What are you exactly doing over in Diagnostic Robotics? How did you get into your field?
Yeah. So, what's very special about us? We're doing neither diagnostics nor robotics. That's really cool. The way I was doing AI at that time, and again, this was extremely early days. I received tens of thousands of different cells, and they wanted us to count it, like manually count it. We have access to almost 60 billion historical claims of patients. So, think about this as almost medical encounters with physicians, insurance companies, meaning you do not build the LLM, but how do you take an LLM and you make it run faster and cheaper. Israel is not in the game where you need to invest tens of billions of dollars, right? It's in the game of you can build them the values. You can make humans out of humans instead of just delivering content to those humans.
All right. Welcome to another episode of Israel Tech. I'm excited to have with me here Kira Radinsky. She's the co-founder and CTO of Diagnostic Robotics, and we're going to be talking about a subject we don't talk much about. What is that? You'll find out in a second. But first, if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to our newsletter. You can find it on our website. We have over 50% open rates with over 600 leading VCs, investors, LPs, founders, and other players in the Israeli tech ecosystem, and those that are interested. We're also on 10 new media platforms. Our goal is to continue to democratize the Israeli tech ecosystem by bringing things straight to you in your favorite newsfeed. Kira, thank you so much for joining us in Israel Tech today.
So, whenever we do this virtually, people are always curious, where's the person sitting? So, do you want to share with Where are you right now?
I'm in California in Los Gatos.
Okay. So, you're originally from Kyiv, and then you moved to Israel at a young age, and then you ended up in America. Can you maybe take us through kind of a little bit just of your personal journey? I was reading, you know, when you came with the Gulf War and all that. When was your family You want to tell us a little bit about your upbringing in Ukraine, and then you coming to Israel, and then maybe how you ended up in California?
Oh, definitely, definitely. Well, many, many, many years ago, when my family was still in Kyiv, it was part of USSR. USSR was a very different place than what Ukraine is today. In general, you were not allowed to do many things, for example, have a job. You couldn't take specific library books. So, it was very different times. And people were just pretty much waiting about, well, one day I'll be able to leave. Most people needed a visa not to come in, but to actually leave the country.
In '89, when USSR started falling apart, after a lot of pressure from the Jewish community in the United States, the Jewish community in USSR was allowed to leave. The main reason they stated, they were never citizens to begin with. So, they're repatriating, coming back from wherever they came from. In less than a year, I would say around 90% of the population left. People were leaving so quickly because they were afraid that the gates will close and you will never be able to do it again. The way we were doing it, when you leave, you cannot take anything with you. You can take like $100 per person, certain amount of clothes. You have to give your apartment, pretty much everything that you own back to the government.
And people were trying to kind of predict when to come to Israel because everybody knew the Gulf War is going to start. And I always say that my interest in prediction started from my mom predicting the Gulf War. She almost got it right, but instead of coming after the Gulf War, we came two weeks before. So, she almost got it right, right? But she had to predict almost a year in advance to get all the approvals, etc. We arrived to Israel with a million and a half other people arriving pretty much that year. Israel population at that time was 5 million, so they had to absorb almost a million and a half people in a year who came with nothing. Nothing. People who are educated, don't speak the language, don't have a job, and just have to live in a society.
And as you kind of alluded in the beginning, the first thing we saw was the Gulf War. But ever since then, and ever since I can remember myself, my dream was always to be a scientist, something that my mom or my aunt or anybody in my family could only dream of, I had actually opportunity to do. I didn't know what type of scientist. I knew something around healthcare, something around computers. I didn't quite know, but started coding pretty early on. My aunt was a programmer. She wanted to get rid of me and not help me in computer games, so she instead was giving me answers with different code that she was writing.
And approximately when I was 14, I joined a research study at the Technion. We were studying something around how natural compounds impact the proliferation of prostate cancer cells. Not that I know what prostate was, what prostate cancer was, etc. But what was really important is we had to feed huge amounts of broccoli and Brussels sprouts to cancer cells. If you're interested about the results, it does kill the cancer cells. It kills all the cells as well, so I'm not sure it's the right thing to do, especially—
Is that why children don't like broccoli and Brussels sprouts?
