Scouting for Growth

Sid Chakravarthy: Supply Chain Monitoring, the Metaverse and NFTs

On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Sid Chakravarthy, founder and CEO of StaTwig and a leading expert in emerging technology, including the Internet of Things, Blockchain, Metaverse, and NFTs. Sid uses these to develop solutions with large-scale social impact.
 
KEY TAKEAWAYS
There are big problems with drugs and vaccines when you look at the last-mile delivery system, or indeed getting to the people who really need them. They get damaged, spoiled, or stolen to be sold on black markets, so I thought I could use my ‘Bay-area skills’ to solve real-world problems, and that’s how I started the company. 
Supply chains are complex networks of partners who work together to bring a product to the final consumer. But there’s a lot of confusion and a lack of interoperability when it comes to sharing information. They all track the product as it passes through their own company, but it stops when they pass it on to the next partner. We provide end-to-end visibility into how the product moves through the supply chain, leveraging blockchain.
The data this technology provides is scalable; underwriters can use it to assess risks across the supply chain: how much product is being damaged? How do I write a policy for that? You can prevent specific claims from happening because you have full transparent visibility of key data points. And those show that there could be a failure in one part of the supply chain or another. 
The Metaverse and NFTs are not that complex at all. Think of a gamer: he is involved in, and essentially lives in, a full-time game, talking to people, buying and selling things, etc. Scale that up to non-gamers, imagine an alternate world where people can plug in and do what they want: shopping, clubbing, travel, building a home, anything. The possibilities are endless. That’s the Metaverse, a digital reality where you can plug in anytime and live fully in it. NFTs are certificates of ownership for digital art. 500 million people might have that digital art on their laptop, but there’s only one certificate that says “this is the actual owner of it and all the copies”. Think about your Picasso or Rembrandt. Can you prevent the copies? No, but you may be able to in the future with NFTs! This gives you the right to use, sell, brand, and rent that product (digitally) for any commercial purpose. Consider using your digital art and assets in the Metaverse. 
BEST MOMENTS
‘When I started the company, vaccines were a very boring product, Covid made it very attractive all of a sudden! But by then, we already had a solution to solve some big problems with Covid.’
‘Internet access and blockchain technology have allowed the birth of a new kind of transparency and visibility. This could never have been done as easily before. And this is because the customer is asking for it.’
‘Once the product moves from one touch point to another ("airport to courier" or "from manufacturer to consumer") we are annotating the journey and telling the story of it as it moves along its path transparently. Each item has its own tracking number and lots of tracking data about each individual product within each container.’
‘NFTs can act as a way of bringing your real-world products into the Metaverse by using what is called a true certificate of ownership, allowing you to transact digitally within the new internet.’
 
ABOUT THE GUEST
StatWig is a platform that ensures the safe, high-quality supply of vaccines. The platform provides continuous visibility and actionable insights to enable real-time decision-making.
Sid is a leader in emerging technologies, including the Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain. He uses these technologies to develop solutions with large-scale social impact across the world's supply chains. 
Sid launched StatWig 6 years ago to record the journey of products across supply chains from manufacturer to customer to create an extra layer of visibility, transparency, and authenticity.
The team has worked with customers such as UNICEF, Gavi, NASDAQ, and the World Economic Forum, among others.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sidchakravarthy/ Email: sidchaks@statwig.com Website: https://statwig.com/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/statwig/  
 
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 hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Tobias Taupitz: The Lifestyle Bicycle Insurance Platform For The Collective

