be afraid of what you read in the newspapers. There are still a lot of opportunities to address in InsurTech, not everything has been done yet. The full insurance value chain needs to be unbundled, re-bundled and revamped and InsurTech startups can address this in numbers. We already have a few unicorns within the InsurTech space. Don’t forget that technology is a means to an end but without it, it becomes tougher and tougher to succeed in any industry. Today, technology becomes your competitive edge over traditional insurance companies.
BEST MOMENTS
‘InsurTech is way broader than just insurance. It can be connected to almost any industry.’
‘Tech investment is in my DNA, insurance is much more opportunistic.’
‘There’s always somebody who is managing more money than you. It’s not about money, it’s about the industry, focus, understanding and capacity to accelerate go-to-market strategies, especially around software or B2B technologies.’
‘It may be very easy to raise money at the very beginning of the startup journey, or when you are big enough to attract a huge round from private equity investors, but when you are in the middle, it’s still challenging. I believe that both entrepreneurs and corporates should keep that in mind.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Florian Graillot is a founding partner and VC investor at Astorya.vc where he invests in early-stage tech startups in Europe. His main focus is to identify, evaluate and invest in the growth ventures that utilise the next generation of customer-centric technologies that will reinvent insurance. His skills include investment, financial modelling, entrepreneurship, business development, and strategy.
http://astorya.vc/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode, Sabine VdL is joined by Matthew Jones, Managing Director and venture capital investor in insurance and risk management-related technology for Anthemis in the UK, Europe, and North America.
Through his previous work with Swiss Re, Matthew sponsored Sabine’s first accelerator and was one of her most active mentors, engaged assessor, and investor. They both learned massively during the acceleration programme as to what a sustainable business model meant.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- At the core of our investment thesis are banks, insurance companies, and FinTech companies. But in addition to those kinds of businesses, we’re also actively researching, exploring, and investing in several adjacent industries where we believe that the technology will intersect with financial services in the future, including energy, agriculture, mobility, health, and property tech.
- For me, cultivating change means that we’re prepared to back genuinely different and disruptive ideas that others aren’t. Because our team comes from partly inside and partly outside financial services, we try to blend those two different perspectives into thinking creatively about how we back new companies and under-represented founders.
- Within the context of venturing, there’s a rule of thumb that startups should target a 10x better experience for the user or a 10x better return on investment. That’s a good rule of thumb. And across financial services, there are so many underdeveloped spots where growth ventures can focus on delivering that kind of outcome.
- Entrepreneurs that seek funding should seek smart money. They should ask their investors what they believe in, and how they put it into practice. They should evaluate their investment team and the partners too: Are they a diverse bunch? Do they have values that align with yours and are they putting them into practice? Would you want to affiliate yourself with a firm that doesn’t have the same values as yours?
BEST MOMENTS
‘Without insurance and re-insurance nothing really happens. Insurance is everywhere, which is great for me as someone who’s a little bit obsessive about insurance.’
‘Financial services is the lifeblood of the world’s economies. But we recognise it’s not perfect and there are opportunities for improvement.’
‘There is no part of the insurance value chain that is immune to the effect of technology.’
‘There’s no excuse, and it’s not acceptable, for big venture capital companies to have all male and all white CEO portfolio companies. We are in the 21st Century!’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Matthew is a Managing Director at Anthemis, where he is responsible for sourcing, analyzing, and executing investments as well as providing support for Anthemis’ portfolio companies. He brings in-depth knowledge of the insurance sector and focuses on investments in insurance and risk-related technology.
Matthew’s areas of interest include analytics and data, artificial intelligence and automation, asset management, digital health, mobility, new insurance propositions, and risk management. Prior to joining Anthemis, Matthew was at Swiss Re, with roles across non-life and life insurance and reinsurance in both London and Zurich.
Matthew previously served on the boards of Flock, Hokodo and Stable and is the resident venture investor for Carrier Management’s VC Viewpoint series. He holds a bachelor’s in business administration from the University of Bath and also studied at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
https://www.anthemis.com/
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Sabine VdL defines what venture scouting, also called technology scouting means and why companies and investors see it as so important. She also discusses what skillsets a technology scout needs to succeed as well as what should motivate them and how these strategies are delivered.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- In recent months companies around the globe have seen new types of challenges affecting them all, including: changing customer needs (such as the "I want it now" generation demanding reduced engagement friction); rising competition (This does not only means the fast-moving dominance of BigTech, but also the arrival of new digital market entrants.); and increasing market volatility (Think about bitcoins and other digital currencies that have fluctuated up and down).
- Many companies see it as essential to closely monitor developments in core technologies and scan for emerging technologies with disruptive potential. Methods here include technological forecasting, technology foresight and technology intelligence.
