Great Leaders Make Great Founders

Photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash

Every now and then, we get inspired by a story that makes us want to share it with the world. It’s less about us rather about the remarkable act that occurred that we hope by sharing will empower others to better themselves.

A few weeks ago, I met with Daniel Schreiber, the CEO and Co-Founder of Lemonade. I’m a big believer in their mission to reimagine and rebuild the insurance industry from the ground up with the customer experience at the core. (I was also fortunate to invest a small amount of capital in Lemonade as my first angel investment. More on that here.)

I’ve chatted with Daniel a few times prior here and there but nothing major. Leading up to our meeting, I was super focused on making sure it would be just as valuable for him as it was for me. From my perspective, this is a guy who is leading one of the world’s hottest (and most promising) startups. His time is extremely limited and I was going to make the most of the 30 minutes we had to chat about how I can add value to the company.

Lemonade’s beautiful office. Photo cred to this guy.

Located in Sarona, Tel Aviv, I walked into the office and was greeted by the team. Before getting started, Daniel and I walked into the kitchen area for coffee and made some small talk.

What happened next shocked me.

Daniel turned to me and said (paraphrasing) “before we get started, I wanted to thank you for all of the support you give us on Twitter and Medium.” I was shocked that he even noticed. He then went on… “I even loved your tweets about what Mark Zuckerberg (aka. Zuck) can learn from Lemonade”.

Wow, now I’m super impressed.

One simple action, two powerful lessons

Some might say I’m reading too deeply into Daniel’s comments, but they opened my eyes to attributes of a great leader and founder.

A great leader and founder is someone who has their finger on the pulse of reality and acts on it. Knowing what the world is saying about you can be a full time job in itself. But knowing what people are saying and being mindful to strategically act on it at the right time is a superpower. While I deeply appreciated Daniel’s comments that was also a great ego booster, it was more the awareness he had in that moment that made me love this company even more. True leaders are people that recruit anyone and everyone (customers, partners, employees) to join their cause. They are people who see the world differently and know how to react swiftly and accurately. To me, Daniel showed this awesome character trait and it’s a great lesson for others looking to better themselves.

The second lesson is a bit more personal and relates to an article that M.G. Siegler published earlier this week. Starting out in the tech/VC scene, it’s difficult to make your mark. Everyone is constantly sharing insights, news, advice, personal jokes, and it’s difficult to just jump in and ride the wave. It’s super challenging to know if there’s any impact of your words. Do people read it? Is it adding value or just noise? So to end off this story with M.G’s advice, “just keep at it”, it pays off.

Thanks for reading!

Hi! I’m Jordan, and I work in VC in Israel. There’s a lot happening in the VC/startup scene and I figured I’d post my observations here. All opinions above are my own. Feel free to follow on Twitter: @jordanodinsky.