On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Tobias Taupitz, CEO and Co-Founder of Laka, to discuss topics including business model innovation, leadership, culture, and expansion into new markets.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Why should you protect future losses when you can look backwards knowing exactly how much you need to charge to cover your costs of claims? We do so retroactively shares Tobi, so as not to incur a credit risk or payment default risk. It is all about balancing the risk, including actuarial risk. This way we know down to the penny how much we need to recover in a month, we can be fully transparent because we’re a high frequency, and a low margin player. Customers get a monthly breakdown from us showing what happened within their risk pool of like-minded people, and we split the costs among them. We have a cost-plus business model in insurance where we add a fee on top of every claim we settle – a success fee almost – so, ironically, the more claims we settle the more money we make.
The Laka model, or whatever it will be called eventually – a credit-based insurance proposition – should be the status quo across the industry because it’s the only way in my mind that it’s a fair and appealing to customers. It will change the game.
In a world where brand trust is at an all-time low and traditional insurers have commoditised themselves to the point of no return (thanks to the price comparison websites for example,) the next big buzzwords such as ‘embedded insurance' do not help create brand awareness. Such buzzwords become more and more interchangeable. We’re trying to build an insurance brand people can trust, that they want to associate themselves with, which allows us to do cool things like horizontal cross-selling, a ‘colour-in’ health product which is a modern take on personal accident cover and vertical expansion.
To all founders: You’re not alone, there are many great people out there willing to help, but it’s up to you to express what you need and how you would like to work together. Be radical and say “no” to advice that doesn’t fit in because you’re the only person that knows your business, the way you do. Nevertheless, highly stimulating viewpoints (as always) are always great to listen to and learn from.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Why estimate when you can be accurate?’
‘Laka is the divine goddess of prosperity and hula dancing – we saw this a very fitting comparison about well-being and having some fun.’
‘We want to be the lifestyle brand within the mobility insurance.’
‘With 125 million active cyclists with a high-end or insurable bike in a growing market is a fantastic place to be. In England alone, 47% of people aged 5 and over owned or had access to a bicycle in 2020. If you focus efficiently, you can own the full supply chain from front to end. That’s what we’re building with modes around sustainable mobility in Europe.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Tobias Taupitz’s aim is to turn a century-old insurance operating model on its head. He launched Laka with his two co-founders after spending years in the Corporate Finance teams at Barclays and KPMG, covering financial technology and insurance clients. Rediscovering his passion for insurance, he made it his mission to align customer and insurer interests, moving from premiums upfront to payments in arrears.
Tobias graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Insurance and Actuarial Sciences from the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and attended University College Dublin and the National University of Singapore to earn his CEMS Master’s in International Management degree.
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 hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Allison Schneider: A Lens on Vouch The Startup For Tech Founders

On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Allison or Ally Schneider who heads up venture partnerships at Vouch, a US business insurance platform for startups. Vouch raised over $160 million in investment funding so far with well-renowned investors including Silicon Valley Bank, Index Ventures and Y Combinator. Ally talks to Sabine about the company’s business model and helps us understand how Vouch helps founders like you grow and scale in the right way.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The product and experience have been very manual; we’ve been able to build a digital-first experience for founders to obtain business insurance. They can apply through our site in 7-10 minutes through our questionnaire, which asks specific questions about their business that give them a customised quote in terms of what coverage and limits we recommend, and they can adjust those parameters to suit them, and their coverage will go live at midnight on the same day. This not only reduces the time for startup founders but also provides a very easy self-service experience for those who prefer it.
When you think of legacy risk classification systems, they tend to be very broad and vague. We break it down into 70 niche codes (from connected home devices to B2B SaaS, AI/machine learning) to get really granular and customised to the customer's needs across different types of companies. That goes into our underwriting algorithm to say these are the coverages that make the most sense for your business today, as well as the ones you might want to consider as the business grows and scales in the future.
We have 10 proprietary lines of covers. We’re in the process of becoming a full carrier, which gives us a lot more flexibility to go direct-to-consumers, to do more from a discounting and bundling perspective, to be more flexible with timing, and to put coverage in place and bind the risk quickly. We also take a really proactive approach to risk management as well.
A founder has so many responsibilities to their business and people, too. There are things that founders are incredible at, and having business insurance expertise typically isn’t one of them – and nor should it. We think about our role in how we can make this process as painless, easy, cost-effective, and high-quality, as we should be able to save these founders time and energy so that they can focus their time and effort on the things that are really important to their business
BEST MOMENTS
‘The energy that you get spending your days surrounded by the most amazing entrepreneurs and founders, talking with them through the most interesting problems that they’re solving: That doesn’t get old.’
‘I get asked if I’m a corporate or a startup person, I actually really enjoy both environments as long as I can collaborate with the other.’
‘When business insurance matters, it really matters. It’s an area where it’s of high importance but low awareness. We saw the opportunity to build really innovative products and services that are really geared towards these types of companies, as we really want to fill that education gap too: or why business insurance is really important for founders.’
‘Our insurance advisors’ expertise sets us apart in terms of how we engage with our customers or the startup founders effectively and directly. They understand the inner workings of how startups operate and what it means to be an eCommerce business vs a SaaS business... the milestones those companies go through and the risks they face.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Allison Schneider is heading Venture Ecosystem Partnership at Vouch Insurance. She is relatively new to the InsurTech world with a background in corporate and startup collaborations. She started her career at IBM Watson through IBM's startup partnership programme, supporting startups building on IBM’s AI and machine learning APIs, providing the technology, support, and resources they needed to grow. Through that role, Alli fell in love with AI and machine learning, technology in general, and the possibilities and use cases for these technologies.
After IBM, she spent some time at a venture-backed startup called x.ai, building out its sales and business development practice and working with corporates on the other side of the table. She then went back into corporate, working at Principal, E*TRADE Ventures, and Labs, leading the startup mission there while engaging with and building bridges to FinTech and enterprise tech startups, shaping proof of concepts, prototypes, and commercial pilots.
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 hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Roman Rittweger: Insights on building a winning HealthTech startup in Germany

