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The Wolfcast
The Wolfcast episodes
- EP 21 - Emine Gökce Phillips, PhD - co-Founder and CEO at CryptoIndexSeries - We Don't Need Banks
The Wolfcast quite enjoyed having Emine Gökce Phillips, Ph.D. on the show. Gökce is the CEO and co-Founder of CryptoIndexSeries, which provides data, analytics, and trading tools for the global crypto and digital asset markets.
Some of the topics Gökce covered:
- Having many places to call home
- Moving from a typical corporate job into crypto
- One of her relatives selling his apartment and investing in crypto
- The significance of PayPal facilitating payments via crypto in October 2020
- Institutional requirements to invest in crypto and building a suite of tools to enable that
- How decentralization creates accessibility
- The creation of new economic models like GameFi in the metaverse
- Institutional asset managers expect to increase crypto allocations
- Will existing payment gateways be useful or even necessary?
Some of the other titles we considered for this episode:
- When We Became Parents We Became Entrepreneurs
- Anyone Can Retrieve Data from a Crypto Exchange
- What Happened In October 2020?
37 min - EP 20 - Ines Cheaib - COO at Gaia - A Financial Pathway to Parenthood
The Wolfcast was fascinated talking to Ines Cheaib, the COO at Gaia. Gaia is a new way to pay for IVF..."Monthly if you have a baby. A fraction of the cost if you don't." We initially heard about Gaia from Dr. Hayley Maynard and George Beattie, the co-Chairs of Llyod's Product Launchpad. We only heard a little at first, but we knew we wanted to learn more...
Some of the things Ines covered:
- Born and raised in France
- Studying engineering at school while developing a good idea about tech
- Delving into e-commerce and venture capital before moving into more operational roles
- Feeling at home as a business operator, but comfortable switching disciplines
- The challenges of building a company from scratch
- The Gaia origin story and Nader AlSalim's personal experience
- Using data to minimize risk in the fertility space
- Being a wild-card in the Lloyd's Product Launchpad
- The complexities around building an insurance product
- Considering the members' physical, financial, and emotional needs
- Normalizing the conversation around infertility and conception
- How most people only look for a way to conceive when they actually decide to have a baby
- The expected joy of the first few pregnancies of Gaia's members
Other titles we considered for this episode:
- Everybody Wants a Family
- Preventing the Car Crash Before It Happens
- Bringing Complex Statistics to the Layman
- Facing the Uncertainty of Conception
- Solving a Bigger Problem
The audio on this episode was expertly produced by Isabelle Goh.
42 min - EP 19 - Adi Kaimowitz - Group CEO at Virtual Actuary - You Might as Well Start With the Client
We were very excited to be joined by Adi Kaimowitz, the Group CEO of Virtual Actuary, a firm of highly experienced actuaries ready to work alongside your existing team. Virtual Actuaries combine statistical, mathematical, and financial techniques within a business framework, utilising technology platforms and advanced analytics to deliver the most pre-emptive, precise, and practical solutions.
Some of the topics Adi and I covered:
- Being born and raised in South Africa and not seeing much more of the continent
- How he spent his 20s trying to prove himself
- Hustling has become part of his DNA
- How he built a recruiting business for actuaries
- Starting and building Virtual Actuary
- Finding out what startup incubators were all about
- Why 'connected consortiums' are the future of most industries (Are these DAOs?)
- How the disruption is in the business model itself
- How Virtual Actuary plugged into the global village
- The most important thing is to just "Do"
Other titles we considered for this episode:
- I Wasn't Born With a Trust Fund
- Now I Own the Building
- If You Are Going to Give Us Money, What Would You Want Us to Do?
- Where's Your Exponential Technology?
