Scouting for Growth

In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL interviews Erlijn Sie, a seasoned social entrepreneur, leader, and social business advisor. Erlijn wrote a book on Reimagining Financial Inclusion, a must-read for all corporate business leaders concerned with the future of our planet. In the book, Erlijn talks about the 5 levers that change and impact our financial system.  Erlijn also talks about ESG with a focus on social innovation and how social innovators support companies in the achievement of their impact.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Maybe in the last few decades, we became a bit too focused on the monetary side of ESG and some companies started to forget their core relevance to society. We’re now all trying to find our way back to that societal value that we originally all started to build our organizations with. What makes social innovation (a person, a solution, a product) different from big corporations' purpose is that smaller companies do it in such a radically different way, taking an issue they care about, feel passionate about, and want to radically solve. There’s nothing wrong with taking a good business model to support social innovation, but I do feel it should follow a solution and what fits that solution best. You don’t start your business by monetizing social innovation. You start with the issue, analyze the root causes, and think about how others can contribute to solving that issue. Big powerful corporations still underestimate the potential change they could bring, especially financial resilience for those who need it most. Our former financial system was built last century when we didn’t have the digital technology we do have now. With such technologies and the speed of their development, we are way more able to financially include many more disadvantaged individuals or excluded people. If big corporations (not just banks and insurers) start to see the power of newer technologies, imagine how powerful they could be in the space financially, including so many more people, we can then start to really transform the system. We are currently dealing with a former financial system that basically serves half of the world’s population. That’s fundamentally wrong, we all know that financial services like being able to save your money in a safe place, getting a loan, insurance, and pensions, all these financial services allow you to live your life to your full potential. If you exclude more than half the world’s population from that system, that’s a waste of talent! We need to reform the financial system in such a way that we include the other half. We can only do that if all companies work with us to tackle those flaws. Most of the flaws that are built into our former financial system are because last century's technologies didn’t allow businesses to include them affordably. Nowadays we can include so many of them if we truly want to.   BEST MOMENTS ‘I became a social entrepreneur by accident because I felt I needed more meaning in my day-to-day life, that’s why I founded a micro-finance institution providing very small loans to the most excluded people in the world.’  ‘ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance. I’m mainly focussed on the ‘S’, I feel that the ‘Social’ angle goes first.’ ‘Most systemic issues are too big for one of us to solve, the solution needs to be co-created among like-minded experts or people you feel can contribute to solving the issue best.’ ‘Entrepreneurial qualities are much more needed nowadays than they were last century. This has a lot to do with how fast change happens these days. The most important skill for all of us to learn is how to cope with change, how to be resilient, how to be able to constantly adapt to change.’   ABOUT THE GUEST Erlijn is a seasoned social entrepreneur, leader, and social business advisor to both the social sector as well as the business/corporate sector. Her background is rooted in business management and her focus is on social innovation and financial inclusion. She has supported a range of systems able to change social entrepreneurs, as well as impacted the corporate sector to develop new strategies, approaches, and models to drive inclusion in society. Erlijn brings a combination of deep insights, hands-on experience, and the latest trends in social innovations, blended business models, hybrid value chains, and new ways of organizing. She is dedicated to catalyzing impact in general, and financial inclusion especifically, by connecting innovative and inclusive solutions with the challenges of corporations. Website: http://erlijnsie.nl/    ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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, Sabine VdL interviews Susanne Chisthi, one of the leading names in the industry. Susanne started her career in finance before becoming an influential FinTech voice. Susanne is also renowned for her work with investors and FinTech startups through the FINTECH Circle which is a place where startups can seek education and angel investment. Susanne is also renowned for the wonderful books that she has written in collaboration with other co-authors and co-editors to educate the FinTech sector.   