On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Roman Rittweger, founder and CEO of Ottonova – a digital health insurance provider for individual patients and self-employed people. Today, seven+ years after it was started, Ottonova has over 100 employees and has deployed a marketplace (or an end-to-end platform) that helps users register for and access health insurance coverage for medical services. By 2022, the team had raised over $145 million in Series E. Some of its investors include great names such as Early Bird Venture Capital and Seven Ventures.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Health insurance is one of the most complicated types of insurance to build. People asked me why I wanted to do this, build a HealthTech InsurTech, and why I wouldn’t just want to be a service provider for a health insurance company. My answer is that I had already been a service provider, and I didn’t enjoy it much because you can’t steer the business your way. I wanted to be able to design the tariff, be the customer’s partner, make the sale at the very beginning of the engagement, manage the customer, make them really happy, and save costs at the end for all the parties involved. To do this, you need to have the whole package.
We work in two ecosystems: the insurance ecosystem, where we are the most modern player in Germany, and the financial services ecosystem, where we have the highest net promoter score (67, where the number two has 34). At the same time, we sell our software in Germany and get into other areas and other ecosystems, like life insurance, where we’re starting to sell products and software to other health insurance providers. 
I definitely see that the lines between health and wellness are blurring. We have created a HealthX Club where, in exchange for participating in our market research, we give our users bonus points to spend on their Apple Watch, fitness club, meditation app, etc. The German customers are insured with us, and we want them to stay healthy. Also, we’re starting to work with partners in the fitness field, and even in cosmetics and dental as we figure out if we can add an insurance part to their product. As we’re digital and relatively agile, it’s very easy for us to build that for them.
Our VCs were very shocked by the amount of regulation and the number of people we had to bring on board to become compliant and obtain our insurance licence. They were also shocked by the amount of money we had to invest. After a while, we began looking for other ways to bring financing into the company. We had to go via new routes, including refinancing. Note that German investment leaders are not tech-savvy, so they invested with us to learn from us. We know that corporate venturing (or the stage where corporates want to partner and invest) will always be there for companies like ours because it is part of the stages of any industry-led startup growth process.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I had to wait for the right time and have a little bit of luck as well to start Ottonova. This took me 10 years.’
‘Finding the right customer was the only easy part!’
‘We ask our customers what they want because what you think they might want isn’t what’s important for them. Here is an example: rather than getting medicine delivered by drone before they need it, they’d prefer bills to be paid within 24 hours rather than 48 hours. Understanding such nuances is truly understanding your customers' needs.’
‘In our case, our direct chat and the service we provide day-to-day is actually much more important for our customers than the ‘sexy’ telemedicine engagement platform we created – we haven’t seen a big uptake in that for instance yet.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Roman Rittweger is a doctor by training, though he didn’t practice medicine for long. He worked as a consultant at the macro level of healthcare and insurance, focusing on the customer and how to provide a better experience for them, and on making it more affordable by steering customers towards the right kind of medical care. His first startup was a medical provider for health insurance, helping the insured population find the right physician or manage their chronic diseases. 
He sold this company to Germany’s largest private health insurer at the time and became a consultant again. He learned about marketing and sales because he’d realised through his experience that this is the most important thing. He eventually began looking for the next big area where he could start more startups, and six years ago, he sold his consultancy and jumped into the world of digital health insurance, founding Ottonova.
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 hello@alchemycrew.ventures
 

