Over 170,000 FinTech ventures are 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 partnership opportunities with Global Fortune 500 companies. 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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James Birch: Ki Insurance’s Algorithmic Underwriting Revolution
Épisode 186
mercredi 11 juin 2025 • Durée 52:05
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to James Birch, Director of Strategic Technology Solutions at Ki Insurance—the first fully algorithmic syndicate in the history of Lloyd’s of London.
In today’s conversation, we’ll explore: James’s journey from VC to algorithmic-underwriting pioneer, what a “director of strategic technology solutions” actually does day-to-day inside a digital syndicate, the partnerships, cloud architecture and data streams that let Ki quote in seconds, the biggest trends shaping Algorithmic Underwriting 2.0—and what they mean for brokers, capacity partners and the wider market, and practical take-aways for anyone who wants to thrive as the next wave of automation rolls through speciality insurance
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Ki is a growth stage business, not an incumbent, we’re trying to fight our way to win business and ultimately to grow. We have to do something different from everyone else to try to position ourselves differently and find competitive advantage where we can. That’s something I’ve carried over from the VC space.
We started out looking at what the digital model of the traditional model, where was the toil in the value chain and the broker’s work plan process and how can we simplifying it and make it more efficient using digital capabilities that we saw in the VC space, in FinTech and other financial service industries.
Lloyds of London is a heavily regulated market so we need to abide by any of the regulations that any carrier or underwriter do in that market. Our approach from day 1 was to engage with the regulator early, explain what we’re trying to do, be transparent, open and honest about where the gaps are if we’d not got to a certain level of maturity, don’t overstate the algorithm. We take regulation very seriously, which has helped because Lloyds has been highly supportive of us and our growth and have allowed us to grow as the market has grown.
The main cost-save of the algorithmic underwriting for brokers is they don’t have to have loads of brokers running around the Lloyds of London building to find 2% on a slip or something, the broker negotiates with the lead underwriter, come onto the Ki platform for the follow, and then spend their time on new business and client opportunities.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Any business should evolve as the market evolves and the marketing dynamics changes, you’ve got to react to those and be thinking 2-5 years ahead.’
‘We still trip up on ourselves, even now, because we sometimes try to over-complicate things.’
‘Speak to the customer, hear their problems, understand what’s not working for them, try to make it a simple transaction for them, and then they’ll use your products.’
‘I’m a big advocate of the partner model because if you get 2, 3, or 4 like-minded companies as partners you can build something great together because you’re all strategically aligned.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
James Birch is the Director of Strategic Technology Solutions at Ki Insurance, the market-leading algorithmic syndicate that’s redefining how Lloyd’s of London does business.
Blending a venture-capital mindset with hands-on operating rigor, James has spent the past decade helping innovative companies move from bright idea to breakout scale.
Passionate about demystifying insurance for the next generation, James is a sought-after speaker on topics such as data-driven risk selection, the future of algorithmic capacity and what it really takes to scale a regulated tech business.
Whether mentoring founders or road-testing the latest ML models with his engineers, he’s driven by one simple goal: use technology to make risk transfer faster, fairer and radically more efficient.
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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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This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/
Mark Stern: Transforming Customer Journeys with Physical-Digital Experience Design for Growth
Épisode 185
mercredi 4 juin 2025 • Durée 51:15
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Mark Stern, founder and CEO of Custom Box Agency, an award-winning boutique specializing in bringing digital offers to life through innovative offline ‘box experiences.’
Today, he’ll share how he made the leap from corporate to startup life, offer practical tips for integrating physical touchpoints into a digital world, and discuss the secret sauce behind building high-impact customer journeys. I can’t wait to dive into his wealth of knowledge.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When I mixed physical and digital together with my publication called ‘Entrepreneur Elements’ I people started posting unboxing videos, which a digital-only product can do. Everyone who received the product became an ambassador and lots of organic traffic was being created as a result.
During Covid the virtual event game became bloody red, in terms of competition, because everyone became a virtual event expert overnight. But the boxes, and how we were approaching this to get results faster, was an unknown, exciting realm which I went 100% in on and the business skyrocketed from zero to a million in the first year just by pivoting and focussing on this opportunity.
What we include inside our boxes is a welcome note, a getting started guide – which, for me is the most powerful sales pieces to orient people on the journey that they’re about to start and see your universe, a journey map – a visual depiction of the recipe that’s going to get you the result, then all the tools and resources.
This isn’t SWAG (Stuff Without A Goal), think of it a product development and who we can truly get into your programme and give people the incentive structure to want to take one step at a time. I love data, so I can engineer feedback loops to say, once you’ve hit a certain milestone, how can I get you to provide me with the information I need so 1, I can celebrate you, but 2, it also gives me good intel to make the product you’re making better.
BEST MOMENTS
‘In the online space done beats perfect. I approach the standards of the online realm in a corporate way; the client’s either ready or not ready at all.’
‘If you have a digital product, you have to compliment it with something physical because physical can tap into other modalities and senses that digital can’t.’
‘It’s not about you, it’s truly about your customers and their needs.’
