Adam is an Entrepreneur and the Founder of The Zebra, an online website for searching and comparing car insurance. After a successful exit from the day-to-day operations of his company, Adam now spends his time in Austin looking for and creating new business ventures, including an in-development television show for budding entrepreneurs.
Transcript
My name is Adam Lions, and I'm an entrepreneur. The first company I started was called The Zebra, and today we are the most visited insurance comparison website in the United States. Started the company to make insurance black and white. Started the company to create a kayak or Priceline type experience where folks could put in information and really understand and see all of the different insurance options that are available to them in real time. Some of the first things it was, was start to get the ideas onto paper. And no matter how silly it looked, just get it out there, 'cause you can iterate on it, and build on it, and improve on it. And so that was, I think that was a big first step. And then from there, you just start to learn, okay, I'm gonna need to do this. Okay, now I need to think about raising money. Now I need to think about hiring people, and I need to think about launching a product. Now, we're in insurance, I need to think about licensing, and how do I navigate the regulation here. And so, you just, you just start to, if you set the goal, and then you start to just realize all the road blocks, and just start to figure out how to get over them and around them. In the beginning of the business, I was very, very hands on with the product. Every little pixel I was hyper focused on. Very, very hands on with the business model, and you're still, you're testing a lot of things. So it's very much a roller coaster of, oh, wow, this thing we thought wasn't gonna work is working, and this thing is absolutely not. So we have to cut it. And so at the beginning you're very hands on with a lot of that. Then as the company starts to grow, and scale, and you've started to figure out things, your day to day changes a bit where you may be meeting with more investors, thinking about hiring. Maybe you're not as much in the weeds on how did we do today, but what's going to happen next month, and planning, and strategy. And so, but I think it does depend on the type of entrepreneur. If you're more of a product-focused entrepreneur, if you're more of a visionary type of entrepreneur, if you're more of an engineer, and you're really, you're coding, and you're figuring out these very difficult problems, technically, I think that will impact your day to day. But, anyway you cut it, if you're an entrepreneur, and you're building a company, you're gonna be consumed with that idea, and consumed with making sure that it's successful.
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