PLUGGEDIN

In episode 10 I sit down with Shaul Olmert Co-founder & CEO of Playbuzz and learn how a deep introspective look at his career had him start Playbuzz.

So how does a kid from Jerusalem who started out as a teacher end up creating and running one of the largest content creation companies in the market? It all started back as a teach where he met his co-founder and former student Tom Pachys and years of working at startups, entertainment companies, gaming companies and the growing frustration with where his career path was going. By taking a deep look at himself and his career Shaul realized that he needed to follow his passion and create something, which led to Playbuzz.

Shaul opens up on the many challenges he faced from almost running out of money early on, doubling down when the future looked bleak and how success happened by accident early on. Most impressive though was the loyalty he showed to his first lead investor Danny Cohen from Viola ventures (formerly Carmel Ventures) who gave them terms before they saw any traction and easily could have gotten better terms after their viral success on their demo product led them to see over 20M users on their site within 4 months.

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In episode 11, I sit down with Sagi Schliesser CEO & Co-founder of TabTale one of the largest mobile gaming companies in the world with over 2 Billion downloads. Years of experience from 8 years in the army, 10 years in B2B led Sagi to follow his passion and creativity to create TabTale. TabTale was not an overnight success, it took a number of years to find the right formula and a big commitment from Sagi who sold his apartment to continue to build and grow TabTale. Now it has 5 offices around the world with their mobile games regularly breaking the top 10 in the app store. This episode has so much more as Sagi goes into their marketing strategies, company culture, and most of all what Sagi wanted to be when he was 15.

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In episode 12, I sit down with Yaron Samid, a serial entrepreneur who already built 2 successful startups on Pando & Desksite took an idea he had after finding a weird credit card charge which led him to create BillGuard a “collective brain” of credit card charges needed to be created to warn people about common grey charges. Yaron’s journey to a successful exit was long, hard, and fun from his really short stint at Edelman PR after college, to Forman Interactive (Register.com), Backweb, Desksite, Pando and finally BullGuard. Yaron’s career originally started in marketing and moved to product marketing and management which he realized made him a better founder and one that gave him a better perspective on running a business.

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In episode #13, I sit down with Yoni Assia, CEO & Founder of eToro, the worlds leading social trading platform. So how did Yoni take his passion for finance from his teenage years and build a company that in 2018 had 1 Trillion in trading and 1 Billion in customer deposits? It wasn’t done alone, he had great investors like Guy Gamzu who was an early lead investor and was critical in creating an organizational structure that has helped the company grow, it now has 620 employees worldwide. He keeps employees happy by giving them equity and looks to hir jr. people who look to grow. The culture he has built has been infectious and has helped them grow to over 10 million users and 60% growth in revenues the past 2 years. In fact they are looking to hire 150 people in 2019 and have their sites on global domination.

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In episode #14 I sit down with Yosef “Gary” Levitt, former CEO & Founder of MadMimi which was acquired by GoDaddy for $45M. The road to success was anything but easy as Yosef’s journey started on a farm in South Africa to becoming a pro-skateboarder and bass player, getting a scholarship to a music college in the US, working as a Busboy in SOHO, playing at wedding, getting married, moving to Jerusalem and building MadMimi into one of the best email platforms for artists and small businesses. This interview with Gary Levitt is one of the most incredible and inspiring I have ever heard. W/o any formal education Gary was able to produce music for The Oprah Winfrey Show, teaching himself HTML from a book, and so much more. This interview will make you realize that you too can start a company and the only one holding you back is yourslef.

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In episode #15 I sit with Avner Halperin, CEO of EarlySense a medtech company that is at the forefront of Digital health. EarlySense developed a software and sensor that remotely monitors patients’ sleep and movement when placed under a mattress. Crazy! I know as it’s one of the more effective non-invasive patient-monitoring systems, in fact it saved over 3,000 lives in 2018 and is now in over 1M beds.