Steven Mendel: Tips on how to build a sustainable growth business

On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Steven Mendel, CEO and Co-Founder of Bought By Many, an InsurTech startup well known across the UK market, with a new brand launched in the US under the name "ManyPets." Bought By Many is making the world a better place for pet parents through its tech-enabled insurance products and services. 
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The first startup I was involved with was in the investment consulting space in the mid-90s. I became a management consultant and went on to set up three more startups, all in the finance space, but none of them directly related to insurance. Bought By Many started in the broader insurance space, but over several years, we narrowed our focus to the pet space.
For many years I’d been troubled by the poor way large corporates treat individuals – in particular in financial services – in contrast, they treat other corporates very, very well. I felt I had to do something to redress the balance between corporates and individuals in financial services.
We asked our pet community members to fill out a questionnaire to understand what they thought of the insurance industry, how they would have improved it, and what their ideal pet insurance policy would look like. We got 40,000 responses and created seven brand-new go-to-market products in September 2016. Instead of going live, we took the opportunity to reimagine every step of the customer's insurance journey so that, when we launched in February 2017, there was nothing about the experience that bore any relation to anything else they would have seen in the pet space before.
We became a double unicorn in eight and three-quarters years. But, in truth, I can’t get excited about the valuation at all. It doesn’t change in any way the business, the people we want to recruit, our existing staff, our focus on our customer base, our focus on the pets, or our focus on the pet parents. It’s an important milestone, of course, but it has not changed us as a business one single piece of the way.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Our first TV advert was at the very beginning on direct to household advertising, and we were able to work with Ridley Scott’s production studio to create something genuinely different and quirky.’
‘The idea behind Bought By Many was creating communities of individuals who had similar but niche insurance needs and to help them get access to better insurance – price, product, and customer experience.’
‘Our Net Promoter Score has never been below 70.’
‘Pet owners do talk, they want to know what pet food you use, what vet you go to, and who insures your pet. Having members of ours who advocate in the marketplace is really important for us and has massive knock-on economic benefits, of course.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Steven Mendel has over 25 years of experience as an actuary in financial services, which has included leading Close Brothers Wealth Management during the launch of their non-advised offering, creating the world’s first art-focused wealth advice offering for Christie’s, working as part of the team that formed Barclays Wealth, and heading the McKinsey UK Savings and Investment Group.Steven founded Bought By Many, now called ManyPets, which is disrupting the pet insurance market through innovative tech and is building a business to become an irresistible employer obsessed with customer service.In April 2019, Steven was included in the London Business School Review of 30 People Who Are Changing The World.
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 hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Helene Panzarino: Reinventing Finance and emerging FinTech business models

