Ari Katz: Shaping BEA Ventures
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Ari Katz, Managing Partner at BEA Ventures and Co-Founder of bolt, now known as bolttech, which metamorphosed into the powerhouse bolttech. On this episode they discuss strategic vision and market positioning, startup acceleration and value creation, data and technology, future outlook and collaborations, and much more. KEY TAKEAWAYS The unique angles that we provide include identifying the companies that we want to look at and validating the market acceptance of their idea/solution. We have hundreds of customers/prospects/partners that we can tap into to see if it’s of interest to them and help take it to the next step. Areas we’ve seen that have a lot of action or potential is the creation of data and insights and how we can imbed that into our offerings. Another is personal cyber, we are very big in device protection and distribution in 35 countries around the globe, there are similarities between device and cyber protection and awareness of cyber is getting more and more. There are cases where people don’t want to buy data because they’ve been offered data so many times, they paid for it but didn’t see any returns for 1000s of reasons. There can be cases where you can offer it as a profit share rather than as a service, change the things that you offer even though the product is the same. Insurance is a data business and has been gathering/analysing/learning from data forever. A successful company is one that is managing to leverage their data and doing proper underwriting, pricing, etc. What we are seeing are all kinds of data companies of all sizes that are not necessarily adapting to new changes and capabilities. We bring all data capabilities into one place where we can enable to carriers on our platform who we work with to leverage the ones they need or want. BEST MOMENTS ‘Typically, young companies need more fundraising (Seed A) and more handholding to improve. This is where our thought of creating an external VC came into play.’‘It’s rare to see a company that hits the right product market feed from the start.’‘We want to help companies to avoid making the same mistakes we did when we were starting out.’‘In Asia there are bigger ecosystems that insurance is part of which is not the case in Europe and the US, big brands have distribution and sell insurance as part of it. I think this will be an area of growth in 2024 in Europe and the US.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Ari Katz is a seasoned entrepreneur with 30 years of experience founding and managing software companies with several successful exists. His track record includes over 20 years of creating pioneering insurance solutions revolutionizing the insurance landscape, solutions designed to meet consumer demands whilst offering a competitive advantage and sustainable commercial growth. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ari-katz-537737/ 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, and 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 and accelerating 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: SabineVdLLinkedIn: Sabine VanderLindenInstagram: sabinevdLofficialFacebook: SabineVdLOfficialTikTok: sabinevdlofficialEmail: podcast@sabinevdl.comWebsite: www.sabinevdl.com