Curtis Barton started Alkeme in October 2020 with seven agencies, $25 million in combined revenue, and a simple argument: stop running a lifestyle business and start building generational wealth. Five years later Alkeme is at $350M+ in revenue, 35 states, 110+ locations, and 85+ acquisitions. In Episode 160, Curtis explains why most consolidators are more overleveraged than they admit, why organic growth is the only honest metric in the rollup game, and why every insurance brokerage — whether it wants to or not — is becoming a software company.
A finger cut came in as a severity one workers comp claim. Nobody looked at it for 90 days. CLARA's models kept reading the incoming medical documentation — and caught the trajectory shift before any human did. By the time the alert fired, the case was heading toward amputation, not a bandage. In Episode 159, CLARA Analytics CEO Heather Wilson explains how claims AI actually works in practice: not as a replacement for adjusters, but as a 24/7 safety net that catches what tired eyes miss — and what she wants to accomplish before she leaves this industry: finally connecting the claims intelligence that closes cases to the actuarial intelligence that prices them.
Sid Jha didn't come from insurance — he came from Citadel, trading commodities, pricing weather risk. In Episode 158, he explains how that background shaped Arbol's thesis: that parametric insurance wasn't just a claims shortcut, but a bridge to entirely new pools of capital that traditional insurance could never access. We also get into why Arbol stopped being a pure parametric company — and why being ideological about your product is the fastest way to miss what the customer actually needs.
AI won’t replace insurance brokers.
But it will change how their work gets done.
In Episode 148, I spoke with Anupam Gupta, Chief Product Officer at Applied Systems, about how AI is transforming the brokerage tech stack.
One idea stood out:
Instead of replacing humans, AI will become digital teammates working behind the scenes.
For example:
• AI agents preparing renewal packets
• Extracting data from submissions and emails
• Comparing carrier responses
• Surfacing missing coverages
The result?
Less administrative work.
More time for brokers to do what actually matters: advise clients.
One of my favorite lines from the episode:
“Imagine every employee showing up like your top 10%.”
That’s the real promise of AI in insurance.
Vivek Krishnamurthy, principal at Commerce Ventures talks about startup performance, the future of insurance, Commerce Ventures, documentaries, and #crypto.
