Scouting for Growth

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Frank Mendoza, a revered figure in data analytics and AI strategy. His contributions to Fortune 500 companies such as Nike, Kellogg's, Keurig Dr Pepper, and Jim Beam, as the founder of Catalytics, have revolutionised how these organisations leverage big data, artificial intelligence, and advanced analytics. Frank offers practical recommendations for implementing AI, making this seemingly daunting technology accessible and actionable, demystifying AI, shares his strategic insights, and helps us scout for growth in this exciting field. KEY TAKEAWAYS Over the last 8 years, I’ve worked with some of the top brands to introduce analytics concepts such as machine learning and chatbots. The hype has really gotten big in the last few months around what’s called generative AI, which is a little bit different from what we’ve historically called AI or machine learning, but in a nutshell, it’s got people really excited, and companies really want to take advantage and be able to demonstrate a competitive advantage to some of their competitors. It’s a really exciting time to be in this space. One of the challenges/constraints all companies face, large or small, is time. Big companies can throw money at it; small companies don’t have that luxury, but they really need to focus their attention. When I approach a company to discuss leveraging AI, I want to focus on where they’ll use it and ensure there’s a direct tie to business value. There are so many tools thrown onto the market that it’s causing a lot of analysis paralysis, and businesses are struggling to figure out which tools they should use, where, why, and who should use them. You really need a strategic approach to leveraging these technologies to ensure you’re getting the biggest bang for the buck. Customers have given you the privilege of providing you with information about themselves that’s very important to them, but for you as well to grow your business. How you use that information, where you provide that information to models, all those things are very vital to ensure that you’re doing the things necessary to protect that information. OpenAI and ChatGPT can retrain on the questions you’re asking – that's when you really want to provide guardrails/guidelines to your organisation about what you’re allowing them to put in there. Generative AI solutions have been trained on publicly available data, such as images. Our society is moving  - I believe – in a positive direction, but it has not moved all the way to where it needs to move. The net result of that is that there is a lot of information out there that’s still filled with biases, hate, etc. You want to make sure that when you’re leveraging these tools, you take into account these biases and the inherent challenges of using these models, and ensure you have a level of human judgment in the loop. BEST MOMENTS ‘We’re now shifting the paradigm from inventing with tools to tools inventing. There are things the tools are doing that are creating something that hasn’t existed before.’ ‘One thing that no organisation can waste is resources and time.’ ‘Every organisation is unique, and the applications of AI are going to be unique to those as well.’ ‘The ability for you to execute AI is predicated upon the quality of your information. I encourage organisations to start looking at that and take advantage of “data enablement” to enable businesses to move forward. It’s a daunting task but you don’t want to boil the ocean, that’s where I help organisations understand where exactly they should put their focus, energy and effort.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Frank Mendoza is a highly respected and award-winning analytics leader with over 20 years of experience in Strategy, Customer Experience, and Data Science. He is the founder of Catalytics, a service company that helps Fortune 500 companies like Nike, Kellogg's, Keurig Dr Pepper, and Jim Beam to execute actionable AI and Data Analytics strategies to solve their toughest business challenges. Frank shares that 2023 is the year of AI and that it is becoming more prevalent across industries. However, many companies are still intimidated or confused by its use and capabilities. Frank is there to help implement AI across any business and identify the best approaches to do so, offering practical recommendations, as AI should be a tool that augments and empowers companies to grow and innovate. Frank can be found here. And you can also reach him at Improving 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

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Benjamin Friedman, who, over a 20+ year career, has navigated the perilous waters of startup finance and operations, riding the bumpy waves of startup growth and guiding his companies through successful M&A transactions, equity raises, and debt financing. To cap it all, Benjamin is a firm advocate for values such as collaboration, optimism, and open communication, and has consistently strived to connect company goals, team initiatives, and individual performance in his roles. KEY TAKEAWAYS At graduate school I’d studied nonprofit management and worked at a nonprofit for a few years and found it was very process driven, we kept talking about what to do but never actually trying things. I’m much more results oriented, so I moved into an e-commerce company