The Threshold to Success (Larsen, Maniv, Olmert, Milchman, Butcher, Nemessanyi) | DLDTelAviv 15

Thanks again for everybody for joining us. Our panel is Threshold to Success, and obviously success can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. We have the privilege of having a number of different vantage points to what success means and stages on the way to success, both from people like Mooney who you just heard from, who are out there with big ideas and big aspirations, looking to create something not only valuable but also successful from a social perspective. And you have people like Teresa and Mike who look at many folks who are in the struggle to create success, and they learn from and facilitate and try to grow those businesses and those ideas past the concept stage, past the early stage, through some of the synaptic jumps that businesses need to undertake in order to be successful. And then we also have the privilege of having Eldad here who has managed through many of these challenges and has managed through a high degree of growth and the changes that any business as it goes from concept to commercial viability to growth to maturity really needs to grapple with. And there are many, many off-ramps on this process to success, which makes the accomplishment, the getting to that point, that much more impressive, that much more worthy of hearing about. Rather than me spending any more time talking about the people here, I figure that they're much more accomplished in being able to tell you about themselves and about what they're doing and the narrative arc, if you will, of taking an idea, a big idea, a valuable idea, and guiding it through the various stages that it becomes a real transformative product. And with that, I'll turn it over. Maybe since we just heard from Mo, I'll pass the mic to him and if he has anything to add to the remarks he just had, and then we'll pass it down the line and hear from our panel participants as to exactly how they see the world and how they got to where they are and also where, Mo used the word presumption, I use the word aspiration, where you aspire to get to. And I think one of the unifying themes from everybody here is it's very rare that their aspirations are ever fully achieved; they're always thinking of something new, something to add, something more that they can do. And that's really the spirit of getting to the threshold of success. And with that, I'll pass it over to Mo.

Thank you so much. I must tell you that I've been a few minutes ago on this podium and I'm trying to figure out again what I can do and say things that I didn't do before. But this morning I've seen the ex-Israel president Shimon Peres was here and he said that as long as a person has more dreams than his doings, he's still young. When he has more doings than his dreams, he's old. So in that sense, I believe that everyone is young here. They are still young, much more young than I am, and I'm flattered to be with them here. But in any case, let me tell you a little bit about what I do because it might be that few of you haven't been here. I am the CEO of a company who has, during the last three years, been building the capacity of giving everyone in the world the ability of getting to the best hospital they can afford to according to his medical condition, wherever it is in the world, and without being treated in a biased manner. All the information is being handled by us out of the box. We got a certain algorithm which enables us to compare thousands of hospitals all over the world, divide them into small pieces, combine them together, weigh each one of those pieces against the other one, and then to get the verdict where should I go with my not small thing. Most of the people will say big things in order to get my life back. This is what we do. It was a complicated way to do. When I started this way, I tried to find people who can do it for me and said cracking that is like cracking the atom. Nobody can compare a hospital in Thailand with a hospital in the USA and this to Bangladesh and that third one to China. It is possible. We do it today here. So this is where we are. We find that we shall open doors to people who couldn't for themselves, knowing better about what to do about themselves, whether they're Chinese, Turks, Indians, wherever they are. It will be in their language and according to the ability of doing something about that. Thank you.

Hi everyone, I'm Shaul from PlayBuzz. And along the lines of what Eldad just mentioned about the shrinking attention span of users and the challenge to actually consume information on a 4.7-inch device, I really like content and I really appreciate good content and good storytelling. And so I partnered with a couple of smarter people and together we started PlayBuzz, that is a platform that enables the greatest publishers, influencers, storytellers to create content in a format that is optimized for these conditions and get their users back, get their attention, get their engagement, and actually drive meaningful results. I think that also relates to what Eldad mentioned about success requiring adaptation and constant dialogue between the initial vision you started with and the market and how things actually work. I think that what worked really well for us and what I'm most proud of is the fact that we launched with something very lean, we threw it out there, and a little bit later, after more than 40,000 different publishers started using our platform and creating content and driving results, that was the guideline for us on what we need to develop and how we need to morph and evolve what we do in order to super-serve those businesses and their audiences.

