How to Create AI products with Authentic Demand (w/ Larry Lafferty, CEO Velocity AI Works)

Today's episode is a series of short lessons on applying AI to Insurtech from software veteran Larry Lafferty. Veloxiti deploys a genius business model strategy, where they start with AI for Dept. of Defense to produce the R&D and first versions of products, then moves them to a separate company that commercializes and productizes  the AI tech into the various vertical use cases like Insurance.

4 Critical Lessons for any SaaS Software business in 2021:

🚣🏽‍♂️AI Is Software: Media does us a disfavor portraying AI as experimental and not able to do anything of value. But AI is just software: you have to get the data right, you have to get the requirements right, and you have to create an experience that really rings the user’s bell.

🍿Create Authentic Demand: It’s easy for organizations to set out o build and follow the excitement of building a solution, but unless there is authentic demand for that new product, users will find a way to sabotage it. Bringing AI into Insurtech means understanding exactly what your users need. 

☀️"Agile" Development Shines on Virtual Teams: As a development organisation a team doing Agile means a stand-up every day 10-15 min trying to identify issues or problems, organizing the work into 2-3 week sprints (a unit of work for the team as a whole) with a customer review at the end of each sprint. Being truly Agile works really well in a remote distributed environment.

🌴The Tree That Bends: Have an informal hierarchy with about 1/4 of the team experienced as team leaders. All of those people are hands-on engineers and have the ability to lead teams. They build resilience by making it possible for a large number of people to step into the project leadership role. There are no strict boundaries, and expectation that everyone will pitch in to do whatever needs to be done.

Insurtech Leadership Podcast is hosted by Joshua R. Hollander with Season 1 focused on #resilience and #humanresources be sure to 👆🏽SignUp! as we continue featuring weekly episodes with CEOs and Insurance executives you need to get to know to succeed in the coming decade of Insurtech 2020-2030.