The insurance industry has a 400,000 agent shortage.

I sat down with Harper's founders, who use agentic AI to deliver enterprise-grade service at 1/10th the cost.

Dakotah Rice and Tushar Nair revealed how they're leveraging the $85B E&S market:

• voice AI running quotes to claims

• why selling AI tools failed, but becoming a broker worked

• how they're hitting software margins in a services business

As insurance carriers exit Florida and California, Harper couldn’t have come at a better time.

Connect with us:

Dakotah Rice: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dakotahrice/

Tushar Nair: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tushar-nair-b08988222/

Harper: https://www.linkedin.com/company/harperinsure/

George Bandarian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebandarian/

Untapped Ventures: https://www.linkedin.com/company/untappedventures/

00:00 Trailer + Introduction

04:33 Dakota's Journey to Founding Harper

05:18 Tushar's Background and Expertise

06:06 The Genesis of Harper

06:38 Challenges and Opportunities in AI-Driven Insurance

13:08 The Evolution of Harper's AI Systems

13:21 Technical Insights into Building AI Agents

16:01 The Future of AI in Insurance

17:36 Advice for Aspiring AI Founders

19:55 Focusing on the ENS Market

22:05 Scaling and Expanding Harper's Services

25:37 Innovative Sales Solutions for Insurance

26:14 Customer Acquisition and Marketing Strategies

27:42 Voice AI: Revolutionizing Customer Interaction

30:15 Leveraging AI for Enhanced Customer Service

33:02 Future of AI in Business Operations

35:49 Fundraising and Business Growth Insights

40:39 Advice for Founders: Building and Scaling Startups

46:16 Co-Founder Dynamics and Relationship

50:08 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Only 8 companies have shipped AI Agents from production. In this episode of Agentic, I brought together 3 of them, to reveal how they crossed this chasm:

1. Aria Attar (TensorStax) shows how they're tackling the 1:250 data scientist shortage with agents that drop into existing cloud environments.

2. Joe Stolte (Daily.ai), fresh off multiple exits including a $62.5 M acquisition, reveals how they turned 1B newsletter interactions into $1.2M in ARR in just 14 months.

3. Jacky Wong (Nullify) explains how they're helping enterprises where security teams are outnumbered 4:1 by developers.

Key insight? While the AI market races toward $733.7B by 2027—

Solving for deployment and LLM reliability > focussing on model capabilities.

Let’s dive right in.

Connect with us at:

1. Jacky Wong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wongja/?originalSubdomain=au

2. Aria Attar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariaattar/

3. Joe Stolte: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephstolte

5. George Bandarian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebandarian/

6. Untapped Ventures: https://www.linkedin.com/company/untappedventures/

00:00 Trailer + Introduction

02:26 Agentic AI Overview

06:49 Meet the Founders

10:42 Deep Dive into AI Security

20:01 Building Agentic Models

25:59 Deep Reasoning and Inference in AI Models

26:19 Building and Training Baby Agents

27:37 Trust and Acceptance in AI Solutions

28:49 Lessons Learned and Advice to Founders

29:40 Common Mistakes in LLM Development

33:32 Customer Acquisition Strategies

36:57 Fundraising Insights and Challenges

42:38 Driving Acceptance and Trust in AI

44:37 Reconciling AI as a Deflationary Technology

46:56 Removing Human Evaluators in Development

With $90B poured into AI over the past year, where is the focus going to be in 2025? I spoke to four top investors to find out.

1. Yipeng Zhao (Embark Ventures) believes AI offers a one-year head start. Fast GTM wins. Slow movers risk irrelevance.

2. Hari Arul (Khosla Ventures) has stopped backing co-pilots altogether. His take? Human-in-loop models won’t survive past 2026.

3. James Shecter (Fika Ventures) says enterprises need the illusion of control over their AI workflows.

4. Nicole Toussaint (TenOneTen Ventures) sees the “Scopely moment” for AI agents approaching fast — and soon, market entry will outweigh engineering breakthroughs.

Tune in now.

Connect with us at:

1. Yipeng Zhao: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yipengzhao/

2. Hari Arul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hariarul/

3. James Shecter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesshecter/

4. Nicole Toussaint: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-toussaint-2874a1106/

5. George Bandarian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebandarian/

6. Untapped Ventures: https://www.linkedin.com/company/untappedventures/

While 92% of Fortune 500s realize the surplus alpha that can be created from leveraging AI, only 25% of SMBs realize the same.