which doubled every year and it was an amazing ride. I became addicted to the startup journey. A lot of startups have a unique journey, every founder is an individual, but there are some common themes. Successful startups have founders that are clear on who they are and what they’re trying to accomplish. That might seem easy, but it’s actually very hard work to regularly check in with yourself. The other application is around vision and values; those will remain constant even as the business pivots, evolves, changes and challenges occurring. The final piece is feedback loops, successful founders are constantly seeking advice from advisors, investors, other founders and their team, they’re constantly seeking feedback – they may not act on it every time – new ideas and how to get things done. Align outcomes, results and activities. A lot of people get worked up by working really hard and spending a lot of time and effort but activity alone won’t generate the outcomes that you’re looking for, you have to see what results are coming from that activity and then you have to see if those are affecting the outcomes that you desire. Are you looking at it through industry metrics, internal metrics? You need to be constantly running experiments to see if ‘x’ improves your quality, your efficiency for you or your customers. You have to constantly evaluate your process but aligning your activity results and outcomes is really critical. Bringing in fractional experts can do a number of things; they can help you look holistically across the business and make connections between different functions, how do sales, marketing, finance and product all connect and what are the ways to optimise them collaboratively to grow your business. How have things been done in the past and how can they be applied to your business in order to grow as fast as possible? Cost and risk are considerations as well, by looking at fractional resources you’re mitigating both; you pay people who come in much less than someone doing the job full-time, especially if you don’t know how they’re going to work and how they’ll fit with your team. BEST MOMENTS ‘Being open to other people’s opinions is going to make you stronger on your journey.’ ‘It’s very important to balance strategy and implementation.’ ‘We often think about productivity as running fast, but if you’re not sure of what direction you want to be running, it doesn’t matter how fast you’re going, you're going to be heading in the wrong direction.’ ‘Unsuccessful founders keep doing the same thing their customer needs, successful ones ask “what is it you need now?” and they’ll provide that.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Benjamin Friedman, the mind behind We Build Scale Grow Inc., is a seasoned entrepreneur with over 20 years of leadership in finance and operations. Throughout his career, he's skillfully navigated the entrepreneurial landscape, leading successful M&A transactions for five companies in the last decade. As the founder of Build Scale Grow, Benjamin is committed to helping startups overcome challenges and scale quickly, offering solutions to resolve immediate problems while installing long-term, scalable systems. His work is steeped in experiences from diverse roles, including Chief Operations Officer and Chief Financial Officer, extending to areas such as sales, marketing, people operations, legal, technology, and product. LinkedIn: Benjamin Friedman The company: Build Scale Grow The Book: Scale: Reach Your Peak 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

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Saagar Govil, Chairman and CEO of Cemtrex Incorporated. With a tenacious spirit and an unwavering focus, Saagar has led Cemtrex from its initial days of making under $3M in revenues to a thriving powerhouse raking in over $100M, with over 350 employees in 6 offices worldwide. Under Saagar's vision and leadership, Cemtrex is a diversified technology company relentlessly driving innovation across sectors, including smart technology, virtual and augmented realities, advanced electronic systems, industrial solutions, and, most intriguingly, intelligent security systems powered by AI. In this episode, they dive into the world of AI and security and explore Saagar's inspiring journey, mission, and passion for technologies, from IoT to space tech. KEY TAKEAWAYS Cemtrex started out as a small family business, and over the last 10 years, we’ve focused on driving growth. We started out as a small environmental technology company, and we struggled to grow in that industry because market appetite for it only emerged recently. I figured out the best way to grow was through the acquisition of businesses with greater potential, because you get a bigger reward for the hard work you put in. We’re seeing a transformation of the security industry as we adopt and implement AI systems. The unique thing about what’s happening today is that for the first time ever, computers can now see better than humans. What that allows is for companies to use and leverage technologies in ways never before possible to drive better security outcomes. That could be from preventing incidents from happening to responding to them more effectively in real time, and to more accurately apprehend suspects after an event occurs. In the past, CCTV cameras with advanced features were triggered by motion and would trigger events, alarms, etc. The challenge is that if a tree is swaying in the background, it can trigger these alarms, which is frustrating for operators. With the advent of AI, you can track specific objects more accurately and clearly, so that if a certain asset in the frame is moved, then send an alert. That solution is really easy to implement out of the box today. Unfortunately, the world is becoming increasingly dangerous. 