On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Helene Panzarino, author of Reinventing Banking and Finance: A Framework to Navigate Global FinTech Innovation, published on Amazon in November 2020. The pair discusses the book and the key insight Helene offers for reinventing the banking business model.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
We assume banking has always been what it is today. In the early days (1200s Italy) hyper-personalisation was going on for aristocrats and the like, now FinTech is the full circle back to hyper-personalisation but we’re doing it at scale, digitally.
The Industrial Revolution had a significant impact on banking, as it did on every other aspect of society and the economy. There’s now mass servicing, which has taken away some of the personalisation and individuality of banking. This intensified through the IT side of banking in the 1950s, when we were able to use technology to store and process more data, as well as to begin offering more products and services to a wider audience. The more recent digital revolution and the internet allowed us to do our banking online, and the smartphone brought that to its apex, so you have a bank in your pocket.
In five years’ time, we’ll be able to DIY our own bank and choose between different products and services; this is where FinTech will come into its own.
It took banking ages to realise that the threat posed by the insurance industry from outside was greater than the threat from within. Insurance and InsurTechs had a much better collaborative partnership from the get-go, whereas banks and FinTechs were adversaries. FinTechs have now grown up and are aware that they need their parents if they’re going to scale, and they’re working very well collaboratively now, but I applaud the insurance industry for getting there first. 
BEST MOMENTS
‘Everyone must now have a global view; no one can stay confined in his/her geographical space.’
‘The pandemic has shown us the inadequacies of some banks’ desktops, platforms, and apps. Consumers are now using those apps, including the non-digital natives who used to visit banking branches in person and weren’t used to digital engagements.’
‘If you’ve created a startup bank, you need to remember that you’re operating In a regulated industry and if you ‘colour outside of the lines’ the regulator is going to come down on you. So, make sure to bring in experienced people to your C-Suite or Board.’
‘Everyone knows how to innovate, but everyone does not know how to execute. You need to be given space and the finances to fail. It needs to be OK and not damaging to your growth path or career prospects if you’re going to fail, too. Acceptance of different growth paths needs to be accepted from the top; if that openness doesn’t permeate from the top down, then nobody’s going to try to grow smartly or differently.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Originally a Commercial Banker, Helene is an experienced FinTech Programme Director, an exited entrepreneur, educator, and author.  Her book ‘Reinventing Banking and Finance: Frameworks to navigate global FinTech innovation’  came out in Sept 2020. Previously, the MD of the global Rainmaking Colab FinTech Programme, a world-first, post-accelerator program for Series A+ FinTechs and Tier 1 financial institutions, Helene was also responsible for the Inaugural Programme of Education and Events for Innovate Finance. She is an Associate Director of the LIBF Digital Banking Centre, the Lead Fellow, and creator of a world-first FinTech Pathway in a Master's in Tech Entrepreneurship Degree for UCL, and co-creator and lead delivery partner on the Imperial College FinTech Executive Education Programme. Her specialist subject areas are Digital Banking and Alternative Finance (SMEs). She is also the CEO of the New Financial Laborator,y enabling community banks and building societies to engage with the global FinTech community.  A regular judge, speaker, and moderator for the banking and FinTech awards and conferences, Helene was a BSI FinTech representative for the UK in Brussels, named on the Computer Weekly 100 Women in Tech Award 2018-19, and on the Innovate Finance Women in FinTech Power List for 2019.
You can discover more about Helene's book here > reinventing banking and finance. 
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 hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Spiros Margaris: What does really matter in FinTech today?

On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Spiros Margaris, who discusses the pros and cons of working for a young venture, setting up a startup, as well as the best way to succeed in business. He shares insights on the future of FinTech and much more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
You build trust with founders by telling them what you think, honestly, but not always expecting them to do what you say. Trust is the basis of working together, and with trust, anyone can go far, even in difficult times.
You have to play to your strengths. If somebody asks you questions – and startups will – and you don’t know the answer, you need to say you don’t know. But then call someone in your network who has expertise and can answer.
A startup engagement is like any "relationship": you will have great times, mediocre times, and bad times. It won’t always be this exciting thing people think of. Even if the job you do is extremely boring and repetitive, whichever job that is, that’s what will make you good at that job long term.
The future of FinTech is embedded finance. Even non-financial companies will enter this space with trusted partners or develop their own FinTech solutions, which will complement their existing offerings even better. They don’t need to make money through finance, unlike banks. The finance ‘cake’ will be split into more categories in the future, including financial and non-financial offers.
BEST MOMENTS
‘It’s a privilege to be recognised by your community, but at the end of the day, you’re only as good as your community. We grow together.’
‘Winning is about teamwork: Together we win, like a football team.’
‘Great young people want to work in great companies that give them responsibilities and let their voice be heard. They’re not so bothered about money yet. They want purpose.’
‘The nice thing about my job is that I talk to so many smart people. This means that I keep learning. Think about our world as a fantastic international digital school!’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Spiros Margaris is a venture capitalist, futurist, keynote speaker and senior advisor. He is the first international influencer to achieve ‘The Triple Crown’ FinTech ranking. He was ranked the international № 1 FinTech, Blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) influencer (05/2018) by Onalytica. Spiros once again was ranked the global № 1 Fintech influencer (02/2020) by Onalytica. He regularly ranks among the top three in established global industry influencer rankings. 
He is a keynote speaker at international FinTech and InsurTech conferences. He also gave a TEDxAcademy Talk. He published an AI white paper, “Machine learning in financial services: Changing the rules of the game,” for the enterprise software vendor SAP. First non-IBM Keynote Speaker at the biggest IBM event in Europe, “2019 IBM Systems Technical University”, among others.
Linkedin link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spirosmargaris/ Twitter Link: https://twitter.com/SpirosMargaris Website Link: https://www.margarisventures.com/ Keynote Speaking Agent: www.gspeakers.com
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 hello@alchemycrew.ventures
 