So how did Avner build EarlySense to be one of the largest MedTech companies out of Israel? Listen to find out, but in the meantime here things you will learn in this episode.

1. What proverbial wall did EarlySense hit? How did they overcome it before it killed them?
2. What challenge did EarlySense overcome w/ first product?
3. Diversity within the company as they have 13 languages spoken in the office and employees ages range from 17-77.
4. Market Research!! Critical to their sucess- EarlySense spent months in hospitals listening to the needs of users-i.e. medical professionals
5. Leveraged experts in field to prove value and generate proof points.
6. How did EarlySense penetrate & sell to US Hopitals?

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In episode 16, I sat down with Dennis Crowley, co-founder, former CEO, & Executive chairman of Foursquare to talk about the beginnings of his career in tech and how he took his passion of bringing people together into Foursquare. However, before founding the geolocation company in 2009, he had a less than ideal experience selling his previous startup, Dodgeball, to Google in 2005. That experience led to the creation of Foursquare as the leader in geolocation data for enterprises and the fun app for consumers and is now used by more than 50 million people every month.

Here are some of the other topics discussed in this episode:
– How many things did Dennis fail at? (8:20)
– What was the grad thesis project that Dennis write in Syracuse?
– Why the lack of infrastructure hurt the first fundraising round?
– What advice did Andreessen Horowitz give to Dennis that helped them grow?
– Had no idea how popular Foursquare would be
– When did he realize that Foursquare needed a new CEO (19:30)
– How did the pivot into a location data company come to be?
– What does Dennis do in his spare time?
– What did Dennis want to be at 15?
– What hack does Dennis recommend to keep himself organized?

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In episode 17, I sit with Sarah Hofstetter one of the more accomplished executives in the Digital Media Space. Sarah’s story shows what hard work, creativity, perseverance, and good timing can lead to. Sarah is currently President of Comscore but her first job was as an intern at the NYTimes where she learned the art of storytelling. One of the key lessons she learnt early on was the importance of communication within the company and how the absence if it allows false narratives to be created. Here are a few more things you will learn when you listen to the podcast;
– How did she get started at 360i
– What led Sarah to become CEO
– What 3 traits did Sarah instill at 360i (Passion, Purpose, Persistence)
– Why was her first pitch at 360i was or Living w/ ED (hysterical story)
– Why Comscore?
– What keeps Sarah on top of her game?
– What hack does she do and recommends- hint: it’s waterproof

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In episode #18 I sit down with Ziv Elul, CEO of Fyber a leading mobile adtech company in Israel and beyond. Ziv’s story is pretty amazing from a career in the IDF to an MBA at Hebrew U where he took a thesis project on In-Game Advertising and built it into one of the hottest adtech startups with friend and co-founder Offer Yehudai.

So what led him to this path, what lessons did he learn from IDF that prepared him to be CEO of a multinational company. All excellent questions and you will learn the answers when you listen to the podcast. When you listen you will also hear how he raised his first round of funding, got his first client, started getting traction, why he pivoted the company (21:00), what he looks for in employees, why he looks forward to Shabbat.

Listen and enjoy but most of all don’t forget to give a positive rating in iTunes, Google, etc.

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In episode #19 I sit down with Omer Keilaf, CEO of Innoviz on of the hottest companies in the autonomous vehicle sector. Omer finally realized his dream of being a CEO after spending years helping 3 different startups succeed to the point where he co-founded Innoviz in 2016. Omer took an idea and in 3 weeks raised $9M and the rest is history. He brought in 20 employees and started to build the product out, over that time tInnoviz has grown to over 200 people with $182M raised to date. In this podcast you will also learn the following: – How long did it take Omer to raise capital? – What is Lidar? – When did Omer realize Innoviz was going to be HUGE? – Why was CES ’17 a pivotal point for Innoviz? (17:00) – How did a startup land a partnership w/ BMW – What did he want to be at 15? – Productivity- what hack does he suggest for others? (41:00)

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