Reimagining Risk in the Age of AI

James BenhamAnd we are back with another great episode of the InsurTech Geek podcast. I am your InsurTech Geek, James Benham, with me, the most interesting man in insurance, my

Rob Galbraithmain man in San Antonio, Texas, mister Rob Galbraith. Rob, how's it going over there in the cedar country of Texas? Yeah. Oh my gosh. We've got so much just dumped on the ground here, and, of course, the wind's blowing everything. So the nice thing is that the temperatures have, gotten warm enough to be quite comfortable before the the 100 degree days this summer, but the bad news is the allergens are spreading

James Benhamall over. Yeah. Yeah. It was a when it it blows over to College Station, it usually causes one to two weeks of absolute hell and torment for me. So Do you know I did some digging this year? That is a, law of unintended consequences case study because city planters, seventy five and a hundred years ago, decided to plant cedar trees, but to avoid the mess of female cedar trees, cedar trees are male or female or both. Believe it or not, there are some cedar trees that the top part is one gender, the bottom part of another gender.

The female cedar trees have a little berry that is the receptor for that pollen. And so what happened is they didn't want the city planters didn't want those berries littering their sidewalks, so they planted all male cedar trees. Guess what all male cedar trees do when there's no female cedar trees around? They dump ungodly amounts of pollen into the air. There's nothing to receive it or scrub it out of the air, and we end up in cedar fever. And it's all because city planters didn't wanna sweep some berries up.

So the solve is simple. Plant female cedar trees, believe it or not. Didn't know that, but now you do. With us to not talk about cedar trees is my new friend who really enjoyed our preshow talk, Amir Kabir. Amir, how are you doing? Good. Good. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah. Where are you joining us from today, Amir? I'm in San Francisco. I've been here for the past decade plus. Nice. And how are things in San Francisco today?

I'm I'm assuming maybe a little cloudy, maybe a cool breeze off the ocean in '72?

Amir KabirAlmost. But, no, I think we're getting into the better, better weather area or or time. Usually, it's it warms up in March again, till, like, and then, you know, it gets colder. But, you know, people are talking about, like, climate change and whatever. I think we're feeling this somehow. Some some things are changing for sure. Yep. Interesting

James Benhaminteresting topic we won't dive into today, but, it's good to it's good to see you. I'm glad you're joining us, and welcome to from from, beautiful San Francisco. Always have a good time visiting San Francisco. Some amazing restaurant scene there. Really phenomenal.

Amir KabirIt's it's actually it's interesting because, like, obviously, you went to the whole COVID era and things kind of very slowed down, but we're we're getting ready back to where we were before. The new mayor is doing an amazing job.

James BenhamNew businesses are opening. The restaurants are opening. So, yeah, I'm excited. Yeah. It's it's great. Well, we're gonna jump in. You know, here on the InsurTechie podcast, we talk about insurance and technology and the nexus thereof. Rob and I have been doing this for pretty much six years now, which is crazy, Rob. Right? It is. I know. It is. And I think we've hung out in person, like, three times total because we see each other all the time, but it's it's here. Been doing this a long time.

And we love talking about that. We also love talking about the people behind the industry. Obviously, insurance tech. Insurtech has evolved a lot. I've been building software for insurance and working for carriers, TPAs, MGAs, PBMs, you name it, since 2004. Rob has been in the industry, what, twenty five, thirty years at this point? Yeah. Lost him. I'm at I'm at twenty two years in the industry, twenty five in business. Rob's about twenty five in the industry. He he started on the business side. I started on the technology side, and we kinda met in the middle.

Now I definitely span the the gap, and so does Rob. We both kinda stand in the middle of ops and and technology, and that's that's how we we got together on this. But we wanna hear about you because you have a really interesting life path. And I I I'd I'd like to kinda walk through where you were born and raised and what led you well, we'll actually keep it to that. Where were you born and raised, and what did you wanna do when you were growing up?

It's a it's a very deep question to start with, but let's let's do it.

Amir KabirI was born in Iran, and my parents immigrated to Germany when I was a toddler, a little kid. And I always was fascinated by, I don't know, technology and building, I would say. I built my own computer when I was a teenager and was always fascinated by, you know, new things. And when you ask when you ask my younger self what I wanted to be, I think I was fascinated by WWE, so I wanted to be a wrestler when I was younger. So Hulk Hogan was definitely an idol.