The Four Types of Investment

On this episode, Sabine VdL reviews the four types of investment and who is winning the corporate venturing game as well as looking to the future to evaluate and imagine what is coming our way.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The four types of investment strategies: ‘Driving’ (strategic and tightly linked to operational capabilities), ‘Enabling’ (strategic and loosely liked to operational capabilities), ‘Emerging’ (tightly linked to metrics of financial importance), and ‘Passive’ (loosest connected to corporate capabilities and strategies).
Winners at corporate venturing during the ‘Startup Phase’ have been identified as having 3 core elements: A clear and defined vision that drives a clear charter and operating model; A strong and experienced team that combines both internal operational knowledge and external understanding of the Venture Capitalist’s drivers; Established expectations and milestones to measure and ensure performance.
Winners in corporate venturing during the ‘Expansion Phase’ are seen to have a slightly different set of core components: Agility in refining strategic investments or the portfolio focus; Tailored approaches to recruiting and retaining the Corporate Venturing team over time; Institutionalization of the Corporate Venturing operating platform.
Winners during the “Resiliency Phase” have found ways to industrialize and democratize their learnings. They have been identified as having the following common characteristics: The Corporate Venturing program plays a strategic role and continually influences parent growth; there are purpose-built, well-established, end-to-end investment platforms; and they have intelligent community management and communications capabilities.
BEST MOMENTS
'Consider Driving and Enabling investment paths at the earliest stage of formation, moving to Emergent investment. This means that Passive investment in the latter stages of the CVC model is probably the best option to drive long-term financial returns.’
‘CSAA Insurance Group, for instance, provides insurance products across a range of personal areas to AAA members as they built their own Corporate Venturing arm.’
‘Having an agile platform is crucial.’
‘Innovations are creating seismic scale changes to our business landscape across multiple big industries. These evolutions and changes are  made possible through corporate venturing.’
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 hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Sam Evans: From Investment Thesis to Strategic Partnerships

On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Sam Evans, a Founding Partner with Eos Venture Partners, who has spent the last four years investing in InsurTech startups. He is an active speaker and a top 50 InsurTech influencer. 
Prior to establishing Eos, Sam was a partner at KPMG, where he led the Global Deal Advisory insurance practice. During his career, Sam has worked on over $75bn of insurance-related transactions and has worked in many of the large, mature, and high-growth insurance markets around the globe. Sam lived in great places, including Australia, Hong Kong, and Switzerland. Today, Sam lives in the UK.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
There’s so much happening, it’s a super exciting time. One of the key areas for us at Eos is the digital and gig economies. First, it’s difficult to properly serve the gig economy worker with traditional insurance solutions because they’re not usage-based, not connected, and often backwards-looking. Still, the gig economy worker has become a huge and growing market, especially on the back of the pandemic. It’s also underserved. Second, the ability to transition from protection to prevention within life and health, leveraging technology to proactively manage risk and embed medical, health, and fitness technologies to prevent the deterioration of conditions. Third, consider emerging risk classes, such as cybersecurity risk, combined with embedded insurance mechanisms; these new risk classes are increasingly entering the market.
The pandemic has accelerated the industry’s adoption of ‘digital’ by at least 5 years, which is quite staggering. Demand from pretty much all our portfolio companies has increased significantly, so we’re seeing it in real-time. The industry’s maturity has also accelerated; overall fundraising levels are increasing, but they’re increasingly dominated by a smaller number of companies making larger rounds.
The first half of 2021 saw more funding than the whole of 2020, so we’re still on a very significant upwards trajectory in terms of appetite and capital flowing in. We are in an environment with inflated valuations, too. The InsurTech bubble hasn’t burst yet. It’s deflating, though, and this may not necessarily be a bad thing. It’s all part of the maturing journey of a sector. 
There’s a significant amount of capital looking to be deployed against excellent business models. We’re always keen to talk to companies that are either on the path to or have reached the series A stage. If you look at the market as a whole, we’re at least 10 years behind FinTech in development, so we’re still at a very early stage of development. This is going to dominate the industry for the next 20-30 years. This is a fundamental change and shift in how insurance operates.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Key to our philosophy is working in partnership with the industry, rather than adopting a pure challenger model, which is where we saw the greatest value could be created.’
‘Connected vehicle insurance enhances safety by improving driving quality and highlighting accident hotspots. Insurers today get better results as they can use the data to enhance risk selection and pricing.’
‘A lot of InsurTech startups are going to struggle and fail. That’s part of the natural evolution of a sector. I think Covid-19 has accelerated that to a certain degree due to the fight for quality, and the lookout for those startups that are likely to do particularly well.’
‘Incumbents shouldn’t see regulation as something that’s going to protect them from new entrants. We’ve seen, even in our small portfolio, companies moving from an MGA into a full-stack model with the blessing of the regulator.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Sam Evans is a founding partner of Eos Venture Partners, a Strategic InsurTech Venture Capital fund with offices in London and Philadelphia.
Eos is an independent specialist InsurTech investment and advisory business.
Eos is today a Series A and Series B investor with a focus on new business models and new technologies that will impact and transform the insurance industry.
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. Founders are choosing to work with Eos because it is an independent specialist and active InsurTech investor with a strong track record and excellent relationships across the insurance sector.
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 hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Florian Graillot: Astorya.vc ... Europe’s Early-Stage InsurTech Investor

