Longevity in business rarely happens by accident. It’s the outcome of repeated choices: where you focus, who you hire, how you listen, and how you adapt.
Todd Greenbaum, president and CEO of Input 1, built a company that evolved from a five-person operation managing $10 million in premiums into a platform that handles more than $16 billion in annual premiums and serves over two million users. His path offers practical lessons for founders and leaders who want to build something that endures.
Start with a real customer problem
The company began with a simple, specific problem: banks wanted to enter premium financing but lacked the technology and operational know-how. Solving a narrow, well-defined customer pain gave Todd and his team traction. The lesson: find a distinct, urgent problem and solve it well before you chase scope.
Grow by concentric circles, not by boiling the ocean
Ambition matters, but so does restraint. Todd describes a conscious pattern of expansion: take core capabilities and apply them to adjacent needs. Start as a tech-enabled service for banks, then sell the software, then extend into billing and digital payments for insurance carriers and brokers.
The advantage of concentric growth is simple: you reuse expertise, reduce unknowns, and protect your reputation while increasing total addressable market.
Practical framing
Master a bucket before you try to boil the ocean.
Reuse intellectual property across adjacent problems.
Test product tweaks on your core customers before broad rollouts.
Let your vision evolve
Vision is not always a static manifesto. For many founders the initial “why” changes as the business and market reveal new opportunities. Todd’s founding why—help banks offer premium financing—morphed into a broader mission: let insurance companies focus on product creation while Input 1 handles billing, collections, and payments with scalable technology and operational excellence.
Design culture to support scale
Culture isn’t an optional add-on. It’s the operating system that decides whether processes and products deliver consistently as you scale. Todd emphasises kindness, curiosity, respect, and active support: treat every person with dignity, encourage questions, and back people when they stretch into new roles.
Practical cultural elements to adopt:
Create expert groups focused on specific functions so feedback is actionable.
Encourage curiosity and remove the stigma of asking “stupid” questions.
Reward humility and introspection in leadership.
“Make sure that you’re always double checking yourself and that you’re not getting too big for your britches. Make sure that you are not kind of buying your own BS.”
Build a unique, sustainable advantage
In regulated industries, differentiation can come from product breadth tied to operational excellence. Input 1’s platform supports all three ways to pay an insurance premium—one-time, carrier billing, and financing—on a single system. That single-platform approach reduces friction, improves user experience, and increases customer stickiness.
Innovation matters—especially in a lagging sector
Insurance historically lagged in digitization, creating a runway for insurtech. Practical AI use cases already delivering value include:
Automated claims assessment (drones and image analytics).
Faster underwriting through rapid data evaluation.
AI agents that handle routine customer questions and escalate only when necessary.
Stay at the edge of invention—don’t assume “good enough” will stay good enough.
Listen to customers and build surgical feedback loops
Customer conversations are the best product research. Todd’s team slices customers by product, geography, and relationship type, then runs expert groups that translate nuances into product and workflow changes. The result: incremental improvements that remove friction and increase adoption.
Make meetings purposeful and measure behavioral change
Communication cadence matters—quarterly leadership reviews, monthly division check-ins, weekly team meetings—but so does discipline. Reduce useless meetings. When you meet, have clear agendas and outcomes. Most importantly, check whether meetings create behavioral change, not just information transfer.
The onboarding crisis and the discipline of restraint
Growth without operational readiness can create catastrophic customer experiences. Todd recalls a painful episode when several large clients were onboarded too quickly, exposing weak mid-level management and forcing senior leaders to step in constantly. The recovery taught a crucial lesson: be methodical about ramp-up times, resource allocation, and internal training before you accept new, large customers.
People scale differently from software
Properly architected software can often scale without breaking. People and culture do not scale the same way. Preserve cohesion by:
Hiring durable leaders and investing in middle management.
Keeping long-tenured employees engaged and passing cultural norms to new hires.
Planning growth so culture remains intact as headcount increases.
Remote work: preserve culture deliberately
Remote teams need intentional culture maintenance. Watercooler spontaneity disappears over virtual lines, so compensate by creating rich virtual rituals, occasional in-person gatherings, and deliberate onboarding experiences. Bringing remote people to headquarters for concentrated interactions can reignite enthusiasm and deepen connection.
Grounding practices matter for leaders
Leadership is high-energy work. Todd finds balance in two personal rituals:
Playing in a band—music as a weekly reset where problems fade for a few hours.
Consistent exercise—discipline that powers long-term health and cognitive stamina.
Practical checklist for leaders who want to build a lasting company
Start narrow: Solve a clear problem for a specific customer segment.
Grow concentrically: Extend into adjacent markets using the same core strengths.
Prioritize operational readiness: Only onboard large customers when people and processes are prepared.
Design culture deliberately: Promote humility, curiosity, and mutual support.
Listen surgically: Use expert groups to turn customer feedback into product and process changes.
Keep innovating: Treat technology and AI as ongoing investments, not one-time projects.
Measure meeting impact: Stop meetings that don’t change behavior.
Protect culture in remote setups: Invest in rituals, periodic in-person touchpoints, and intentional onboarding.
Stay introspective: Leaders must continually check themselves and remain humble.
Final thought
Building a company that lasts is less about a single brilliant leap and more about disciplined, iterative decisions: choosing the right customers, expanding thoughtfully, building operational muscle, and protecting culture. Ambition fuels growth, but restraint and humility make that growth sustainable.
If you want to explore how a single platform can simplify premium billing and payments across payment methods, start by talking to the people who run those platforms and listen closely. The next big product insight will often come from an honest customer conversation.
Get In Touch With Todd Greenbaum
Todd can be reached through his Linkedin account. To find out more about Astound Digital, visit their website.
This article was created from the live video conversation for The Business Philosopher Within You podcast. This episode was published on YouTube under the title “How to Build a Company That Lasts 40+ Years | Todd Greenbaum, Input 1’s CEO.” The article was created with the help of AI after significant input from human intelligence.
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