Fantastic. Hi everyone, my name is Teresa Nesani. I'm with Microsoft, not nearly as accomplished as these gentlemen over here. What I do is lead what we do with startups in New York, which is a fairly big market. I work with many, many startups. I particularly focus my time on startups that are emerging through the pack to really look like they're doing something special. And if there's some connection to our technology, of course, you know, cloud is huge, it makes us very, very motivated, and me personally very motivated to help find the kind of deals that will turn a small company into a really huge company, because our own distribution channels as well as those of our customers and partners can do things that it might take a very long time for an entrepreneur to do on their own. So I think that sums it up.

I'm Mike Butcher from TechCrunch, where I'm a journalist. And you probably know what TechCrunch is if you're at DLD. If you don't, you're going to have to leave the room. We'll have you shot outside. I don't quite know why I'm on this panel, but I might as well be here. I think what we should talk about really is not success but failure. So I think most of the time entrepreneurs are actually not so much on the brink of success but more on the brink of not failing. And anyway, if you want to tweet my photo, my mom will be really happy if you tweet my photo. So I want to pick that up later on, showing my parents that I actually have done something with my life. Thank you.

Go on, go for it. Well, thanks everybody for giving a little bit of background on yourself. And Mike's here because he's the collision of old media and new media. That's why there's five of us and one of him, so he's got us outnumbered from that perspective. I think one of the ideas I'd like to maybe bring out for Mike and Shaul, when you look at, you know, Mike, when you're looking at an industry, people who are trying to avoid failure, or a very journalistic way to phrase it, or trying to achieve success, a very entrepreneurial way of phrasing it, what I'd really like, Mike, maybe if you could speak briefly of when you probably see as many diverse ideas as anybody here, going all the way across sectors, stages, and maybe you could speak a little bit about things that are warning signs to you that say, gosh, I've seen this type of approach, I've never seen it work, or pathways that people have taken that you feel that they may be on the right path. If there are things, pitfalls that people can avoid, or things you really need to do, you know, sort of I guess is what I call the basic cost of entry to get into this conversation before even someone like Teresa will even talk to you.

Oh, actually, that's actually an extremely good question. Yesterday I was a traitor to DLD and I didn't come at all, and I sat in meetings about 40 companies, one after the other, after which I needed a very stiff drink. But what I actually was interested, I was thinking while I was doing that, that a lot of the time entrepreneurs, the most successful, you know, if you're going to talk about success or failure, the most successful are the ones who listen. And when I have seen, there is a particular one or two business models out there that I have seen try and try and try again. You know, entrepreneurs try something and it doesn't work. Now when I see someone pitch me something I know has not worked time and time again, and I tell them, look buddy, this isn't going to work. You've got to change, you've got to pivot, you've got to re-engineer this. Look, here are the three examples of companies that failed, they threw money at this stuff and it didn't work. And when that person goes, yeah but we've got something different, I go, I know, look, I know you got a lot of self-belief. You have to have a lot of self-belief in an entrepreneur. A lot of entrepreneurs are actually a bit psychologically screwed up, to be honest with you. They have so much self-belief that basically they're just going to punch through because they're working in an innovation space, they're trying to do something absolutely brand new, which is super, super tough. You've got to have tons of self-belief, but you've also got to listen. If you don't listen, you won't learn. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it, correct? And so I think that being an entrepreneur, you've got to listen, and that's the way you'll succeed. If you build a team around you that allows you to listen and allows you to be the kind of person to be better, you know, the better person than you can be, then that's going to work. But if you are pigheaded and don't keep going, keep going when there's so much evidence that what you're doing isn't going to work, then you know, that ain't going to happen.

