Pivoting to Financial Clarity - Didi Gurfinkel - Datarails - Episode #91

We've met our prospect and we had to convince them to change.

Welcome to Not Another CEO Podcast. I'm your host, David Politis. Every week we talk to inspiring leaders and get the true stories, the ups and downs, the lessons learned, and come away with actionable advice for our own journeys. Today's guest is Didi Gerfinkel, co-founder and CEO of Datarails. Datarails is a platform that automates data consolidation, forecasting, and reporting without forcing finance teams to change how they work. He's been building the company for over a decade, but like many enduring businesses, Datarails didn't find product-market fit overnight. Didi spent years iterating and listening to customers before things really started to click. The patience has paid off in a big way. Over the last 5 years, their growth has accelerated and they're on their way to $100 million in ARR. The company has raised $180 million from top-tier investors, including OnePeak, Zev Ventures, Vertex, and Qumra. Please welcome Didi to the show. Hey Didi, thank you for joining.

Hi, it's a pleasure to be here.

Um, I'm excited. We're gonna kick it off with the question I ask every guest. The first question, what is the one thing that you've done big or small, at DataRails that's had the biggest impact and you would do again if you're CEO of another company in the future?

So I think it's the easiest question ever. I mean, it's having the right co-founders. I think it's the one thing that makes the difference from success to failure. And we are 11 years together. From 2015, ups and downs, arguing all the time, but building a company and have fun together. We are also good friends and sharing time together, having fun together. So I would say this is the 95% of the success is that.

How many co-founders are there?

3 co-founders.

And how did you find, did you work together before or I think you were at Cisco before, did you work together there or?

No, we've met first, I met Oded Hortal, our CTO. I told him we are going to connect all the Excel files in the world into one centralized database and he looked at me and back then I didn't, know him very well, so I thought he's dreaming or something, but now I know that this is the way he digests. And he said after 45 minutes, he said, I'm in. And we started to work together. And then Eyal, now he's responsible actually for everything, but now he focuses mainly on the product. And he joined us a few months later. And since then we are dancing together.

Wow. And how, so you talk about, you know, 45 minutes and he says, hey, I'm in. And how long before you knew that he was the person, that they were the people? Like how did you date, you know, quote unquote date for some period of time before getting married or it was? Pretty quick? Because I just, I asked that because I've interviewed a number of people who've actually broken up with their co-founders within a year, you know, a year, two years, three. And most of them say we didn't date long enough, you know, upfront.

Yeah. So, so yeah, it is a challenge. And I came from a software engineering background. So I had the tools or the skills to evaluate the technical level of a person or how smart the potential co-founder. So I had no doubt that that is the right fit. And what I felt, or the connection or the friendship, so the personal connection that we had in the first meeting, the same sense of humor, the sense, you know, maybe the cynical way to look at the world, you said, okay, this is a guy that I believe we can run together for, and with the challenges, and you know, for a long way. And apparently I was right. I'm not so good in picking people. I mean, I usually let the HR, and because I'm very impressed from very specific skills. And I forgot to check other aspects, but with all that, it was a great success. And with Eyal, and yeah, and Eyal also, we had like, in the Israeli tech community, it's very, very supportive in the way the people can meet each other and introduction between people and out of the blue, one of my advisors said, okay, Eyal is here. He just left WalkMe. He founded WalkMe before he started Datavails and he left WalkMe and he's looking for another venture and we founded together and yeah, it was amazing.

Amazing. I mean, to be together still at this point is, let me ask another question now from the people that I've talked to who are still together with their founders over a decade. I've had a couple of those guests on the show. The founders have moved roles sometimes, you know, is, has that happened at DataRails or has everyone kind of been in the same role from the beginning?

Yeah. So, so the CTO is very easy. The CTO starts from doing everything, engineering everything, and then focus more and more on the edge technology aspects, architecture, and being like the advisor for the VP R&D. This is easy. I think it's pretty stable. I myself, naturally as a CEO, you cannot compare the job of a CEO in the company without revenue, the company with tens of millions of revenue. So I moved inside the CEO role. Of course, I changed my everything. And Eyal, he's like the Swiss Army knife.