I don't know, it kills everything. But we were testing it in very big amounts, so I'm not talking to recommend it as a drug. And my only job was pretty much feeding the cells. In other words, I had to feed healthy cells, cancer cells, cancer cells with broccoli, cancer cells without the broccoli, and then seeing who survives. And my only job was not to kill them. In other words, it turns out they can get infections really quickly, right? So if you touch them by mistake inside this aquarium they're in, they're all going to die. Of course, in the second week, I by mistake touched them and killed pretty much all of our cells.
And since then, they put me on analytics. In other words, "Don't touch anything. Here's the picture of what we're doing. Handle this." And voila, this is how I got to AI. The way I was doing AI at the time, and again, this was extremely early days, I received tens of thousands of different cells, and they wanted us to count it, like manually count it. And I thought this was a huge waste of my summer. Instead of going to the pool, I have to count cells. So I consulted with my aunt. She did her thesis around image processing. Like, "Oh yeah, that's a whole traditional image processing thing. Maybe you can do some image processing to count the cells." So that's what we did.
I was working with a partner from Canada. He's a famous doctor today. At that time, neither one of us was famous; we were just teenagers. I built the image processing, he did the analytics behind it, and the rest is history. As you can mention in Israel, my biggest love in the world is Israel. It's the place who gave me the opportunity at age of 15. It allowed me to go to the university, do a meaningful service in the army that I felt had a lot of impact, build my own startups, get acquired, make impact on the society. And a couple of years ago I decided to scale the companies because most of my business was around the United States, and we moved to the United States.
Okay, before you get there. Okay, first off, fascinating intro, probably more than any other I've done before. What is it like to go to school, technical school no less, at Technion? My daughter's turning 15 in two months. So, I'm thinking, what's it like to go to university at Technion no less at that age?
Right? Socially, it sounds very lonely.
Yeah. People ask me a lot, was this a good choice? I think for me, from an intelligence standpoint, that was interesting, it was intriguing, I had a lot of fun learning new things. But socially this wasn't the right thing to do. The age difference was evident, especially as in Israel people go to the university after the army, so most people are around 24, and 15—and you cannot look too older than your own age, right? So, people would do homework in pairs, there's an entire atmosphere of doing things beyond just studying, and I was just doing the studying. So, was it worth it? Depends on your KPIs, right? So, if it's about being intellectually challenged, yes. If it's about having fun, no.
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So, yeah, you know, I guess that's the difference between Technion University and Tel Aviv University where I went. I went to a fraternity and everything was about social life and partying, which should not be the purpose of university. You definitely—let's just say it helps you in your career more than I did. I left with some memories and $50,000 in debt. So, I mean, well—
Look at the bright side. It's only 50,000 and not 500.
That's cuz I studied business, not medicine, or law, or anything of the sort. But thank God that's well paid off now. So, what brought you to America? I mean, you know, being an immigrant once, being an immigrant twice is difficult.
You get used to being an immigrant. But more seriously, it was business. I think we built what we could on the technology side and it was time to scale it. And it's really hard. Israel is a very small market, as you all know. And in the United States, it was the right thing for us in order to scale. So, we scaled significantly. We're at a point where the company is already profitable. We're working on different roll-up strategy of acquiring other companies where those opportunities, doing it from so far away in different time differences without meeting the right people and building the relationship, was extremely challenging.
Yeah, I see that. What age was it when you started getting involved with your startup?
I came only three years ago, so pretty recently.
Oh, okay. All right, lovely. Are you adapting well there? You like it there? How often do you fly back?
Well, then Israel had a war, so it's impossible to almost fly back. So, I have a ticket to Israel every three months.
No, but I have board meetings in Europe, and then I decided to myself every three months I'll come and visit. I have three companies in Israel. I need to visit the people.
And family, as I said, this is my biggest love. The problem is it keeps getting cancelled because of the flights. So 25% of my flights were successful. So I was able to come three times in three and a half years pretty much.
Okay, that's frustrating. Why don't we start off with Diagnostic Robotics? I mean, that seems to be the leading thing that I really see about what you're doing among your other companies. Definitely want to touch on the other ones, especially with the AI education. What exactly are you doing over in Diagnostic Robotics? How did you get into your field?
Yeah. So what's very special about us? We're doing neither diagnostics nor robotics. That's really cool. What we're doing is—
I know, I came up with it.
