There are over 180,000 FinTech ventures out there today.
My team tracks 7.3 million of them across markets every single week.
But the number that matters isn't the one that's growing. It's the one that isn't.
Only 25% of these ventures have secured funding and meaningful backing.
The other 75% aren't just looking for capital. They're looking for access, credibility, and partnerships with the institutions that can turn a great product into real-world impact.
This is Scouting for Growth. I'm Sabine VanderLinden. I lead Alchemy Crew Ventures, and I built the Venture-Client Model for regulated industries... the model where a growth venture earns a corporation as its customer before a VC writes the cheque. When that sequence works, it changes the equation for everyone: founders, corporates, and the investors watching from both sides of the table.
Each episode, I bring a founder, an operator, or an institutional leader to the table for the conversation that usually happens behind closed doors: about how corporates really think, how capital really flows, and what it actually takes to build, grow, and scale in a world where the boundaries between FinTech, InsurTech, HealthTech, and AI are dissolving by the month.
This isn't theory. Our conversations should bring you the strategy, the tactics, and the hard-won clarity from people who control capital and collaboration.
If you're navigating this ecosystem — as a founder, an operator, or a leader — this conversation is for you.
Listen in. Challenge what you thought you knew. And join us.
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The Enterprise Intelligence Stack: Why Four Excellent Tools Produce Nothing
Episode 237
Thursday, September 10, 2026 • Duration 15:51
Four excellent tools can still produce nothing. Intelligence only creates value when it connects, compounds, and scales.
In this solo episode of Scouting for Growth, I introduce the Enterprise Intelligence Stack, a practical framework for understanding why promising agentic pilots stall, why different AI agents can operate with completely different views of the same customer, and why the third pilot can end up costing as much as the first.
The uncomfortable truth is that most enterprises are not suffering from a lack of capability. They are suffering from a lack of composition. Data, models, platforms, people, and governance may all exist, but they rarely operate as one coherent system. The result is fragmented intelligence, duplicated infrastructure, weak accountability, and pilots that work beautifully in isolation but struggle to scale.
I break the Enterprise Intelligence Stack into four layers and two rails: Data and Judgment; Models and Orchestration; Distribution and Access; Customer and Experience; supported by the People and Trust rails. I then introduce a four-part Composition Test built around one shared source of truth, one registry, one audit trail, and one accountable human.
Most importantly, I leave leaders with three practical moves: draw the stack, run the Composition Test, and fund the rails before funding the next layer.
Because in the age of agents, the winners will not necessarily be the firms with the most intelligence. They will be the ones whose intelligence connects, compounds, and scales.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
I want to challenge the way we continue to diagnose enterprise AI problems. We often blame procurement, technology, models, talent, or adoption when an agentic pilot fails to scale. But increasingly, I believe the real constraint is composition. We may already own many of the capabilities we need, but they are not working together as one system. Four excellent tools can still produce nothing if they operate from different data, different logs, different governance models, and different assumptions about the customer.
This is why I introduce the Enterprise Intelligence Stack: four layers covering Data and Judgment, Models and Orchestration, Distribution and Access, and Customer and Experience, supported by the People and Trust rails that have to run through the entire system. The distinction is important because layers can be purchased, whereas rails must be designed and governed by the organization itself. The Composition Test then gives us a practical way to challenge every new initiative: is there one shared source of truth, one registry, one audit trail, and one accountable human?
For me, the biggest takeaway is that we need to stop asking simply, “What should we buy next?” and start asking, “How will this connect to what we already have?” Whether you are an enterprise leader or an AI venture selling into one, the objective is the same: build intelligence that can connect, compound, and scale. The next move is not necessarily another purchase. It may simply be to draw the stack and understand what you actually own.
BEST MOMENTS
“It is not a tooling problem. It is a composition problem.” – Sabine VanderLinden [00:16]
“The real failure is that the capabilities we already own don't work together.” – Sabine VanderLinden [00:16]
“A firm can use four suppliers and still have one shared spine. It can also use one supplier and end up with four disconnected systems.” – Sabine VanderLinden [08:00]
“Enterprise buyers do not need another brilliant soloist. They need a venture that can join the orchestra.” – Sabine VanderLinden [08:00]
“A pilot or product integration that can't connect to the wider system is a cost, not an option.” – Sabine VanderLinden [10:00]
“Do you have a stack or do you have a shopping list?” – Sabine VanderLinden [14:00]
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
Kevin Maney: The Category Creation Formula for Winning Markets in the AI Era
Episode 236
Thursday, September 3, 2026 • Duration 49:52
Kevin Maney: The Category Creation Formula for Winning Markets in the AI Era
AI is making products easier to build, but meaningful differentiation harder to sustain. A stronger feature set, a faster model, or simply adding an “AI-powered” label may not be enough to convince customers that a new market should exist in the first place.