On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Florian Graillot, an investor and co-founder of Astorya.vc or Astorya. Astorya invests in Seed InsurTech startups across Europe. In this conversation, the pair covers topics including who he is, why he started Astorya, and how he sees the world of corporate venturing today and tomorrow.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
There is a trend emerging of direct competition between Tier 1 insurance players and reinsurance companies working directly with InsurTech startups, enabling them to bypass specific insurance providers across the value chain. The latter has a massive impact on how the market is being restructured behind the scenes. 
Florian founded Astorya with co-founder Jan Kastory because he saw a market gap. As an investor, Florian shares that Astorya’s focus is investing in entrepreneurs first, utilising his team’s financial and entrepreneurial background. Given this context, it makes sense that Astorya attracts top tech entrepreneurs. At Astorya, Florian states, "We understand how to grow businesses as we do just that ourselves every day."
FinTech investors only commit 10% of their time to InsurTech. Astorya only does InsurTech, explains Florian, meaning that 100% of Astorya’s time is dedicated to insurance tech ventures. And this is why Astorya’s limited partners invested in the firm. The Limited Partners know that the Astorya team will spend 100% of its time on the InsurTech topic every single day of the week. 
Don’t be afraid of what you read in the newspapers. There are still many opportunities to address in InsurTech; not everything has been done yet. The full insurance value chain needs to be unbundled, re-bundled, and revamped, and InsurTech startups can address this in numbers. We already have a few unicorns within the InsurTech space. Don’t forget that technology is a means to an end; without it, succeeding in any industry becomes tougher and tougher. Today, technology becomes your competitive edge over traditional insurance companies.
BEST MOMENTS
‘InsurTech is way broader than just insurance. It can be connected to almost any industry.’
‘Tech investment is in my DNA, insurance is much more opportunistic.’
‘There’s always somebody who is managing more money than you. It’s not about money, it’s about the industry, focus, understanding, and capacity to accelerate go-to-market strategies, especially around software or B2B technologies.’
‘It may be very easy to raise money at the very beginning of the startup journey, or when you are big enough to attract a huge round from private equity investors, but when you are in the middle, it’s still challenging. I believe that both entrepreneurs and corporates should keep that in mind.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Florian Graillot is a founding partner and VC investor at Astorya.vc where he invests in early-stage tech startups in Europe. His main focus is to identify, evaluate, and invest in growth ventures that utilise next-generation customer-centric technologies to reinvent insurance. His skills include investment, financial modelling, entrepreneurship, business development, and strategy.
http://astorya.vc/ 
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 hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Matthew Jones: Some Investors Care About Diversity

