Co-Founder, CEO at Life.io
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Who are you and what do you do?
CEO & Co-Founder of Life.io
1. What was the journey that brought you to your current role?
I was raised by parents who were entrepreneurs / business owners and always wanted to do something that would have a significant and lasting impact. This combined with industry expertise and serendipity led me to found Life.io.
2. How do you get things done?
First and foremost, I surround myself by highly talented and dependable team mates, and try to give them the space to take charge of their domain. Usually, this means things get done better and faster than I could ever do them myself. Beyond that, I try to remember a saying I heard from my parents: “discipline is doing what you have to do, when you have to do it, whether you feel like doing it or not.”
3. Who are your role models and why?
There are several people who have been instrumental in helping me grow personally, and helping create and support Life.io. Each is worthy of several paragraphs, but one who stands out especially to me is Robert Kamerschen (Kam). Beyond being wildly successful in his professional career, what left the greatest impression on me was Kam’s attitude. Generous, supportive, trustworthy, and with a larger than life personality, Kam always succeeded by building up and investing time and energy in the people around him.
4. What’s the one secret about your field or industry you wish everyone knew?
Not a secret, but often lost on people both in and outside the industry, is that insurance serves an important public good. It is so easy to get carried away with the day-to-day obstacles of running a business, we often forget that we are working toward a greater good, and that our work as an industry is improving millions of peoples’ lives.
5. What are your predictions for the industry for the next few years?
We are really at the beginning of a massive sea change in the industry. Incumbents had a false sense of comfort that the life insurance industry was protected from true disruption because of the capital and regulatory barriers in the insurance industry. This is proving to be untrue. The growth of private equity, Insurtechs and DeFi combined with the unprecedentedly low interest rates is posing a much greater threat to the incumbents and status quo than anyone believed possible 3 or 4 years ago.