Kevin Maney, bestselling author, technology commentator, and founding partner of Category Design Advisors, joins me to unpack the Category Creation Formula: Context + Missing + Innovation = New Market Category. Developed through nearly a decade of fieldwork with more than 50 companies, the framework offers a practical way to understand when markets are ready to change: identify what has shifted around the customer, uncover the newly urgent need that shift creates, and then design the innovation the market is ready to embrace.
Our conversation moves beyond conventional product-market fit toward a more fundamental question: What would market-product fit look like? We explore why being first matters less than establishing the accepted dominant design, why competitors can actually validate rather than weaken a new category, and why successful category creation starts outside the organization, not with the technology already sitting inside it.
In an era of AI abundance, compressed innovation cycles, and increasingly crowded markets, this conversation offers a different way to think about growth. It is particularly relevant for CEOs, transformation leaders, investors, and founders asking not simply how to build a better product, but how to create a market that wants it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What I found particularly compelling in this conversation with Kevin is his challenge to one of the most deeply embedded assumptions in innovation: that we should build a product and then find its market. Kevin turns that logic around with the idea of market-product fit. Instead of starting with what our technology can do, we should start by understanding what has changed in the world around our customers, what new problem that change has created, and what innovation could solve it. His Category Creation Formula, Context + Missing + Innovation, gives leaders a simple but powerful way to make that shift.
Denise Garth: The Frontier Insurer, One Year In
Episode 235
Thursday, August 20, 2026 • Duration 01:37:20
Denise Garth: The Frontier Insurer, One Year In
Denise Garth returns to Scouting for Growth one year after the Frontier Firm idea began to move from a strategic aspiration into insurer operating models, technology roadmaps, and boardroom priorities.
As Chief Strategy Officer at Majesco, Denise offers a sharper test for the Frontier Insurer: Is the organization simply using AI? Is it redesigning selected processes around AI? Or is it rebuilding the enterprise around intelligence, connecting its data, core platforms, people, partners, and decisions? Only the third represents genuine transformation.
The uncomfortable truth is that most carriers now have AI enthusiasm, pilots, and isolated productivity gains. Far fewer have the intelligent core, embedded governance, and human-agent operating model required to scale them. Majesco’s research captures the disconnect: 82% of insurance leaders believe AI will define the industry’s future, yet only 14% have integrated it into their operations.
Sabine and Denise explore what has changed over the past twelve months, why intelligent orchestration now matters more than another point solution, and how insurers can move from experimentation towards a genuinely redefined operating model.
The conversation is for insurance CEOs, COOs, CROs, CDOs, transformation leaders, and technology founders navigating the move from AI experimentation to an intelligent, governable operating model.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
One year on, I see the conversation around AI in insurance moving from “What is this technology?” to a much more consequential question: “What does this mean for the business?” The 82%-14% gap tells us that the challenge is no longer access to technology. It is leadership. Most insurers are experimenting, but experimentation alone will not create a Frontier Insurer. The real opportunity is to rethink the business around the outcomes we want to create for customers, employees, and shareholders.
I also believe we need to stop thinking about AI as something we bolt onto existing workflows. The Frontier Insurer embeds intelligence into its core, connects high-quality, accessible data with workflows and agents, and builds governance and auditability into its architecture. This changes what people actually do. Claims professionals can move from repetitive adjustment towards risk reduction and customer empathy; underwriters can become more focused on portfolio management and judgment; and employees can spend more time on knowledge-based work rather than manual processing.
Bárbara Fernández: Human-Agent Collaboration, Agentic AI, and the Rise of the Human Boss
Episode 234
Thursday, August 6, 2026 • Duration 26:41
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.
Carlos Falcón: Rebuilding the Insurance Core for AI, Venture Scouting and the Frontier Firm
Episode 233
Thursday, July 30, 2026 • Duration 26:45
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.
Reggie Townsend: Making Responsible AI Irresistible
Episode 232
Thursday, July 16, 2026 • Duration 01:36:16
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.
Dale Diamond: When a $25K Claim Becomes a $7M Verdict or More
Episode 231
Thursday, July 2, 2026 • Duration 01:15:45
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.