Right, that's a great... oh yeah, absolutely, let's get interactive here. Totally agree with you. And you know, probably 95% of the entrepreneurs that I talk to, you know, I see a lot, so I well, did you think about this? I've seen this fail, I've seen this fail. It's very rare that they choose to take that bit of context. But they are hearing advice from many, many, many different people. And I think listening to the right people or figuring out what's fact and what's fiction, what's hype. I mean, if you believe everything that you're reading, not in TechCrunch, if it's in TechCrunch it's ace, but just generally speaking, there's so much hype in the market. And I have often seen a real difference between what I'm sort of generally hearing and then when the facts are in front of us based on some sort of reality or documentation.

I'm going to come back on that. I think you're right, and it just occurred to me, sometimes people say, you know, you got to be the right place, the right time, right person, right place, right time to be successful. And I think also at the same time you got to listen to the right people and listen at the right time to the right information. And entrepreneurs, it's so tough for entrepreneurs because you're absolutely right, they get so much incoming, so much advice from advisors, from their team, and trying to filter that, super tough. You've got to be that sort of a person who's going to be able to go pick out one piece of information that's actually going to work. And I think that's, you know, can you learn that skill or do you have to be born with it? I don't know, that's the eternal question.

I was, with your permission, I will represent the entrepreneurial angle for it and say that I'm all for listening. At the same time, you know, I think as an entrepreneur when you come up with a concept, with a vision and an idea, rest assured that 95 if not 100% of the people are going to tell you you're wrong. And it's okay, you know, if these people really had the crystal ball that told them what the future would look like, they would be working on a startup rather than writing on those who do it. And I think you need to be respectful for people with experience and listen for advice. At the same time, if you're really convinced in the vision, there's no other way to validate it other than going on that journey and be attentive and listen and figure out that the tactics may change, the product may look different, the business model may be different, the tactics may change, they usually do, you know, statistically in all of our experiences they did. At the same time, you know, if you really subscribed to the vision and you really feel like there's a need in the market for what you're doing, there are ways to accomplish it. So you know, I think that without taking away from listening to other people's advice, you also got to trust yourself that maybe just maybe you are the right person at the right time and you need to take a crack at it.

I would like to say something about that. And there's nothing more joyful than being proven wrong, honestly. There's nothing more incredible than being proven wrong. I want to tell you something, I don't believe that you can become an entrepreneur without believing something the others don't know. It's a fact of life, otherwise the others will be the entrepreneur and you're going to be the ones or followers. So being an entrepreneur is something that is built in in you. You can get all the information in the world and they decide upon yourselves. And if somebody is following you, it's okay. If they don't, you try to change the world. This is the idyllic way of an entrepreneur. And of course listening is fantastic. Whom to listen to is another question. So the right way is to listen, but still you need to take the will in your hands, otherwise others will take it.

Can I ask a follow-up? My job is becoming extraordinarily easy. It's a hot day right before lunch and I've started a food fight. I see such a difference between first-time entrepreneurs and serial entrepreneurs, in large part their ability to cut through the noise and have the conviction and know when they should have that conviction. Do you feel that... so you're not a first-time entrepreneur. Well, maybe, you know, I'd love to get Eldad's perspective here because he's probably managed through some of these challenges and has... and to get your, you know, how did you filter out the advice that was valuable, the advice that was inconsistent to what you initially held beliefs were, and how did you embrace some of that? Because I think that is critical in any business, whether you're at the early stage or how, you know, unsolicited advice is extraordinarily plentiful and how do you manage it?

Now that's, I think, very interesting. I'd love to, Teresa, just to get a sense, you see so many different businesses and try to, you know, put that in a little bit of context. How often when you see a business and it's a reasonably early stage, are they still with their initial idea or has that idea evolved a little or a lot? And then when you look at the companies that you work with that have been successful and you compare it back to what you first saw, how much evolution in that idea has been? And is it driven by outside advice or is it driven by, as Shaul and Eldad, Mo have mentioned, just reacting to a vision and adapting your vision to circumstances on the ground, which is really as much an internally generated response as opposed to advice from the outside?