Swiss Army knife, yeah.

He's so talented with execution and operation that he built our go-to-market and then we moved it to the CRO. Then he built our customer success and then he built the product. So he is the inbound guide. He runs the day-to-day operation and the day-to-day projects. And I'm busy with speaking with people like you, with the presenter of the company, unfortunately.

Not Another CEO. So I want to talk a little bit about the journey because, you know, it's based on the conversations we've had and what I understand, the first 5 years were not up into the right, you know, and it took some time before you found that trajectory that you're on today. Can you maybe talk about when you started the company and what the idea was for the product? Then and just that first 5, let's start with the first 5 years of the challenging years, like what was going on in those years?

Yeah, it's an understatement that the first 5 years was, it was pretty tough. Yeah, we started the company. I worked in Cisco and I got into Cisco as part of acquisition of a company that I was a CEO in this company. Anyway, I spent a few years in Cisco. And when I left Cisco with a mission to solve the Excel hell problem, okay, it's a huge company, endless spreadsheets, so many processes that instead of running in systems run on Excel, it looked to me very even ridiculous. So I said, okay, I have engineering background. I am pretty good in architecture. And I said, okay, let's connect all the organizational spreadsheets into one centralized database. That was the concept. And I thought that once we do that, everything will be amazing because it's amazing, right? You have all the data in one database. The organization has the full control on the data. You have consolidation, you have analysis, you have compliance, you have so many things and you have huge market. There are 1 billion Excel users in the world. And you see, I already, I remember the pitch from those days. And I went out of Cisco and started to raise money and it was not easy, but it was okay to raise the first money because I, If I have one skill, it's to convince people. This is something that I know that I do pretty well. And I was able to convince two early investors that I'm on something, okay? And we raised like a million dollars or so. And we started to build the technology. We built the platform, made two patents, take Excel data into database. Amazing, really amazing, very unique. And we had something that we thought this is the best technology ever. And then I put the hat of the salesman and started to sell. What did I sell? I didn't know. I just get into the customer's office and say, okay, I have, what is your problem? You have Excel, right? Okay, what is the way? Consolidation? Okay, I can solve it. We have a data integrity issue. Okay, I can solve it. We have this process that it's too, okay, we can solve it. It was like, and it was true because if you take Excel and database, you can solve anything. But it was, and I don't know if I would say luckily or the opposite, I was able to bring or to win some, a few customers from large insurance companies. With the use case of compliance and some financial companies in terms with a consolidation and some companies with the data collection and few use cases, customers. So we thought that we are on something because every new customer, okay, this is a use case, this is a use case. And, but we couldn't grow. I mean, we didn't be able to create any repetitive process. Every sale was a nightmare, a nightmare. And year after year that we feel that we are on something because the feedback from the customers, wow, this is amazing. I can do with this, that, that. The feedback was super, super strong, but we couldn't translate this feedback to real revenue. So year after year, and you know, the money is run over. So I have to go again to my investor and say, look, we are on something here. Believe me, we are on something. We just need to find the crack. We are on something. So another million. And we raised almost $10 million with almost no revenue, just by maybe providing soft evidence of potential, potential technology, potential impact, potential market, and we pivoted Maybe 4 or 5 times with, from different use cases to other use cases, different ICPs, company size. It was such a long, difficult, fascinating process.

How long was this period?

5 years.

How long was it?

5 years.

So in this 5-year period, how, how did you keep yourself motivated? Like when you're in that kind of a period, it is not easy to be a founder or CEO. Like it's exhausting no matter what, even if you're, even if you're doing amazing. So the question is, in a period like that, how did you, how did you keep going? How did you have the energy to yourself personally or you and your co-founders? Like how did you guys keep doing that?

I started the company at age of 42. It means that I have one shot, right? It's not, you found the company in age of 30, 35, you have another chance. I knew that this is my last shot, the only and last and only shot. So I didn't have even the thought in my mind that it won't succeed. I was 100% sure that something will come up with this idea or with this concept.