- The basis of technology scouting is about enhancing the insight provided on emerging and advanced technologies and lowering the time lag between technological advancement and detection, accelerating the potential delivery of unfair competitive advantages for any company.
- One of the biggest obstacles to innovation is often the regional limitations and the siloed way of thinking that exist in many corporations today. They know though that to remain competitive, they need to acquire valuable information on emerging technologies the earliest as possible.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Strong technological competence plays a crucial role in maintaining and improving a company's competitive position, regardless of business size.’
‘In an environment impacted by technological complexity and the globalization of R&D activities, the successful identification, and usage of external sources of knowledge is becoming increasingly essential and primordial as part of a business success strategy.’
‘Technology scouts require lateral thinking, knowledge in science and technology, a certain level of credibility, recognition within the company, cross-disciplinary orientation, creativity, and imagination.’
‘Think about venture/technology scouting as an early warning system for companies to make better innovation choices.’
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode, Sabine VdL describes what corporate venturing is and what it entails, how it can help startups and entrepreneurs, why there is an increased drive towards corporate venturing today and the best strategies to deploy VC programmes.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- With corporate venturing, large companies develop, sponsor or invest in startup companies from the earliest stages of formation to later stages of growth to identify emerging technologies and develop cutting-edge customer-driven solutions that can resist the effects of time.
- The central point is that a startup company is evaluated and then funded by the corporate venture capital arm of the established business. This works well to shake off protocol and bureaucracy which can weigh down innovation when a parent company gets involved in partnership and investment decisions.
- Venture Capitalists (VCs) are experts at the money side of things where they focus on the financial objectives, whereas the corporate venturing team draws expertise from finance but also from strategy and industry, with their fingers on the pulse of emerging trends, opportunities, and risks.
- Young startup businesses can benefit tremendously from accessing the distribution, assets, core capabilities including the global resources and infrastructure of the big guns. If those established companies have well-defined processes in place, they can facilitate the education of internal stakeholders alongside startup founders on how best their solutions could scale within one or multiple geographies while providing effective mentorship. They can also find a paved path to access specific customer markets and growth. In industries such as insurance, dominated by large players, this is especially important.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Corporate venturing has some similarities to what R&D is in many industries.’
‘Corporate venturing also has some similarities to Venture Capital funding.’
‘There will always be some great CVCs and less great CVC units out there.’
‘80% of startups fail.’
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
I just thought I would explain… Why Scouting for Growth?
I have been fortunate for the past six years to work with Tech ventures wanting to change the world of insurance, finance, health, and wealth to name but a few.
And to accelerate great companies, one needs to understand a little bit about "business."
I have been fascinated with building growth ecosystems for the past six years. Getting my ventures to collaborate better and faster. At the same time, I have been driven by the potential of enabling my corporate partners to collaborate better with tech ventures while enabling those growth ventures with the greatest potential to engage with the many investors who gave me their trust.
"Scouting For Growth" is the underlying premise for both … Venture Capitalists and Corporate "Venturists!" One side is looking for financial returns mostly from investing in start-up ventures. The other side tries to balance both financial and strategic returns. And often create unnecessary tech bubbles through the process.
Anyway, I want to demystify through this podcast series two important processes that yield strong financial outcomes though 1) partnership, 2) investment, but then leading to 3) growth and 4) scale.
First, Scouting For Growth is about scouting for ventures: or identifying and nurturing startups that are aligned to major market problems. The outcome sought may mostly be partnerships and collaborations but also longer-term investment opportunities for the many.
Second, Scouting For Growth is about building ventures: or creating and designing new customer value propositions supported by disruptive business models able to solve some of the most complex challenges we need to contend with today.
Hopefully, the lessons learnt will ensure that we gather the right tools and techniques to build the growth business of tomorrow.
You will also find that… I am French. I have been in the UK for 30 years. I am fortunate to work every day with some renowned international companies. But despite my great English I still and often drop my “ses” and count in French. I hope you won’t mind. You can take the French gal out of France. But rarely will you change her truly!
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hi, I am Sabine VanderLinden – Many of my friends call me Mrs VdL.
I have been in business for over 25 years. I worked for very well-known and respected blue-chip companies. And 6 years ago, I decided to take the entrepreneurial and investor route and ran a very well-known acceleration program for early-stage startups in Europe and the United States, while also engaging with investors and corporations in Asia, Africa and LATAM.
Yes. I know. Five continents in 5 years. 70 startups accelerated during that period. Lots of Airmiles. $100 million invested in accelerated portfolios. And certainly, lots of learnings.
Since then, my team and I have scouted over 20,000 ventures to help both corporates and investors identify new sources of growth.
I want to dedicate this podcast to the founders, the entrepreneurs, the intrapreneurs, the investors, corporate fighters, the change markers who over the years have given me their time, patience, and trust.
We will together, demystify the world of corporate venturing for you.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.