Sure. So, you know, any time I meet with an entrepreneur, hopefully it's not just one shot in time, but it's, you know, across an arc that's changing a lot. I would say probably 100% have changed one way or another. I mean, you know, there's the adage that no product survives contact with the market. And I think that, you know, whatever advice you're getting from anyone, the facts are the facts. And, you know, if the market is picking it up, then, you know, think about doubling down or figuring out how you can scale it or do more of that. If it's not, you don't have a business, period, the end. So I think that entrepreneurs that start showing that they have the stamina to withstand this market feedback and figure out what to do with the assets they have, you know, they extend their runway a little more, extend it a little bit more, and then hopefully, you know, they take flight in time. But probably, I don't know if I could think of a startup that stuck on their initial premise.

I would say that this stage in a young company's life where you're beginning to get advice is a very crucial and interesting junction. I remember when we were very early on at PlayBuzz, one of the world's largest media companies approached us. They just sent an email through our website, and when I just saw their name, you know, receiving an email from me, I was so excited. And they said, you know, we love what you do, we really believe in it, we want to work with you, but, you know, we want to use it in a different context. We want you to alter your system to do this and that. And it was very hard to say no, but essentially had we said yes, you know, we would never be where we are today. You know, it's like you really got to make the filter. I guess I want to suggest to people about taking advice is aligning it back with the vision and say, does it serve that vision? Is it just a technical thing that, you know, I may get a press release that I'm working with that company or, you know, I may make a few dollars, or is it really something that aligns with what I want to do long term? And if it's the former and not the latter, you know, the best advice will be to let it go, because you only have so many bullets at that stage and you got to be very, very precise and very, very focused about what you put your money on.

Yeah, I agree. And I think that making the wrong decision at that stage, an early stage company, can basically kill the company, totally kill it. And many often I see entrepreneurs say, you know, we're going to try something and, you know, if it doesn't work, we're going to go into white labeling, we're going to white label the product or something like that. And I just said, what on Earth are you talking about? Like white labeling, like you're five minutes old, you know. Usually white labeling something is, you know, the sign of a death, effectively.

But it's funny, isn't it? I mean, entrepreneurs are often like scientists, they're actually doing experiments to work out whether something's going to succeed or fail or not. And it's that sort of many, many experiments. And my father's a scientist, God knows where the brains went, certainly didn't go to me. But you're doing many different sort of failure experiments to see what will work, you know.

I would like to tell something. Being an entrepreneur doesn't mean that you're stupid. It means that you have dreams and you can change dreams and you can see how it works, what could be altered in order to get better results. So you need to have the basic belief in what you do, but you can change tactics from one time to time. And this is what a good entrepreneur needs to do, change the technique, add the technique in accordance to the circumstances. So if you are referring to that, I'm totally with you. You need to be there, flexible enough, adapt yourself to the market, understand what the market demands from you and change variation according to that. But then basically you need to feel what you believe in. You cannot change your belief every day. So this is the basic principle according to what I am going to.

I love Shaul's example. It actually really sums it up, right? Because when you're early, that first really big deal is exactly the moment when both what you are and what you hope are sort of exactly the same thing, at least from a perception standpoint. So if you signed that deal, you then would become the company that is a division of the big company, or you're one that serves those big companies, but not your own thing. And so if in that moment what that deal is, if that is what you will be, then you're okay, take the deal, do it, you know, and double down because it's going to suck up 110% of your resources to fulfill it, right? You know, or are you going to make that really tough decision that you made and walk away? I mean, that's like, that's the human moment of entrepreneurship that separates the proverbial boys from the men, if you will.

If I may ask, I may make your job even more obsolete and, you know, take on the moderation and ask Eldad, you know, really curious, what does it really, you know, realistically, how can you foster this kind of innovation and flexibility in a company that's worth, you know, north of a billion dollars and has hundreds of employees and is a market leader? And, you know, being at that size, at that scale, how can you really take such spontaneous turns and experimentation when, you know, you're riding such a big ship?