- It Was Always Part of the Plan
- We’re Talking about a More Immersive Experience
- You Can Be Connected from Anywhere
- Now Anybody Can Participate Digitally In Any Business
- The Mega-Gig Economy
- If You’re Not Doing, You’re Doing Too Much Thinking
45 min - EP 18 - Dr. Hayley Maynard and George Beattie - co-Chairs of Lloyd's Product Launchpad - We’re Not Wizards, We’re Scientists
I knew when we were preparing that this episode was going to be great...and the recording did not let us down. When one is lucky enough to have Dr. Hayley Maynard, Strategy at Chaucer Syndicates, and George Beattie, the Head of Incubation Underwriting at Beazley & Co. together on a show, the only result could be magic...even if they are decidedly not wizards.
There was so much ground to cover, that we went as far back as The Code of Hammurabi.
Some of the other topics we covered:
- The foundation and the Legend of Lloyd's
- Insurance subscription
- The caliber of the underwriters in the Lloyd's Market
- The rollout of Lloyd's Product Launchpad
- Conference-level chat that never really changes
- Risk transfer versus risk management
- Gaia - a new way to pay for IVF
- Spending time solving problems that don't really matter
- Building products with your customers
- The buyer urgency created by specific problems
- Innovation and controlled experiments
- Connecting the Launchpad to the Lab
- A shout-out to Tom Hoad - OIF
Some of the other titles we considered for this episode:
- It Started Out as a Coffee Shop
- Coming Up With Solutions for Complex Risk
- It’s a Very Positive but Properly Cynical Environment
- We Triage Quickly
- George Brings the Brains, I Bring the Jokes
- This Is a Voluntary Democracy
- Innovation Isn’t Just About Products
47 min - EP 17 - Peter Clarke - Founder of InsurerCore - Everything You Could Possibly Think of Is Insured
The Wolfcast had the pleasure of talking to Peter Clarke, the Founder and Managing Director of InsurerCore. InsurerCore helps insurance professionals identify new contacts, find current connections in the market, and stay up-to-date with industry information.
Some of the topics that Peter covered included:
- Coming from a traditional insurance family
- Working at his father's MGA during the summers as the Chief Scanning Officer
- Early examples of digital implementations in the insurance space
- How MGAs are different
- Implementing technology is good, getting people to use it is better
- The significance of the 'London Market'
- Noticing inefficiencies and his journey into entrepreneurship
- Democratizing access to the 'London Market'
- Dave, Dan and, Don
- Minecraft and collaborating online
- Building partnerships and getting the first groups onto InsurerCore
- The Bible of Insurance
- Building APIs to connect to pricing platforms
- The impact of COVID on InsurerCore's growth
33 min - EP 16 - Dr. Renu Ann Joseph - Luminant Analytics - Employing Tools and Techniques So Your Data Can Tell a Story
The Wolfcast really enjoyed the company of Dr. Renu Ann Joseph, the Founder, and CEO at Luminant Analytics and the Head of Virtido Center for Data Science & AI. Luminant was founded to challenge the way insurance pricing is done and enable insurers to adopt a new approach to that pricing. Virtido makes Data Science accessible and actionable for industries not traditionally driven by data.
Some of the topics that Renu and I discussed:
- At 12 years old thought she wanted to be an archaeologist but figured there was not much money in it
- Determined at 14 years old that she wanted to be an economist
- followed the dream to become an economist and focused her Master's Degree studies on Developmental Economics
- Studied for her Ph.D. under Dr. Frank J. Chaloupka
- Did her post-doctoral studies with The Gates Foundation in Toronto
- Switching gears and working for Moody's in West Chester, PA
- Moving to Zurich, Switzerland, and taking a cool job at a re-insurer
- The launching of Luminant Analytics
- The siloing of data in insurance companies
- The significance of step changes for startups
- Starting her second venture - Virtido Center for Data Science & AI
Other titles we considered for this episode:
- The Use of Tobacco In Poorer Countries Is Nuanced
- The Academics Are Very Grumpy :-)
- I Always Need To Know a Little Bit More
- Data In Insurers are Siloed to Heaven and Back
- That Process Is Very Painful
- Making Someone Pay for What You Produce Is Hard
- Analytics Is Real Behavioral Change Within an Organization
35 min - EP 15 - Rahul Makhija - co-Founder & CTO of Esto Internet - Will You Teach Me Internet?
