Protecting $500 billion dollars of real estate value: Mike Zukerman, CEO of CSAA, an $8 billion carrier of insurance distributed through AAA Clubs, tells how technology helps protect that massive asset. He tells us how enterprise technology can “surprise and delight” CSAA’s 3 million policy holders, and how self-driving cars will change insurance strategy.   

00:00 Introduction to Mike Zukerman & CSAA 

01:40 Understanding CSAA and Its Business 

04:24 Remote Work and Employee Satisfaction 

08:30 Mike Zukerman’s Background and Career Journey 

11:57 The Future of Auto Insurance and Autonomous Vehicles 

18:51 Understanding Auto and Home Insurance Regulations 

20:10 Challenges of Homeowners Insurance in California 

21:55 Innovative Wildfire Mitigation Technologies 

29:16 Leveraging AI for Customer Delight in Insurance 

35:03 Why CSAA is a Great Place to Work

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Lux Capital General Partner Shahin Farshchi, PhD, talked with me about his background, Lux’s history, and how the firm came to position itself as the leading investor in hard-tech. A focus on outstanding teams, market readiness, patience and taking the lead from entrepreneurs on the “next great sector” has led to investments such as Anduril, Aurora, Databricks, Hugging Face, Matterport, Nirvana, Planet Labs, Zededa and Zoox.

Note the “skip to” audio time stamps below.  You can read the related article here in 3 minutes.

Links to Lux Capital and Shahin.  Host: Ali Tabibian of GTK Partners.

On some podcast players you can click to jump to the timestamps below.

(1:44) Introduction to Lux

(6:14) Shahin’s background and initiative in managing your career

(20:49) Investment selection process

(34:30) Focusing on the long-term

(37:33) The next big things

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