Podcast · Business

Scouting for Growth

by Sabine VanderLinden · English · Business

There are over 180,000 FinTech venture s out there today. My team tracks 7.3 million of them across markets every single week. But the number that matters isn't the one that's growing. It's the one that isn't. Only 25% of these ventures have secured funding and meaningful backing. The

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 46 min
Latest: 8 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

8 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 5 min

Manjit Rana: Moving at the Speed of Trust

Insurance has become extraordinarily good at finding the few. The next competitive advantage may come from clearing the many. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, I sit down with Manjit Rana, Executive Vice President for Insurance across the UK, EMEA and APAC at Clearspeed, to explore a deceptively simple question: can insurers establish trust at the same speed at which they are automating decisions? More than 90 out of every 100 customers coming to an insurer are genuine. Yet much of the industry's fraud infrastructure has historically been designed around identifying the minority that…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

E239 · 24 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 8 min
Prof Gianvito Lanzolla: Strategy in the World of Data and AI
AI is changing the economics of business. But it is not rewriting the fundamentals of strategy. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, I sit down with Professor Gianvito Lanzolla, Professor of Strategy at Bayes Business School, advisor to boards and CEOs, and co-author of Diversification in the World of Data and AI, to examine what actually creates competitive advantage when access to intelligence is rapidly becoming ubiquitous. The uncomfortable truth is that better technology alone does not create a better strategy. Being early to AI can accelerate learning, but scaling before you…
E238 · 17 Sep 2026 · 18 min
Agentic Distribution: AI Can Find the Customer. Can You Keep Them?
Discovery is becoming abundant. Customer ownership is not. In this solo episode of Scouting for Growth, I go inside the Distribution Intelligence Layer and examine what happens when AI assistants become a new front door to the market. Customers can increasingly discover products, compare options, generate quotes, and decide what to do next before they ever reach a company website. The strategic question is no longer simply how they find you. It is what happens to the relationship when they arrive. The uncomfortable truth is that AI may not remove the broker. It may remove the search box and…
E237 · 10 Sep 2026 · 16 min
The Enterprise Intelligence Stack: Why Four Excellent Tools Produce Nothing
Four excellent tools can still produce nothing. Intelligence only creates value when it connects, compounds, and scales. In this solo episode of Scouting for Growth, I introduce the Enterprise Intelligence Stack, a practical framework for understanding why promising agentic pilots stall, why different AI agents can operate with completely different views of the same customer, and why the third pilot can end up costing as much as the first. The uncomfortable truth is that most enterprises are not suffering from a lack of capability. They are suffering from a lack of composition. Data, models,…
E236 · 3 Sep 2026 · 50 min
Kevin Maney: The Category Creation Formula for Winning Markets in the AI Era
Kevin Maney: The Category Creation Formula for Winning Markets in the AI Era AI is making products easier to build, but meaningful differentiation harder to sustain. A stronger feature set, a faster model, or simply adding an “AI-powered” label may not be enough to convince customers that a new market should exist in the first place. Kevin Maney, bestselling author, technology commentator, and founding partner of Category Design Advisors, joins me to unpack the Category Creation Formula: Context + Missing + Innovation = New Market Category. Developed through nearly a decade of fieldwork with…
E235 · 20 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 37 min
Denise Garth: The Frontier Insurer, One Year In
Denise Garth: The Frontier Insurer, One Year In Denise Garth returns to Scouting for Growth one year after the Frontier Firm idea began to move from a strategic aspiration into insurer operating models, technology roadmaps, and boardroom priorities. As Chief Strategy Officer at Majesco, Denise offers a sharper test for the Frontier Insurer: Is the organization simply using AI? Is it redesigning selected processes around AI? Or is it rebuilding the enterprise around intelligence, connecting its data, core platforms, people, partners, and decisions? Only the third represents genuine…
E234 · 6 Aug 2026 · 27 min
Bárbara Fernández: Human-Agent Collaboration, Agentic AI, and the Rise of the Human Boss
Bárbara Fernández: Human-Agent Collaboration, Agentic AI, and the Rise of the Human Boss The future of work will not be won by humans who move faster. It will be shaped by humans who know how to orchestrate intelligence. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden sits down with Bárbara Fernández, Deputy Director of MAPFRE Open Innovation and Head of insur_space, to explore one of the defining leadership questions of the agentic AI era: what happens when humans stop doing every task and start directing systems of intelligence instead? As AI assistants evolve into autonomous…
E233 · 30 Jul 2026 · 27 min
Carlos Falcón: Rebuilding the Insurance Core for AI, Venture Scouting and the Frontier Firm