KEY TAKEAWAYS The unique thing about our books is that we crowdsourced the best knowledge, worldwide, because we believe in the power of the community. One person alone could never write such a comprehensive book on FinTech, RegTech, or InsurTech, for example. It would be impossible. But accessing knowledge from 70 authors globally, representing corporations, Tech startups, Tech scaleups, and thought leaders, all coming together and contributing their own expertise to the projects, makes these books extraordinary. Talking about the lessons we learned from lack of travel – when you buy products abroad you can claim the VAT back, sometimes large amounts. I never actually claim my VAT, because I never wanted to queue up at the airport to claim my VAT receipts. So I never claimed these back in my whole life. One of the FinTech companies I’m working with at present is putting this all online. Imagine the future of VAT claims. This is an example of FinTech hitting a pain point in B2C that millions of customers face worldwide and we can see already a huge impact when travel is back to normal. Diversity is a key thing for anybody in a large financial institution. The team should be diverse. When we think about the testing and development of AI, business leaders need to be accountable for it too. Particularly how fair AI-led decision-making is? Who gets accepted or rejected by an AI algorithm for a loan? Remember that those things can be very discriminatory if they’re coded wrongly. It is important for businesses to access a diverse workforce, to be able to develop AI-led technologies, and think about the use cases, how they can go wrong, and how to protect every individual through ethical AI. An ethical AI board is an important mechanism to ensure businesses are doing the right thing long-term and are avoiding renowned stereotypes. We have a responsibility as citizens to make things simpler and more transparent. We’ve seen lots of movement in the FinTech sector in terms of investment behavior, but the good news is that in the long term the FinTech sector will continue to boom and investors will want to stay in the sector. Investors will return and invest in ventures and deploy capital from the earlier stages to the later stages.    BEST MOMENTS ‘Our goal is to make FinTech a mainstream sector and, at some stage, to replace finance overall – there will be no finance without FinTech.’ ‘Lots of banks are trying to figure out the best way to engage with the FinTech sector. It’s certainly easier said than done. The devil is often in the detail. If you acquire a FinTech company the key thing is to make sure you integrate the company into your organization well so that it still works after the acquisition without destroying its spirit so both the startup and the corporation can benefit.’ ‘Technology is everybody’s responsibility, it’s mandatory for leaders to understand how technology can shape, empower and enable what they do from a strategic point of view.’ ‘2020 was a year that shocked us all. I was in China in January of 2020 actually promoting a book. The effect of the current change will be profound. And nobody knows yet what the future will look like. So planning long term will remain challenging.’   ABOUT THE GUEST Susanne Chishti is the CEO of FINTECH Circle, Europe’s 1st Angel Network focused on fintech opportunities. Susanne is also the founder of the FINTECH Circle Institute, the leading fintech learning platform offering innovation workshops to C-level executives and online courses. She is also the Co-Editor of the bestselling The FINTECH Book, which has been translated into 10 languages and is sold across 107 countries, as well as The WEALTHTECH Book, The INSURTECH Book, The PAYTECH Book, The AI Book, and The LEGALTECH Book (all published by WILEY). She has also been a FinTech TV Commentator on CNBC. After completing her MBA, Susanne started her career working for a FinTech company (before the term “FinTech” was invented in the Silicon Valley 20 years ago.) She then worked for more than 15 years’ across a number of financial institutions including Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, Morgan Stanley and Accenture in London and Hong Kong. Website: https://fintechcircle.com/    ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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 interviews Nicole Anderson, Founding Partner at Redsand Ventures who supported Sabine’s acceleration programs over a 5-year period by providing those startups with proposition design and go-to-market strategic thinking. These two skill-sets are so important to gain customers and access capital. On this episode, they talk about Nicole’s journey from a FinTech venture builder to a sustainable investor.   