90-95% of schools have CCTV, and yet we’re still hearing about mass shootings taking place all the time, and it’s a tragedy. This tells me that a) the basic tools are already installed and b) they are actually not that effective. The ways we can implement AI today to drive better outcomes is apparent in that we can do better with identity management using facial recognition, we can track who should be at school at a certain time, we can send out the right alerts if there is a disgruntled person on the premises or tap into sex offender databases to alert the authorities that they’re on the perimeter. BEST MOMENTS ‘Sometimes it’s not about how hard you work, it’s about where you’re spending your time and your effort.’ ‘AI is definitely going to make businesses and specific assets safer.’ ‘When you have a security co-pilot that can understand what’s going on on the video feeds, you can start to interact with that GPT/co-pilot, you can manage security needs much faster or in real time, that’s where we’re going to see the industry moving in the next couple of years.’ ‘There are ways to build these types of technologies that maximise people’s privacy but also ensure the safety of those that are occupying the space at any given point in time.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Saagar Govil is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cemtrex Inc., a company that owns and operates multiple businesses building industrial solutions and intelligent security systems. Saagar is a serial entrepreneur interested in IoT, Wearables, Robotics, Advanced electronics, and Space Tech. In his leisure time, he enjoys watching the Knicks, golfing, travelling, and sailing.   ABOUT CEMTREX Cemtrex, Inc. is a diversified technology company that's driving innovation in a wide range of sectors, including smart technology, virtual and augmented realities, advanced electronic systems, industrial solutions, and intelligent security systems. Cemtrex Inc. owns and operates multiple businesses, including those that build industrial solutions and intelligent security systems. 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

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Dr Melissa Sassi, CEO and Co-Founder of Skills Hustle, a pre-seed edtech company committed to closing the skills gap and transforming learners into earners. Skills Hustle's platform takes an innovative approach, offering gamified, interactive, and practical modules that engage learners more deeply. With a focus on community building, the platform provides access to thought leaders, networking opportunities, and real-world challenges such as innovation challenges and hackathons, enabling learners to develop practical skills and solve real business challenges. In this episode, Melissa shares her insights, experiences, and innovative ideas in leveraging technology and education to drive social impact and foster sustainable growth. KEY TAKEAWAYS I’ve spent the last 10 years of my career working between Microsoft and IBM, and I’ve always created my own jobs; I’ve never followed through the ‘right’ career progression plan. I ran startup accelerators; at Microsoft, it was all about building internet and energy access solutions around the world and bringing digital skills to connect them. At IBM, I focused on data protection, privacy, and security across heavily regulated industries such as FinTech, HealthTech, and InsurTech. I’ve also had a couple of stints on Wall Street and founded a nonprofit that taught tens of thousands of kids to code in 12 countries. Currently, I run a venture studio with my partner. One day, my daughter, who was living in Tunisia with her father at the time, said she didn’t have access to a computer in her classroom. They had one shared across 40 kids. I realized there’s no way that she’s going to be prepared for the future of work and the digital economy. I could get her devices for home use, but what about the other kids in her classroom? So I went on a mission to get computers for the class. But as I did this, I realized the bigger picture: access to tech, skills, the internet, and the role they play – including affordability – in driving outcomes in healthcare, education, economics, and getting a job. Everything we have and do centres around tech. I realised half the world isn’t connected to the internet, and I looked at what I could do to change that. My partner and I are still working on how to demystify what a venture studio is or what a venture builder does versus a VC, an accelerator, and an incubator. We combine all those things together. In the future, I’d love to see situations where my founders raise a shit-ton of money, come up with amazing solutions that power the world, change things that make the world a better place, and make money at the same time. I believe in doing well while doing good.  BEST MOMENTS ‘Everyone is a FinTech these days, including Timbaland.’ ‘I had it ingrained in my soul that I needed to work, to be productive, independent, to be able to take care of myself. From hard work come outcomes in life that are financial in nature; it may be experiences, but you’ve got to work to achieve.’ ‘I was part of a broken system, and I perpetuated a broken system without knowing it.’ ‘We focus on growth from 3 perspectives: Technical enablement, thinking about what the business model is, and access to partnerships.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Dr Melissa Sassi has dedicated her career to the intersection of technology, education, economic development, social impact, startups, and sustainability. With extensive global experience, including visits to 60 countries, she brings first-hand knowledge of the challenges and opportunities in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Melissa's doctoral thesis focused on the transformative role of digital inclusion in solving the SDGs. As the CEO and Co-Founder of Skills Hustle, a pre-seed edtech company, Melissa aims to bridge the skills gap and empower learners to become learners. Skills Hustle offers an interactive, practical learning platform focused on gamification and real-world application. Through live sessions, mentors, innovation challenges, and hackathons, learners acquire valuable skills while solving authentic business problems. The platform also features a community portal for ongoing engagement, networking, and access to thought leaders and opportunities. Core content areas include digital skills, habits and attitudes, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy. 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

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Brenden Kumarasamy, founder of Master Talk, a platform dedicated to nurturing top-tier communicators in diverse industries. Breneden has honed his craft by coaching executives and entrepreneurs, helping them ascend to the top 1% of communicators in their fields. Brenden also runs the popular Master Talk YouTube channel, where he has democratised access to his communication tools. In this episode, we dissect Brenden’s journey, his philosophies, the art and science of effective communication, and his vision to transform the way we communicate. KEY TAKEAWAYS My journey started in college, where I studied accounting and created presentations focused on numbers. Somebody told me that if I wanted to work for one of the Big Four accounting firms, I needed to participate in these things called ‘case competitions’, which are essentially competitive presentations where you pitch to executives, and the best people get jobs. I started coaching the other students on how to communicate (mostly for free) to help them win competitions, and I accidentally developed a gift for speaking. While working for IBM, I made videos in my basement for fun, just a hobby. But that hobby turned into something much bigger than I initially thought it would be. After two and a half years, I made the difficult decision to quit my job and do Master Talk full-time.  YouTube is the hardest one out of all the platforms to grow, but it’s also the most beneficial one if you stay in it the longest. The 5/20 rule: If I post 1 really good long-form piece of content every week for the next 10 years, I’ll be successful on YouTube. I’ve already written all my content for 2024 that I’ll film with my production team in the next 3 months. That’s how forward-thinking I think the brand is. Never miss a week. There are parts of education, consulting, and helping people transform industries that AI will improve. For example, search queries, so I might not need as many people on a research team. But what AI cannot automate is education. No one is going to spend $2,000 to fly out to a conference to watch an AI speak; the human is really important in this situation. BEST MOMENTS ‘I did not want to be an entrepreneur; I wanted to be an executive. ’ ‘A big mistake a lot of content creators make is when they think about personal branding, they focus a lot on what’s hot: LinkedIn, TikTok, etc. I always thought about my personal brand in decades, not days. Who do I want to be in 10 years?’ ‘People focus way too much on having 1000 followers, not 1000 conversations. If I do 10,000 podcast interviews, it’s impossible for me not have 100,000 followers. Luckily, I didn’t need to do 10,000; it took 500.’ ‘If you 10 years from now had the chance to look back at your life right now, what would they disagree with you on? Oftentimes it’s not information, it’s implementation that’s missing.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Brenden Kumarasamy: It all begins with impact. Despite all the presentations I’ve given over my life, I still remember to this day how scared I was to post my first YouTube video. I didn’t look like anything in my workshops or presentations, but I went ahead with this project for one reason: Impact. A wise friend once told me that I couldn’t possibly coach every human being on Earth with the limited time I had in my life, so I needed to go on video to share my message with the world. I got over my fear, practised 100’s of times on camera until I was finally able to say that I was “YouTube Ready”. All’s to say that when you care about others and only want to add value, you’ll be able to overcome any fear/obstacle in the service of others. 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