Carlos Falcón: Rebuilding the Insurance Core for AI, Venture Scouting and the Frontier Firm Insurance does not have an innovation shortage. It has an absorption problem. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden sits down with Carlos Cendra Falcón, Scouting and Investment Lead at MAPFRE Open Innovation, to explore one of the most pressing questions facing insurers today: can the core of the institution actually absorb the intelligence, ventures, platforms and partnerships being scouted around the world? Carlos brings a pragmatic perspective from inside one of the world's…
E232 · 16 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 36 min
Reggie Townsend: Making Responsible AI Irresistible
Responsible AI will not scale because leaders believe in it. It will scale when doing the right thing becomes easier than working around it. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden welcomes back Reggie Townsend, Vice President of AI Ethics, Governance and Social Impact at SAS, for a timely conversation on how to make responsible AI irresistible inside the enterprise. This is not a theoretical discussion about principles. It is about what happens when AI governance meets real deadlines, board accountability, product design, agentic AI, regulatory pressure and enterprise…
E231 · 2 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 16 min
Dale Diamond: When a $25K Claim Becomes a $7M Verdict or More
The future of insurance claims will not be decided in court. It will be shaped much earlier: in the first conversation, the first escalation decision and the first 180 days. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden speaks with Dale Diamond, J.D., Vice President of Claims at NAMICO, about how mutual insurers can respond to a claims environment reshaped by nuclear verdicts, social inflation, litigation funding, AI-enabled plaintiff strategies and climate-driven property losses. The conversation opens with a case every claims leader should study: a $25,000 auto liability…
E230 · 25 Jun 2026 · 47 min
Willem Paling: From Messy Middles to Autonomous Agents and the Race for Trust at Scale
AI in insurance has crossed a threshold. The question is no longer whether insurers can experiment with artificial intelligence. The question is whether they can govern it, scale it and trust it fast enough to remain relevant. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden speaks with Willem Paling, Executive Manager of AI and Analytics at IAG, about what happens when a major insurer moves AI from side project to core operating infrastructure. Willem takes us inside IAG’s agentic AI pivot: a shift from isolated proof-of-concepts to established AI products, embedded governance…
E229 · 11 Jun 2026 · 43 min
Patrick Van Deven: The Frontier Firm's Moat isn't Data. It's The Layer that Governs It.
The AI revolution has a hidden dependency most enterprises are still underestimating. It is not the model. It is not the interface. It is not even the agent. The real bottleneck is the enterprise data layer. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden speaks with Patrick Van Deven, CEO of VaultSpeed, about why AI governance in regulated industries will depend on something far less glamorous than large language models: trusted, traceable and explainable data transformation. As insurers, banks and wealth management firms move toward AI-native operating models, many are…
E228 · 4 Jun 2026 · 57 min
Brad Wetherall: AI Search, Agentic AI, and How Corporations Must Adapt to Digital Discovery
Search is no longer just a destination. It is becoming an intelligent decision layer. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden speaks with Brad Wetherall, former Google executive, about one of the biggest shifts facing CEOs, CMOs and growth leaders today: the move from traditional SEO to AI-mediated discovery and generative engine optimisation. Brad spent more than a decade at Google working across platforms including Google Business Profile, Google Shopping, Google Wallet and Google Domains. He brings an insider view on a critical question: when AI becomes the first…
E227 · 28 May 2026 · 1 hr 13 min
The App Era Is Over: Wallet-Native Insurance & the Agentic Frontier — Marc Lampe × Ernesto Suarez Talk Collaboration
Insurance is not failing because it lacks technology. It fails when customers cannot access help at the exact moment they need it. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden speaks with Marc Lampe, Co-founder and CEO of Miss Moneypenny Technologies, and Ernesto Suarez, Founder and CEO of Gigasure, about why wallet-native insurance could become one of the industry’s most practical customer experience innovations. Marc’s company powers Wallet Studio, a digital wallet platform trusted by brands including Zurich, ERGO, and SIXT. Ernesto is building Gigasure, a digital-first…
E226 · 21 May 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
David Daiches: Inside INSHUR — From Manhattan Uber Rides to Insuring Autonomous Fleets
Insurance did not fail the mobility economy because it lacked technology. It failed because it misunderstood behavior. That is the core insight behind this conversation with David Daiches, COO & Co-Founder of INSHUR — the embedded insurance company powering protection for some of the world’s largest on-demand platforms, including Uber, Amazon, and DoorDash. The breakthrough started in Manhattan in 2016. David and his co-founder spent weeks taking short Uber rides across the city asking drivers one question: how do you buy insurance? The answer exposed a major gap. Traditional taxi drivers…