So, and how were you able to keep the team, the broader team? Because you had people, like, how were you able to keep them motivated?

This is the challenge. And I think that what made it happen, what makes it possible, is to not run away from the reality and to look very, very, in a very, you know, honest and brutal truth on what is going well, or more, and what doesn't go well. And when people see that you are not just envisioning or use your imagination or just making up stories, but you're actually very authentic, very look at the reality. Sometimes it's tough because it's brutal, but you look at the reality, but still keep the the long term or the vision or the optimism, I think it helps people to believe that you believe. And once people believe that I believe, that I'm really, really true and honest about my belief, I think this is what gave me the, I would say, the ability to continue to lead the company, even though sometimes we were lost in the desert. When we pivot 3 times or 4 times in 2 years or 3 years, you need every time not only convince them about the new pivot, but also convince them that we were wrong about the previous pivot, right? Because sometimes they are still motivated about the past pivot and you need to say, no, you spend time. Actually, no, it's funny, but you spend time on—

Such a good point. It's such a good point.

Because they say, no, it will work. You see, we have this customer and this customer and this customer are happy, but you know that this is not the right direction and you are wasting time and money. So we need to pivot. But say, no, it's good. It's good. No, it's not good. Why? Because 1, 2, 3. And then You need to convince them again that—

It's such a good point.

Yeah.

It's such a good point. Um, that lesson for founders is really, is really important because again, very few companies start and then they just go off to the races. Yes, there are some, but very few. And the way you just described that, I think that for a lot of founders, they either put their head down. And keep running their head against the wall and their team's head against the wall and everything because this is what we said we're gonna do. And then others are pivoting so quickly, not communicating with their team, not, you know, and there's this balance where it's, yeah, this is the reality of where we are today. I love that this is where we are today. This is where I want to go. And I think you get more credibility when you're honest about where we are today. And people are like, okay, he's not crazy. I mean, he knows what's happening. But this is where he's trying to take us. Um, I, but I've never actually thought about that last, I've, I've not thought about that, that once you do all that work to get them convinced, if you have to pivot again, you, you have to unwind all the work you just did. I, I never thought about that.

Yeah, 100%.

What was the, because now, now you've been on a run for the last 5, 6 years, you've been on this, this amazing run. Um, I think a lot of people know DataRails. I, I know a lot of finance people who use it in their companies, like you've been on this run. What was the, what was that catalyst? What was the thing that changed the trajectory?

So I would say that if I look at the maybe a path or trajectory between our pivots, I think that although none of them worked except the last one, but I think that we improved in at least in something from pivot to pivot. Okay, we get, we got more and more realistic from pivot to pivot. And in the last pivot, I think that we made some few decisions that were the key success factor for this pivot. One, we decided that we are not trying to invent any new product. I mean, let's find a solution that there is a name for it. Okay. Not just value. Okay. Data integrity. No, give me a name. FP&A, expense management, tax management, a name. This is so important. So important that first you have the budget line. Then you have, you know how to advertise. You know how to pitch people. People understand it's so important. And this is a lesson that we, it took us 5 views to learn, I, first recommendation, find something with a name. This is one. Second.

Sorry, on that name thing, what the other thing you said I do not want to gloss over is the budget line. I've been through this and I've been through trying to get people to buy something when there isn't a budget line. And that is, I mean, is it possible? I guess it is possible, but now you're fighting you're fighting many uphill battles, not just to prove your product, but for them to create. I think that having the name and having the budget line is really— I thought it was cool to create a category, and then you actually start to go try to create the category and you realize you're doing a lot of work. Yeah. Very expensive work, timely work. I think that budget line comment is a good one.