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Brandon Leibowitz, the mastermind behind SEO Optimizers, a dynamic company that's been helping small- to medium-sized businesses get noticed online. Brandon’s passion for growth and his unwavering belief in the power of digital marketing are why we invited him today. In this episode, the pair explores the steps businesses, big and small, must consider to enhance their digital marketing efforts, from defining clear goals and understanding their target audience to optimizing their website, creating valuable content, leveraging social media, utilizing paid advertising, and measuring their campaigns' success. KEY TAKEAWAYS          Digital marketing today is characterized by constant evolution and changes in the algorithms and ranking factors that search engines use to determine website rankings. This makes it challenging for businesses to keep up with the latest trends and adapt their strategies accordingly. Additionally, there is significant competition in the digital space, making it difficult for businesses to stand out and reach their target audience effectively. To become better at digital marketing, both large and small businesses can take the following steps: define clear goals, understand your target audience, optimise your website, create valuable content, leverage social media, utilise paid advertising, measure and analyse, stay up to date, and seek professional help. Every few months, Google will have a big update, and that’s where you have to find out what they want because they don’t really tell you what they’re looking for, so that you spend money on paid ads, they don’t want you master SEO. You’ve got to stay ahead of things one day at a time. Who knew ChatGPT was going to cause such a disruption in the market a couple of years ago? It’s tough to predict what’s going to happen, just stay up to date, read different blogs and forums, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos, and stay in the weeds as much as possible, learning as much as possible from other people, and figure out what might happen in the future. There’s no real way to stay ahead. BEST MOMENTS ‘I have been involved with digital marketing since 2007 and want to share my knowledge about SEO, Social Media Marketing, and Google Ads.’ ‘Identify what you want to achieve with your digital marketing efforts. This could include increasing website traffic, generating leads, improving brand awareness, or increasing sales.’ ‘Consider partnering with a reputable digital marketing agency or consultant to help you develop and execute effective digital marketing strategies that achieve your goals.’ ‘Key words are so important. You can build a website, but if you don’t market it it’s going to be hard for people to find it. I make sure that when people search on Google, your website pops up.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Brandon Leibowitz runs and operates SEO Optimizers, a young company that supports small and medium-sized businesses in getting more online traffic and becoming visible to their target audience, which in turn converts into clients, sales, and leads. Brandon started in digital marketing in 2007 after graduating from college with a degree in Business Marketing. In my first job, I handled marketing for an e-commerce website. He helped companies rank at the top of Google by using search engine optimization and driving traffic through social media and paid ads. In 2008, Brandon realized that most businesses would need a website to stay competitive in the future. Having a website is only one piece of the puzzle. Ultimately, these companies need someone to help market their websites to drive traffic that will, in turn, convert into clients. Since then, Brandon decided to stick with digital marketing and started his own company, SEO Optimizers. One of Brandon’s stories: a friend built a website for him in exchange for doing SEO for his insurance website. Brandon ranked him above government websites for all his essential business keywords. If you want to know more, check Brandon’s free gift below: https://seooptimizers.com/gift 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  

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Clemens Behrend, an entrepreneur with a rich background in building customer-facing support solutions in Web3. Clemens spent over 5 years building Bitpanda's customer community department from scratch and scaling it from pre-seed to unicorn status. And it is important to understand that the power of Web3 is in building unique communities. During their deep dive, Clemens and Sabine talk about his interest in Web3, Bitcoin, and Crypto, why he believes those 3 components are key to building unique communities, and Clemens shares a few tips for those of us interested in learning and trialling such technologies. KEY TAKEAWAYS          From 2017 to 2022, I led and set up customer support at Bitpanda, the first Unicorn in Austria and a neo-broker that offers all asset classes from cryptocurrencies, stocks, and commodities to almost four million customers 24/7, 365. In my youth, I played a lot of computer games and realised you could earn money by selling items. So I launched my first business, an online shop for virtual items. Though this I discovered my passion for customer support and keeping my 1,000-2,000 clients happy. The biggest mistake I made was relying on 1 payment method. Then a friend of mine showed me BitCoin and that was the solution to my problem. After that, I focused solely on cryptocurrency. The most important thing that people need to realise when building a unicorn, especially in the crypto industry: Crypto is 24/7, it’s not like the stock market that closes on a Friday afternoon, it’s also on the weekends. Our key success factor was being based in Austria, and we had an impressum, which is not that typical in the crypto industry; people never knew where their funds were, but this gave us transparency and also trust from our clients. It meant we were always reachable with 24/7 support. Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, and I would say the only really decent one; all the others are copies because Bitcoin's source code is open, and anyone can publish and own their own cryptocurrency. They symbolise companies, so investing in Bitcoin and in cryptocurrencies are two very different things and have different risks. People need to do research before investing. BEST MOMENTS ‘Last century private currencies had been predicted, so the concept behind Bitcoin is not that new, it’s just beautiful to see how it’s now come into practice.’ ‘In Web2, you log in to a page, and there’s a Google SSO with just a username and an email; in Web3, you connect with your wallet, and you can transfer financial data on the blockchain.’ ‘Bitcoin’s uptime is still amazing: Over 99.9% with only a few outages of a few hours or so, the last of which was 10 years ago. Compared to traditional payment methods like Visa, Mastercard, or SWIFT, Bitcoin is doing well. ’ ‘Make it as easy as possible for your customers to complain, because the biggest issue for any business in Web3 is when you have people who silently quit and don’t tell you why. When you receive a complaint, see it as a last chance to convince the person to stay.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Clemens holds a BSc degree in Economics and has a rich background in building customer-facing support solutions in Web 3. He spent over five years building Bitpanda's customer support/community department from scratch and scaling it from pre-seed to unicorn. His knowledge in the field is extensive, and he is known for his strong analytical and managerial skills. 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

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Per Axberg, CEO of Legly – a revolutionary platform that leverages the power of artificial intelligence to provide critical insights on B2B contracts, both before and after signing. This helps sellers, purchasers, and lawyers conduct efficient, accurate contract review, thereby saving precious time. During the discussion, they dive deep into three fascinating topics: learning about Per's journey and the inspiration that led to the creation of Legly, and what spurred him to set up this AI-driven platform for B2B contracts. Explore why SaaS platforms for legal contracts are not just an added convenience but an essential tool for today's entrepreneurs, and how they play a role in supporting and streamlining business operations. Delve into the three most crucial best practices that entrepreneurs and legal departments can adopt to make the most of those platforms, particularly when scaling their enterprise. KEY TAKEAWAYS We built a platform that lets you match lawyers and use their spare capacity. We can buy the time they haven’t sold yet; they spend less time selling themselves, and they still make a profit. We can also sell their time to startups for less money. Global companies started using this service; they needed lawyers to check incoming contracts – bulk, boring tasks – to identify risks, check for anything that breaches their preferences and guidelines, etc.  Technology has started to get better and AI has started to be able to do things for commercial purposes, at the same time we met with the head of law at one of these big companies who made a WILD (warranties, indemnity, limitation liability and delay) card for his sales people, he said if we focus on these four things we’ll get rid of most of the risks. This was the beginning of Legly; it’s much, much more than that. Legly is a robot that acts pretty much as a lawyer would. You can upload one contract for free to try it, and you will get the document back in a minute or so with highlights in different colours and comments on the side telling you what to focus on, what is important. You could also tailor that to the breaches of your guidelines, and so on. It helps companies check contracts before signature. We can also use this machine to apply it to law firm contract portfolios, to check legal due diligence when you’re buying or selling a company, and to look for specific items in the documents. Legly helps you find many things in documents and go through contracts much faster. Particularly it helps lawyers to find things in the contract before signing that they may not be used to checking for, to be able to find breaches to the preferences before involving the rest of the organisation, before waiting fort some weeks for the legal team to come back with feedback and so on, and thereby be able to handle much more of the contract process. BEST MOMENTS ‘Before, you had to read through the documents, and there could be thousands of them, but now you just drag and drop, pretty much, and you get a list directly.’ Usually, salespeople are the ones who see their customers' documents and know the deal, the business, who the customers are, and their relationships. They are much more suited to check these documents, as far as they can.’ ‘We’re not replacing any lawyers. Rather than them having to check the whole document, they might just get 2 or 3 questions. That’s much more efficient.’ ‘You have to start testing these tools and gaining an understanding of it so that you can structure your work in a better way that suits these kinds of technologies because they will become a ‘hygene factor’ in the future.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Per Axberg is the CEO and co-founder of Legly. Legly has developed a contract review automation tool that uses AI and ML to review and provide feedback on B-2-B contracts before signing. Legly is a great example of how legal tech not just makes legal counsels sleep better, but also can increase the capacity of non-legal experts such as co-workers on sales and purchase teams. Legly uses artificial intelligence to review and provide feedback on B2B contracts before signing. This way, sellers, purchasers, and lawyers can do a better contract review in less time. 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

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Cyrille Godinot, an industry titan whose career spans over 32 years across Marketing, Sales, Business Development, and Service Operations. Currently, Cyrille is contributing to the tech powerhouse, Schneider Electric, where he has spent nearly 11 years. His significant role involves developing solutions and services, directly impacting the digital transformation of the electronic, insurance, and Inspection ecosystems. His responsibility also lies in leading marketing deployment activities for strategic accounts to leverage Schneider's EcoStruxure IoT solutions, ensuring they deliver safe, efficient, available, and cyber-secure electrical infrastructure. On this episode, they discuss: Cyrille's illustrious career, his insights into evolving market trends, especially regarding the adoption of new technologies and the influence of digital transformation and IoT on the B2B services sector, Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure IoT solutions, and Cyrille's vision for the future of the industry. KEY TAKEAWAYS I’ve been boots on the ground, directly with customers, involved in service operations, and I have come to realise that the best way to build a long-term relationship with customers is to deliver their expectations. You need to listen a lot, that’s how I moved into marketing. When you are going through digital transformation, you have to consider all the impact that it raises. If you start with historical products, they now need to include sensors and must be able to communicate with an upper layer that understands them. You have to agree on a data model for collecting the data and on how that data is represented. Then you need to define how you’ll leverage that data to deliver value in asset management, performance, sustainability, safety, availability, and all the other areas you want to deliver to your customer. Transformation is very much about aligning everybody around a single structure for the right data to go to the right place. At the same time, our partners’ ecosystems need to evolve to tackle the new complexity of digitisation. One of the major challenges right now is unifying the data model. Electrical current can be measured in amps, milliamperes, or kiloamperes. Which unit you use may vary depending on the device, so at some level you need to be able to represent the same data with exactly the same unit; otherwise, it will be confusing when you go to analytics to compare them. Ecostruxure is opening opportunities in leveraging data from new business models. In this, we see a tree domain that is very interesting, related to risk management and insurance. When you collect a lot of data on a property, you’re going to have something that is a proxy of telematics in car insurance. This could be used for risk prevention, underwriting scoring, looking at track records about claims and operations, most of which will be leveraged by anyone who has a use case for that data, to improve the relationship with the end client, for example, where messages can be sent when a discrepancy arises to alert them. I could leverage that data myself and build analytics, and only propose a risk score, for example. Another model is how to bridge a product to embedded insurance, enabling us to consider new services we can build in partnership with risk management companies. BEST MOMENTS ‘In the digitisation transformation that we’re all going through, there is a huge opportunity to create a new business model to disrupt the existing one, and it all starts with collecting data.’ "We're coming from an industry where historically competitors were not in a mode of aligning, and each one had their own model, but at the end of the day, current remains a current and being able to express a unit that is understandable is inevitable.’ ‘It starts with risk prevention. Because we collect data continuously, we can provide alarms. This is most of the value; this is what differentiates. Live data can give immediate reaction for the site manager, and the insurance can be aware of the situation so that they can take action and mitigate.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Cyrille Godinot has been in Marketing, Sales & Business Development, and Service Operations since 1994 across various industries, achieving rapid growth in Europe, Asia, and the USA. Specialties: Business Development, Strategic Marketing, Partnerships, Deal Closing, Offer Creation, Digitization, Photovoltaics, O&M Services, Sales Management, Outsourcing, Maintenance, B2B Service Operations, Spare Parts Cyrille leads marketing deployment activities for strategic accounts to leverage EcoStruxure IoT solutions and provide them with safe, efficient, available, and cyber-secure electrical infrastructure. 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