E225 · 14 May 2026 · 1 hr 8 min
Alan Martin: Why Insurers Who Invest in Wellness Win — The Healthcare Innovation Playbook still works
What if the biggest opportunity in insurance isn’t pricing risk—but transforming it? Alan Martin brings a bold, necessary reframe to the life and health insurance industry: the future belongs to insurers who move beyond actuarial prediction and into active health orchestration. At the center of this shift is his concept of modifiable risk—the idea that many health outcomes are not fixed, but can be influenced through timely, personalized, and scalable interventions. For decades, insurers have operated within a reactive model: Assess risk at underwriting Pay claims when events occur Offer…
E224 · 7 May 2026 · 27 min
Xavier Lestrade: From Insurance to Personalized Care Pathways: The New Blueprint for Growth
The future of health insurance will not be defined by faster claims processing—but by relevance in everyday life. In this episode, Xavier Lestrade, Managing Director of AXA Health International at AXA Global Healthcare, explores how insurers must evolve beyond the traditional payer model toward personalized, outcome-driven healthcare ecosystems. The shift is clear: from claims management to care orchestration, from reactive reimbursement to proactive health engagement. At the core is a new operating model—the frontier healthcare insurer. This is not incremental innovation. It is a structural…
E223 · 30 Apr 2026 · 27 min
From Org Charts to Work Charts: What the MIT Frontier Firm Paper Means for Insurance, Finance & Risk
AI isn’t disrupting your business because it’s intelligent. It’s disrupting it because it orchestrates. In this solo episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden explores why MIT CISR’s Business Models in the AI Era is a must-read for leaders in insurance, finance, and risk. The real shift? Moving from static, function-led organisations to adaptive, outcome-driven firms. MIT’s data tells a clear story. In 2013, only 12% of companies operated as Ecosystem Drivers. By 2025, that number reached 58%—and these firms consistently outperformed peers on growth. Orchestration isn’t a future…
E222 · 23 Apr 2026 · 42 min
The Risk Intelligence Gap: How Exposure Data Deficiency Is Reshaping Property Underwriting
The future of property underwriting will not be won by carriers with the most models. It will be won by those with the most decision-grade intelligence. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden speaks with Anthony Peake, CEO of Intelligent AI, about a problem hiding in plain sight across commercial property insurance: the risk intelligence gap. The conversation is built around one uncomfortable truth. Underwriters are being asked to make portfolio-defining decisions using exposure data that is often incomplete, unverified, outdated, and disconnected from the workflows…
E221 · 9 Apr 2026 · 46 min
Trust Is the Operating System of the Agentic Enterprise
Trust is not a feature. It’s the foundation. And yet, most organizations are still treating it as an afterthought—something to audit, regulate, or retrofit once AI is already in motion. That mindset is breaking. Fast. In this episode, Steven Abel and Franklin Manchester introduce a critical shift: from managing AI risk to engineering trust into the system itself. This is the essence of Trust by Design—a framework that redefines how enterprises build, deploy, and scale AI in an agentic world. Because we are no longer deploying tools. We are deploying decision-makers. And that changes…
E220 · 26 Mar 2026 · 17 min
The Capacity Gap
Execution is the new strategy. Yet most organizations still treat it as an afterthought. In this solo episode, Sabine VanderLinden introduces a critical leadership lens: the Capacity Gap—the structural mismatch between strategic ambition and an organization’s ability to deliver at scale. In a world shaped by generative AI, climate pressure, cyber risk, and rising customer expectations, this gap is no longer occasional. It is systemic—and it is widening. Too often, a failed transformation is blamed on talent, technology, or strategy. Sabine challenges that assumption. The real issue is more…
E219 · 12 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 2 min
Florian Graillot: How Intelligence on Tap and Agent-Human Teams Are Redesigning Risk
Risk is no longer something we predict. It’s something we design for. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden sits down with Florian Graillot, Founding Partner at Astorya VC, to explore how artificial intelligence, venture capital, and new business models are reshaping the future of insurance and risk management. At the heart of the conversation is a fundamental shift: from static, backward-looking risk models to adaptive, forward-looking systems built for uncertainty. As emerging risks—from climate volatility to cyber threats and AI-driven fraud—accelerate beyond…
E218 · 5 Mar 2026 · 40 min
Karl Grandl: The Intelligent Experience Layer Re-Architected
Financial services aren’t being digitized. It’s being re-architected. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden sits down with Karl Grandl (Miss Moneypenny Technologies) to unpack one of the most critical shifts facing insurance, banking, and capital markets: the rise of the Intelligent Experience Layer—a customer-centric orchestration fabric that connects data, AI, governance, and distribution in real time. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: most “digital transformation” efforts are still layering automation onto legacy systems. And that doesn’t create intelligence—it…