‘Boxes can be a tool to take what you’re already talking about/teaching, or the service you’re providing and making it easier for people to have the breakthrough in the tangible way the a digital-only product just can’t.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Mark Stern is an accomplished serial entrepreneur and the visionary behind Custom Box Agency, an award-winning experience design firm headquartered in Austin, Texas. Leveraging his background as a top-ranked strategy consultant at Deloitte, Mark has guided major retail and lifestyle brands through transformative growth initiatives. He holds an MBA from Duke University and has been recognized as a Forbes Next 1,000 Entrepreneur, as well as featured in Joey Coleman’s bestselling book Never Lose an Employee Again.Mark’s passion for merging the physical with the digital underpins his signature approach of crafting “offline-meets-online” experiences. By moving beyond standard swag and focusing on strategic box campaigns, Mark’s team has successfully launched 100+ direct mail initiatives—boosting conversions, slashing churn, and extending customer lifetime value. As a mentor at SXSW, sought-after keynote speaker, and champion for innovative entrepreneurship, Mark remains dedicated to helping businesses of all sizes adopt experience design as a powerful lever for growth.
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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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This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/
Alex Schmelkin: Transforming Insurance Underwriting with GenAI and AI Agents
Épisode 176
jeudi 3 avril 2025 • Durée 46:26
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Alex Schmelkin, a visionary entrepreneur who's reshaping the future of insurance operations. Alex is the Founder and CEO of Sixfold, a company at the forefront of harnessing Generative AI to empower insurance underwriters with groundbreaking tools and capabilities.
Today, we'll explore how Sixfold is leveraging Generative AI to transform underwriting practices, the challenges and opportunities in implementing AI at scale, and Alex's vision for the future of insurance operations.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
There’s close to $7 trillion of premium written around the globe every year. That equals 7% of global GDP, it’s an enormous amount of premium that’s needed for the world to function and for people and businesses to take risks. The most underserved population are the underwriters, the people making decisions day in day out on that $7 trillion worth of business trying to figure out the good and bad risks and why. There’s so little support for these unsung heroes.
The typical underwriter is reading the equivalent of a novel every 2-3 days in documentation. These are not interesting fiction novels, they’re information-dense losses, statements of values of property and exposures. We’ve expected them to consume more and more but it’s information overload. Enter language models and AI, in the first time in human history we have the ability to take in a nearly limitless volume of data and help the underwriter to see through that to find the patterns without having to read every single word on every single page and free them to do the extra research at the end to find the best result for the end customer.
Regulators understand that AI is here and have already embraced it. They’re not as ahead of it as we would like them to be, as an industry, and they’re not getting everything right. But by putting a few fence posts around the problem we’re trying to solve they’ve forced the conversation and the industry to respond to it and to start rolling out the way we are with some of these AI transparency partner models.
The single challenge we run into everywhere is underwriter trust. The underwriters, despite being overworked, there not being enough of them, and despite it being a challenging job, are really good at what they do. The reason is they’ve been trained over the years to do everything they can to get the right answer. They’re the front line protecting insurance companies from bringing on bad risks. The hardest thing is to convince them is that AI is accurate. If they have a bad experience with AI first time they may not go back ever.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I found insurance – or it found me – almost 20 years ago and I’ve never looked back, and it’s all underwriting all the time.’‘The biggest use of GenAI today is helping underwriters to find more accuracy, be more effective, and more transparent in their underwriting efforts.’‘We attempt to arm the human with a bevy of different things for the that are the less value-producing part of their jobs.’‘The human is so much more effective when they’re working beside a robot that helps them be more accurate and more efficient at their job.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Alex Schmelkin is the Founder and CEO of Sixfold and is at the forefront of revolutionizing how insurance underwriters operate through Generative AI—a game-changing approach that not only enhances decision-making but also streamlines processes for a more efficient future.
His knack for identifying industry pain points and transforming them into innovative solutions has been the backbone of his success. With a deep-rooted belief in the power of technology to drive growth, Alex has consistently pushed the envelope, challenging norms and inspiring those around him.
Beyond his entrepreneurial endeavors, Alex is a dynamic speaker who captivates audiences with insights on SaaS, customer experience, and technology ethics. His passion for responsible innovation shines through in every conversation, as he advocates for solutions that not only meet business needs but also uphold ethical standards.
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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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Brenden Kumarasamy: Delivering effective board level communication
Épisode 86
mercredi 12 juillet 2023 • Durée 39:12
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, & 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.
Twitter: SabineVdLLinkedIn: Sabine VanderLindenInstagram: sabinevdLofficialFacebook: SabineVdLOfficialTikTok: sabinevdlofficialEmail: podcast@sabinevdl.comWebsite: www.sabinevdl.com
Brandon Leibowitz: Free Your Outreach With An SEO Strategy
Épisode 85
jeudi 6 juillet 2023 • Durée 39:47
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, & 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.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
Clemens Behrend: Web3, Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies
Épisode 84
jeudi 29 juin 2023 • Durée 39:30
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, & 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.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
Per Axberg: AI Driven Legal Contracts
Épisode 83
mercredi 21 juin 2023 • Durée 38:07
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, & 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.
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 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 PartsCyrille 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, & 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.
Twitter: SabineVdLLinkedIn: Sabine VanderLindenInstagram: sabinevdLofficialFacebook: SabineVdLOfficialTikTok: sabinevdlofficialEmail: podcast@sabinevdl.comWebsite: www.sabinevdl.com
Stephen Lathrope: Using Geospatial Data To Drive Dynamic Underwriting
Épisode 81
jeudi 8 juin 2023 • Durée 43:05
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, & 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.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
Gary Garth: The Zero to 100 Million Sales Blueprint
Épisode 80
jeudi 1 juin 2023 • Durée 37:08
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, & 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.
Twitter: SabineVdL
LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden
Instagram: sabinevdLofficial
Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial
TikTok: sabinevdlofficial
Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com
Website: www.sabinevdl.com
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