S2 Ep45: Joshua Motta, co-founder and CEO, Coalition

Our guest in this 32nd interview episode with a unicorn start-up leader is the CEO and Co-founder of Coalition, Joshua Motta.

Coalition is the world’s first Active Insurance company, designed to prevent digital risk before it strikes. The company combines the power of technology and insurance to help organisations identify, mitigate and respond to digital risks. 

Coalition was co-founded in 2017 by Joshua Motta and John Hering and has since raised over $700M from leading global technology investors. Coalition reached unicorn status in 2021 with a current valuation of $5 billion, trusted by over 104,000 customers worldwide.

Joshua started his cybersecurity journey in two of the world's most prolific companies and organisations, Microsoft and the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Insurance, he jokes, is a very dangerous field and known for being ‘technologically adept’. But in some ways, this was the perfect preparation. Coalition is "what would happen if you combined a financial service - insurance - with a technology company and an intelligence community mindset." His previous experiences, including positions at companies like Cloudflare and Goldman Sachs, helped him bring disciplines together to tackle a problem in a novel way. 
Coalition has reached unicorn status thanks to its focus on its customers. Joshua states “we’re really partnering with them to improve their cybersecurity to mitigate the risks that they face before the event happens,” he also mentions that they are not “just paying out a claim” but rather, they are “on the ground helping them to recover.”

The commitment to client protection further extends to Coalition’s communication, where Joshua believes that effective communication comes from ‘putting yourself in the shoes of the customer’ and simplifying the message to make it as accessible to the customer as possible. Joshua also explores leadership and hiring at Coalition, with their recruitment process being that of a “stars attract stars” philosophy – hiring talented, ambitious people who want to work with other talented and ambitious people.  The second stage of this approach is embracing a ‘tribal’ philosophy, which means getting these top performers and talented individuals to work together in harmony. Loyalty, a sense of shared purpose and an egalitarian ethos are embedded into Coalition’s tribal culture and have helped them succeed.

Being deliberate about culture is incredibly important, states Coalition’s CEO. At the end of the day, “culture is not what you write down, it is what you practice.” 

The interview, as usual, was co-hosted with Russell Goldsmith of the csuite podcast. Alongside Holly Justice, Senior Partner at Tyto PR.

We have distilled the most valuable, actionable insights from our first 15 interviews with leaders of unicorn companies and bottled them in our book ‘Growing without borders: The unicorn CEO guide to communication and culture’. You can download it here.