But,

James Benhamyou know, that changed over time, I guess, and so we're we're here today. Yeah. It's interesting that you're born in Iran, raised in Germany. I was born and raised in Louisiana, the Deep South United States, and we both wanted to be WWE guys. There you go. You see?

Amir KabirThat's perfect.

James BenhamEvery Saturday morning, my best friend and I, if he was over, he was over probably half the Saturdays. The other half, was by myself. I watched WWE. I was a big fan of Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan. Yep. Yep. Yep. All the all the And I thought everything is true. You know? That that was that was untimely.

Amir KabirThat's 100% true until till, you know, someday I woke up and felt that was a delusion.

James BenhamYeah. Well, they're good actors or or sometimes they're not. So it's a it it it's it's a it's a fun time. So what at Germany, you know, did you then, go to college there and start your work there? Because I'm I'm seeing, you know, on your resume, it looks like you went to University of Cologne. You went to so I'm seeing actually a few degrees here.

Amir KabirA couple a couple of German universities and and maybe a of United States universities. So what was the Yeah. What was the what was the educational path? Sure. Yeah. So as mentioned, like, you know, always fascinated by, you know, tech and and curious about, you know, the new things and kind of, built my own computer when I was a teenager and that kind of translated into the love for building other things like businesses. I started businesses. I was part of a startup early on in Germany.

We were building enterprise software back in the days on premise. You know, there was no no AI and cloud and and and what whatnot. Yeah. I I went I have a I a degree in computer science and business from from the University of Cologne and from a private school in Cologne as well. The company I was part of, or the startup I was part of, we were building it in a tiny town down in the South which is called Karlsruhe. Karlsruhe has the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, which people compare to the MIT, they call it the KIT.

There's a lot of technical folks coming out of that given the strength and the depth of the program. And so the company we were building eventually was acquired after six years. Joined by Actuate here in San Mateo, by a Silicon Valley company which was a great outcome now looking back for a small software shop out of, you know, a small town in Germany. And then I basically also started another company, but that was a complete disaster, I would call. I think, you know, learning stairs, you know, pick your partner wisely and who you work with, and that's one aspect of it, but also like, what problem are you solving?

Try to find a problem before you find a solution. And so that's kind of the path in Germany, I would say, in a short format. And my goal you know, was always to somehow come to The US. I was fascinated, by by the American dream, you know, the movies and, you know, hearing that and and seeing all of the, you know, TV series. And obviously, you know, being in tech technology in in Europe and Germany, knowing about, you know, Silicon Valley, knowing about, you know, Yahoo and AOL very early on, and then Google and Facebook and whatnot.

So that was fascinating to me. And so it's been now, I have to count, thirteen years almost. It was August 2013 I basically packed my two suitcases and, you know, sold some assets and immigrated to this beautiful country. And I initially came for business school going back to your question. I, got my MBA at Georgetown. That's that's how I got to The US. But my goal was basically, you know, to figure out how can I, you know, figure out this American dream, first of all, but also how can I get into tech in Silicon Valley eventually?

And that's kind of been the the the the way I started. I started very early on, my career in DC area with the fund called Route sixty six Ventures. It's a small venture fund that was set up by a former entrepreneur that was in the financial services sector, and that's how I got into investing, but also into investing within the broader financial services sector and also insurance. The first deal I actually worked on was a product warranty play out of Germany called SimpleSurance, and so that's how I learned about, you know, not only investing but also the insurance front.

And I moved over to San Francisco, it was eleven years ago, eleven years ago and I've been here since. And I was part of the founding team at Mini Cree Ventures, I was number three on the team there. We started with $50,000,000 and grew it to over a billion. I left six years in and then I became a general partner at a fund called AVAD. I joined on their second fund at the Force GP to build out their practice on the broader financial services side and my goal was always to start my own fund and resigned there and began the journey of starting and building my own fund Overlook Ventures earlier last year.

So that's been the journey over the last, I don't know, three decades. Along the way I became a U. S. Citizen, so that American dream somehow became true I would say. And you know it was a lot of ups and a lot of downs, but you know very grateful to be here. That's awesome.

