What if insurance isn’t actually about protection—but about who understands risk better than anyone else?

Tanner Hackett has spent his career at the edge of massive shifts—helping build Lazada into Southeast Asia’s e-commerce backbone, then co-founding Button to ride the mobile commerce wave. Now he’s the founder and CEO of Counterpart, an insurtech company rebuilding small business insurance with AI-driven underwriting, real-time risk insights, and a growing dataset across 35,000+ policies.

In this episode, Tanner breaks down why insurance—one of the largest financial markets in the world—still runs on outdated assumptions, and how Counterpart is quietly rewriting the math.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

00:01 – Introduction and Tanner Hackett Background

00:33 – Early Career: Lazada and Southeast Asia E-commerce

01:30 – Building Button and Mobile Commerce Insights

02:03 – Founding Counterpart and Shift to Insurance

02:19 – Initial Idea: HR Tech to Insurtech Pivot

04:11 – What’s Broken in Insurance Today

06:15 – Why Previous Insurtech Startups Failed

08:16 – Understanding MGA and Insurance Business Model

09:16 – Why Now Is the Right Time for Counterpart

11:49 – Rethinking Value in Insurance

13:07 – Insurance Categories Counterpart Focuses On

17:28 – Distribution vs Underwriting Bottlenecks

19:45 – Data Advantage and Underwriting at Scale

21:25 – Insurance Basics for Startups

27:02 – Counterpart’s End-to-End Platform Approach

29:28 – AI, Data Infrastructure, and Pricing Risk

33:48 – Building a Data Moat in Insurance

35:10 – Founder Advice: Reducing Risk and Lowering Premiums

38:05 – Real-World Claims and Insurance Stories

39:21 – Fintech and HR Tech Companies Tanner Admires

40:58 – Long-Term Vision for Counterpart

42:29 – Closing Thoughts and Future of Insurance

“Insurance is a math problem—but most of the industry is still pricing to averages.”

“Every dollar paid out on a bad claim gets passed on to the next customer. That’s the system we’re fixing.”

Tanner’s journey started with marketplaces and marketing tech. Now he’s building a company where the product isn’t just coverage—it’s understanding risk at a level traditional insurers never could. Because in the end, the companies that win in insurance aren’t the ones with the biggest balance sheets. They’re the ones who see the risks others miss.

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Follow Tanner Hackett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tannerhackett/

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What if your AI didn’t just answer you… but interrupted you, remembered you, and slowly became someone you knew?

Vish Hari is building toward that future. A former Facebook AI researcher with roots in astrophysics, he’s spent nearly a decade inside deep learning—from training early models in 2013 to now founding Ego AI, an applied research lab focused on one idea: AI should feel human, not mechanical.

Ego isn’t chasing superintelligence. It’s going after something most labs ignore—behavior, personality, and relationships. The bet: the next breakout consumer platform won’t be the smartest AI. It’ll be the one you actually want to talk to.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

00:01 Introduction to Vish Hari & Ego AI

00:45 Background in Astrophysics and Early AI Work

03:00 From Research Labs to Founding Ego AI

05:30 The Problem with Current AI Interactions

08:00 OpenAI, Agents, and Personal AI Limitations

11:30 Video Games as AI Training Grounds

15:00 Human Behavior vs Machine Intelligence

18:30 Ego AI Architecture and Product Vision

22:00 Utility vs Personality Tradeoff

26:00 Vision for AI Companions and Relationships

30:00 AI, Society, and Behavioral Shifts

34:30 Near-Fatal Assault and Recovery

40:00 Lessons on Time, Resilience, and Focus

43:00 Why Current AI Agents Fall Short

47:00 Consumer AI vs B2B AI Debate

50:00 Future of Work and AI Impact

53:30 Founder Mindset and Building Ego AI

56:00 Closing Thoughts and Where to Find Ego AI

Pull quotes:

“The problem we’re solving is entirely human-ness. AI does not feel human.”

“We don’t need superintelligence. We need something that feels like a person.”

If Vish is right, the future of AI isn’t a better tool.

It’s a new category of relationship.

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Follow Vish Hari on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/astrophysicist/

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What do you learn after building companies across five generations, and investing in thousands more?

David S. Rose has been early to nearly every wave: PCs, the internet, mobile, and now AI. As the founder of Gust, he didn’t just invest in startups, he built the infrastructure that powers how startups raise money globally.

He’s a serial entrepreneur, one of the most active angel investors in the world, founder of New York Angels, and the architect behind Gust, which now supports over 2 million founders and most major angel networks worldwide.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

00:01 – Intro & David S. Rose background

00:24 – Early entrepreneurial beginnings

02:30 – College ventures & first hustles

03:30 – First job with Senator Moynihan

04:40 – Real estate career & early tech adoption

05:20 – Inventing proptech

06:50 – First startup experiences

08:00 – WristMac and early wearable tech

10:30 – Mobile messaging startup

13:30 – Accidental Series A raise

16:00 – Wireless software & early telecom

17:30 – Internet disruption

18:00 – AirMedia & wireless internet vision

22:00 – Dot-com boom & expansion

23:40 – Dot-com crash & shutdown

24:40 – Transition to angel investing

25:30 – Founding New York Angels

26:30 – Building Gust platform

29:00 – Gust Launch & company formation

30:00 – Writing books & Quora

33:00 – AI impact on startups

35:00 – USREM & real estate marketplace

37:00 – Current ventures & roles

39:00 – Singularity University origins

42:00 – Exponential technology & Ray Kurzweil

49:00 – AI, AGI, and future predictions

52:00 – Impact of AI on venture capital

54:00 – Future of work & unemployment thesis

58:00 – UBI and economic restructuring

01:00:00 – Abundance & societal shifts

01:01:30 – Entrepreneurship in AI era

01:03:30 – Healthcare, robotics, and tech progress

01:05:00 – Founder mindset & entrepreneurship

01:07:30 – Startup success traits

01:09:30 – Investment decision framework

01:11:30 – Closing thoughts & where to find David

Along the way, he shares lessons from decades of building through booms, crashes, and paradigm shifts—and why today’s founders are playing a completely different game.

“If a machine can do your job better, faster, and cheaper… by definition, that job disappears.”

“Entrepreneurs are like cockroaches. You can’t kill us.”

From selling firewood on his first day of college to powering global startup ecosystems, David’s story is a reminder: the tools change, the stakes get higher, but the mindset that builds companies stays constant.

Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Ga6v0YUsHotLhjap67uu5

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ignite-conversations-on-startups-venture-capital-tech/id1709248824

Follow David S. Rose on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsrose/Follow David S. Rose on X: https://x.com/davidsrose

Follow Brian on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bblinkedin/

Visit Our Website: https://www.teamignite.ventures

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