And I think, Eldad, you bring out a really, I think, critical point in this arc of growth. And you think about, at what point in time do the skill set of the visionaries, the people who are willing to not listen to 95% of the people telling them what to do, the willingness to turn down an opportunity like Shaul, at what point in time do their skills become an impediment, or do their skills have an inherent blind spot in the ability to scale, to grow, to professionalize? You now have lots of customers, you have an opportunity to commercialize, to take that step. I mean, it'd be very interesting to hear from you, Eldad, you know, some of the human capital challenges internal to your company, because many of the people who are there at the beginning, who are the most passionate believers, are people that are harder to rein, harder to systematize when you go from small and concept to scale.

And maybe, Shaul, you could build on that just in terms not only of the human capital but the culture. You know, there's a very different, in my experience, there is a very different type of personality and culture that gets created as the business moves on, because the people that Eldad are talking about who are more process-oriented, more systematic, they generally turn out to be very quickly the larger number of your employees. And so the leadership may be more entrepreneurial, where the execution folk, which tend to be a higher number of people, you know, I'd love to see how in your experience how you dealt with that challenge.

So, you know, I'll have to disappoint you and say I don't have a recipe for that. I'm battling with those exact challenges these days. We grew, PlayBuzz grew from 15 people to 87 in the past 12 months. So we've been, you know, extensively hiring, opening offices around the world, recruiting new teams, changing roles, responsibilities, defining new processes. And it's very hard to strive for perfection. It's not about perfecting a machine that does execute everything flawlessly. It's really about identifying who are the leaders of each domain, who are the people that take ownership, that take initiative, that drive things, and giving them a sense of direction and, you know, pretty much let them drive it. I think it changes a lot when it gets to the multi-hundred number of employees, like Eldad is facing, and, you know, definitely when it gets to Microsoft size or whatever. But, you know, it's more of an art than science. It's about communication. And I think the role of the person that started the company or that runs the company is a lot about making sure that everybody's crystal clear on the vision, on what we're trying to do, but giving them the freedom to interpret, you know, what does that mean and what are the decisions in terms of execution and priorities that need to be taken in order to serve this uber vision.

Oh, Mike, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say one word, like from the press media angle, is that I think there has been, started to see some high-profile failures in the market. There's a company just sort of literally shut down just overnight in the US. I won't name this case a second, but, you know, high-profile entrepreneur, lots of media buzz, appearing on stage at all the conferences, next day, bang. A company called Shopperr last week, the last two weeks in London, raised a million, all of a sudden basically dead overnight because either somebody's just like not taking care of business, basically. And I think there are entrepreneurs out there who, you know, will become high-profile and basically become in love with being in the media. And we don't mind that because the media is the media, right? You know, the journalists like to write about high-profile hot spaces and hot entrepreneurs and all those kinds of things. But, you know, we're not in charge of your business, you are, right? So if you don't stick to your knitting, you know, things might go south.

And maybe I would, I guess the discussion has consumed most of the time that we have here. I know I had mentioned at the outset that, you know, I would turn it over to the audience to see if they have any questions for the panelists, which I will do so now, to see if you can shoehorn your questions in so we don't take up the next panel's time. And so with that, if anybody would like to ask any one of our panelists questions and react to anything they said, I'm sure they'd all welcome the opportunity to speak to you directly.

Right, let's do a survey question, shall we? Like, no, no, let's, we need to go ask them something. Like, how many people here have... what's a good question? How many people here are going to basically become a billion-dollar unicorn in the next two years? Put your hand up. One, two, three, four, five, six. Six, right. The Israeli economy just tripled, which is good news. Goodness me, please see me later. How many people here have been part of something that, you know, they thought would be amazing and in the end it just didn't happen? Go on, come on, hold up. Good for you, good for you. It's all part of the journey, right?

Indeed, indeed. I don't know if any of the panelists have any sort of final closing remarks, other than that I will thank everybody.

I was thrilled to be here with such successful people here. This panel is the road to unicorn, so I've been here with people that I have to touch, maybe will become, it will be contingent and she become also a unicorn. I'm sure that we shall meet again everyone with his dreams and the way that he tries to do business. And it's so fantastic to see people and to see how they achieve whatever they've done. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Am I remiss to not invite you all to the Microsoft Gallery as well? It's very cool. Free drinks, free food, come see us there.