Scouting for Growth

On this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL talks to two renowned FinTech Influencers and respected voices in finance and insurance, Danielle Guzman – head of social media at Mercer who is an expert at activating employees and creating business impact on social media, and Theodora Lau - Founder at Unconventional Ventures, author, podcast host and public speaker who advises many startup ventures. KEY TAKEAWAYS Danielle - The future of work is something I’m passionate about, both personally and professionally and the journey over the past years has been about reinventing myself and how to stay relevant in a world that is changing so radically. The pandemic has only accelerated that journey, not just for me but for everyone to be thinking about this a lot more, using social media channels to connect and make a difference. Theo – I spent the bulk of my career in telecom, not finance and banking, don’t hold that against me! What’s interesting is, when you look at high-tech, telecom, financial service industry, and FinTech and InsurTech startups, a lot of what we do inherently at the end of the day is about people. Technology is a means to an end and allows us to communicate and exchange ideas. As a broader society, we’re starting to realize that self-care is actually not self-indulgence. The conversations around mental health and well-being are now becoming what they should be. Health is embedded in every aspect of our lives, but mental health and taking time to invest in our own well-being have always been secondary things. It’s critical that now through organizations and leaders that it’s becoming a very real and daily conversation at the table. I grew up in a generation where you had a career, and now we’re part of a generation where you’re having career experiences. There’s so much that needs to be done for that to become accessible to everyone, there doesn’t seem to be an answer to that right now but organizations are trying to figure that out. That’s going to be a watershed moment for the future of work and one of the biggest changes that we will probably see in our lifetime and we’re at the beginning of that journey. At the crux of that is the concept of trust.   BEST MOMENTS ‘I like to look at everything as not making big changes all at once, but how we can make small, incremental changes that have a compound return over time.’ ‘The past 18 months have shown, we might be in the same storm, but we’re not in the same boat. We have been very aware of a lot of the challenges and inequalities that exist in our society, but I hope we take away the learning from recent months that there’s a lot we still need to do.’ ‘Longevity is a challenge, but it’s actually an opportunity. Since the early 1900s we’ve all gained an extra, healthy 30 living years. Living longer affords us to try different things in our careers.’ ‘Are new solutions being created to mimic what we’ve always had in the past, or are they being created to support these new opportunities? Are there enough solutions out there to support small business owners and gig workers? I would say we need more.’ ABOUT THE GUEST As the VP of Social and Distributed Content at Mercer, Danielle uses data to assess the viability of risky campaigns and predict the future of digital content consumption. Since diving head first into the world of insights-driven marketing and leadership, Danielle has seen data transform the careers of dozens of marketers—including her own. Website: https://www.mercer.com/ Theodora (Theo) Lau is a public speaker, writer, and startup advisor, whose work seeks to spark innovation to improve consumer financial well-being. As founder of Unconventional Ventures, she focuses on developing and growing an ecosystem of financial institutions, corporates, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists to better address the unmet needs of consumers (e.g. older adults and gig economy workers), with keen interests in women and minority founders. As part of her work, she regularly mentors and advises FinTech startups. She is recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice for Economy and Finance, No. 1 Women in Finance by Onalytica, and Top FinTech influencer by various publications including Onalytica, Retail Banker International, and FinTech Finance. She co-hosts Rhetoriq, a podcast on longevity and fintech innovations, and runs a weekly blog on Irish Tech News. She is also a regular contributor for various top industry events, publications, and podcasts, including Harvard Business Review, MIT Tech Review, Money20/20, Finovate, RISE, American Banker, Breaking Banks, Financial Brand, Financial Revolutionist, Irish Tech News, Mercer, and INV Filter. She provides strategic advisory services to a broad set of corporates; she advises startups and mentors entrepreneurs from different accelerators and incubators around the country. She is an advocate for diversity and inclusion – and frequently writes and speaks on the need for diversity on gender, ethnicity, age, education, and more. Her end goal is to help more financial institutions (incumbents and startups) focus on the needs of the forgotten demographics and build sustainable and inclusive business models. Website: https://www.unconventional.vc/  ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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 Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Scott Gunther, General Partner at IAG Firemark Ventures, the corporate venture capital fund from IAG located in Australia. Scott has been at IAG for over 10 years and has been running the Venture fund for over 6 years. With strong expertise in marketing customer experience among others, Scott wanted to bring something new to the group, by opening his doors to the external world to ensure its resilience and relevance for the very long term. During this podcast, the pair discuss Scott’s path to CVC Land, and what IAG Firemark Ventures do to remain on top of its game. They also cover the topic of talent, talent, and talent, and what remote working means for Scott and his team. Finally, they discuss best practices for startups, scaleups, corporate innovators, and investors wanting to build their corporate venturing arm. KEY TAKEAWAYS Everything we hear, see and experience in the startup world today is not new, it happened way back during the dot com boom. That’s where I started and I couldn’t ask for a more impressive grounding, working for one of Australia’s largest companies and trying to set something up – 90-day sprints to try to launch businesses, products, and services and thinking about the World Wide Web before it became the World Wide Web, eCommerce and the like. As a young man, at the time, coming out of university, I probably had no idea what the future was going to hold for me. A fundamental part of why we do what we do is to bring the outside world inside our own enterprise and try to transform how we