Willem Paling: From Messy Middles to Autonomous Agents and the Race for Trust at Scale
Episode 230
Thursday, June 25, 2026 • Duration 46:54
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.
Patrick Van Deven: The Frontier Firm's Moat isn't Data. It's The Layer that Governs It.
Episode 229
Thursday, June 11, 2026 • Duration 43:24
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.
Brad Wetherall: AI Search, Agentic AI, and How Corporations Must Adapt to Digital Discovery
Episode 228
Thursday, June 4, 2026 • Duration 57:14
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.
I also loved Kevin’s perspective on category leadership. Being first is not necessarily the objective. The real goal is to establish the dominant design that shapes how customers understand and expect the category to work. And, counterintuitively, competition can help because other players entering the market validate the category in customers’ minds. For me, this is a particularly important lesson in today’s crowded AI landscape.
Finally, Kevin makes a distinction I think every leader should consider: using AI to make the existing business more efficient is only one side of the opportunity. The bigger question is what entirely new products, services, and ways of operating become possible because AI has changed the context. As AI itself becomes foundational and ubiquitous, the differentiator will increasingly be what humans do with it, and the ideas they create about what comes next.
BEST MOMENTS
“Category design is a strategy. And when I think of positioning and marketing, those are things that a company does.” – Kevin Maney [13:52]
“Product-market fit has led a lot of people to think we'll build this product and figure out a market to put it into. And we talked about it, saying, like, it's actually market-product fit.” – Kevin Maney [25:00]
“Your ultimate goal is to win the dominant design. It's not to be the day one, first mover, be the first one to say, ‘We're creating this category.’” – Kevin Maney [29:57]
“Your goal is not to wipe out all competition, your goal is to be the dominant design and make all of your competitors follow you.” – Kevin Maney [29:57]
“I actually believe that the big AI models... that's going to become, at some point, as boring as the internet or as electricity. What excites me is what you can do with it.” – Kevin Maney [37:26]
“AI is trained on the past, and it's only going to understand the past, and it's going to be the humans that create the future.” – Kevin Maney [49:19]
ABOUT THE GUEST
Kevin Maney is a bestselling author, award-winning technology commentator, and founding partner of Category Design Advisors. He is the co-author of The Category Creation Formula and Play Bigger, and spent 22 years as a technology journalist at USA Today. His work has also appeared in publications including Newsweek, Fortune, The Atlantic, and Wired.
Kevin helps leadership teams identify, define, and develop new market categories. Through nearly a decade of category-design work with more than 50 companies, his focus has included market-product fit, dominant design, the adjacent possible, strategic points of view, and the leadership alignment required to translate innovation into an understood and adopted market choice.
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 biggest shift, however, is towards orchestration. I am increasingly convinced that the winners will not be the insurers with the most AI pilots or the biggest AI budgets. They will be the organizations that can bring together intelligence, governance, and core systems into a coherent operating model, while building trust along the way. Becoming a Frontier Insurer means being bold enough to rethink organizational structures, jobs, processes, technology partnerships, and ultimately the economics of insurance. The question is no longer whether AI will change insurance. It is whether leaders are prepared to redesign their businesses around it.
BEST MOMENTS
“Every insurer in 2026 will tell you that they are doing AI. Ask your harder question. Who has rebuilt the business or operating model around it?” – Sabine VanderLinden [00:16]
“The gap isn't a technology story. It is a leadership story.” – Sabine VanderLinden [00:16]
“It isn't about cutting people. It's about elevating them.” – Denise Garth [14:49]
“It is about a rip and replace of business capabilities and the operating model.” – Denise Garth [43:34]
“Somebody else is going to jump ahead of you because they're going to look at it from an orchestration standpoint and rethink.” – Denise Garth [38:19]
“Redefined their operating model and embraced AI in a way that accelerated that redefinition of the operating model.” – Denise Garth [95:10]
ABOUT THE GUEST
Denise Garth is Chief Strategy Officer at Majesco, where she leads strategy, marketing, industry relations, and innovation in support of the company’s client-centric vision. She works closely with insurers, technology partners and the wider industry ecosystem to identify emerging shifts and translate them into practical priorities for property and casualty, life, annuity and benefits organizations.
An internationally recognized insurance and InsurTech thinker, Denise focuses on the forces reshaping the industry—from AI, data, and intelligent core platforms to new operating models, changing customer expectations, and ecosystem-based growth. Her work challenges insurers to move beyond incremental modernization and build organizations capable of learning, adapting, and delivering value continuously.
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
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
"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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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