When I first met Jay Winder back in 2014 he struck me as a hyperactive listener. I don’t mean that he was hyperactive. On the contrary, he had the composure of a Zen acolyte running his startup, clearly at inner peace with himself. Rather, I mean that he was actively engaged in the conversation and deeply in tune with what people around him were saying.

We met at a conference, had an informal chat together, and then I got to know Jay better the following day when we were sharing a taxi to the airport. Jay did not enter into any kind of “pitch mode” with me, perhaps because he knew I was fresh off a plane from Europe and hadn’t invested in Japan. So although of course we discussed his start-up — a promising little B2B SaaS invoicing solution called MakeLeaps — our taxi conversation spanned several topics, from tech to VC, to even the metaphysical. Jay demonstrated a genuine curiosity about my own ambitions, posed a lot of questions about the world of VC, and identified ways to try to be helpful to me, particularly as I was contemplating a move over to Japan.

A few days after the encounter, totally unprompted, Jay followed up by email thanking me for the opportunity to meet. He then wrote something along the lines of, “I’ve been giving a lot of thought in particular on what you had to say about X, and I’ve actually decided to implement that.”

I cannot remember his exact phrase, nor exactly what particular advice I had given, but it was clear that Jay had taken it to heart. The rigor with which Jay retained our conversation, and his diligence in following up, triggered me to make a mental note of his stand-out qualities as the kind of entrepreneur whom I would like to back.

This first impression was reinforced when, periodically, Jay would drop me a simple catch-up email. Not some long, unwieldy, multi-paragraph tome but just a simple heads-up to keep himself top-of-mind and maybe ask me a question or offer to make an introduction. And like clockwork, he would follow through on any action item.

I remember thinking to myself that if this entrepreneur is so effective in following up with somebody like me, he must be adored by his company’s customers and stakeholders.

So it’s no surprise that when a year later Jay told me that he was going to raise a small pre-Series A round for MakeLeaps, my instinct was to make a leap for the opportunity to invest. Of course I went through the analysis, liked what I saw, appreciated the product and its early market traction, and estimated that the company’s financial plan was sound. But the reality is that Jay had already long ago won me over. I even invited a few of my trusted partners from Europe to join the round because I felt that the opportunity to invest in an entrepreneur like Jay was too compelling to keep to myself.

The commendable behavior continued after I became a shareholder in MakeLeaps. Jay would find time to keep me updated and solicit my opinion on things. He was often bearing gifts as well — like a box of chocolates or a bag of pistachios — as an expression of his appreciation (now in retrospect, I probably should have refused these gifts and countered with a request for some stock options on top of my investment).

Today, Japan’s industrial giant Ricoh announced its acquisition of MakeLeaps. This acquisition is one of a series of strategic moves in which Ricoh will digitize and improve its customer’s workflows by combining MakeLeaps’ cloud invoicing software with Ricoh’s multi-function printers and other customer management systems. I predict that MakeLeaps will prove to be an excellent strategic fit for Ricoh.

I applaud Jay and his team for their heroic efforts in building MakeLeaps, and I wish them all the success as they open up a new chapter of this innovation story inside their new home at a visionary group like Ricoh.