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Stephen Lathrope, a seasoned executive and proven business leader who has worked as a partner, CEO, and executive director of private equity-backed financial services and technology businesses. Stephen has also led large teams within a very well-known consulting firm. Today, Stephen leads the insurance practice at ICEYE, a geospatial data provider to the insurance and government sectors. According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the global geospatial analytics market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 12.2% from $68 billion in 2022 to $120 billion by 2027. One of the main drivers is the increasing demand for location-based services across industries, including transportation, construction, and agriculture, as well as urban planning and management, disaster response, and environmental monitoring. Over the course of the podcast, they explore what geospatial data is used for. How does geospatial inform the future of underwriting and claims? Deep dive into examples as to where geospatial data is best used, and Stephen will give us some advice for insurance companies looking to incorporate geospatial data into their underwriting and claims processes. KEY TAKEAWAYS          ICEYE has been around since 2014 as an organisation that is one of the leaders in new space technologies. The founders miniaturised synthetic aperture radar technology and put it on miniaturised satellites. The first use case for that is for monitoring ice flows in the northern seas for freight planning, hence the ‘ICE’ part of ICEYE. What it does today is build and operate its own constellation of radar-enabled satellites. For insurance, we use them to observe hazards and damage related to natural catastrophes, and we can also monitor assets on the ground. We can measure very small movements in vehicles, buildings, and the Earth's surface. The opportunities for insurers around catastrophic events are really significant. What we can do with new technology is provide much more rapid insight into where the water is and where the high-water mark has been, within an event. We can provide our customers with an initial view of where the water is within a few hours, and we provide very detailed reports on flood depth and water depth with a high degree of accuracy. Our customers associate that with the perimeter of individual buildings, which enables them to very quickly identify which of their customers need assistance most urgently, how much water is likely to be around a property, the extent of the damage, and where to allocate resources on the ground. The data we provide is used to estimate the overall event cost and the potential damage cost for each building. One of the very common challenges we face with our customers is asking, “Do you really know where the properties that you’re insuring are?” It’s a factor of how often we can say the water is at 1 metre depth at a particular latitude and longitude, and the insurer is trying to work out where that is relative to the properties they know are affected by the event. BEST MOMENTS ‘ICEYE is bringing wholly new technology to bear in an industry that has loads of opportunity to do things differently and better for customers and stakeholders using the insights that we can provide from space and with data and analytics.’ ‘The majority of what we’re doing in insurance, and with government, is around natural catastrophe: response, and near-term preparation for events that look like they’re about to happen.’ ‘There’s only going to be more frequent, more severe flooding. As we speak, there’s a fairly major event happening in Mississippi, which we’re capturing images of from our satellites and reporting upon right now.’ ‘We’ve just launched our beta for insurance and wildfire that’s similar. Again, the ability of the radar to see through smoke, cloud, day or night, and report while the fire’s still burning means insurers can have data that’s really detailed, really rapid.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Stephen Lathrope is a proven technology / financial services business leader with 10 years’ experience in CEO and executive director roles on boards of Private Equity-backed, international financial services/technology businesses, and 20 years’ experience in business and technology consulting. Sales/growth specialist, with a track record of delivering sales-driven growth in software/services across the UK and international markets. ABOUT ICEYE ICEYE is a Finnish microsatellite manufacturer. ICEYE was founded in 2014 as a spin-off of Aalto University's University Radio Technology Department, and is based in Espoo. 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