Scouting for Growth

• Danny Nathan: Driving Innovation and Venture Growth with Apollo 21

  On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Danny Nathan, founder of Apollo 21, an innovation and product design studio based in New York City. Learn about the transformative role of emerging technologies like AI, quantum computing, and cloud services in reshaping traditional business models. Danny discusses how Apollo 21 integrates these frontier technologies to solve complex business and operational challenges, helping clients across various industries, including healthcare, finance, fitness, and more. KEY TAKEAWAYS I focus on layering all the ideals of innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology together with a focus on helping companies understand what it means to build a culture of innovation, what that looks like from an operational standpoint, and how that perspective impacts how companies are structured and how they approach their work. We then leverage those thoughts to help companies create interesting new products We work with companies of all sizes and scales, from napkin-stage founders who have an idea but haven’t figured out how to bring it to light or defined what an MVP product might look like to serve their customer needs, right us to large companies lie Bank of America. Interestingly, the problems they’re trying to solve are not exactly dissimilar, it’s a question of scale and customer expectations are today and where they want to get to tomorrow. We’ve found that large companies inherently are not set up well to support the ideals of innovation. As companies grow, they optimise for efficiency and look for ways to wring every dollar out of every penny that goes in. Innovation is inherently an inefficient process that requires some expenditure of experimentation, trial and error and that’s difficult to align to the way that large companies operate in terms of budgeting. One of our core values is: Crawl, walk, run. Having run startups ourselves we’re highly aware of the benefit of starting small, understanding what you’re building, determining where the value is being delivered or not, and iterating on that over time, so we can truly build something that accomplishes a need and gives us an opportunity to figure out where we mis-stepped along the way. BEST MOMENTS ‘Gen AI is the elephant in the room today, you can’t help but be aware of it because of the pace it’s coming into fruition. A lot of companies aren’t ready to incorporate it into their workflows.’ ‘Start getting your data in order, understand and learning what type of structure and data you need to align to the goal you have for AI use cases in future.’ ‘Figure out ways for your employees to begin interacting with and utilising AI to accomplish the tasks they’re doing today so they aren’t afraid of it and how to ask the right questions of it to get beneficial responses from it.’ ‘One of the things a lot of people overlook is the level of research and understanding of your customer and their need that should go into the process prior to building anything.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Throughout a roller-coaster career spanned acting, advertising, consulting, technology, and entrepreneurship, Danny Nathan has developed a habit of helping companies create new products and services and launch new ventures. Known variously as a product person, UX guy, designer, strategist, marketer, creative, and sometimes even "The Cleaner," Danny brings a wealth of experience to every project he undertakes. Today, Danny is the founder of Apollo 21, an innovation and product design studio based in New York City. Apollo 21 sits at the intersection of a business consultancy, a product design studio, and a venture studio. The company helps organizations foster innovation, leverage venture-driven growth, and remove barriers to scale by building technology that solves complex business and operational challenges. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner. Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Facebook TikTok Email Website

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  53:28
• Scott Gunther: Corporate Venture Capital, the Venture Client Model, and Driving Innovation in 2025

  On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Scott Gunther, who is not only a corporate venture capitalist and start-up enthusiast—he’s also the secret ingredient that helps big businesses think like nimble innovators! In this episode, we’ll hear how Scott’s unique blend of strategic vision and hands-on execution has set him apart in both blue-chip boardrooms and early-stage tech circles. We’ll dive into the venture client model, explore the evolving CVC (Corporate Venture Capital) landscape through the lens of 2025, and uncover the do’s and don’ts for insurance providers and emerging Tech founders. KEY TAKEAWAYS Recently we’ve seen a bit of stability in CVC investment, there’s been a strong volume of deal-flow dollars that are starting to pour into startup investment. At the same time, we’re seeing corporate change their attitudes and approaches to innovation and venturing. Some have closed their CVC funds, others have changed their investment focus, some have scaled back altogether, although some are quite the opposite. We’re starting to see CVCs experiencing slower exit returns and their financials aren’t what they were in 2021/22. In the last 2-3 years the savvy CVCs have done 2 things well: They’ve managed to keep their portfolio afloat and managed to hang onto their strategic assets but have also helped their portfolio grown at the same time. This will be a trend for CVCs in 2025. We don’t put anything up to our investment community until we have an exec sponsor because post-investment is when the exec sponsor comes to life and the VC model starts to hit home. We have a dedicated post-investment team that connect the startup and the corporate. The biggest opportunities for insurers and CVCs operating in that space is understand how people use and interact with digital technologies, and how they’re affecting society. Also, customer segmentation and proposition development is different for different demographics now and how different cohorts are research, buy, service, claim, it’s not one size fits all. The savvy insurers know what these macro-trends are and understand how the latest technology, data, and AI trends are. This could help us get to the holy grail: The segment of one! BEST MOMENTS ‘We’re going to see more competition, things are going to happen faster and cheaper, but there’s still an uncertainty about which things we should own and which we should outsource.’ ‘I think a lot of people focus on the E and S or ESG, but not the G, but the G incorporates some of the most crucial aspects about how a company runs itself.’ ‘The more efficient and effective a company can run the more it can have on its customers and community.’ ‘We connect the startup with the corporate to create mutual commercial value, it’s an ethos we live by.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Scott Gunther is a Corporate Venture Capitalist and start-up enthusiast with a track record of partnering with business leaders to identify strategic opportunities and guide transformational change. Drawing on years of experience designing future-state, digital-first businesses and delivering critical programs across multiple industries, he brings a rare blend of strategic vision and executional prowess to his clients and colleagues. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner. Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Facebook TikTok Email Website