KEY TAKEAWAYS I have sat now, effectively, in almost every seat around the table when it comes to looking at what investible ventures look like, feel like, and what success should and could be. Thankfully, I’ve had to go through the toughest schooling to make venturing successful and break through some of the barriers in financial services. It has always been a big aspiration of mine to break down the barriers of consumerism and finance. The path I’ve been on is a perfect platform to learn how to access capital because there is money to be allocated in the world. There always will be. Still, it’s only when you’ve taken the journey yourself and been involved at the grassroots that you understand fundamentally what needs to be done. You can immediately see what the true impact of investment could be. I’ve finally got to the point in my life where I’m bringing it all together. I’m just a do-er really and I’ve always done things the hard way. Building ventures is very very tough and all the lessons that came out of that eight years prepared me for one thing: The biggest success factor in a venture is firstly knowing your market and not assuming it’s going to remain static. Secondly, thinking ahead of the market and remaining absolutely relevant with your value proposition. This requires a really strong degree of paranoia which then cascades down into how your business model evolves. Never make any assumptions that things are going to stay the same or you know your consumer/customer more than you think you do. Thirdly, everything fails without money. Money will always find a good opportunity, but never underestimate the runway you need to grow and scale. We are not a VC or private equity fund, we’re a private equity structure that uses very innovative project financing techniques to deploy financial instruments across a varied portfolio and absorb quite a lot of risk for that portfolio by the way we’ve engineered the allocation of money. We don’t invest at a very early stage, except in very strategic areas, but most of our work is in the growth phase of a venture, and we’ve moved well out of the area of financial services. I identified 5-6 areas – all verticals or industries – that I believe in. My goal is to build a stellar portfolio with one major investment in each one of them in order to make a significant impact in selected countries/regions, that’s the strategy we’ve taken.   BEST MOMENTS ‘Like anything in life, the best opportunities come to you rather than you chasing them down. Often, what you think you want is not actually good for you.’ ‘I knew that if I was going to be successful I needed to sit on the money myself and be master of my own universe. By hook or by crook I was going to do what it took to find ways in which to build my own investment structure, so I set up a fund.’ ‘The real frustration of many entrepreneurs is that their innovation which is often in the area of green innovation was being misunderstood. I wanted to fill that gap.’ ‘We’re in an evolution phase. Anyone in the spectrum of grassroots investing right up to multi-fund structure is in the adoption phase of some kind of strategy linked to sustainability and ESG.’   ABOUT THE GUEST Nicole is a venture builder, investment (corporate venture, VC, family office, and token/digital asset) advisor. As a multiple-time technology entrepreneur (CEO & Founder) and an innovation thought leader, she has gained an in-depth knowledge of crypto technologies, blockchain, and green finance. Passionate about technology business models that are challenging the status quo and providing greater inclusion for people globally and having a positive impact on our environment, she has focused her lens on the intersection between emerging technologies and emerging markets both physical and virtual. Her company Redsand Ventures, works with corporate visionaries and professional investors who are unfaltering in their execution of the green economy. It sits at the intersection of disruptive business models, and sustainable real estate as an investment opportunity. Redsand Ventures has built and exited over 10 disruptive ventures in financial technology in the last 7 years. Voted Innovator of the Year, 2017 by the South African Chamber of Commerce, Top 100 Women in FinTech 2016 by Innovate Finance, and included in the Power Women of FinTech 2015, 2016, and 2017, Nicole is also active in the London and European start-up acceleration, incubation and growth arena working as an advisor and mentor to Level39, Startupbootcamp FinTech, London Tech Advocates – Women in Tech and FinTech workstreams.  Nicole serves as an industry thought leader and has featured on numerous panels and speaking circuits. She is a contributing author to The FinTech Book, exploring the role of corporate venturing as a catalyst for innovation in FinTech. She is also a co-editor of the InsureTech Book. Both books are published by Wiley. She has an Honours Degree in Information Systems and Economics from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and graduated from the Institute of New Economic Thinking, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York specializing in the Economics of Money and Banking, and a Green Finance Professional from the Chartered Institute of Bankers. Website: https://redsandventures.io/    ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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 interviews Gwen Yu, an expert in sustainable finance with an understanding of transfer pricing, who helps international ventures to understand the best way to move internationally. Sabine talks to Gwen about how she made her way into sustainable finance, and how her past business and personal experiences have shaped her decision to support a better future and a better planet. During the course of the discussion, Gwen shares her vision, mission, and goals with regards to shaping a more sustainable future.   