There is a right time for everything. And And now in the last year or two, we are creating new category. And this is the time. Once you have the brand, you have the awareness, now you can start. But to start with a new category, okay, who will listen to you? I mean, it's a, yeah. So this is one. Second, we added another aspect in our exploration that we, one of our core advantages is our native Excel capability. And this is something very strong and every business user that we've met was very impressed and very, it was a very good selling point. Now, what we maybe made, we did something more accurate is that we took this value, this advantage, and we focused on finance people. And for finance people, Excel is a different thing if you compare it to other business users, because finance people not only use Excel, they also love Excel. And the rest, the generic business user, marketing, sales, they use Excel, but they hate Excel. They see it as the, as you know, in Microsoft, they call Excel the second best tool. If you don't have the dedicated system, if you don't have Salesforce, if you don't have expense system, if you don't have whatever, you use Excel. Finance people, for them, It's a skill. It's a skill. It's, it's, they're very proud of their Excel abilities, right? Excel skill. It's a, it's a, you know, there is an Excel competition in the world. It's a world champion.

Yeah.

I think it's one of the things that made the shift, the extra value that now we can pitch users that the value may be the same value in terms of the actual, you know, saving time and everything, but now you pitch to people that actually have some emotion about your product and not just the value or ROI calculation. And then we decided to take this platform that connects Excel into a database and And we decided to pivot into the SBA space. Again, a name, okay? A name. And we decided to focus on the mid-market. Why mid-market? Because I met hundreds of customers and I saw the difference between large companies, the way they look at Excel and the way mid-market companies, mid-sized companies look at Excel. The CIO of a, I don't know, large insurance company, they don't want to see Excel. They want to replace, if they could, they would replace all the spreadsheets in the organization into systems. In the mid-market, you don't have this, you know, vision on this ambitious. They want that thing will work in the best, you know, ROI and that things will be simple and not to change too many things and keep work in the best way. So if Excel is the tool, so be Excel. So this is why our product market fit is very strong in the mid-market because they love Excel. They don't want to replace it. Not today and not in the future. And also we chose the mid-market because like in every startup story, we made this pivot when we had like a few months of runway. So we had to have like quick feedback from the market. We couldn't wait for enterprise sales cycle. And then we had like, I don't know, maybe 10 people in the company, most of them engineers. And we had one SDR that used to cold call people to book meetings for me. Okay, I was the salesman with my broken English. I tried to sell the product and they say, okay, we go to the FP&A and let's try to create, let's build a pipeline. And let's try to let this SDR to be an account executive. Why not? I mean, it's over the phone. It's— there is more sensitivity to accent. And let's give this SDR— he's a native English speaker. Let's give it a try. Let him sell. And We generate the leads. We, the founders, the co-founders, we're from LinkedIn. We just hit connect, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect. At some point I let my kids every night to connect, connect, connect thousands of thousands. We have a huge metrics of, so we will not, we will be able to cover the entire market. From territories. I mean, how you arrange the data in LinkedIn. And I let my kids those days, today LinkedIn has the limitation, how many connections. Back then it was, you could do like hundreds of hundreds every day. So we generate like phone numbers from LinkedIn. I don't know if this is crazy, but one of five, people in LinkedIn actually put their personal phone numbers in LinkedIn. Yeah. So if you first connection, if you're a first connection, you can get their phone numbers, 20%, even more, 25%. It's crazy. So, um, I have 20,000 connections in my LinkedIn. So I have 500, uh, 5,000 phone numbers of CFOs, right? And my co-founders again, so this is how we created the initial list. And we started to create, to book meetings for this, Robert, his name is—

For the SDR.

Yeah, his name is Robert, okay? Until today is the number one salesperson in the company. So it's a great story. And he, in the first week, he closed 4 deals. It's more than what we closed in 3 years in total before this week. In one week, 4 meetings, and by the end of the month, we had 12 or 14 deals. So it was such a strong signal. Signal of product market fit that we had no doubt that we are on something. Wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a, it was.

So it was not a question. I mean, this, this is not, um, the way you're describing it, which is how I've seen it for companies. This is not a, do we have product market fit or not? I mean, when you started to make these changes and when you went through what you just described within a month, I mean, it sounds like within a week. You were already feeling like this is just different. It just, it just feels very different. Within a month you had already done more deals than you had in the whole previous history of the company. Like there was no question. I think some people say like, I think I have product market fit. And my answer to people is you will know when you have product market fit. Exactly.

