Professional Biography
My professional biography is divided in 3 parts: technology, management and entrepreneurship. The three parts are not sequential, but I tried putting them on a timescale nevertheless (click image on the right).
I grew up as a computer geek, programming since the age of 10 (actually I learned programming at the age of 7, but hadn't own a computer).
- I joined the Israeli army in 1995, and took the Mamram 7 months computer programming course, as part of a special quota for talented people. I then joined the army intelligence forces as a computer programmer. Later on I started my own technology team, which was only me at the beginning, and quickly became a group of 3 teams and 8 engineers, which I led for 3 years. We were experts in infrastructure software and information technologies.
- When I discharged after over 6 years of service, I immediately joined a startup called "Savantis" as the first software engineer (my predecessor left quickly). After over a year of hectic around-the-clock work with amazing people, I was given the responsibility to solve the redundancy and high availability issue of the product. I was also given another engineer, and the work, as hectic as it has been so far, just became a 20 hours a day brain-melting work. After that I was leading a project which involved people from all around the R&D team and the product team in Boston.
- When I felt I needed a change, I left Savantis after 2 years, went on a small trip to east Asia, and returned to Israel to start my bachelor studies in IDC in computer sciences.
- Just before the academic year began in 2004, I reconnected with Eden and Yaniv from Savantis (which closed down in the meantime), and together we developed a stock exchange trading machine that runs some complex trading models for a company called Delavenne. In the year to come I focused on my studies.
- During my second year of studies, the owner of Delavenne, Yariv, and his friend Eyal, started a new venture, later to be called Atiden. I partnered with them, and together we worked on another technology-based trading model. Although I was the only technical guy, I worked mainly on analyzing the model and validating it using technology and information tools. This gave me a more thorough financial knowledge, as my partners are, well, financial geniuses. I left Atiden when the model could not perform as we expected, and stayed friends with Yariv.
- On my third year of studying I decided to start my own Internet venture. Ziv, a classmate from IDC and a great guy in general, joined me, and together we worked on a comparison engine for the online grocery market. We hired another classmate to develop the engine, and while him and Ziv were working on the site, I focused on studying the industry and writing the business plan. After 6 months of work the plan was ready, and we headed to capital raising. We got help from people we both knew, and were introduced to almost every VC in Israel. After additional 6 months we acknowledged that we can't raise $6M without showing a product, and went back to the garage to finish development. The fact that it was too big to develop in a reasonable amount of time, along with the launch of a huge competitor which was doing something very similar to what we wanted, we lost interest and abandoned it. I learned so much during this experience about planning a business and how to fail in raising money.
- I decided to take a fourth studying year under the "Zell Entrepreneurship Program" in IDC. during that year I started, with the help of my classmates Itai and Gali, an old idea I was playing with in my head for over a year. We developed an investment fund which invests in websites, but not in the traditional Powerpoint meetings way, but rather in an automated manner. I visioned online marketing as a formula that we can use to facilitate the investment. After all, you have marketing ROI, right?
- During that year I studied A LOT about financials, accounting, psychological aspects, legal aspects, business, product and innovation. I attended lectures by leading professors from Israel and abroad, and had a 10-day trip to New York and Chicago, where we met startups and huge corporate-America firms. We also went through a 3-day workshop in the Chicago School of Business. During this year I think I gained business and people skills more than I gained through all my life.
- I've also had some side jobs: I gave consultancy services to the army, the same intelligence unit I served in, in matters of software architecture and project management. I also worked as a teaching assistant in IDC, giving lectures to 120 students about Java programming, algorithms, mathematics, and other topics.
- When I finished my studies I took a management position in "Continuity Software". The company was founded by Gil Hecht, the same founder of Savantis, in which I worked before. I was the Director of R&D for almost a year, until I decided entrepreneurship is my game rather than managing people for other people.
- Today I'm "between jobs", where I'm developing an Internet website that will later (hopefully) become a "cash cow" for me, while still working the side jobs I detailed above.