KEY TAKEAWAYS There is so much variety in everything that I’ve done in my career. It’s only looking back now that I see how all the different pieces fit together. If you take sustainability as a broader scope you’re looking at ESG in general, and transfer pricing is relevant when it comes to trying to figure out governance and how everything fits holistically within the puzzle. Everything from understanding your supply chain to trying to figure out where the demand goes.  Early in my career a manager came to me and said: “The younger you, is most of the options you will have and it’s going to be really hard to make a decision to shut certain doors offered to you. But you shouldn’t look at it that way, you should look at it as that’s the path you’re going to go down towards eventually. And maybe you’ll circle back around. But early on, you must define what’s important to you as a person. It doesn’t matter what that is, but you need to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and recognize the person you are.” That has fuelled my path. I want to have a positive impact in whatever I’m doing and I want to leave wherever I’ve touched enhanced and better than before. To get a loan from a bank you would go through a credit committee which traditionally would check if the person is risky, has defaulted before, where are they positioned, and do they have a sound business plan. To incorporate sustainability into what financial institutions are doing now, they’re looking at the sustainability rankings in terms of ESG (Environmental Social and Governance) of whoever it is they’re providing a loan to. Typically, it’s mostly for big corporations because that’s where the data is available. Do they have proper supply chain governance, are they doing something harmful/ or positive for the bio-diversity imprint, and how are they funding new projects? These are now becoming more standard practices and will be rolled out so that when you go into the credit committee to get a loan, how sustainable you are will play a role in the type of interest rate that you get. If you’re not sustainable you are likely to become a riskier client. Technology is going to be a critical part of the equation in driving change within sustainable finance. From the decision-making process, the inputs that are required in terms of data analysis will need to be pushed out, and quality controls will need to happen to make sure it’s actually sustainable. I don’t think the big guys are going to be able to do it alone. The innovation will start out with small pockets and groups that have great ideas. This will be pushed through to ensure that tech is doing well and serving a diversified community rather than a one-dimensional one.   BEST MOMENTS ‘I think transfer pricing gets a bad rap because one of the most important parts is trying to figure out the actual market price you should be paying for services as opposed to the negative connotation where you’re doing tax evasion.’ ‘I believe the universe comes full-circle somehow and I’m not at the end of my circle, but I can see where all these interconnections happen.’ ‘Purpose and impact have become much more important, much more than just what people want to say in their marketing brochures But actually drilling down to see how what you’re telling is true? Whether you are doing what you are saying you’re going to do? Am I investing in companies that I feel are in line with my values?’ ‘Sustainable finance is just adding another lens to ensure that your money is invested in what’s necessary or good. Is your investment making a negative or positive impact? Is it going to serve an underserved community or causes that you want to see addressed?’   ABOUT THE GUEST Gwen Yu is an expert in sustainable finance with expertise in transfer pricing and has worked with renowned companies including Sherpa and BNP Paribas. She also worked with the European Commission as a member of the data and usability subgroup. Gwen can be found on LinkedIn under https://www.linkedin.com/in/gwen-yu/    ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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, Sabine VdL interviews Sam Evans, Partner at EOS Venture Partners, a Strategic Venture Capital fund and an InsurTech investment specialist with offices in London and Philadelphia. This is their 2nd interview as Sam appeared in episode 6 of Scouting for Growth. Here the pair discusses the topics of sustainability and ESG, the impact of urbanization, climate risk, and supply chain risk. Topics that have become increasingly important for many sectors of the economy with over 2.2 trillion searches on Google's search engine for the term ESG (as of May 2022.)  