Scouting for Growth

By Sabine VanderLindenBusiness Entrepreneurship Technology

Scouting for Growth episodes

June 01, 2022Susanne Chishti: The State of FinTech
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 voice in FinTech. Susanne is also renowned for her work with investors and FinTech startups through the FINTECH Circle, a platform where startups can access 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. No single person could ever 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 contributing their expertise to the projects, makes these books extraordinary.
Talking about the lessons we learned from the 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 all of this online. Imagine the future of VAT claims. This is an example of FinTech addressing a pain point in B2C that millions of customers worldwide face, and we can already see a significant impact when travel returns to normal.
Diversity is key for anyone 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 is AI-led decision-making? 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 develop AI-led technologies, consider use cases, how they can go wrong, and protect every individual through ethical AI. An ethical AI board is an important mechanism for ensuring businesses do the right thing in the long term and avoid well-known stereotypes. We have a responsibility as citizens to make things simpler and more transparent.
We’ve seen significant 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 it. Investors will return to invest in ventures and deploy capital from earlier to 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 details. 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 that offers innovation workshops for 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 began her career at a FinTech company (before the term “FinTech” was invented in 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.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
38 min
May 25, 2022Nicole Anderson: From FinTech venture building to sustainable investing
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 crucial for gaining customers and accessing capital. In this episode, they discuss 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 for learning 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 the true impact of the investment. 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 those 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 that 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 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 and investment advisor (corporate venture, VC, family office, and token/digital asset). 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 financial technology ventures 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.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
53 min
May 18, 2022Gwen Yu: The world of sustainable finance
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL interviews Gwen Yu, an expert in sustainable finance with a background in transfer pricing, who helps international ventures understand the best way to expand 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 regard 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 in a broader sense, you’re looking at ESG in general, and transfer pricing is relevant for understanding governance and how everything fits holistically within the puzzle. Everything from understanding your supply chain to figuring out where 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 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 they are positioned, and if 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 biodiversity? How are they funding new projects? These are now becoming standard practices and will be rolled out so that, when you go to the credit committee to get a loan, how sustainable you are will play a role in the interest rate you get. If you’re not sustainable, you are likely to become a riskier client.
Technology will be a critical part of driving change in sustainable finance. From the decision-making process, the required data analysis inputs will need to be pushed out, and quality controls will need to be put in place to ensure it’s actually sustainable. I don’t think the big guys are going to be able to do it alone. The innovation will start with small pockets and groups with 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? Are you 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 experience 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.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
32 min
May 11, 2022Sam Evans: InsurTech, Sustainability and ESG
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 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 population dynamics in many parts of the world, including 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 challenges with housing and logistics. Insurance and InsurTech have a key role to play in supporting these major macro shifts.
Equality of 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, making it less about a pure protection-driven product and more about a protection-focused approach to help them live healthier, 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, not usage-based, and don’t align with policyholders' underlying behaviors.
Responding to natural catastrophes is an area where the insurance industry as a whole is already doing significant work, and there are many initiatives to reduce the protection gap, but clearly, a large proportion of vulnerable economies and populations still lack insurance. So, closing that protection gap will 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 insurance businesses. In partnership with RAW Capital Partners, EOS offers a unique solution for growth-stage InsurTech companies.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
48 min
May 04, 2022Nigel Walsh: Making insurance loveable
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Nigel Walsh, formerly Managing Director, Insurance at Google and now global head of insurance at ServiceNow. 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, building communities, creating MGAs, writing papers, and 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 misloved. 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 9 products with 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 thinking about things and helping 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, not just to close the protection gap, but also to close the education gap, so everyone has access 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 threat in the Metaverse is cybercrime, which costs the industry billions of dollars 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, but 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 quickly, but never again will we move this slowly. People will never want to go back, given our access to video conferencing and online food delivery. The question is, how do we take more giant steps forward now?’
ABOUT THE GUEST
LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
39 min
April 27, 2022Andrew Cons: Building an international unicorn
In this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Andrew Cons, who was the CEO of Bolttech’s European operations at the time of the recording. Now leading Bolttech in Indonesia. He discusses his leadership journey, including acquiring expertise over the years in strategy, business improvement, and founding his own venture.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Bolttech has grown from a PowerPoint deck to a unicorn in just 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 major growth path I pursued. Both paths bring a lot of pressure, but the pressure of growing a mature, stable business at lightning speed while simultaneously identifying and converting growth opportunities to make that happen is a privileged position to be in.