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  37:55
• Staci Gray: Empowering Entrepreneurs to Scale Their Businesses Through People, Processes, and Personal Transformation!

  On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Staci Gray, Founder and CEO of Organize To Scale, whose journey is nothing short of inspirational. Imagine graduating high school at 16, diving headfirst into the entrepreneurial world, and buying your first property at 18. When her mother was diagnosed with stage four cancer, Staci leaped into action. Taking the reins of her family businesses, she transformed overwhelming challenges into streamlined successes. In just 36 months, Staci helped launch 36 syndication businesses that collectively raised over $300 million. Today, we'll dive into Staci's unique approach to scaling businesses through people and processes. We'll explore how she empowers leaders to build strong teams, streamline operations, and prepare for successful exits—all without losing their minds or their personal identities. KEY TAKEAWAYS You need to know yourself, whether you’re a visionary, an integrator, or more operationally minded. Getting that level of clarity is critical because the visionary role is externally focussed, thinking 5 moves ahead, caring about customers, interested in advancement and expansion. Whereas the integrator (COO) role is internally focussed on the team, fulfilment, operations. Sitting in both seats at the same time is fragmenting yourself, it’s important you choose which role you do and then employ opposite to that who also buys into your vision. As a business you should be continually adapting. The technology or the team you needed at 6-figures is not the same that you will need at 8-figures. Your job as a leadership team, in whatever seat you’re sitting in, is to get good at pushing to the next ceiling, hitting it, and then adapting to make sure you have your cash, tech and trained team aligned. Those things are critical to scaling. I’m a huge advocate of trying to scale businesses in a way that truly creates freedom: Tim freedom, financial freedom, and geographic freedom. That’s only our ‘eyes-open freedoms’, sometimes people also sacrifice their internal freedoms; Joy, love, peace, connection, belonging to scale their businesses. I think that’s a bigger sacrifice. It’s important to not attach my identity to my business, it’s not me, it’s something that I do. All building a business really is is taking an idea and turning it into a reality. It’s also people. People are doing the work, even if they’re using technology. And ideas and people sometimes create friction, we see it all over the world, and that friction can create bottlenecks. We have to be able to have conversations around what isn’t working, in a non-personal, objective way to see how we can improve communication, workflow, accountability, processes, documentation so the flow is smoother and we can all achieve and win by driving revenue, scale up the business, create operational efficiencies and improve gross profit. BEST MOMENTS ‘The best integrators are ‘co-visionaries’, they can envision with you and also take the vision and sculpt it into tactics.’ ‘Stay in your lane, if you try to get in someone else’s lane it can fragment operations.’ ‘The moment I found out my Mum had stage 4 cancer was when I realised the importance of organising to scale your business before there was a crisis.’ ‘Doing whatever it takes to build your business might look different than what you think it looks like.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Staci Gray is the Founder and CEO of Organize To Scale, a company dedicated to liberating mission-driven leaders from operational chaos and empowering them to scale their businesses effectively. With a passion for organizing businesses and building strong, high-performing teams, Staci envisions a world where entrepreneurs and leaders can grow their enterprises, fuel the economy, and make a tangible impact on people's lives without sacrificing their personal well-being. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner. Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Facebook TikTok Email Website

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  46:54
• State of the Nation in Insurance Venturing