Exactly.

It just, it's a, it's a very different.

Exactly.

I mean, it's, it's a very different feel.

If someone asked me, I'm not sure if I have the product market fit, I said, I'm saying, no, you don't have it. I mean, for sure.

Exactly.

Because if, if you had it, you knew. So, so, um, yeah.

Something you said that I, I, I want to double down on here also is the ideal— you really had this ideal buyer persona about going to finance who had an attribute about them, about loving Excel, use— like having pride in their Excel skills. Like you had that, that ideal buyer persona that you focused in on. And then simultaneously focused in on ideal customer profile of this mid-market customer because of their dynamics of how they think about Excel in their environment. And so when you, when you kind of did those two things and you stopped trying to create a category and instead jumped into an existing thing, you really were able, from what I'm hearing, were able to narrow that down, do the territories in LinkedIn, you know, it's, you know, connect with all the people that fit that profile. But now It's, it seems obvious when you say it out loud, but then when you're in it, you don't really, you know, I, I've had this experience where I was like, no, I'll sell to IT and security and maybe we'll try the finance team. It's like those are 3 personas that have completely different everything, tools, mindset, you know, needs. I'm going to sell to the small company and I'll sell to the enterprise. Why not? That's, that's a good idea. But of course the bank needs something very different than the mid-market fast-growing company than the startup, you know. And so when And when you say that, it's like all of those things, it's not one of those things. I mean, it's all of those things happening kind of simultaneously where the magic happened, it sounds like.

Yeah, I would add maybe another factor that I think were critical for the velocity or the how fast we identify the product-market fit. I'm not sure that they are were a must-have for the product-market fit. But when we pivoted to this space, we decided to lower down every day the barriers. I mean, to remove every possible obstacle. And we reduced the price to minimum. I mean, we chose the price, it was $790 a month, okay? That it's enough to see that the customer is actually willing to pay. Okay, it's not $1, it's not $5, it's something that they need to think about and they will not just pay just to see how it works from one. But it's not a budget that they need like a cycle of 5, 6 weeks to improve it, to improve it. And this is one. And we also, we offer the monthly subscription. No commitment. You don't need to take long-term decision. Just if you think, if you see that it's the right product for you, take it. We actually disrupt the market because there were a few competitors in this market. And I know, and now we have in our sales team, we have the best performers from each of our competitors. So we know all the stories from back then that we, Our name, DataRails, you know, you were mentioned in the competitors' rooms and then offices in that we actually disrupted the market because we came with a super interesting product, very unique approach, and we offered a price and a pricing model that No one could compete with that. Okay. So this is how we can actually in the first year, we grew from a $0 to $1 million ARR. Even it took 11 months. It was February until December. In 11 months from $0 to $1 million ARR with one single account executive that this is his first year in account executives. So So it was a very strong momentum. And since then, we, of course, we now the price is a multi-year contract.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

10 times the price and everything. It's, we went, you know, added the factors that once you have the product market fit, you start, you can build a company.

You're, yeah. You're in the right. You're in the right to do that. Can I ask you, after that first week or maybe the first month, did you, were you like celebrating? Were you high-fiving everyone? Were you and Robert and the co-founder like, was everyone, did you feel like this is the beginning, you know, like of the next chapter? Did you know at that time or is this kind of business as usual?

Yes and no. I don't know if this is us. As you know, the nature of the habit of the founders, or before we spent so much time in the desert that we, you know, we look at things in a very balanced view and say, okay, that's fine. Okay, now what is the next challenge? And then we move to the next challenge. So I don't want to, you know, to sound like, but we are not celebrating things. It's all right, it's nice, but we know we are on a mission to build a multi-billion dollar company. So, okay, it took 5 years and it happened only now, but okay, we know that this is only the first phase, right? The very, very initial phase. Now we have a company to build. So that was the mindset.

