Scouting for Growth
There are over 180,000 FinTech ventures out there today. Still, my team and I monitor 7.3 million of those ventures across markets every week. Why, because the boundaries of business are becoming highly blurred. FinTech. InsurTech. HealthTech. WealthTech. AITech. This number changes every single month. But here’s the stat that really matters. Regardless of market or region, only 25% of these ventures have secured funding and meaningful backing. That means 75% are still on the outside looking in—searching not just for capital, but for access, credibility, and value-creating partnerships with Global Fortune 500 companies. And this is where things get interesting. Because funding isn’t just about money. It’s about how corporates think, how investors decide, and why some ventures scale while others stall. In this podcast, we pull back the curtain on corporate venturing. Well, to be more precise, we will focus on the Venture-Client Model, or how a growth venture becomes a commercial customer of a corporation. Then it only makes sense for VCs, including corporate VCs, to invest in successful, repeatable partnerships. And what founders must understand if they want to build, grow, and scale—intelligently. You know this already. This isn’t theory. It’s strategy, tactics, tools, and hard-won insights from those who control capital and collaboration. So if you’re a founder, an operator, or a leader navigating this high-velocity digital transformation ecosystem, well, this podcast is for you. Listen in. Challenge your assumptions. And join the conversation.
Episodes
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden welcomes industry veteran Karl Grandl, now of Miss Moneypenny Technologies, for a wide-ranging conversation on the real transformation underway in financial services and insurance.
Sabine VanderLinden sets the stage by emphasizing that digitization is no longer enough—true change means re-architecting operating models for velocity, intelligence, and trust at scale. Togeth...
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden sits down with Manish Shah, President and Chief Product Officer at Majesco, to explore the rapidly changing landscape of insurance core systems.
Together, they examine how AI is shifting the industry from being purely a protector to one that also focuses on prevention and dynamic participation. The conversation covers everything from the persistent protection gap and the ...
In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden welcomes Gil Arazi—a serial entrepreneur, executive, and leading insurtech investor—to explore the urgent transformation taking place in insurance. Gil Arazi argues that the industry’s traditional role of simply paying claims post-loss is outdated and that prevention is the new north star for sustainable growth.
Their conversation dives into why insurance must shift from r...
In this forward-thinking episode, Sabine VanderLinden returns to kick off the year with a transformative discussion on “frontier firms” and the rise of agentic enterprises.
As digital transformation accelerates, leaders face challenges like increasing climate risks, cyber threats, and widening protection gaps—pushing businesses (especially in regulated industries like insurance) to rethink strategies. Sabine explores how trailblazi...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sangha Penesetti, founder and CEO of goZeal, who didn’t just break the glass ceiling—she installed a flexible skylight.
Today we’ll dive into the economics of equity, why flexible work is not a perk but a performance driver, and how insurers can win by rethinking who gets a seat at the table—and how that table is set.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
In my early career, every cl...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Marinela Profi, Global Market Strategy Lead for AI, GenAI and Agentic AI at SAS, about the rise of agentic AI and how we will move from hype to real, reliable AI.
In today’s episode, we’ll discuss: Why LLMs alone don’t solve business problems – and what does, how governance is becoming the new frontier of AI trust, and what leaders should expect by 2026, as ent...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Andrei Craciunescu, founder and CEO of RiskCube, about why the next generation of insurance will be built like software: adaptive, transparent, and embedded into every business platform.
They also discuss how AI and data are transforming the broker's role from middleman to intelligent orchestrator, and what the insurance experience of 2030 could look like when ...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Rob Schimek, Group CEO at bolttech, about how bolttech’s connector model is redefining global insurance distribution, from telcos to auto makers and beyond.
They also talk about why the future of protection will depend on trust, data and design more than policy documents and premiums, and what leadership really looks like when you are building at the intersecti...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to us about all she’s learned from the numerous guests on the show recently, from startup founders who build AI to simplify the chaotic insurance back office, to innovation leaders in Fortune 500 firms wrestling with ethics, regulation, and talent shortages.
After dozens of conversations here’s what Sabine has learned: AI isn’t just changing our tools. It’s changi...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Stephen Brittain, co-founder of InsurTech Gateway, a pioneering venture builder focused on bringing early-stage startups into the heart of the insurance world – a regulated industry that typically moves at glacial speed.
Over the past decade, Stephen has helped launch and scale ventures inside one of the most regulated, risk-averse business sectors on the plane...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sebastien Denef, CEO and co-founder at AGENTS.inc, a company at the forefront of building intelligent agent platforms for enterprises.
On this episode we explore how agentic AI architectures are reshaping industries, what it takes to scale agentic AI solutions across siloes, and why the winners in this space will be those who master both the technology and coll...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Ulrich (Uli) Homann, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft, and Mark Luquire, EY Global Microsoft Alliance Co-innovation Leader, about how to build an agentic AI enterprise that doesn’t just work faster, but works smarter and, most importantly, works for everyone.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
In the past automation has been very task driven and specific, things had to go in a ...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Laurna Castillo, Senior Vice President of Product at CSAA Insurance Group, a AAA insurer serving millions of customers across the western United States.
Laurna has become a leading voice in reimagining how the insurance industry – and entire communities – can build resilience in the face of escalating wildfire risk. On this episode, Laurna will share her journe...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Yo Kwon, CEO at Voltaire.Claims.
Together, we pull back the curtain on how enterprise operations (and in particular finance and insurance operations) are being reinvented – not tomorrow, but right now.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
I was working with my co-founder on Ai technology trying to work out what would be applicable for wider businesses. While we were testing...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Bobbie Shrivastav, co-founder and CEO of Solvrays about building AI-driven workflows that aim to eliminate 70% of manual back office work with governance, auditability, and with human-in-the-loop controls directly built in. They also talk about what makes vertical AI for insurance defensible and measurable, compressing sales and implementation cycles without cu...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Amit Santhirasenan, co-founder and CEO of hyperexponential, an actuary and software engineer who has built the AI native pricing and underwriting platform used by leading specialty carriers.
In this episode we cover how to turn messy submissions into structured signals your pricing model can trust – without hiring an army, multi agent architectures, the agentic...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Will Ross, Co-Founder & CEO of Federato, and if you’re an underwriting transformation leader—drowning in Excel, stale pilots, and disconnected data sources—this episode is for you.
Will Ross isn’t here to sell you hype. He’s here to show what it looks like when AI actually delivers: faster quotes, better decisions, happier underwriters, and measurable resul...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sara Mikulski, CTO at Kingstone Insurance, about the moment in her career that convinced her that the claims ecosystem could be rebuilt around a single, trusted data spine.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When I started my career, success looked like stabilisation: getting to a point where we all understood what was happening in which system, where the data was, and just making ...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Arvind Sontha, COE and co-founder of Kyber, an AI startup redefining how carriers handle claims correspondence.
The insurance industry is undergoing a seismic shift as carriers face mounting pressure to deliver faster, more transparent, and compliant communications to policyholders and clients, making the need for digital claims transformation greater than ever...
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Charlie Wendland, chief claims officer at Branch Insurance.
The world of claims management is undergoing a seismic shift, with AI at its heart. Insurers leveraging AI have reported a 75% reduction in claims handling time and 50% increase in fraud detection accuracy. Cutting claims processing times allows adjustors to focus on complex decisions and customer care...
Popular Podcasts
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!