deliver insurance. That means that every day is different because, as you’re starting to look at global, macro trends or at different markets to see what’s working, or looking at different parts of the customer journey. We’re working today with business-to-consumer businesses, Agritech, or AI businesses, there are no two days that are the same. The more that you can experience, whether it’s industry or role, function or geography, it really sets you apart from the rest to have this flexibility. Successful CVCs across the world are made up of teams that have got really diverse skill sets. CVCs fail or succeed depending on their acknowledgment that they’re part of something bigger and that the corporate HQ has its primary direction and purpose. At IAG our purpose is to make your world a safer place, we’re there to insure customers, their assets, businesses, livelihoods, and a whole heap of other different risks. But also, if an incident or a claim happened, to be there to help them to recover. Working for an organization that is very purpose driven gives you something to work backward from and something to aim for, like the North Star. Any CVC has to make sure that they’re not just a little adjunct of a corporation, they’re a really integral part of the business and as a consequence, you really have to know your business inside and out. When we put our investment thesis together we had to get razor-sharp on the things that you can and can’t do. You might want to invest in every market, look at all sorts of different stages of startups, and invest different amounts.  When you first get going you need to give yourself guardrails, like not investing in series c stage scaleups for instance. For instance, our CVC does not lead investment rounds. We do not invest in certain markets. As we evolve, we will adjust, refine and expand our investment thesis which will change for the better over time. BEST MOMENTS ‘I’ve always been a believer in breadth and depth of experiences and my journey took me to different parts of the business world but also into very relevant adjacent verticals too.’‘Insurance is something you fall into and if you fall into it, you stay there.’‘Those CVCs who are really intrinsically in tune with understanding changing business models, but also the relationships across businesses and our industry, are the ones that are probably more successful.’‘Innovation is something that anyone in an organization should aspire to do. If you’re not moving forward you’re standing still and if you’re standing still, realistically, you’re going backward.’ ABOUT THE GUESTScott Gunther is a corporate venture capitalist (CVC) & startup enthusiast. Scott every day partners with business leaders to help them identify and understand strategic opportunities to achieve digital transformation and customer growth. With years of experience designing future state digital-first businesses and delivering transformation programs across multiple industries, Scott possesses the unique skills and experience of both strategy and execution - a differentiator at the board table for both blue chip and emerging businesses. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottdgunther/ IAG Firemark Ventures website: https://firemarkcollective.com/ventures ABOUT THE 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 Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Henrique Volpi, one of the co-founders and the CEO of Kakau – one of the very first InsurTechs in Latin America. Kakau is an InsurTech and tech platform that delivers digital experiences while improving insurance operations and easing the delivery of complex financial services. Kakau's SaaS model is powered by machine learning and robotic process automation. Henrique is one of the co-authors of the InsurTech book and is also the co-founder and board member of the InsurTech association of Brazil. During the conversation, Sabine and Henrique discuss InsurTech in Latam and Brazil, selling insurance via the phone, Brazil's regulator approving subscription transaction models, NFT policies, and the future of tech-led business models. KEY TAKEAWAYS Back in the day, people would question whether it was possible to sell insurance digitally. Insurance sales were only done by phone. Indeed, you could originate business via Google Adverts and so on. Still, the delivery of a fully digital experience wasn’t the case back then. So, we did the contrarian thing and went to design a digital-first platform as we knew this was a global trend. The first thing we did was to discuss the project with a very large legal forum in Brazil and asked them for their help because insurance is a regulated industry and we knew the importance of having a legal team, and we designed one of the first digital MGAs in Brazil. Since the beginning, we spoke to the regulator. This approach was very different from other startups that were afraid to go to Rio and speak to them. We just shot straight and said: “We want to do this. Is that legally OK? Can we move forward?” We took a different approach from the other startups. Over time the regulator told us that we could not engage with them that much. So, we went back to our legal partner and set up the first Brazilian InsurTech Association to help technology startups get access to the insight they needed to build their InsurTech right. We started with 4-5 companies and now we have more than 20 members. The first thing I believe we need to educate others is on finance and therefore insurance, especially in Brazil. This should be the same in South-East Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a whole. Individuals must learn how to make money and take care of their money because many people do not know. They have to learn how to lend money, they have to learn how to manage that money, and hopefully, they will learn how to save a little bit. Only later they will think about insurance. Typically, you start with lending and credit cards before going up the value chain to investments and then insurance. Insurance and InsurTech are probably 5-6 years less mature compared to FinTech in Brazil which is going very strong.  Don’t be afraid to pivot your business model, you’re going to pivot many, many times around your journey and you have to be aggressive in terms of technology. We’ve seen around the world many, many companies that don’t really have a good tech stack, it’s just a front-end. What’s interesting though and I’m excited about this too, is when a market player realizes that it does not need to own everything then it can consider licensing. When you license the best capabilities that are out there you have a different perspective on how you serve your customers and users.    BEST MOMENTS ‘Even though it was very hard and there was a lot of work to do to prove the content, we proved that one can sell insurance policies digitally. Now it’s something that’s growing very fast in Brazil.’