Episode
Stephen Brittain: Why Venture-Client Models Are Rewriting the Rules of Corporate Innovation
- Podcast
- Scouting for Growth
- Published
- Nov 13, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 4402
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Summary
On this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL sits down with Stephen Brittain, Co-Founder of InsurTech Gateway — the world’s first authorised venture builder and fund dedicated to insurtech — to explore what it really takes to build startups inside one of the most regulated, risk-averse industries on the planet. And yes… that industry is still insurance. (The land where “move fast and break things” gets politely escorted out by compliance.) Stephen has spent the last decade doing something most people talk about but few actually pull off: bringing early-stage innovation into the heart of large insurers — without killing the startup spirit in the process. He’s been a catalyst for corporate innovation leaders and a strategic guide for founders trying to navigate the labyrinth of regulation, procurement, and distribution at scale. From product design to mastering risk Stephen’s journey starts in product and service design, where he saw risk as the ultimate constraint. But instead of avoiding it, he leaned in. His curiosity became a turning point: what if understanding risk wasn’t a blocker… but the unlock for doing bigger and bolder work? That insight is what led him into insurance — not because it was “sexy,” but because it holds powerful, often underestimated capabilities: creating trust, enabling lending, and building mutual models that scale across ecosystems. The real job of a venture builder: keep the idea alive long enough to evolve InsurTech Gateway was born with a mission: find exceptional founders and help fast-track them into market with enough momentum (and resilience) to survive an environment where early ideas are too often treated as fixed commitments. But Stephen makes a critical point for every founder and innovation leader: no one gets it right on d…