The Wolfcast had the pleasure of speaking with Rahul Makhija, a co-Founder (with his brother!) and the CTO of Esto Internet, one of the premier ISPs in India.
Some of the topics Rahul and I discussed:
- Did 2020 really happen?
- His family was from Panipat
- The challenges of operating and growing an ISP during COVID
- The increase in internet usage due to the pandemic
- Got his first job because he wanted a smartphone
- How he was one of those kids that took apart all of the electronics in his house
- Self-taught web application and network engineer
- The non-triviality of networking computers
- Learning and implementing that learning
- Starting Esto with fixed wireless internet and the progression of machinery
- Licensing and regulations surrounding ISPs in India
- Service outages and how they get handled
- BBNL and wiring the villages
Some of the other titles we considered for this episode:
- You Can Buy It When You Start Earning for Yourself
- I Am Going to Work Today
- If You Are Not Doing, You Are Dying
34 min - EP 14 - Esben Nielsen and Simon Bentholm - Penni.io - Put the Product Where the People Are
Esben Nielsen, a co-Founder, and the CPO, and Simon Bentholm, A Digital Strategy Executive at Penni.io were pretty awesome guests of The Wolfcast. Penni.io's vision is to fundamentally change the way people engage with insurance.
Some of the topics that we covered included:
- Employing technology to solve business problems in complex environments
- Applying behavioral science to the insurance industry
- The brain has the tendency to translate an easy decision as a good decision
- Gift cards as decision tools
- The importance of 'relevance'
- Understanding risk perception is important for contextualization
- Three ways of doing embedded insurance
- Embedded insurance is the hottest topic ever
- Quoting questions and binding questions
Other titles we considered for this episode:
- I Had Loads of Hypotheses Going In
- The Red Cross in the Corner of the Browser Was the Biggest Competitor
- Nobody Wakes up in the Morning Thinking About Insurance
- The Numbers Don't Lie
- I Am Going to Do the Other Thing
- The Best Decision Is the Easiest Decision
49 min - The Wolfcast News RoundUp - EP 02 - Rene Papesch and Michael Waitze - The Global Internet Is Being Attacked by Sharks
Rene Papesch and I got back together to discuss some recent news in the connectivity and technology resilience space.
We discussed:
- Google's Cloud Outage (https://bit.ly/3xhw1ZJ)
- Tesla's Owners Can Not Open Their Car Doors (https://bit.ly/3DNduH0)
- A Mouse Crated an Internet Outage (https://bit.ly/3nHrahh)
- Sharks (https://bit.ly/3p0dxt8)
10 min - EP 13 - Natalie Hall of Merkel Science and Ed Gaze of Lloyd's Lab - Bringing Together Technology and Human Insight
It is not often one gets to record with the Head of Lloyd's Lab and a premier blockchain startup that is going through the Lab's program, but that is exactly what we did on this episode of The Wolfcast. We were graced with the presence of Natalie Hall, the Director of Marketing, EMEA, and APAC at Merkle Science and Ed Gaze, the Head of Lloyd's Lab. Suffice it to say that the discussion was active and fascinating.
Some of the topics we covered included:
- Ed's original visit to the Lloyd's Building
- What Lloyd's Lab is and what it strives to accomplish
- L Marks' collaboration with Lloyd's Lab
- The impetus for introducing blockchain companies into Lloyd's Lab now
- The use of smart contracts to facilitate syndication
- How productive it has been for Merkle Science to be in the program
- The anatomy of crypto risk
- KYBB - Know Your Blockchain Business
- Some innovative ways to incorporate Merkle's blockchain expertise into the insurance value chain
Other titles we considered for this episode:
- Ultimately, This Comes Down to Building Relationships
- Insurance Just Covers So Many Things
- Driven By What the Market Wants
- More Accessible, More Transparent and Fair Financial System
- Getting that Supercharged Insight Has Been So Helpful
- It Should Come With a Cape
- What Does 'Good' look Like?
36 min
About The Wolfcast
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Definitive Conversations on Digital Risks, Parametric Insurance, and Other Interesting Topics