‘We may be going through a crisis. Still, what’s happening now is very volatile. So, when growth opportunities return, the launch of digital-first businesses may return faster than a lot of people think.’‘I’m very interested in the ramifications of cyber risk within our digital world. I think another trend we need to pay attention to is the monetization of value-added services. Some big carriers in Brazil are setting up services companies that will prevent risks from happening, especially around commercial lines.’‘Go for it. The world needs people who have the courage to become entrepreneurs.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Henrique Volpi is known for having a positive attitude, execution focus, and servant leadership. Committed to making a positive impact, Henrique Volpi is the co-founder of Kakau, one of the first InsurTech startups in Latin America. A technologist for the past 25 years working in leading tech companies such as Servicenow, EMC/Dell, and BMC Software. Henrique co-founded and became the president of the Brazilian Insurtech Association. He is a co-author of the Insurtech Book.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henriquevolpi/ Kakau Technologies reduces the complexity of financial services and insurance operations through the efficient use of AI technology. By leveraging ML and RPA Kakau Tech delivers seamless SaaS solutions in Risk Model Management, NLP Claims Management, NFT Policy Management, and Churn Prediction. Kakau's technologies is a digital platform that uses artificial intelligence technology to deliver more accurate results in the insurance segment. Kakau delivers a fully digital experience seamlessly powered by machine learning across multiple product categories. The platform enables users to get insurance for various products like motorcycles, cell phones, digital devices, and bikes among others. Website: https://www.kakau.co/ ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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 Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Dylan Bourguignon, CEO of SO-SURE. He is on a mission to restore customer trust in insurance He has set up his digital insurance platform with a unique model that delivers win-win insurance. In this conversation, the pair discuss Dylan's journey setting up SO-SURE, why he moved into insurance, and how useful sales strategies and skills have been to scale the business. KEY TAKEAWAYS Having been an engineer twice over, I went into strategy consulting and then private equity for 10 years, and acquired an MBA on the way. In the latter part of my time in private equity, I was focused on insurance and I got to understand the entire value chain of insurance and how there was a chasm between the consumer experience of insurance and the margins the industry was making. As an investor, I was looking for businesses that were addressing the issue, sadly there weren’t any so I decided to do it myself. Whenever you try to change the equation for consumers, if you just try to focus on a single element that matters to them, whether it’s distribution, policy admin, or claims, as individual segments of the value chain, you’re only optimizing a sub-optimal point. If you really want to have a step change in customer experience, you really have to take control of the entirety of the value chain and redesign it. That’s what we’ve done.  Our platform does deliver a risk pooling model, it delivers a network model. Think about it as Mutual 3.0 (the next stage of a John Lewis Partnership model.) The idea is that I buy a policy, I’m covered, I can then connect to my friends and family who I trust, and every time I connect to them, I and my friends each get £10 added to each of our reward pots. We can all connect to as many people as we want until my reward pot is worth 80% of the value of my premium. At the end of the year, if I and my friends have not claimed, the money in my pot is paid out to me. My pot is not dependent on my friends' connections, only with those networks of people I connect directly with. Embedded insurance is a bit like "the emperor's new clothes." I feel that it is just like dressing up something that’s been around for a long time. "Dixons" was selling insurance with laptops in the 90s already. The only difference is now the ability to make it part of the consumer experience when you purchase a product, as distribution partners you can also build a better understanding of their customers and you can use some of that information to provide a more relevant and bespoke solution for the customers in terms of the insurance. There are all sorts of charges that the industry needs to be mindful of. Think about the issue of over-insurance. If you insure for loss/ theft/ damage for every single item that you own – a couch for example – is that not covered by your home and content insurance already? The solution that we’re creating for consumers needs to be relevant and we also need to be delivering through an impeccable moment of truth -- a superb claim experience -- that needs to be as seamless as the purchase itself.   BEST MOMENTS ‘For us at SO-SURE, we needed to gain control of the customer experience from purchase to claim. What you quickly realize is that there’s no way of fundamentally changing the paradigm for consumers unless you have control over the entire value chain – policy admin, claims, distribution.’‘Consumers don’t trust the promise that when things go wrong their back is going to be covered. Unfortunately, this is broken. Nobody has the consumer’s best interest at the heart of what they are doing. We’ve addressed all those issues in our redesign of the consumer experience. It’s so critical to focus on what the customer’s experience is going to be when they claim and how it can be a good experience.’‘Win-win means amazing if you need us. Our insurance products are incredibly competitive, up to 40% cheaper than our competition, it’s very clear and written for consumers, and when you claim we fulfill the claims within 24-72 hours, 10 times faster than the competition. If you do not claim you get rewards (95% of people don’t claim on insurance.) If so you can get up to 80% of your money back if you and your friends in your pool don’t claim. What’s not to love?'‘Be yourself and don’t stop believing.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Dylan Bourguignon is on a mission to restore consumer trust in insurance. He has developed a digital Insurer with a unique model that delivers win-win insurance based on a social business model that rewards the customer for great behavior. With 10 years of private equity investing and business development experience across a broad spectrum of industries (i.e., consumer, media, industrial, and financial services). With special expertise in business growth drawing upon sales, strategy, negotiation, M&A, financing projects, and leadership skills, Dylan has a lens on what makes sense for consumers. Dylan gained analytical and financial skill sets grounded in an MBA and a Chartered Engineer status degree. Worked in Europe with exposure to Asia and USA. Bilingual French-English with conversational Spanish and basic German. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanbourguignon/  Dylan built SO-SURE insurance so that one can have his cake and eat it! SO-SURE makes it fast and easy to claim when a customer needs support. And when the customer does not need SO-SURE, then the team rewards him or her with up to 80% of premium payback.SO-SURE offers coverage against theft, loss, accidental damage, water damage, and more. It also offers insurance premium reimbursement every year. It offers online claims processing services. It also offers replacement or repair once the claim is approved.Website: https://wearesosure.com/ ABOUT THE 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