KEY TAKEAWAYS As a global economy, we’re facing a number of pivotal challenges. These include major weather-related events linked to climate change and other natural catastrophes, significant changes in terms of population dynamics in many parts of the world with aging populations, as well as the development of the right urban infrastructure to support people. With current urbanization trends, a significant proportion of the population is moving into cities, resulting in living and logistic issues. Insurance and InsurTech have a key role to play in supporting these major, macro shifts and changes. Equality, the access to healthcare, is going to be critical as we face growing populations. Here we’re looking at the ability to leverage different ways of thinking about insurance and making it less about a pure protection-driven product and more a protection-type focus to help them live healthier and longer lives. We’re going to see a lot more gig economy workers and we’re already seeing that traditional insurance solutions aren’t fit for purpose because they’re generic, they’re not usage-based, and they don’t align with the underlying behaviors of policyholders. Responding to natural catastrophes is an area where the insurance industry as a whole is already doing a huge amount of work and there are a lot of initiatives to try and reduce the protection gap, but clearly there’s still a huge proportion of vulnerable economies and populations that are lacking insurance. So, closing that protection gap is going to be important.   BEST MOMENTS ‘Clearly there’s a lot that can be done to make healthcare more affordable, easier to access, but also a lot more efficient.’ ‘Close to 50% of the US population score badly from a credit risk perspective and are therefore penalised through the cost of their insurance. The ability to tailor usage-based coverage that switches seamlessly between personal and commercial usage – for example, if you’re using your vehicle for a ride-share scheme, this becomes very relevant for individuals.’ ‘Energy usage and efficiency gains are going to become a lot more important. We have to be much more focused and smart around how we use resources. Technology can play a key role even from a home perspective on energy usage by using IoT, sensors and smart AI to improve behaviours, enhance efficiency and lower energy usage.’ ‘Insurance touches every single part of the economy, so it’s a natural enabler for driving these initiatives.’   ABOUT THE GUEST Sam is a partner at EOS Venture Partners, a Strategic Venture Capital fund and an InsurTech investment specialist with offices in London and Philadelphia. EOS invests in Series A and Series B growth ventures with emerging business models and new technologies that will impact and transform the insurance industry. Today EOS provides financing and advisory services to leading entrepreneurs building innovative businesses in the insurance sector. In partnership with RAW Capital Partners EOS offers a unique solution for growth stage InsurTech companies. Website: https://www.eosventurepartners.com/    ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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, Sabine VdL interviews Nigel Walsh, Managing Director, Insurance at Google. Nigel is on a mission to make Insurance loveable. He spends his days helping insurance carriers unlock the power of Google Cloud and Alphabet, supporting startups, creating communities, building MGAs, writing papers, and much more.   KEY TAKEAWAYS In the last 15 years, I’ve truly fallen in love with insurance, I think it’s got a huge purpose, it’s massively misunderstood and mis-loved. You only have to step out of our little bubble of friends to your everyday friends – who don’t work in insurance – and ask them their perception or impression of insurance, and it’s not good. My desire is to turn that into something as joyful, delightful, and exciting as an experience of buying something online or engaging digitally in different ways. I love that the organization that I work for is so inclusive, beyond anything I’ve ever seen in my life. We have nine products that have over a billion active daily users, so you have to be able to manage, understand and design for everyone when you do that. Through an insurance lens, we have some of the smartest people on the planet that are thinking about things and help stretch your imagination in so many different ways.  The platforms that we’ve got that surround our core technologies and cloud – like being able to look things up on YouTube, not just Google – give us the ability to help educate the world in a very very different way. My ambition is to string those pieces together to not just close the protection gap, but close the education gap, so everyone’s got accessibility and an understanding of what we’re doing going forward. Big corporations, and individuals, are physically transferring money into this new world (the Metaverse – which could be a fad like SecondLife and Clubhouse), then you’re also automatically creating risk and that risk could be or should be, protected. The most obvious thing to protect against in the Metaverse is cyber threats, which cost the industry billions year on year. And now we’ve opened up a whole new world and a new level of risk. We should now also spend some time exploring and understanding what these risks mean for customers and insurance carriers alike.    BEST MOMENTS ‘Our ability to enable large insurance carriers, small startups, and everything in-between with what we have, I felt like a stronger opportunity to be a force for good as we go to support consumers, corporates and so much more.’ ‘Over the last couple of years, especially in lockdown, I found solace in the InsurTech community, who were sharing their success stories, especially in their exercise schedules. They’re always striving to move forward.’ ‘I don’t read as many books as I used to, I love listening to podcasts because you can listen and learn while going about your day. We, as tech providers, service providers, and insurers, have to recognize how people choose to learn more and more today.’ ‘Never before have we moved this quick, but never again will we move this slow. People will never want to go back when you think about our access to video conferencing and food delivery online. The question is how do we take more giant steps forward now?’   ABOUT THE GUEST Nigel Walsh serves as the Managing Director for Insurance and Financial Services within Google Cloud division and the host of the InsurTech Insider podcast. He is on a mission to make insurance lovable. He worked at Capgemini as Vice President, Head of UK Insurance, where he was responsible for building and developing the UK insurance operation and was a partner at Deloitte.  His interests include: Supporting startups. Creating communities. Building MGAs. Scouting new startups. Writing papers. Creating partnerships. Understanding the future of insurance. Deploying robots. Co-hosting podcasts. Creating propositions. Connecting people. Supporting projects in London, New York and Dublin. Building a global team.  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nigelwalsh/    ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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, Sabine VdL interviews Andrew Cons, CEO of Bolttech’s European operations, who talks about his leadership journey, acquiring expertise over the years in strategy, business improvement, and founding his own venture.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Bolttech has grown from a PowerPoint to a unicorn within two years. It was different from the outset from anything I’d ever done before and that’s what really attracted me to the business, I had set up my own business before but this is unique in what we’re trying to do here. It’s a results-driven business and I’m a results-driven person, but I really love driving innovation and seeing that through to fruition, so when Bottech came to me I couldn’t really say no because it was such a great opportunity.  The two big experiences where I’ve experienced great growth have been obviously here with Bolttech, building it from the ground up has been an amazing experience, and leading it from the front, setting the example, and building the culture in your own image is both exciting and a very privileged position to be in. Secondly, it was building out Asurion across Asia/Pacific, another big growth path that I took. Both paths bring a lot of pressure, but the pressure of growing a mature, stable business and doing that at lightning speed while simultaneously identifying and converting growth opportunities to make that happen is a privileged position to certainly be in. We connect insurers with distribution partners and then end customers. We’ve made a pretty good start on that mission so far, we achieved unicorn status with the largest ever Series A funding round for an InsurTech. To date, we’ve raised over $247 million from some key strategic investors. At the center of our business is the largest insurance exchange in the world, we now transact over $44 billion in quoted premiums annually.  We see the digital ecosystem and ourselves as an enabler for our partners and our customers to gain the right protection at the time of need, which is really important. As a platform, what we are is the gel that sits and allows insurance carriers and distribution partners to deliver great insurance products on demand.   BEST MOMENTS ‘I fell into insurance but I’ve really enjoyed all the roles I’ve had as well as starting up my own venture and whether it’s leaving transformational change to building successful businesses from the ground up, I’ve certainly learned a lot on the way.’ ‘I’ve been really lucky to build an amazing leadership team and organization that I believe is the best InsurTech business in Europe.’ ‘We’re a many-to-many ecosystem for our partners and customers, we bring them together.’ ‘Our mission is to become the world’s leading technologically enabled ecosystem. To deliver on that mission, we’ve developed the world’s largest insurance exchange, but on top of that we offer 5,000 insurance products – and growing – and we work with over 180 insurance providers to give that choice and quality of experience to our end customers.’   ABOUT THE GUEST Andrew Cons leads the Bolttech teams across Europe providing strategic and dynamic leadership as Bolttech builds the next generation of insurance services, protections, and ecosystems for Bolttech's existing and new partners in the European region. His experience spans a portfolio of businesses and a track record of results including extensive board-level leadership across technology, operations, and digital transformation.  Andrew leads an agile, future-ready team that is focused on expanding Bolttech’s reach by driving sustainable growth in Europe. Outside of work, he enjoys traveling, golfing, and spending time with his family. Bolttech: https://bolttech.io/    ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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, Sabine VdL interviews Robin Kiera, the most renowned European FinTech and InsurTech influencer. He set up Digital Scouting in 2017 as a platform that now has 400,000 followers – which is not insignificant in this industry. Robin is a thought leader, an entrepreneur, and a senior leader who has worked in finance for years and gives practical tools and techniques around lessons to learn in the FinTech and InsurTech sectors.