Scouting for Growth

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Saagar Govil, Chairman and CEO of Cemtrex Incorporated. With a tenacious spirit and an unwavering focus, Saagar has led Cemtrex from its initial days of making under $3M in revenues to a thriving powerhouse raking in over $100M, with over 350 employees in 6 offices worldwide.Under Saagar's vision and leadership, Cemtrex is a diversified technology company that's relentlessly driving innovation in an array of sectors, including smart technology, virtual and augmented realities, advanced electronic systems, industrial solutions, and, most intriguing, intelligent security systems powered by AI.In this episode, they dive into the world of AI and security and explore Saagar's inspiring journey, mission, and passion for technologies, from IoT to space tech. KEY TAKEAWAYS Cemtrex started out as a small family business and over the last 10 years we’ve focussed on driving growth. We started out as a small environmental technology company and we struggled to grow in that industry because the appetite for that in the market has only come to fruition recently. I figured out the best way to grow was through acquisitions of businesses that had bigger potential, because you get more reward for the hard work you put in. We’re seeing a transformation of the security industry as we look to adopt and implement AI systems into the market. The unique thing about what’s happening today is that for the first time ever computers can now see better than humans. What that allows is for companies to use and leverage technologies in a way that’s never been possible before to drive better security outcomes. That could be from preventing incidents from happening to responding to them better in real time and to more accurately apprehend the suspects after an event occurs. CCTV cameras with advanced features in the past used to be triggered by motion and they would trigger events, alarms, etc. The challenge with that is that if a tree is swaying in the background it could trigger these alarms which is frustrating for operators. With the advent of AI you can track specific objects more accurately and clearly so that if a certain asset in the frame is moved then send an alert. That solution is really easy to implement out of the box today. Unfortunately, the world is more and more dangerous. 90-95% of schools have CCTV and yet we’re still hearing about mass shootings taking place all the time and it’s a tragedy. This tells me that a) the basic tools are already installed and b) they are actually not that effective. The ways we can implement AI today to drive better outcomes is apparent in that we can do better with identity management using facial recognition, we can track who should be at school at a certain time, we can send out the right alerts  if there is a disgruntled person on the premises or tap into sex offender databases to alert the authorities that they’re on the perimeter. BEST MOMENTS‘Sometimes it’s not about how hard you work, it’s about where you’re spending your time and your effort.’‘AI is definitely going to make businesses and specific assets safer.’‘When you have a security co-pilot that can understand what’s going on on the video feeds you can start to interact with that GPT/co-pilot, you can manage security needs much faster or in real time, that’s where we’re going to see the industry moving in the next couple of years.’‘There are ways to build these types of technologies that maximise people’s privacy but also ensure the safety of those that are occupying the space at any given point in time.’ ABOUT THE GUESTSaagar Govil is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cemtrex Inc., a company that owns and operates multiple businesses building industrial solutions and intelligent security systems. Saagar is a serial entrepreneur interested in IoT, Wearables, Robotics, Advanced electronics, and Space Tech. In his leisure time he enjoys watching the Knicks, golfing, travelling, and sailing.CemtrexCemtrex, Inc. is a diversified technology company that's driving innovation in a wide range of sectors, including smart technology, virtual and augmented realities, advanced electronic systems, industrial solutions, and intelligent security systems. Cemtrex Inc. owns and operates multiple businesses and they are building industrial solutions and intelligent security systems.Website: www.cemtrex.com ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Dr Melissa Sassi, CEO and Co-Founder of Skills Hustle, a pre-seed edtech company committed to closing the skills gap and transforming learners into earners. Skills Hustle's platform takes an innovative approach, offering gamified, interactive, and practical modules that engage learners on a deeper level. With a focus on community building, the platform provides access to thought leaders, networking opportunities, and real-world challenges such as innovation challenges and hackathons, enabling learners to develop practical skills and solve real business challenges. In this episode Melissa shares her insights, experiences, and innovative ideas in leveraging technology and education to drive social impact and foster sustainable growth. KEY TAKEAWAYS I’ve spent the last 10 years of my career working between Microsoft and IBM, and I’ve always created my own jobs, I’ve never flowed through the ‘right’ career progression plan. I ran startup accelerators; at Microsoft it was all about building internet and energy access solutions around the world and bringing digital skills to connect it. At IBM I focussed on data protection, privacy and security in heavily regulated industries like FinTech, HealthTech and InsurTech. I’ve also had a couple of stints on Wall Street and had my own nonprofit teaching tens of thousands of kids to code in 12 countries. Currently I run a venture studio with my partner. One day my daughter, who was living in Tunisia with her father at the time, said she didn’t have access to a computer in her classroom. They had one shared across 40 kids. I realized there’s no way that she’s going to be prepared for the future of work and the digital economy. I could get her devices for home, but what about all the other kids in her classroom? So I went on a mission to get computers for the class. But as I did this I realized the bigger picture that access to tech, skills, the internet and what role they play – including affordability – in driving outcomes in healthcare, education, economics, getting a job, everything we have and do centres around tech. I realised half the world isn’t connected to the internet and I looked at what I could do to change that. My partner and I are still working on how to demystify what a venture studio is or what a venture builder does versus a VC, an accelerator and an incubator. We combine all those things together. In the future I’d love to see situations where my founders raise a shit-ton of money, come up with amazing solutions that are powering the world, changing things that make the world a better place but also making money at the same time. I believe in doing well while doing good.  BEST MOMENTS‘Everyone is a FinTech these days, including Timbaland.’‘I had it ingrained in my soul that I needed to work, to be productive, independent, to be able to take care of myself. From hard work comes outcomes in life that are financial in nature, it may be experiences, but you’ve got to work to achieve.’‘I was part of a broken system and I perpetuated a broken system without knowing it.’‘We focus on growth from 3 perspectives: Technical enablement, thinking about what the business model is, and access to partnerships.’ ABOUT THE GUESTDr Melissa Sassi has dedicated her career to the intersection of technology, education, economic development, social impact, startups, and sustainability. With extensive global experience, including visits to 60 countries, she brings first-hand knowledge of the challenges and opportunities in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Melissa's doctoral thesis focused on the transformative role of digital inclusion in solving the SDGs. As the CEO and Co-Founder of Skills Hustle, a pre-seed edtech company, Melissa aims to bridge the skills gap and empower learners to become learners. Skills Hustle offers an interactive and practical learning platform, with a focus on gamification and real-world application. Through live sessions, mentors, innovation challenges, and hackathons, learners acquire valuable skills while solving authentic business problems. The platform also features a community portal for ongoing engagement, networking, and access to thought leaders and opportunities. Core content areas include digital skills, habits and attitudes, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy.Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissasassi/ ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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