In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL interviews Janthana Kaenprakhamroy, co-founder and CEO of Tapoly, an on-demand gig economy worker InsurTech UK startup. In this interview, Sabine and Janthana discuss business model innovation, target market and customer segmentation, and what building a lifestyle brand in insurance means. They finally cover company culture, talent acquisition, and founding a business. KEY TAKEAWAYS Tapoly came about because I was so surprised with how backward we were in terms of offering insurance and the whole end-to-end process for gig economy workers and micro-businesses. This was an industry in which I thought I could add value. Tapoly is a very timely and much-needed platform because we are able to operate at a micro-premium level that some traditional players may not be interested or capable of delivering. Our fully-automated process where we use technology to drive our pricing and underwriting means it’s easier for us to gain that economy of scale and save costs even if the transaction is much lower than a traditional player would want to underwrite. This is needed because someone needs to serve these customers. We differentiate ourselves from our peers by our product differentiation, our approach – which is from the customer angle, looking at their profile and asking ourselves what we need to do in order to get the relevant insurance to cover our clients’ flexible lifestyles. To cover this you need to expand your product range and list of carriers, which is time-consuming and costly. The next stage is to grow our business. Gig workers could work three jobs, each job with a very different risk profile, so it’s very hard to buy coverage to cover all three risks. Offering an on-demand, usage-based solution relevant for a variety of activities will help the insured and us so that we know what risks we are taking as opposed to getting a surprise when the client claims for something which is obviously not covered by the policy.   BEST MOMENT ‘What’s needed in the insurance space is a joined-up system that tracks every single transaction from every single source. That’s why Tapoly has gone from being a reach-out player offering micro-insurances to moving up the chain.’ ‘Our gig workers include either micro-business, sole traders or freelancers that are difficult to make a profit from but need insurance to cover core products like employer liabilities for businesses that everyone must have. There are also professional indemnity public liability and other add-ons that may be relevant to their business activity and risk profile.’‘I’m a first-time founder as well as being a female, and on top of that I didn’t have much insurance experience when I started, and the profit margins are small on microinsurance products. A lot of investors would prefer to invest in a company with larger margins and at a more mature stage of development, still, we are hopeful that we can prove to them that we are one of the valuable platforms that they should invest in.’‘I chose my co-founder, Sam, based on three aspects: Skill to add value, work ethic, and his ability to financially support the business when needed We both chose our team based on the talent that we know we needed, and individuals that we could coach and teach so they don’t pick up any bad habits. The experience was not necessary for us. An interest in the business and high work ethics were key.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Janthana Kaenprakhamroy is one of the Top 10 Insurtech Female Influencers as ranked by The Insurance Institute. Founder of Tapoly, the first on-demand insurance platform for the gig economy in Europe, as seen in the Top 100 European Fintech Awards 2017. Chartered accountant and former investment banking professional. Janathana was also one of the co-authors of the InsurTECH Book. Website: https://www.tapoly.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janthana-kaenprakhamroy-0b73546b/ ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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

In this episode of the Scouting for Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Mike Minett, CEO or Chief Ideas Guy at Portabl. Portable is a platform and community which provides insurance, benefits, and savings products for freelance and self-employed professionals. In this podcast, Mike and Sabine cover: Why Mike decided to move from consulting to building an InsurTech focused on the future of work, what Portabl’s focus and core proposition are, what is required to build a gig economy-focused startup, and a little bit of ESG and the Future of Tech. KEY TAKEAWAYS We exploded out of the gate and got some opportunities in the US which was probably too big for us for where we were at in our journey. So, we made the decision to come back and technically build and launch again out of London. Then we got a bit of Covid interruption when we were due to close our first round of funding in March 2020 and things fell apart at that point, but interestingly Portable and our proposition to serve and support the independent, freelance, and gig world of work continued to be interesting and Covid accelerated everything. So, on the one hand, we lost time, but actually, I think the timing will work out even better for us as we prepare to finally launch into the market. It’s been a journey! We want to create a portable structure that wraps around the individual and follows them with whatever they’ve got going on, whatever pieces of work they might have on the go, for whichever client they might have on the books, and ultimately, across any geographies that they might be traveling to and working through. The old model is no longer fit for the way people are choosing to live and work. Building an insurance business has its challenges, especially considering the regulatory constraints and the risk profiling requirements, which is our secret sauce – ‘frisk’, our freelancer risk. People’s underwriting score and credit score both drops simply because they’ve become independent, yet this is the same person with the same network, the same skills, and experiences, and potentially the same career trajectory. Why should they face biases and penalties just because they are independent? The only reason is that the models are built for the old world. At Portabl, we’re trying to tackle risk profiling through data and analytics, getting a better understanding of these individuals, to present that story back to our insurance and credit partners on behalf of these individuals so they get a better and fairer deal. We try to free up a lot of time and stress for our customers so they can concentrate on their work. Insurance for good is a good thing, but people don’t wake up in the morning and say “I wish I had more insurance”, they don’t even know what they have, what they don’t have, what they should probably have, and that it’s a lot more affordable than they probably think. A lot of our insurances come with really nice features like access to a virtual GP, counseling and mental health support, physio, etc.    