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Life can be ironic. I don’t like marketing agencies guys and I really despise consultants! I started as an insurance sale agent, from the ground up on commission for selling insurance policies on the streets of Hamburg. I always said, between me and the CEO of Allianz are 27 different levels of hierarchy, between me and the one below me was just the street. I saw a huge gap between what insurance can be: helping people, protecting them against risks in our lives, and the reality of selling insurance which didn’t have a lot to do with the desire and the demand of the buyer.  At the beginning of the month, we had a list of clients to call, but the lists had nothing about their situations. We were not in the minds of our clients, they were going to banks and building societies. When I founded Digital scouting years later and we were crushing it on social media, we found our clients were standing in line. I remember thinking this is quite a different way to sell than I was doing previously. We started a blog with thought leadership pieces, went to conferences all around the world, and brought ideas back home from entrepreneurial start-ups so we can sell our policies like iPhone or other Apple products. We have very good, brilliant people working in the insurance industry. But it seems to me that most insurance ecosystems – in countries like Germany, France, Britain, USA – have nothing in common, no exchange, but there are so many interesting use cases in Britain, France, and the US that I really wanted to get to know what’s going on. I wanted to see the international trends. That’s what made me want to bring these great ideas back to Germany. When I announced that I was leaving Allianz to go into an online gaming company that has only been around for 3 years, people were calling the company doctor to see if I was feeling OK. How could I leave that security? Sometimes you lull yourself into a false sense of security. Once I decided to start my own business, I just had to do it because you can still go back to great stable and corporate jobs in this industry or another sector. I don’t want to regret anything when I lay my head on the pillow for the last time.   BEST MOMENTS Everybody says: “We don’t sell products, we consult”. Yeah, alright, let’s talk at the end of the year.’ ‘People tell me “Robin, you’re the rebel of the industry”.’ ‘I think everybody likes frictionless transactions, not just Generations Y and Z. And their tolerance when it comes to incompetency and friction is certainly getting lower, which I think is just right.’ ‘There were no downs in building my business, we always grew organically. Any downs were brought about by my own stupid mistakes, like keeping a bad tax advisor for too long... things like that.’   ABOUT THE GUEST Dr Robin Kiera is the Founder and CEO of Digital Scouting, a consulting and marketing agency based in Germany. Robin is an author, renowned speaker, entrepreneur, and top-ranked insurance, and finance influencer. He started Digital Scouting as an after-work hobby that exploded positively and became a multimedia B2C, B2B, and B2B2C consulting and marketing agency – supporting entrepreneurs, c-suite executives, and start-ups in their digital transformations, market-entry, hacking the attention of customers and partners through digital media. Before being recognized as the “Attention Hacker” in the insurance and finance industry he was labeled as the “Rebel of Industry” radically exposing the elephant in the room through targeted topics tackled via his on-stage rants, videos, and blogs. Being genuine with his contributions he was recognized in top industry rankings, supported by more than 140,000 followers when he started generating 16 million of reaches every month. Digital Scouting: https://www.digitalscouting.de/    ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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, Sabine VdL interviews Minh Tran, founding partner of Mandalore Partners (and also her co-founder at Alchemy Crew) about the world of Venture Capital Funds. He has worked in the Corporate VC world for 30 years, most recently in financial services and founding Mandalore Partners 10 years ago.   KEY TAKEAWAYS When you are a Corporate Venturer you have two models, one is to invest in VC outside – that’s not really a corporate venture, but you have that option, the second is to create your own team internally, for many reasons, this model hasn’t worked in the long run. I came up with a third model, which is how to externalize corporate venture funds – to reach out to startups with both a financial interest and a strategic alignment of corporates. This is Venture Capital as a Service. Resilience comes from lateral thinking too when investing. You can enter the market of your core industry, but you can also reach out to new industries that can impact your core industry. If you’re a retailer, you invest in your core business, but FinTech could disrupt retail finance, so you could reach out to FinTech ventures, not just retail. So you’re prepared for disruption. SIDE – Source, Invest, Develop, Exit. Each step of our process has been optimized. Source is the ability to source better than a corporation, we combine public data (Crunchbase) with private data (corporate assignments) to come up with a list of startups. We then invest like a VC. We develop a portfolio management plan like a VC, but I do things differently, more hands-on than VCs. Then Exit, again I use VC techniques to exit at some point with or without the corporate.  