I sat with 6 founders who are building Agentic AI solutions: Jacky Wong (Nullify), Aria Attar (TensorStax), Max Ahrens (Maihem), Saurabh Sharma (You.com), Jonas Diezun (Beam AI), and Ashar Rizqi (Bounti.ai).

The key highlights from our conversation were:

- OpenAI’s function calling breaks down when scaling requires consistent outputs and error handling—just ask Jacky or anyone building enterprise agents.

- MongoDB could face disruption as AI agents take over infrastructure orchestration—Aria flagged it, and I agree.

- Calling agents "AI workers" simplifies adoption for hesitant enterprises—a shift that doubled Jonas Diezun’s sales.

- Agentic AI scales across verticals in months, not years—Ashar says the old SaaS scaling playbook is obsolete.

- Max at Maihem points out that building functional agents hinges on managing the edge cases that crash your system.

Let’s dive right in.

Connect with us here:

1. Jacky Wong- https://www.linkedin.com/in/wongja/?originalSubdomain=au

2. Aria Attar - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariaattar/

3. Max Ahrens - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximilianahrens/?originalSubdomain=uk

4. Saurabh Sharma - https://www.linkedin.com/in/saurabhs/

5. Jonas Diezun - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonasdiezun/

6. Ashar Rizqi - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashar-rizqi-6614487/

7. George Bandarian - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebandarian/

8. Untapped Ventures - https://www.linkedin.com/company/untappedventures/

00:00 Trailer

01:26 Welcome to the Agentic Podcast

02:21 Founder Panel Introduction

02:41 Founders' Backgrounds and Insights

10:08 Defining Agentic AI

20:00 Building Effective AI Agents

26:08 Challenges in Early AI Development

26:21 Human in the Loop: Enhancing AI Adoption

26:58 Debating the Importance of Evaluations

27:39 Technical Insights and Mistakes

29:07 Impact of Agentic Paradigm Shift on Infrastructure

29:52 Customer Adoption and Market Strategies

31:21 Go-to-Market Strategies and Early Stage Focus

39:18 Horizontal vs Vertical Approaches in AI

47:39 Final Thoughts

#ai #tech #podcast #vc

As we transition into agentic models, it’s evident there’s a blend of optimism and caution.

In this panel discussion, I was joined by Jon Chu (Khosla Ventures), Pranav Reddy (Conviction), Andrew Brackin (Gradient), Arash Afrakhteh (Pear VC), Alejandra Vergara (Bee Partners), and Nahim Nasser (Georgian) as we explored:

• why agentic AI will drive systemic shifts across various industries

• the need to define scalable, high-impact use cases for agent-driven solutions

• shifting dynamics of human-machine interaction

• how agentic AI is advancing in parallel with LLMs

• why regional disparities and emerging foundation models could profoundly shape future progress, and

• how value will accumulate for vertical companies beyond the API

Let’s jump right in.

00:00:00 Trailer

00:02:13 Introduction

00:11:47 Current State of AI

00:21:00 Investment Insights and Startup Pitfalls

00:30:49 Vertical vs Horizontal

00:42:09 Evaluating Business and Team Dynamics

00:51:19 Different ways to look at AI

00:58:06 The AGI Landscape

01:01:17 Outro

Connect with us here:

1. Jon Chu- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jchu/

2. Pranav Reddy- https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranavgreddy/

3. Andrew Brackin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewbrackin/ 

4. Arash Afrakhteh- https://www.linkedin.com/in/arasha/ 

5. Alejandra Vergara- https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandra-vergaral/ 

6. Nahim Nasser- https://www.linkedin.com/in/nahimnasser/

To me, agentic is intent meeting capability—systems that act autonomously, adapt intelligently, and drive purposeful outcomes.

Our guests on this episode—Jonathan Corbin, Sami Shalabi, and Eugene Mann—embody that. They're pushing AI agents forward for real-world enterprise use cases with Maven AGI.

We discuss:

• solving complex challenges with AI agents

• empowering enterprises with cutting-edge tools, and

• why agentic AI will create new roles for humankind

Let’s get into it.

Connect with us here:

1. Jonathan Corbin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcorbin01/

2. Sami Shalabi- https://www.linkedin.com/in/sshalabi/

3. Eugene Mann- https://www.linkedin.com/in/eugenemann/

4. George Bandarian- https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebandarian/

5. Untapped Ventures- https://www.linkedin.com/company/untappedventures/