BEST MOMENTS ‘The fear of startups and the whole concept is that you need to be doing more faster and you’re constantly watching the clock.’‘By 2023, 50% of the world’s workforce is going to be working independently in some shape or form. Who’s looking after this new 50%? While today they are few, they will become a major portion of the working population tomorrow. That was the genesis for the idea of Portabl.’‘As an independent, it’s precarious, if you lose your health. Your health impacts your ability to earn. And if you lose your ability to earn, this also impacts your health. We really concentrate on the health and wellbeing piece by trying to keep our members happy, healthy, and productive.’‘The laptop and the mobile phone are the most critical business tool for many of us, do you have them insured? You really should because all your data, your IP, and your knowledge are likely to be either on your phone or on your laptop. Independent workers don’t have the company to replace the phone or laptop.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Mike Minett is the CEO and founder of PORTABL.co, an all-in-one, a data-driven platform providing portable insurance, benefits, and savings products to the world's freelancers and gig economies – nicely wrapped up in a single monthly membership bundle. PORTABL.co does the heavy lifting for these new and typically underserved markets, saving members’ time, money and stress with easy-to-understand and use risk and financial products.Mike is no stranger to disrupting the market with unique perspectives on the twenty-first-century workplace – driven by a rich understanding of the impact of demographics. After a 20-year consulting and management career across fintech, insurance, and risk management for global investment banks, Mike launched The Positive Ageing Company, a SaaS-based data business focused on addressing the challenges and opportunities of the global aging workforce. That start-up was acquired by MMC Inc. (Mercer) in 2016.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeminett/ PORTABL.co is empowering the world's independent workforce and the future of work.Portabl has built the world’s smartest platform and community providing flexible financial wellbeing, health benefits, and insurance products to the 50% of the workforce living and working as part of gig-based economies.  At its heart is our proprietary FRISC Score – set to challenge traditional underwriting and credit scoring of independent workers. Never has our mission to better serve and support the world’s independent workforce been more important and relevant.Website: https://www.portabl.co/ ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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

In this episode of Scouting for Growth,  Sabine VdL interviews Naby Mariyam, CEO of Coverhero an insurance platform that provides cover for all types of gig economy hustle. The first product delivered by Coverhero, Hustlecover.com was recently launched to fill the gap of financial insecurity for the growing gig economy and self-employed generation. KEY TAKEAWAYS Before setting up Coverhero, the last two startups I did were in the gig economy and supply chain, so I have a bit of experience in building marketplaces and gig economy-based platforms. I launched Australia’s first ride-share platform, Ridehero, and a last-mile delivery platform, ZipMate.  Before transitioning into tech I was a social scientist in academia for about 15 years.  It’s very humbling to go into a whole different industry where you don’t know how it’s done after being an expert in academia. In my area, I was at the top, and then to go to a completely different industry and started from the bottom was deeply humbling. This is core to my existence, to who I am, I have to fight through these barriers pretty much every single day: I left the Maldives to move to another country and started over. I then decided to get into tech, tick all of the diversity boxes and fought those biases. And to build what we have built at Coverhero is a huge accomplishment. There’s no other way for us but to build a customer-centric business. This is what was truly weird when I first started talking to insurance industry executives who design products around the actuaries or the loss/expense ratios, it’s very product-centered rather than customer-centric. I then learned how broken the supply chain of insurance is and that got me really excited because I really love solving non-sexy, complex supply chain problems. I wanted to find out how we build a product that customers actually wanted, as well as determine how we acquire customers, and retain them at a lower cost.  Our philosophy is to build a really valuable piece of software that connects the insurer to distribution. There were a couple of things that led us to take this direction. When we first started we wanted to go direct to consumers and acquire customers that way, but along the way, we realized that to build a company that can dominate a category you need to find a gap, then define, refine and refine again this new category. The category that we define is "work integrated life cover", which is for someone who has finished university and who decided to go into the workforce as a self-employed. BEST MOMENT ‘I wasn’t really interested in insurance, but I had a life-changing experience where I got really sick and we had an insurance claim rejected. That process led me to be curious enough to think “why is this so difficult? Why can’t it be as simple as booking an Uber?”’ ‘To leave academia to jump into the startup world was an existential crisis, I think.’‘I’ve always been passionate about creating equity and opportunity for people that don’t have access to networks, this is something the world needs to do a lot more of.’‘The last four years I’ve been in the space I’ve seen a lot of money being invested into ideas that may or may not work, and the bar that’s being set by the insurance industry is very different from the bar that is set for a startup that is not from the InsurTech industry.