James BenhamWhat a great what a great story. I'm glad you're here too man. Have a lot of Persian friends and you know, I have a a very diverse company from a geographic perspective. People from all over the world work with me, and our and our 270 teammates or so. So it's we got we got folks in Argentina and Ireland and Colombia and, I mean, all over the place. They're all over the world and and South Africa. Great people. And so it's it's, it's fun to see how many innovative minds there are all over the place.

I was looking through your portfolio at Overlook, and so just just tell us real quick. You you have a heavy risk

Amir Kabirlike, you've invested heavily in risk at at Overlook. Right? Yes. So I think the way I, you know, define the thesis there, and I think it's a culmination of the last, obviously, ten years of investing, but also, twenty years of building. I believe, you know, two things are true. One is that technology is always going to cycles, but risk always evolves and emerges through those cycles. Right? And so, today it's AI, the last wave it was blockchain, then we had cloud, then we had mobile, then we had whatever, right?

And so those cycles are always an up and down, but what never disappears is risk and risk is always emerging and evolving through those cycles. And so the thesis of the fund is to basically invest at the intersection of risk and frontier technology in companies that are building the infrastructure of risk. And what I mean with that is that I'm looking into companies that are building software or platforms that help you better manage, measure or mitigate risk one way or the other. And in the practice that these are companies that are building simulation software for autonomy, robotics foundation models, cyber incident response, deep fake detection, or new insurance products for, you know, hardware.

Right? So it's it's kind of a broader risk theme here And I know a lot of people ask me, like, well, risk is so broad. Like, you know, what what are you, what do you mean with that? Yes. I mean, you know, there's a lot of risk in in in pharma. There's a lot of risk in biotech. There's a lot of risk in, like, you know, a bunch of these kind of areas. I'm trying to, you know, stay kind of within within the sectors that, you know, I have deeply understanding in and also a deep networking

Rob Galbraithwhere I can help the founders I work with. That's awesome. Rob? I'm Amir, thank you so much for sharing your story and and being our guest today. It's really inspirational, and it's pretty neat to get, to know a little bit about you and and your background. So I'm really fascinated from those, I would call them the early kind of InsurTech days till now. Like some of the companies that you had investments in, Next Insurance, of course, Insure. Bought by many to me is like a favorite, like, kind of niche one that didn't last, but I think was actually very shaped kind of the early days of the the industry, and there's a lot of folks that came out of that that have led other other ventures.

So I'm just kind of, you know, having been, you know, an observer, right, and involved in in some of these stars over the last ten years, but it's it's changed quite a bit. I can remember the frothy kind of early days and the excitement to the maturity. Right? Obviously, we've got COVID and and, you know, hard market cycles kinda going through that. So just comparing some of those maybe early days at Munich Re Ventures, which was, again, a very foundational corporate VC in the early days till now.

What have you seen kind of in the Intritech journey,

Amir KabirI guess, over the past decade? Oh, I mean, great question. And I think there's a lot of to of lot of to unpack here. When when when we started kind of Munich Re Ventures, it was, like, early two thousand fourteen. I think 2015, we really kind of took off there. It was kind of the early days of this this word called Insurtech. Right? I mean, there was not really much out there. And I believe what we saw and and what people focused on was basically or or the or the nuance was like, look.

Insurance is an outdated business. Insurance carriers are not really customer centric. They don't really care about you. They actually don't call you customer. They call you policyholders. Right? And, you know, there there is there is an opportunity to make this better, faster, neater, I don't know, like, you know, more appealing to the customer. Let's say it this way. Right? And I think the notion was also, look, it's hard to communicate with the insurance carrier, you know, again, going back to the to the premise of, they don't care about you, so it's hard to have a direct communications lines and so on and so forth.

So how can we make this better? And everyone kind of focused on the traditional lines of businesses, right, auto, home, renters. Nexinsurance, I think, was one of the few ones with with some others that were focused on small businesses. Most of the business models were traditional MGA models, tech enabled MGA models. And many, I think, thought that insurance is a scalable business as a SaaS business. Right? But I think quickly pretty quickly realized that, you know, I I love this term that insurance is a get rich slowly business.

At the end of the day, it's it's a risk business. Right? You're underwriting risk, and so if you don't do that the right way early on, it will cost you in the back end. Right? And so for us, I think when we I mean, obviously, very fortunate to be within the broader Mini Creek group. We actually didn't look at many of these, you know, traditional lines like auto renters and and home early on because I think, obviously, there was the notion of, like, we don't believe that there is much to do there.

