Tal Jacobson, CEO, Perion, (Stock Symbol: $PERI) Shared Timeless Advice...

Thank you, Adam, and thanks for having me.

Yeah, absolutely. So I've started my journey in 1997 at a company called Macromedia, a company who invented Flash, which you know most of the web until maybe 10 or 15 years ago were based on. And I worked there for six years and was acquired by Adobe, and then moved from there to AOL, part of ICQ. Again, trying to figure out how do we grow the company, how do we grow an instant messaging company, basically back then with no funds. And the idea was, you know, we can go into all those news portals around the world, provide them with our technology of instant messaging, they would promote that, and we would share the ads. And you know what, turned out to be an amazing strategy because after like a year and a half or so, we've made like 45 million dollars in revenue. So that was a big success. Then managed a company in the US, came back, was part of the mechanics on the management team, you know, so I learned a lot about how agencies think. Then part of the founding team of a company called SimilarWeb, which you know, we were like five people in the room trying to figure out, okay, so what do we build now? Four years forward, we're like 600 people, you know, raised over 100 million dollars, and again, the company was IPO'd like two years ago. And now in the past five years, I've been part of Perion. Again, a great turnaround. I was managing the search division, rebuilt the Microsoft relationship, we got awards for being the biggest supply partner of Microsoft. And now since, you know, we announced it at the beginning of the year, but officially two months ago, I became the CEO of the company. And that's, you know, in a nutshell, my 26 years.

Yeah, absolutely. So at the end of the day, you know, Perion is, I think it's very easy what we do. It's hard, the mechanics is hard, but the story is easy. So everything we do is basically connect advertisers with their consumers, and we do that through technology. So we're not a lot of people, roughly around 500 people, but our entire goal is how do we build more technology to connect advertisers with consumers. We do that through, you know, we have publisher solutions with video, display, high impact. We have advertiser solutions, you know, we have a division called Undertone which works with all the biggest agencies in the US with the biggest brands, and we're building the creatives. And we have the search division. And we basically do and combine all that technology in one place, one centralized place, and then we get all those insights that can help us grow into different segments, right? And a lot of time we would invent our own technology in-house or we would buy that, right? So we actually been working on CTV technology in the past two or three years, which grew very nicely. We've built our retail technology, which grew very nicely. But sometimes we will just buy a company. So we bought, like two years ago, we bought a company named VideoZoom, which provides, you know, display and video solutions for websites, and it grows very, very fast. And you know, a lot of publishers, content publishers love them. We're getting more and more clients. It works great.

Right. Well, that's a great question, and I want to go back to what you just said, you know, with Darwin, it's not the strongest species that survived, it's the species that's adjusting to change the fastest, right? And again, I think the fact that we're such a small company in the amount of employees and everything is based on technology, we can do very fast changes. I love it. And I think a lot of companies just, they fall in love with the angle they took or with the technology they've built, and they're not moving fast enough, they're not changing what they've built fast enough. And that's what I've seen in the past 26 years. I was part of ICQ, and back then we thought we were positive that the only threat we have is Microsoft Messenger. Microsoft Messenger, none of those companies exist anymore, right? None of those products. I mean, nobody could actually see that Facebook is going to come and messaging is going to move into social, right? And I think that that's the only thing that people need to remember: can you change fast enough? And do you have the mentality within your management to change, not fall in love with solutions that worked in the past but are not going to work in the future.

You know, I think, you know, going back like 25 years ago, there are two things. One is when I worked at Macromedia, you know, 25 years or 26 years ago, the internet wasn't that sophisticated back then, right? And we had people selling those software which were basically a box with a book and a CD. And we had to call all those companies, you know, newspapers or web developers, and to try to sell them that. And you know what I've done is I've built a software that can automatically send faxes overnight to all those companies. And you know, thinking about it now, that sounds kind of primitive, sending faxes, right? But that was basically performance marketing in 1997, and we've made millions of dollars from performance marketing over faxes. You know, I would never do that again now with faxes, but again, what I've learned is marketing is always the same, channels might change, but if you can identify the message and the audience and how to get to it as fast as possible, then you know, that's the key. And the second thing is, you know, like again, 25 years ago, I was young and I was in charge of messaging and stuff like that, and I accidentally sent a message, an email promotion to all our clients, but I accidentally sent it, everybody saw their own, everybody else's email, right? It wasn't BCC, it wasn't CC, and everybody got pissed, the customers. Again, that took like 24 hours and then everybody forgot about it. But during that time, because I was so young, you know, I came to the CEO of the company, I said, you know, I quit because I've made that big of a mistake. And he said, you know, only people that actually do things make mistakes. So, you know, don't beat yourself too much. You know, mistakes are natural, it means that you actually did something. And his response, you know, was so motivating. And I follow the same things, you know, when people make mistakes, and if they own the mistake, and that's great. You know, I don't want people to make mistakes, but at least if they own it and they learn from that, I think that's the best way to grow.

Timeless mistakes, except for the other one, not making those mistakes, yeah, just staying back. I love it. Listen, you know, I think everybody's making mistakes. Everybody would wish they have a time machine going back and fixing things. I think making mistakes is natural. I think making mistakes, if you learn from it, that's totally fine. And I think great entrepreneurs are the ones who are not afraid of making mistakes, and they should embrace it.

You know, from my experience, when I worked, you know, from other CEOs, I think what separated the most powerful CEOs and successful CEOs from others is their ability to lead. I think the word leadership, if used correctly, it's actually leading people by example, right? Showing them the ways, showing them your vision, making sure they have the right tools, they have, you know, everything they need to succeed, and if they don't succeed, teach them how to. You know, I've worked in so many different companies. Some CEOs were great leaders, some CEOs were not, unfortunately, like you would expect statistically. But again, you know, set an example, have a clear vision, have clear KPIs of what you think is successful, and teach people how to get there. Don't expect people to actually know how to get there, and surround yourself with people that can actually grow.

At least, I think in general, being a CEO is only dealing with challenges, right? Nobody comes to you when things work, right? You never heard about things that go... Nobody calls you in the morning and say, you know, today everything works perfect. You don't get those phone calls, right? It's only things that don't work, right? And you need to be very resilient about, you know, getting 20 new challenges, 20 new risk factors today, and to make sure, you know, you can handle that, you can make fast decisions with clear KPIs. Okay, so this is what happened, this is what we need to do, let's see if that works. And to stay calm, because at the end of the day, if a CEO gets nervous, everybody else loses it, right? We want to make sure you stay calm, you have the answers. If you don't have the answer, you know, that's also fine. Say, you know what, I don't have the answer, but I think that's the right way to go. Let's see if that works. I think people appreciate that.

Well, I think, you know, there's a rule saying that the most simple answer is usually the right one. So don't overcomplicate the answers. If you're looking for an answer, it usually is the simplest one, right? If you believe in a company, you know, go with it. If you believe in a story, if you believe in the product, if you believe in an industry, you should be with it. Don't do things you don't believe in. And again, don't try to figure out overcomplicated answers. If the answer is overcomplicated, it's usually not the right answer.

Thank you.