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

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  

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  

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

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  

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  

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Amy Buchan Siegfried, an experienced founder, CEO, entrepreneur, investor, and speaker. Amy is the Co-Founder of Last Night’s Game, a platform that breaks down sports in an easy-to-understand way, through email and weekly podcasts. She also serves as the “on-air talent” and face for the company. From creation to execution, Amy has managed organisations and significant initiatives, including fundraising, marketing, program development, and community relations to empower others with ideas, information, mentorship experience, and resources. Sports Tech includes over 17,000 startups ventures 30% of which have raised $35 billion of VC funding with 11 active unicorns. Business models range from fantasy sports, eSports or Casino games to Fitness and Wellness tech often used in health insurance. On this episode the pair discuss Amy the investor, the entrepreneur and the women in tech, why Last Night's Game, niche markets yield success, the challenge and the opportunity for women entrepreneurs, and tips and best practices. KEY TAKEAWAYS I love to recognise the talent of those that are out there hustling trying to make things happen, and making those connections and making things happen for them. You want to support those who have the ideas, what’s 15-30 minutes of my time for somebody who’s trying to make their thing happen? Getting things started and taking the first step is the hardest part, if you can give that extra vote of confidence or ideas or connections, that can help them be successful. The ideas to differentiate yourself only come from talking to others because, when you’re the founder, you’re stuck in your own head and don’t see all those other things. Be a sounding board, be available. Last Night’s Game was set up about 20 years ago. I was working as an intern at the Arizona Diamondbacks MLB team and one of my girlfriends asked why certain things were happening and I thought she was really missing out on an opportunity to connect with her co-workers. We were working in a male-dominated industry and sports is a common language that allows you to level the playing field in the office. So, I thought about how to teach her about sports in an interesting way. My brother and I devised a way to make sports approachable so they could use it in day-to-day interactions, or dates, etc. But it took until 14 years later before we had the time to work on and launch it. I’m successful because of what I learned in the corporate world. It was a good structure for me. So often now the corporate world is depicted as the bad character in a movie, but it’s not, there’s a lot we can learn from it. You learn to work as a team in the corporate environment, you have to work in someone else’s structure, alongside personalities that are not like you. There’s still a way the corporate world can evolve, and we should all be evolving no matter how big your business is so that we don’t end up as a ‘has-been’ company that nobody wants to work with. The foundation of having relationships is still critical today. We’re more connected than ever but more removed than ever. How do we maximise and humanise that connection? Get out and meet people, build relationships. If you’re not comfortable being the people person, hire someone who is. It’s the same as building a team around you that isn’t like you, doesn’t think like you, doesn’t live on the same block as you. A diverse team brings a different perspective, and everyone has their different talents.  BEST MOMENTS‘Sports is like food: It’s a common language that we can all speak, everywhere you go has a national dish and a national sport and everyone’s really proud of that.’‘How are you making yourself different from everybody else? That is how you get funded, if you’re different that’s an excellent thing.’‘The biggest challenge in investing in businesses, from an angel investor viewpoint, is that everyone wants to be everything to all people. You can’t be, it’s not possible. Identify your target market.’‘Our whole goal is short and sweet. We all know we have information overload, but we crank out a lot of content.’ ABOUT THE GUESTAfter seeing how the ability to talk sports gave her the upper hand as a woman in business, Amy and her brother Scott created Last Night’s Game to give their friends the same advantage. Last Night’s Game empowers its readers to join the sports conversation, even if they don’t know the first thing about sports. Her career has included working for a Major League Baseball team and in other male-dominated industries. A third-generation entrepreneur, Amy once flew around the world in 58 hours and 37 minutes, has lived internationally and is a master of small talk, bringing people together and the handwritten note. You can often find this married lady working with the entrepreneurship community nationwide and teaching her toddler about sports, food and other things he’ll have to use to make small talk one day.Reach out to Amy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amybsiegfried/ About Last night’s gameEmpowering you with the latest sports and pop culture news, so you never have to resort to talking about the weather. Last Night’s Game empowers its readers to join the sports conversation, even if they don’t know the first thing about sports. The conversation doesn’t have to be that painful. Having worked in the sports and corporate world, Amy knows how sports can level the playing field and how helpful it is to have a team behind you.  Last Night’s Game goal is to make it easier for you to stand out in the crowd.  Follow updates on the sports and pop culture world so you never have to be left talking about the weather.Discover: https://lastnightsgame.com/ ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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