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Naby Mariyam says: Graduating with a Master of Philosophy in Management at the age of 22, I have had 18 years of experience in a wide range of industries across Senior level positions spanning Academia (Business studies, Research Methodology and Design), Management Consulting, Documentary production, Travel & Destination Marketing, and Technology. Naby's Research background is in social science where she deeply studied human behavior in her Academic career. Naby is currently taking a break from her PhD to focus on building technology-driven solutions that solve community problems. Naby shares that she is not a new face to the startup scene in Australia, with a number of her own startups, and Business ventures working closely with founders and catalysts of innovation in the Australian Startup Ecosystem in the last 8 years. Naby advised the United Nations Development Project on building start-up ecosystems and designed accelerator programs to drive innovation in developing Nations. Naby was an Australian delegate at the G20 Young Entrepreneurs conference in Berlin in 2017. Naby is a Keynote speaker, commentator, thought leader, and advocate for diversity of thought in the financial services and technology sector. She loves salsa dancing, poetry, and InsurTech (in that order). When Naby is not exploring her side hustles, she runs Coverhero, an embedded InsurTech startup focusing on revolutionizing insurance services focusing on the needs of Millennials and Gen Z. Coverhero Launched its first product www.hustlecover.com to fill the gap of financial insecurity for the growing Gig Economy and self-employed generation, and its smart home insurance API www.lucci.io in 2021. Website: www.hustlecover.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nabymariyam/ Email: naby@coverhero.au Instagram: @nabymariyamMedium: @nabymariyamFacebook: @nabymariyam Podcast on Spotify: @hustlechat ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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 Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Iain Wilcox, CEO of GWT Insight a tech company focused on making cost-effective commercial building data available to their owners, operators, and advisers.  Iain is an entrepreneur, leader, and visionary who successfully started new business operations from scratch balancing strategic planning and practical implementation. Over a period of 30 years, Iain worked with companies including AT&T and Cognizant, and 5 years ago he launched GWT Insight. During the conversation, Sabine and Iain discussed four topics: What is GWT Insight from a company, branding, and team perspective? Why both, property and commercial building IoT, are unique markets around which to build a risk mitigation ecosystem. Benefits that are delivered to the property and insurance markets (including preventative maintenance to prevention). Lessons learned from moving to the entrepreneurial space after years of working for large companies. KEY TAKEAWAYS I’ve been delivering consulting services for 13 years to large corporations and witnessed just how difficult it was for them to marry the need to provide the structure and control around their investments and to ensure that they do not hinder their innovation initiatives. There was recognition by the Tier 1 carriers that they needed to start working with startups. I was working with a large India-based IT company and they recognized that both those organizations needed the agility and speed to market of a startup. This led to the formation of GWT Insight. When we were formed in 2017-2018, it was in the very early days of people understanding that they could save money around how they use and consume energy. Now, with rising utility prices, people are very focused on energy optimization and we see ourselves as not only being able to deliver on the governance part of an ESG model, with the risk management solutions that we develop with our partners, the insurers, and their brokers, but we’re also being able to deliver on commercial property owners’ desire to deliver a better understanding of how their buildings are performing and being able to reduce their costs. Property can account for 20-30% of the overall premium on a portfolio when you’ve got business interruption, public liability, and employee liability. You’ve got an area of the insurance paradigm and the value chain that impacts quite a wide area. We’ve got use cases across a variety of different examples and verticals. We use data in real-time from manufacturing units, offices, hotels, schools, hospitals, and central government departments (MoD and local authorities). Some of the use cases and benefits we’re looking at are picking up fire control data so you know that if there is a problem with the alarm it helps them to proactively go to their clients and warn them. We’ve also been able to identify loss events with our insurance clients and stop them from happening. BEST MOMENTS ‘When buildings are built they have a number of IoT sensors built in already. Even though a standard office will have 5,000-10,000 data points, GWT Insight recognized that there was an opportunity to pick up that data by listening to the existing, in-house building management system. We developed the GWTI Observer to do just this and create a better understanding of risk for our users and customers.’ ‘Risk managers want real-time data because it’s about loss prevention. We’ve still got a little bit of education to go through in the underwriting community, a lot of that community still has a very traditional viewpoint on how to use data and what is out there. With regards to owners, a third of this market is bleeding edge and want to risk manage their properties, a third is interested but not ready for it, and a third does not manage that data and insight proactively.’ ‘I think the "data" topic will change the way insurance is sold, because when you’ve got the data you can make better, informed decisions about how you’re managing your property, the risks impacting your property, and how that impacts the rest of your business.’ ‘In every building in every portfolio, there have been areas where we can help improve the operational efficiency of the building and provide a better customer experience for their own customers, employees, and stakeholders.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Iain Wilcox is an entrepreneur, leader, and visionary that has successfully started new business operations from scratch with software, IoT hardware, and services companies in the UK and Europe. Primarily worked in the startup development phase, building a unique customer base and revenue streams from the start.  Iain manages the delicate balance between strategic planning and the practical implementation of market entry, business development, and revenue delivery for new and established operations. Iain set up GWT Insight approximately 5 years ago. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iainwilcox/  GWT Insight is a tech company focused on making cost effective commercial building data available to their owners, operators and advisers. Whether reducing risk, improving quality of customer experience or saving money, access to reliable, real time and relevant data is now underpinning new ways to improve business performance. With origins in the insurance industry GWT Insight has developed technology to provide the answer to complex data capture challenges in commercial buildings. GWTI's device is simple to install, working across open protocols and many of widely used closed protocol systems it is plugged into the building's BMS, once connected it listens to building systems, sensors or business specific equipment without affecting their operation. Unlimited data can be captured, classified, standardised, compressed and protected with advanced security protocols. The data then flows via the cloud to client information systems, dashboards and user interfaces including tablets, desktops and mobile phones in near real time. The unique approach to data management and ability to deliver real time data on what is happening, and critically inform ‘why’ makes GATTI's solution a highly cost-effective platform to drive material benefits for anyone involved in the performance of commercial property. GWT Insights: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gwt-insight/    ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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

In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Henri Winand, co-founder and CEO of AkinovA, an electronic marketplace built to ease the transfer and trading of insurance and insurance risks. During the conversation, Sabine and Henry discuss the importance of strong taxonomy when moving into multi-party electronic placements, tangible and intellectual assets, transition risk, cyber risk, NFTs, and driving liquidity in illiquid markets. KEY TAKEAWAYS The whole objective of building our marketplace is to access a larger size of the market. The market is there already and our goal is to help clients or anybody in the value chain feel that we can do a better job of providing transactional transparency. I’ve done that in the world of energy and in the world of transportation. I’m an engineer who likes to solve problems, more to the point, I really love to build teams that can solve big problems in this world. The challenge for FinTechs and InsurTechs is sometimes you can’t always patent things because they fall in the business idea realm. Being able to then keep a trade secret – maybe with some patents around it -- which we are exploring big time by the way on a few of our concepts – is a way to not signal to everyone what you are doing, so that you can keep the trade secret for a while. But equally, there are some pieces that I believe, patent attorneys believe too, can be patented. This is quite important because it gives you the ability to have a discourse with very large organizations if they try to replicate your IP. IP = value. It is not about sticking a licensing reminder where you tell someone they’re infringing on your IP and they owe you money, that’s not the point. The point is you arrive at an asset that can be valued by clients and investors which then allows you to have a value-based conversation with your partners too. The question is: How do we, as an industry, attract the right talent? Our industry has to be exciting. I got into insurance by accident and insurance isn’t the first thing you think about when you get up in the morning unless you have to. What do we need to change to be part of the client's journey? If you break down insurance, you have to start with the risk that needs to be reduced and managed. First, I’ve got to be able to make it simpler for the person we engage with and who’s got a problem we can solve.  Second, they also need to be able to articulate it well to ensure that it is well evaluated. I then need to be able to say what it’s worth and how well or badly it could go based on the information gathered. BEST MOMENTS ‘An idea is a cost center until you make money out of it. Once you start making money, that idea can then become a profit center.’ ‘Time is everything, not money or attending meetings. The only commodity we have as human beings is time. So invest your time wisely.’ ‘I’m hoping things won’t change for the worse when we look at the current economy. Still, I think some clear fundamentals have changed. So let's make the best of what we know for now.’ ‘When you’re coming up with an idea, the cleverest people in the room are the ones that question the idea. So, if you want to look clever in a group, don't come up with an idea, come up with critiques.’   ABOUT THE GUEST Henri Winand is a growth and change-oriented CEO with a passion for scaling up businesses with a broad set of technologies, using different business models and team-based delivery.  Henry now serves as CEO for AkinovA, an insurance technology company that he co-founded with a specialist ILS (insurance-linked securities and related insurance products.) Henry drives also a City of London-based fund manager.  Prior to this, Henry served as CEO of a British tech company listed on the London Stock Exchange Main Market (Intelligent Energy, a $1bn tech IPO) with in excess of $200m raised from a broad range of sources, leading to strong top-line growth, largely from internationally-based customers. Today Henry served on several Boards in the UK, Singapore, India, Japan, and the US in the energy, software services, film content publishing, and automotive sectors.  Henry also served on the Board of an EU-funded €1bn+ PPP.  Those also included several advisory bodies to Ministers, Secretaries of State, and Officials in the new energy, automotive, and materials science sectors in the UK as well as on the Alumni Advisory Board of the Warwick Business School and of the University of Cambridge. Henry owns more than a dozen patents granted and pending and has several papers published in well-known, peer-reviewed, scientific journals, topics including composite materials, neutron diffraction, and processes to improve industrial product development cycles.  Henry is regularly invited to speak at international conferences and spoke in the US Senate and French Senate too. Henry provides advice to selected major global institutional, venture capital, and private equity funds. In addition to meeting several Heads of State, Henry made several appearances on Live-TV and recorded TV and Radio programs (e.g. Live CNBC TV, Live Bloomberg TV, Live BBC Radio 4 “The Today Programme”, recorded BBC and other programs, provided thought leadership and quoted articles in broadsheets, e-newspapers, and The Huffington Post.)  Henry is married to Anne. They both have one child called Alexander. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henriwinand/ AkinovA is building an electronic marketplace for the transfer and trading of (re)insurance risks. By working in collaboration and partnership with the insurance industry, AkinovA helps optimize the risk transfer value chain by providing a capital markets grade, industry-regulated, trading platform, and clearing house. AkinovA provides valuable data and analytics to participants and regulators from the aggregated data that passes through the marketplace. AkinovA grows the overall size of the insurance marketplace by enabling new participants to enter and existing participants to transact more business. There is significant pressure from the Capital Markets wanting an appropriate mechanism to access insurance risks that are de-correlated from the bonds and equity markets. Creating an effective secondary market for (re)insurance risks, to enable these risks to be traded, will dramatically increase the volume of business that is transacted across the marketplace. AkinovA is working with a number of brokers, who act as key channel partners for the existing industry, to kickstart liquidity in the marketplace. AkinovA provides them with a venue to service their clients’ needs in a more efficient and timely manner as well as gives them access to new clients entering the market who would benefit from their advice. AkinovA’s goal is to remain an independent marketplace enabling it to attract and work with all trading parties without undue influence from industry participants. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/akinova-limited/  ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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 Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Simon Schneider – founding partner of Neoteq Ventures. They cover three areas: Simon’s path in VC Land, Great minds think alike, and Startup tips to engage with large companies while ensuring they don't get side-lined when the corporation’s strategy changes.  KEY TAKEAWAYS It’s a fortunate coincidence that I entered the VC market in 2001. I’d studied to be a lawyer but decided not to become a lawyer because a friend suggested VCs needed someone like me who knew what contracts should look like and who understood people. From the first day of my VC career, I was fascinated by all these founders and their teams with their great game-changing ideas and technologies. Neoteq invests not just in InsurTechs, we concentrate on early-stage investments which are pre-seed, seed, and Series A. We do not have a specific sector focus, but we look for technology-based startups. The most relevant question for us is which customer problem does the startup solve? It sounds like an easy question, but often when you meet founders and you ask them that very question they have difficulty describing their proposition, and if you can’t describe what the customer’s problem is, why would someone be willing to buy your product? Market, team, and technology, these three key parts, are used constantly to perform our due diligence and decide if the startup is an interesting investment target for us. Not every startup in our business is successful. There are always failures. Of course, investors have expectations and you have to fulfill them as a team when you get the trust of your investors, but not everything can be handled by the team, there are some things your team can handle, and some things in the market that you do not have a handle on. You always have to look at why each case wasn’t successful in the end when it looked promising in the beginning. There are a lot of things going on in the world right now that are impacting startups. I expect that access to capital, especially in later-stage financing rounds will be tougher and tougher than in past years which means valuations will go down a little bit. I expect the rounds will get a bit smaller and that has an impact on the M&A market, perhaps exiting will take more time than you’ve been used to, but if you’re an experienced VC you know it takes time (5-7 years or more) until you can exit your companies from your portfolio. The VC scene won’t freeze though. It will continue to find winners to yield high returns. We are financially driven. Each startup, from our point of view, needs to have the potential to pay back our complete fund. If we do not see this potential it’s unlikely we will invest. Strategic returns are often combined with financial returns, at least from my point of view. But of course, CVCs often try to get some kind of extra deals with the teams to get earlier access to the product. This is something I would highly recommend startups not to accept, in the end, it’s always unhelpful, especially when corporations change their strategy – which can happen from one day to another – you are no longer relevant to them and the baseline premise of the engagement is over. Startups that want to cooperate with a CVC need to set up evaluation meetings and workshops where they can really create the goals on which they will want to work on. If you don’t find common grounds then stop the conversations because it won’t be a successful partnership. Alignment is key. BEST MOMENTS ‘Over the last 20 years as a VC, I’ve seen a lot of things. My fascination with the VC business and the chance I have every day to work with special people are still there. I still love my job.’ ‘The fundraising process, especially during Covid was not easy. Meetings are no longer possible and investors have to make choices through Zoom calls as to whether they would want to invest in a venture.’ ‘Companies working on climate tech and sustainability are really interesting and I see a lot of potential in this sector because it’s relevant for all of us and the better the solutions are the more they will help our planet to survive, hopefully.’ ‘Startups that started in previous crises often were more successful than companies that start in normal times. The big question is: Do we have normal times at the moment? I would say, definitely not.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Simon Schneider has more than 15 years of experience as an Investment Professional in sourcing, negotiation, financing, support & sale of technology start-ups in the field of B2B/Cloud-Software, Digital Media, eCommerce, Insurtech & Clean-Tech. Simon has years of M&A experience through trade sales of several portfolio companies. He also serves as a board member for various companies. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sischneider/  Neoteq Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm based in Cologne, Germany, which invests in outstanding teams with exceptional, technology-based companies. Website: https://www.neoteq.de/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/neoteq-ventures/  ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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