Right? And I think now I have a different view there too and understand because when you look at those markets and and and you know that too, and I think, people have realized that these are highly saturated markets, price driven and highly competitive. And when you take those three things together plus highly regulated, meaning you can't just come up with a new product, right, then it's gonna be really, really hard to just win the market with better customer UIUX, right? And I think people realize that quickly that you can't go to market quickly and you will always get a new customer.

The question is do you want that customer and is that customer a good customer to underwrite, right? And so that was kind of the early days and what we kind of focused on in Munich V time were the ones you mentioned like Next Insurance with it Insure, HDVI, bought by many. You know, all of these were kind of in a category or bucket for themselves where I feel and I know I understand now better obviously is that, hey, incumbents don't really have technological innovation maybe in those sectors, right?

And how can you use tech to make this better without really maybe disrupting the ecosystem but more enabling the ecosystem? And that was the case for Next Insurance. Right? There was the case for Insure. Right? I mean, they're focused on taxi and black car drivers. Right? And when you think about the problem statement of when you are a taxi driver, and I think you guys had Dan on, you wanna get insurance, and it was, like, very cumbersome to do, and, you know, it was it was very hard.

It took a long time. So, you know, everything that resonates from the VC perspective of, hey. How can you use technology to make things better? I think bought by many also, as you mentioned, focused on PET and how can you do that differently there. The premise in the early days was like, hey, we're going to pool everyone into different kind of buckets that have maybe a German Shepherd and have maybe a Persian cat, that we kind of price them that way. And so these were the kind of topics we were kind of focused on.

And I think over the last ten years, a lot of people learned, and and me included, of, like, what is feasible and what is venture backable and whatnot. And I think there, I think there's a lot of opportunities, but what people I think also realize is that I'm I'm I'm sure people are still looking for the $10,000,000,000 win. It's it's gonna be much harder to get a $10,000,000,000 exit in insurance than it is in traditional kind of in a traditional venture play. Right?

James BenhamYep.

Amir KabirI still believe there is still the opportunity to create a billion dollar business with an insurance, but getting to five is tough and getting to 10, I don't wanna say impossible, but we might be close to that, right? And so that's kind of the overview. I mean, I'm sure you guys have seen like, you know, some graphics I designed too. I started thinking about, you know, insurance during the time when I was at Munich Re and then when I left, I put a graph together over the last hundred years of insurance that I think went viral through the community and through LinkedIn.

And then the goal for me was actually to understand better where are we coming from and where are we going and what has happened in in in in in And so I believe we're in an interesting time here coming out of like the the hype of of Insurtech and going into the hype of now AI plus Insurtech, and I think there's there's a lot of

James Benhaminteresting concepts out there, but I'm still cautious in terms of, like, what is possible and whatnot. Yeah. Well, I I'm having a hard time because I work with quite a few insurance companies in various capacities. I'm having a hard time distinguishing InsurTechs from insurance companies in a lot of cases because they're you know, all the insurance companies I know have major AI initiatives and automation initiatives, and, like, they're they're really they're doing a lot there. Insurtechs came and challenged the ideas, and I actually think it served the industry well because it got a lot of executives to really rethink core processes like quote, buying, pay, rate, underwrite, issue, renew, you know, first notice of loss, claims handling, settlements, payments, you know, claim closure.

I mean, you know, you you you could run through all the major transactions of insurance, and they've all been challenged. And some of those challenges failed because, like, you know, trying to disintermediate all the brokers was probably a fool's errand. Now now that you now that you see what really happened, a lot of folks that said they were gonna disintermediate brokers ended up providing technology to brokers. Yep. And and, you know, I would argue AI is probably the most disruptive tool that I've ever seen in twenty five years of being in business in thirty.

Let's see. I started writing code thirty four years ago. So it is by far the most disruptive tool because it it reaches every corner of product engineering and design and development and marketing and sales and operations, and they can you know, for the first time in my career in insurance, I don't have to say, no. We can't do that. I just say, no. I gotta you know, we gotta do some automation work, but we can tackle that task. You know, advanced cognition reasoning thinking, yep. We can do that.