We connect insurers with distribution partners and then end customers. We’ve made a pretty good start on that mission so far, and 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, and we now transact over $44 billion in quoted premiums annually.
We see the digital ecosystem and ourselves as enablers for our partners and customers to gain the right protection at the time of need, which is really important. As a platform, we are the gel that enables 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 in Indonesia, 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.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
47 min
April 20, 2022Dr Robin Kiera: What is attention hacking?
In 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 sales agent, from the ground up, on commission for selling insurance policies on the streets of Hamburg. I always said that 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 didn't include any information about their situations. We were not on our clients' minds; 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 was quite a different way to sell than I had been doing previously. We started a blog with thought leadership pieces, attended conferences around the world, and brought ideas back home from entrepreneurial start-ups so we could sell our policies like an 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, and the US – have nothing in common, no exchange, yet 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 join an online gaming company that had been around for only 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 incompetence 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 grew into a multimedia B2C, B2B, and B2B2C consulting and marketing agency – supporting entrepreneurs, c-suite executives, and start-ups in their digital transformations, market entry, and in 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 the “Rebel of Industry,” radically exposing the elephant in the room through targeted topics he tackled in his on-stage rants, videos, and blogs. Being genuine in his contributions, he was recognized in top industry rankings and supported by more than 140,000 followers when he started generating 16 million in monthly reach.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
36 min
April 13, 2022Minh Tran: Introducing Venture Capital as a Service
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 founded 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: externalizing corporate venture funds to reach out to startups with both financial interests and strategic alignment with 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 compile 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 its valuation.
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 early-stage firm investors to achieve scale exposure to a range of traditional, alternative, and tech venture capital assets.
In addition to his experience as a founding team member at AXA Ventures, Minh was also an integral part of several other VC firms, including Nokia Ventures, Bertelsmann Ventures, and Truffle Capital.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
25 min
April 06, 2022Elisa Vlerich: 9.5 Ventures the VC for corporate venturing
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 differs from traditional VC activity in that you have the power/leverage of a corporation to scale faster and gain 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 cannibalize their own business or start new ventures that are often very small. For billion-dollar companies, it’s hard to start something new that doesn't fully fit 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.
We built the venture with the corporation because it aligns with the corporation's 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 we have, we’re usually 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”.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
35 min
March 30, 2022David Kwon: A decade of societal change
On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews IBM’s David Kwon about how insurance companies have had to navigate a decade of societal change. From the financial crisis and the rise of digital technology to changing consumer expectations, insurers face challenges that are fundamentally altering the very core of our industry.
Does the question remain whether property and casualty insurers will be able to keep pace with societal changes over time? Are they focusing on the right priorities? And what about life insurance – is BigTech making any headway here to challenge established practices?
In this episode, they discuss these trends and examine how insurers can best position themselves for success during this period of rapid transformation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
To remain relevant, insurers must find ways to embrace change while ensuring profitability amid blurred competitive boundaries. While some insurers have embraced the new environment with open arms, others seem reluctant to adapt or even acknowledge potential growth opportunities.
Mass-personalisation is the goal of every large insurer, not just for consumer products, but also for insurers targeting B2B customers as well. The technology has evolved to a point where videos on a website can be personalized to each person, not just seeing your name on a website, but addressing you by your first name, referencing your family, etc.
There are many new risk pools, including self-driving cars. There are six levels of autonomy here, ranging from cruise control to full autonomy. Up to level 4, the liability is still with the driver, but as AI takes on a bigger role in driving, insurance writers now have to start thinking of AI as a risk, just like the driver. At level 5, where there’s no steering wheel, it becomes a product liability issue, and the responsibility shifts from the driver to the manufacturer, which is a completely different business. It also impacts home and auto bundling. The overall auto market will start to shrink as more people buy autonomous cars.
For insurers, this is an interesting time; we’re beginning to see new risks emerging as the foundations of risk are getting more attention than before. There are 3 big disruptive technologies: IoT, AI, and hybrid cloud.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Covid has exposed the vulnerability of the interconnected world, the western world was hit first and suffered faster before it spread to third world countries.’
‘Science and technology are key to solving the toughest challenges in our society.’
‘The days of easily targeting users by buying third-party data are passing us quickly. Insurers must now focus on first-party data by engaging directly with the prospects and policyholders and getting the data themselves through deeper engagement and better experience.’
‘Covid accelerated e-commerce by about 2 years. All businesses, even small ones, are relying on technology more than ever before.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
David Kwon is a sought-after Digital Reinvention Executive for IBM’s largest US and international insurance and banking clients. David is an associate partner within IBM Business Transformation Services and a member of the IBM Industry Academy.
David has delivered over 60 strategy and transformation projects as an engagement leader and in executive strategic roles, ranging from digital strategy, customer experience, and business case for change.
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
46 min