E217 · 26 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
Manish Shah: The Intelligent Core — How AI Is Redefining Insurance from the Inside Out
AI isn’t transforming insurance from the outside. It’s quietly rewriting it from the core—and exposing who’s ready, and who’s not. Insurance leaders talk about innovation, but many are still constrained by legacy systems that dictate how decisions are made, how fast change happens, and how much risk leaders are willing to take. In a world where customer expectations evolve in real time, that hesitation has become a liability. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden is joined by Manish Shah, President and Chief Product Officer at Majesco, to unpack what happens when…
E216 · 19 Feb 2026 · 46 min
Gil Arazi: Redesigning Insurance Through Prevention, Risk, Growth, and Trust
Insurance doesn’t have a technology problem. It has a prevention problem—and a leadership one. For decades, the industry has mastered the art of paying claims after losses occur. But in a world defined by climate volatility, cyber threats, and real-time data, that model is cracking fast. Rising loss ratios aren’t just a financial warning—they’re a strategic one. In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden is joined by Gil Arazi, Founder of The Spark and Managing Partner at FinTLV Venture Capital, to challenge one of insurance’s most sacred assumptions: that risk can only be…
E215 · 12 Feb 2026 · 27 min
The Frontier Firm Playbook: How Leaders Are Building Agentic Enterprises at Scale
The world isn’t becoming uninsurable. Leaders are choosing not to redesign it. Climate risk is accelerating. Cyber threats are multiplying. The protection gap is widening. And yet, “uninsurability” has quietly become a convenient excuse for inaction. In this solo episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden challenges that narrative head-on—and introduces The Frontier Firm: organizations that are rewriting the rules by becoming human-led, agent-operated enterprises. Drawing on firsthand insights from global boardrooms, Microsoft Ignite, and real-world transformations, Sabine explains…
E214 · 25 Dec 2025 · 28 min
Sangha Penesetti: Reinventing Enterprise’s Future Through Flexible Work
On this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL sits down with Sangha Penesetti, Founder & CEO of goZeal—a leader who didn’t just break the glass ceiling… she redesigned the entire building (with better lighting and significantly better policies). Sangha shares the deeply personal story that sparked goZeal: early in her career, every client meeting felt the same—rooms filled with men, with Sangha often the only woman and the only woman of colour in the room. When she became a mother in 2010, the lack of flexibility in the industry became impossible to ignore. There was little empathy, no…
E213 · 18 Dec 2025 · 46 min
Marinela Profi: Building the Trust Frontier or How Agentic AI Is Redefining Enterprise Decision-Making
On this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL welcomes Marinela Profi, Global Market Strategy Lead for AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI at SAS, for a sharp, grounded conversation on what’s actually happening in enterprise AI right now—and what leaders need to prepare for next. Together, they cut through the noise surrounding generative AI and focus on what comes after the chatbot era: agentic AI. If generative AI is the talented communicator in the room, agentic AI is the one who not only speaks—but takes action, executes workflows, and delivers outcomes. Marinela puts it simply: Generative AI…
E211 · 4 Dec 2025 · 36 min
Andrei Craciunescu: Redesigning Insurance for the AI-Powered Startup Era
On this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL sits down with Andrei Craciunescu, Founder and CEO of RiskCube, to explore why the next generation of insurance must be built like software: fast, adaptive, transparent—and embedded directly into how modern businesses operate. Andrei shares what startups really want from insurance today: speed. Especially for venture-backed companies, the old model of waiting weeks (or months) for underwriting decisions simply doesn’t match the pace of business. Founders don’t want endless conversations and back-and-forth emails—they want a quote in minutes,…
E210 · 27 Nov 2025 · 41 min
Rob Schimek: Redesigning for a Connected Future
On this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL sits down with Rob Schimek, Group CEO at bolttech, to unpack how the company’s connector model is reshaping global insurance distribution — not through more paperwork, but through smarter ecosystems that meet customers where they already are. If you’ve ever wondered what happens when insurance stops being a product you buy and starts becoming protection that’s simply… there, this conversation is your preview. Insurance distribution is being rebuilt (and it’s not starting with carriers) Rob explains bolttech’s mission in one powerful phrase:…

About Scouting for Growth

Scouting for Growth is a English business podcast from Sabine VanderLinden. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Sabine VanderLinden
Language: English
Category: Business
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 46 min
Latest episode: 8 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1601461282
Rights: 2026 Sabine VdL | Alchemy Crew Ventures

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