Sure. Yeah. Oh, you know, read all the forms, extract all the unstructured data, put it into a structured dataset, and then make a prediction on the likelihood there's gonna be this kind of event on the claim. Yep. Yeah. We can do that. So it's it's a very interesting time, I think. You know? Also, just to be in software development during this time is very interesting because we're really solutions engineers. We were already making the move to being solutions engineers, not software developers. We're continuing to to to make that move into solution engineering, being really, really good at prompting, etcetera.

So what what do you think I've seen some I see some former investments. I'm hoping those mean successful exits on your on your website. And and you have, you know, quite a few current holdings. Who are the winners and losers in all of this? I'm really interested for your opinion because, obviously, you have to make decisions predicting winners and losers as a venture capitalist. So who are the real winners and losers in the current iteration of the great industrial revolution that's going on?

Amir KabirI mean, are we talking about, like, the ones that are still active in terms of, like, the Insurtechs,

James Benhamyou mean, or, you know, what is the future of Anything. You obviously have you obviously have deal flow, deals coming across your debt. Got it. Got it. So you're you're evaluating deal flow right now. Yeah. And you have I don't want you to speak to your current investments because that would require you to disclose confidential information. So let's just, you know, let's just say, you know, you see a lot of deal flow coming across your desk. You've seen what companies have exited, what companies have bombed, which ones have returned capital, which ones have been runaway hits.

You know, who do you see as the winners and losers in all this? Yeah.

Amir KabirI think, again, going back to ten years the last ten years, fifteen years, and now the notion, again, when kind of the InsurTech wave started, everyone was focused on these tech enabled MGAs. And then as you mentioned, people realized that might not really work out the way they thought it would work out. And now I think that the notion shifted of like, hey, AI is the newest thing and let's build software to sell to insurance companies or insurance adjacent companies, right? And so I see a lot of companies trying to disrupt the broker or agent, meaning not disrupt is the wrong word, enable the broker or agent, right?

Selling some software tools to them to help them, as you mentioned, with better quoting, better binding, better servicing, whatever it might be, right? I still see, believe it or not, people are still trying to wanna disrupt auto insurance, traditional auto insurance. So, yes, it's still out there. It's quite interesting, and I always have to scratch my head. Then I I still see or, like, things that have emerged, as you mentioned too, on the on this topic of claims. I think claims has been I think AI will play a huge role there.

Right? As you mentioned of, like, being able now to ingest a lot of data and kind of make, you know, not only predictions but also assumptions and so on and so forth. Right? So that's, I think, very helpful on the on the claims side. I still believe in tech enabled MGAs. Right? I still believe there's an opportunity, but, you know, you have to be mindful of, like, what does a new opportunity look like. Right? Again, is this gonna be a $10,000,000,000 business? I don't know, and I don't think so.

But can this be a billion dollar business? Yes. And that makes sense maybe for me, having a small fund, for sure, but, you know, larger funds might not agree with that. But at the same time, you know, it's a good question of, you know, if those tech software plays that are selling into the insurance ecosystem can be a $10,000,000,000 business as well. Right? I think people are pointing to Verisk and RMS and then all of these bigger players out there, applied systems and and whatnot. I I totally agree.

I think that it's all good and fine. But, you know, for them to get where they are, you know, it took a long time and I think that the reason is because we're dealing or operating in regulated markets, right? And so going back to AI I think is also an interesting point is that yes, you can do all of the things with AI and it's amazing. The question you should also ask is like will you be able to do that in terms of regulatory barriers, right?

As you know and the guests of the show probably know, spitting out a new product with better AI will not be feasible in the traditional lines and the traditional markets that are admitted, Yeah, you can maybe go into the E and S market and create a new product, but then you also have the distribution problem of like how do you get this in front of people and how do you advertise this and so on and so forth. So, I mean, I've made a you know, when you look at the fund today and investments made today, I would say a third of that you would maybe categorize at traditional InsurTech.

A third of that is traditional, you know, technology and and or or or two thirds is traditional, you know, enterprise software that could be play a role within regulated markets, but not only insurance, it could be financial services, it could be health care, it could be whatnot. So I think if you if you think about it that way, if you want to sell software and if you want to you know create like a huge huge outcome, it has to be across verticals. I think it's going to be really hard to be just selling into the insurance business given the venture timelines we have from like, you know, five to ten years now that can become even longer, let's say twelve years to get to a $10,000,000,000 outcome.