  On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to a panel of global experts to explore the bold new frontiers shaping insurance technology in 2025 and beyond, including microinsurance in Africa, digital disruption in Latin America, the evolving tech scene in the US, Asia, Europe and the UK. KEY TAKEAWAYS AI cannot just be something we add on top of existing infrastructure, there needs to be some re-work to integrate it into existing infrastructure. Foundation for AI scalability and security (not as a bolt-on) will be a big trend. The second thing is generative AI that’s across ecosystem. There is a trend emerging and growing in InsurTech in Europe at least around emerging risks. 20% of all the deals done in 2024 were around that specific topic. Most of the startups in this area are in the pricing/underwriting part of the value chain. There is a need for these with emerging risks that didn’t exist (or weren’t as prevalent) in the past, such as climate change or electric vehicles. In Asia, especially South-East Asia, the markets are way more green field than they are in the US. Here, embedded insurance and ecosystem integration are a really big deal. As people get onto external ecosystems outside of their own they want to embed insurance in them across sectors. We don’t think insurance just in the insurance space is enough. There’s a lot of brain drain in Africa where skilled professionals are leaving the continent. But the paradox of that is that there’s a lot of influx onto the continent. The questions is: Where exactly do the opportunities lie? There’s a lot of grown happening in the emerging communities where companies are developing the mindsets and capacities to transfer risk in all kinds of insurance, not just life. BEST MOMENTS ’95-97% of the economy in Asia is driven by SMEs, and 75% of employment is in the SME sector, and it’s wildly underserved from an insurance perspective. It’s a massive opportunity.’ ‘Accessibility possibilities that the technology and maturity curve provides in emerging markets, especially, is quite exciting because it’s making insurance sustainable, affordable, and reaching more people.’ ‘The population where I live is very young, they were the first penetration for insurance here and, unlike the rest of the world, they’re deeply unconcerned about data privacy, they’re willing to trade their data access for convenience, better products and more personalisation.’ ‘Don’t only stick to the regulations timeframe, keep an eye on what entrepreneurs are building because the market can move faster than the regulations.’ ABOUT THE GUESTS Florian Graillot (covering InsurTech Europe) Hilario Itriago (covering InsurTech LATAM) Lisa Wardlaw (covering InsurTech USA) Michael Waitze (covering InsurTech Asia) Tunde Salako - Africa InsurTech (covering InsurTech Africa) ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner. Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Facebook TikTok Email Website

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  1:04:27
• Carolina Klint: Unveiling Key 2025 WEF Risk Insights

  On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Carolina Klint, Managing Director and chief commercial officer for Continental Europe at Marsh McLennan, who shares her views on the latest WEF report and its implications for businesses and insurers worldwide. KEY TAKEAWAYS My goal with speaking about and promoting the Report is where the topics of risk and resilience belong, which is on the agenda of world leaders, decision makers, executives, board members. The business world is so complex and difficult to navigate and we have an environment now where risks are not only interconnected but they are also layered. So, the Global Risk Report is a great place to start trying to make sense of this. When a company looks at the risks that have the potential to impact or execute on strategies it’s so difficult to get it right: You’re going to go through your risks and scenario planning to pull together an ambitious risk register. Most companies have good processes for this, but in the current environment it’s very rare to pick and prepare for the risks that are going to be the ones that will hit you. Aby working on a culture of risk awareness and resilience, by working on taking a holistic view, connection the dots between people, risk and strategy, companies that do that have a much better opportunity to deal with whatever ends up hitting them. If you have a culture and awareness, and if you empower your leaders and employees to manage through when something hits, it’s going to become a much better outcome for you regards of the risks. We need to not just look at what’s in front of us, but look at the long term perspective. Human beings are wired to focus on what’s in front of us and it’s easy to forget the long-term horizon. This is where the Global Risk Report is so helpful because it looks at the perception of current risks, the 2-year and 10-year risk horizons. BEST MOMENTS ‘We look at how we can bring more value and become more relevant to our clients by connecting people, risk, and strategy – and the WEF Global Risk Report speaks directly to that.’ ‘The business environment is very difficult to navigate, and it’s only through collaboration and looking at the business holistically that you can achieve a long term sustainable business model.’ ‘For anyone in risk and resilience, when the Global Risk Report comes out it’s like Christmas Day as a 5-year-old!’ ‘Everyone’s got a plan until you get punched in the face – that’s exactly the way it is in the current environment.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Carolina Klint is a recognized expert in global risk management and a key contributor to thought leadership initiatives, including the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report. As a Managing Director and Risk Management Leader for Continental Europe at Marsh, she works with clients across industries to anticipate, quantify, and navigate emerging threats—ranging from geopolitical and environmental disruptions to the rapid evolution of technology. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner. Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Facebook TikTok Email Website

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  43:25

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