Listen : Watch : Read #27
June 15, 2025
🎙️Listen 🎙️
The latest Apple release at their Annual WWDC got me thinking about this one, specifically the new call screening and call hold features. TL:DR, we now have machines waiting on hold for us in another IVR machine - while humans wait to speak to other humans. Reminds me of the mess we have with documents and paperwork riddled throughout the Insurance world. In the new web, how we interact and work out whats real, legitimate and whats not will be super interesting. This is a timely listen. Arcjet CEO, David Mytton sits down with Andreessen Horowitz Partner, Joel de la Garza to discuss the increasing complexity of managing who can access websites, and other web apps, and what they can do there.
A primary challenge is determining whether automated traffic is coming from bad actors and troublesome bots, or perhaps AI agents trying to buy a product on behalf of a real customer. Joel and David dive into the challenge of analyzing every request without adding latency, and how faster inference at the edge opens up new possibilities for fraud prevention, content filtering, and even ad tech. [26 mins]
As David puts it, lower inference costs are key to letting apps act on the full context window — everything you know about the user, the session, and your application.
📺 Watch 📺
Want to hear a story on the power of speed and focus (oh and 100% in person business)?. Why agents are not good enough today (but he did say today). Varun Mohan, CEO and Co-Founder of Windsurf, discusses various aspects of building a startup in the AI space, emphasizing the importance of adaptability, speed, and focus - and just nails it.
A brilliant discussion with Harry Stebbings, 20VC. Varun's clarity of thought, passion and focus is just phenomenal. He speaks nearly as quickly as Harry Stebbings too! Watch it twice! [1hr 4 mins]
Feel the internet through answers, not links! Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas speaks with Bloomberg Shirin Ghaffary for a fascinating discussion on his early days from Google DeepMind to OpenAI to starting Perplexity - how Google announces but doesn't ship, and why Browsers are the next frontier for AI companies. If you can blend, navigation, information and activity (transactions) into a clean interface - you can go for it all! Perplexity are up to 780m queries per month!
If you want to transition AI from Answers to Actions, then you really need to have a browser! or more, a cognitive operating system
wwwwwwA quick snippet from Google Zeitgeist. Ruth Porat sits down with Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone to share the action he is most proud of that has enabled Blackstone or their portfolio companies to substantively benefit from AI in their operations. Highly worth a watch!
📚 Read 📚
This topic is not going away - anytime soon! It keeps coming up - I started out in Insurance on this to be fair and it's what made me fall in love with the industry and the challenge that is still here, through decades of legacy, M&A and more. However, what has changed in all these years is new technology and our ability to augment core systems, to create agility and speed while removing that legacy technical debt. Like Robert Pick, we have to be clear - not all of this matters. The other thing of course that hasn't changed is the people element of all of this.
A good read from Vasanth "Krish" Krishnakanthan , Sanjay Kaniyar, and Tanguy Catlin with Sophie Ru from McKinsey & Company
You all know Im a super fan of Storytelling (and always curious and learning), Jeremy Connell-Waite has gone and done it!, published a book of all his tips and tricks, see more below. Ill be ordering a copy for me, a few of the team and most importantly, my kids!. Thanks Jeremy!
After last weeks, $8,000 EV from China, the BBC's Theo Leggett digs in further - are there deeper costs to cheaper cars. Fear mongering over China more broadly and spyware in cars - whats clear is, while demand is soaring, this isnt slowing down anytime soon with new brands beyond BYD spreading fast to the UK and beyond. From the reviews I've seen, the technology is miles ahead of most of those I've seen from Europe. I'm not quite sure we are at the war of the worlds just yet!
Indulge me for a hot minute (I'm a gadget addict and its fathers day), is this just genius or not! Marques Brownlee shared this on his Threads feed the other day! I think everything should be USB-C, (my new Toothbrush is and I love it SURI)! It makes life so much more simple when you need fewer cables, so when I saw this - it felt like! where have you been all my life! (image below)
Our friends over at Genpact released a new report on AI being the driving force reshaping insurance - revealing there is significant AI adoption in insurance, but governance, change management, and lack of AI fluency limit growth and improved customer experiences. Key takeaways beyond this include:
Wide adoption, limited impact on customers:
Most respondents have yet to see AI's full potential:
Tech isn't the biggest AI hurdle
AI fluency gap in the workforce and A strategic blueprint to scale AI
This being consistent to what I've seen over the last 12-18 months. How we close this gap is now key. Great to see this Adil Ilyas Yasir Andrabi - excited to see how we solve this together Chirag Jindal Kara Donato Shannon Morris. Full report below👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
And while we are on AI, a recent study from Accenture further back this up - stating Employees want Generative AI training to help close the talent gap! The rush to acquire AI-savvy talent can be attributed in part to the technology’s transformative power and its potential for value creation, according to Sarah Elk , leader of Bain & Company AI, Insights and Solutions practice in the Americas.
👀 Quick bites 👀
How many AI Agents will serve you? this from Jeremiah Owyang a few weeks back, we are all going to have our own soon! How many is the next question!
Government considers social media time limits for children in the UK, following on from what we saw in Australia for Under 16's
Goldman Sachs sees autonomous vehicles transforming insurance world - how long have we been saying this.
And thats It! See you next week!