I I I still have a hard time thinking about that. Awesome. Rob, bring us home. Yeah. Amir, obviously,

Rob Galbraithwe could we could go on for a long time, but, in the interest of keeping this to a listenable, manageable length for our audience, I'm very curious what you how you think about the nature of risk today and how it is changing and evolving and what

Amir Kabiropportunities that might open. Yeah. Great question. And I mean, that's that's the stuff I try to really focus on on a daily basis. I try to figure out, like, what does the future somehow look like? I mean, predicting it's gonna be hard. Right? But, like, maybe what does future society look like with everything that we have going on today? I think people are talking about humanoid robots, a lot about autonomy, obviously, about robotics. And when you think about that and and the traditional insurance, sector, it's completely different because right now insurance is kind of focused on risks that are happening within human society, but how does this look like if you have a robot running around and serving us in a home setting and maybe making a mistake, doing something really bad?

What are the risks that are emerging there and how can you learn about this today? I guess just one example, right, that I'm kind of interested in. And so I think liability is getting weird. AI decision making, autonomous vehicles, algorithmic systems are creating all new liability scenarios, and so that don't really map cleanly into existing policy structures. So who's liable when AI, you know, goes rogue, when robots injure, and so on and so forth? That's one. I think another aspect is, I think, longevity risk and how that's becoming a systemic problem too.

People are living much, much longer than before, and we see that right now with long term care being a huge problem, and how does that play a role, pension systems, you know the gap between retirement savings and actual lifespan. And I think the third aspect here too, maybe just to close out, reputational narrative risk is also another, you know, category that is interesting to look at. You know, a brand can be destroyed within forty eight hours for a viral moment. That was not the case ten years ago.

You you you can be hyped up in five five minutes, and you can be destroyed in five minutes. I think that's another thing that when you think about traditional liability and D and O policies don't cover really this risk well, and how will this look like when we go in the future. These are the three topics that come to mind. I think the first one being obviously the biggest one, but then the other two are kind of interesting adjacencies too that, you know, are are, you know, worth exploring.

Awesome.

James BenhamIt was we're we're obviously at time, but it was a wonderful conversation. Amir, we really appreciate your insight into how you look at at the world, at insurance, at investment, at what's gonna work and what's not working and where you see it going. I I happen to be very aligned with your thinking on, on on where we where we should invest dollars, where should we should invest resources, what we should be pursuing. And I I I think I I love, insurance is a great place to get rich slowly.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I that that describes it all. And it's a, an industry that thrives on stability Yes. And predictability for survivability.

Amir KabirBut when it but when it works, it works. Right? When it works, it works exceedingly

James Benhamwell. Correct. When it works, it works exceedingly well for all of the policyholders and for the owners of, you know, said agencies, brokerages, MGAs, carriers, etcetera. So and and it it does work out really well often. And so it it is just it's not easy, and it's not fast. And and it and it requires a lot of patience, and I think you have to you have to earn your stripes in insurance. For sure. It's hard hard to step in and And still learning. Step in. Yeah.

Still learning. I'm still I'm I'm at 20 I'm at twenty two years. 2004 was my entry. So twenty two years in insurance, and I still feel like I'm in my my first half of my learning. You know? Anyway Fantastic. Amir, let me just stop and and and and mention because you're you're Persian, you're you're born in Iran. I very much hope that you in the near future get to see long lost friends and family members that you have not been able to see in a long time.

My heart breaks for you and all of your people that you've been separated from each other for so long, and I hope that the outcome of what's going on right now is a beautiful reunion for a beautiful people. I have many Persian friends. I absolutely love my Persian friends. I love what they stand for and what they represent, and I really hope you're re reunited with your friends and family soon. Very much appreciated. Thank you. Yeah. I hope for for a better future. Yes. And to all of our listeners in listener land, thank you for listening in to another episode of the InsurTech Geek podcast.

I've been James Benham, your InsurTech Geek along with most interesting man in insurance, mister Rob Galbrave. We've been interviewing mister Amir. That's right. Amir Kabir. Glad to hear. Thanks for having me. From from Overlook, go check him out at overlook.vc.