In this episode, Sabine VdL is joined by Matthew Jones, Managing Director and venture capital investor in insurance and risk management-related technology for Anthemis in the UK, Europe, and North America.
Through his previous work with Swiss Re, Matthew sponsored Sabine’s first accelerator and was one of her most active mentors, engaged assessor, and investor. They both learned a great deal during the acceleration programme about what a sustainable business model meant.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
At the core of our investment thesis are banks, insurance companies, and FinTech companies. But in addition to those kinds of businesses, we’re also actively researching, exploring, and investing in several adjacent industries where we believe that the technology will intersect with financial services in the future, including energy, agriculture, mobility, health, and property tech.
For me, cultivating change means that we’re prepared to back genuinely different and disruptive ideas that others aren’t. Because our team comes from both inside and outside financial services, we try to blend those perspectives to think creatively about how we back new companies and underrepresented founders.
In the context of venture, there’s a rule of thumb that startups should aim for a 10x better user experience or a 10x better return on investment. That’s a good rule of thumb. And across financial services, there are so many underdeveloped spots where growth ventures can focus on delivering that kind of outcome.
Entrepreneurs who seek funding should seek smart money. They should ask their investors what they believe in and how they put it into practice. They should also evaluate their investment team and partners: Are they a diverse bunch? Do they have values that align with yours, and are they putting them into practice? Would you want to affiliate with a firm that doesn’t share your values?
BEST MOMENTS
‘Without insurance and re-insurance, nothing really happens. Insurance is everywhere, which is great for me as someone who’s a little bit obsessive about insurance.’
‘Financial services are the lifeblood of the world’s economies. But we recognise it’s not perfect and there are opportunities for improvement.’
‘There is no part of the insurance value chain that is immune to the effect of technology.’
‘There’s no excuse, and it’s not acceptable, for big venture capital companies to have all male and all white CEO portfolio companies. We are in the 21st Century!’
ABOUT THE GUEST
I interviewed Matthew when he was the Managing Director at Anthemis, responsible for sourcing, analyzing, and executing investments, as well as providing support to Anthemis’ portfolio companies. Today, he is the head of business development at MS Transverse
He brings in-depth knowledge of the insurance sector and focuses on investments in insurance and risk-related technology.
Matthew’s areas of interest include analytics and data, artificial intelligence and automation, asset management, digital health, mobility, new insurance propositions, and risk management. Prior to joining Anthemis, Matthew was at Swiss Re, with roles across non-life, life, and reinsurance in the USA, London, and Europe.
Matthew previously served on the boards of Flock, Hokodo, and Stable and is the resident venture investor for Carrier Management’s VC Viewpoint series. He holds a bachelor’s in business administration from the University of Bath and also studied at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
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 hello@alchemycrew.ventures

Lens on Venture Scouting

In this episode, Sabine VdL defines venture scouting, also called technology scouting, and explains why companies and investors see it as so important. She also discusses what skillsets a technology scout needs to succeed as well as what should motivate them and how these strategies are delivered.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
In recent months companies around the globe have seen new types of challenges affecting them all, including: changing customer needs (such as the "I want it now" generation demanding reduced engagement friction); rising competition (This does not only means the fast-moving dominance of BigTech, but also the arrival of new digital market entrants.); and increasing market volatility (Think about bitcoins and other digital currencies that have fluctuated up and down).
Many companies see it as essential to closely monitor developments in core technologies and scan for emerging technologies with disruptive potential. Methods here include technological forecasting, technology foresight, and technology intelligence.
The basis of technology scouting is to enhance insight into emerging and advanced technologies and shorten the time lag between technological advancement and detection, accelerating the potential delivery of unfair competitive advantages for any company.
One of the biggest obstacles to innovation is often the regional limitations and the siloed way of thinking that exist in many corporations today. They know, though, that to remain competitive, they need to acquire valuable information on emerging technologies as early as possible.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Strong technological competence plays a crucial role in maintaining and improving a company's competitive position, regardless of business size.’
‘In an environment impacted by technological complexity and the globalization of R&D activities, the successful identification, and usage of external sources of knowledge is becoming increasingly essential and primordial as part of a business success strategy.’
‘Technology scouts require lateral thinking, knowledge in science and technology, a certain level of credibility, recognition within the company, cross-disciplinary orientation, creativity, and imagination.’
‘Think about venture/technology scouting as an early warning system for companies to make better innovation choices.’
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 hello@alchemycrew.ventures