Like any VC I look at if the market is growing, how the product would fit in the market, what is the business model/plan, and what is the team? I also look at a fifth element: The leverage we can access from the corporation. This could help accelerate the startup or the valuation of the startup.   BEST MOMENTS ‘The Mandalore Partners name came from a planet from Star Wars because I wanted to look to the future and I found out it was a good name to have because it was about mobility, globality, tech, and now The Mandalorian TV series.’ ‘There’s a bad reputation to having a corporate venture fund in the market that has the same name as your corporation, this is why externalizing VC activities and having a different name is attracting more startups to our fund while also providing the returns the corporates want.’ ‘When we talk to corporates when they’re looking to InsurTech and they want to be exposed to another tech, an external model can help you assess the new industries you seek where you have or you don’t have expertise.’ ‘I focus a lot of work on where to invest to have the best impact tools and platforms.’   ABOUT THE GUEST Minh is the Managing Partner of Mandalore Partners, which seeks to create an innovative framework that enables investors of firms in early stages to achieve scale exposure to a range of traditional, alternative, and tech venture capital assets. In addition to his experience as one of the founding team members at AXA Ventures, Minh was also an integral part of several other VC firms, including Nokia Ventures, Bertelsmann Ventures, and Truffle Capital. Mandalore Partners: https://www.mandalorepartners.com/    ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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, Sabine VdL interviews Elisa Vlerick, a partner at Ninepointfive Ventures, the Venture Capitalist dedicated to Corporate Venturing. Elisa loves removing syntax complexity from the proverbial crap, applying creativity and execution to everything she does.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Corporate Venturing differentiates from traditional VC activity in the sense that you have the power/leverage of a corporate to scale faster, to have what we call an unfair competitive advantage in the market. That really attracted me to Ninepointfive. Often there’s a lot of resistance within companies to start cannibalizing their own business, to start new ventures that are often very small. For billion-dollar companies, it’s hard to start something new that is not totally fitting into the existing company. They also don’t always have the skills or the right people to implement a new business model and there’s sometimes not the appetite because the new business would be so small compared to the main business so it wouldn’t get the attention it deserves.  The reason we build the venture together with the corporate is because this provides alignment with strategic interests. What we want to build together with them is a successful company with financial returns. If the strategic interests are not aligned with the financial objective that we have, usually we’re not the right partner.  The assumption is that tech-y people aren’t female. It’s like doctors, 20-30 years ago 90% of doctors were male and 90% of nurses were female, nowadays it’s 50/50, if not more female doctors. I think it’s a matter of time, 1-20 years and it will even out in our industry. It’s said women are more risk averse or less daring – and maybe there’s something in that – but once this idea that it’s really challenging and daring to start a startup is gone, I don’t see a reason why this wouldn’t go up to 50/50.   BEST MOMENTS ‘Our team is very interesting because we come from different angles and that makes our decision making and investment processes more interesting and, hopefully, better.’ ‘Taking the whole activity outside the corporate with our knowledge of building startups fuelled by the resources from the corporate makes a startup better placed in the market than a regular startup.’ ‘The key to our success is finding the right people to make it happen. You can have a great financial plan, but it needs to happen and it can only happen if the team is there.’ ‘Surround yourself with people that are better than you and will dare to go against the tide, or criticise the prevailing opinion, they’re going to make better decisions.’   ABOUT THE GUEST When complexity threatens to get the upper hand, Elisa picks up her pen. With that pen, she cuts through the proverbial crap, and to the bone. Elisa is resolute in her belief that strong business ideas can only prosper when ambiguity and prejudice are left at the door. When things are clear, creativity can flourish. From there onward she’ll tell you: “le bonheur est dans l’action”. https://www.ninepointfive.vc/    ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & 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