Yeah. So Um, in terms of, you know, as you've evolved now from where you are, and you talked about this, now you have the credibility, you have the customers, you have the brand, and now, you know, you're, you're, you've, you've evolved, right? You don't just sell one product anymore. You have, like, can you talk a little bit about the next, let's say, inflection point? Okay, so now we're 5 years in, you start, you have this product market fit, you're doing what you need to do to get the, the momentum going. What's the next moment that's that next turn in the trajectory of the company?

So this is the creating a new category. This is the thing. And the way we look at the market and of course the impact of AI on this market. So we believe that there is, and our investors believe, and we just got a new investment of $70 million from One Peak Venture. So We believe that the impact of AI on the mid-market is very unique because it's a market that was dormant for many years. I mean, we've met 3, 4 years ago, we've met our prospect and we had to convince them to change. You need to automate your processes, you need insights, you need to get them and They were stick with their status quo. I have Excel, that's fine. I will spend some time and we had to convince it's today. There is no one single CFO who believes that they can sit and do nothing, right? They know and they fully understand that they need to do something in order to prepare their organization to AI, right? 100%. And if the CFO doesn't understand it, their CEO will force them to understand. And no, sometimes I'm saying it because we meet the customer prospect, they come to the call. Yeah, the CEO asked me to check DataRev because we want to bring AI to the company. Okay, this is pretty common introduction. So AI waking up the market and we meet CFOs that they have two problems. One, they have actual challenges of processes, manual work, and this is like always, but they have also even more difficult challenge, which is, okay, what I'm doing with AI, how I prepare my organization to AI. And What we are, the position that we have here, it's pretty interesting, I think, because the FP&A, and it wasn't by purpose. I mean, we just got to this space somehow, but the position of FP&A in the CFO office, it is very interesting because it's the only product, the only system in the office of the CFO that actually owns the unified data, the single source of truth, the only system. Now the CRO has Salesforce, right? The CIO has ServiceNow. The marketing guy has, everyone has a system that everything go flow into this. The CFO every month needs to go to each system, export the data, unified it. Now when you think about AI, AI can do nothing without data. So if I want to bring AI to my organization today, before you have DataRail, so any unified data, you can actually leverage AI in the system level, right? You can have AI in your ERP, you can have AI in your, I know, HR system, but if you want to run AI on your business or CFO level data, you can't. And this is the solution that you are trying to, the problem that we are trying to solve. And bring a platform. We call it FinanceOS, Finance Operating System, that connect. We have connection and integration with hundreds, hundreds of systems in our market, ERP, CRM, HRIS, you name it. We have long tail of endless number of systems. We consolidate the data, we own the data, and we bring a platform that make this data available for applications, for AI, for everything. And we offer not only FP&A product, but also cash management, month-end close, spend management. So now it's a platform that solves the existing and the current problem of the CFO, but also now you can look at the future and say, okay, I'm ready. I'm ready. One day, maybe next month, maybe next year, the AI will replace everything and you will be able to, the prompt will replace the budget creator, okay? Or you build my budget for next year, okay? And your budget, okay. But I'm ready because I have the data, I have the platform, and I'm ready for any new magic that OpenAI, Anthropic, whatever will introduce. So this is the category that we are creating. It's super exciting for me personally because I was really connected to the idea of a platform in the beginning. And when we pivoted into the FP&A, I was of course very satisfied from the success, everything, but the engineering side in me, I felt that, okay, it's too narrow, it's too narrow. I want something more to provide the foundation, the platform. And now I'm very excited from that. And also it's very interesting to build a category. It's interesting. It's a slow movement. Quarter over quarter, you can see more and more. And when I meet with sometimes investors or bankers and they mention finance OS, okay, they use our terminology, but they don't know that this is our terminology. I know, okay, we created the category. We start to see how it's a new thing, finance operating system.

Yeah. So now, you know, you fast forward, I mean, feels to me the slope of change and growth and everything is increasing. You fast forward 3 years from today, it's 2029. What does DataRails look like, you know, 3 years from today?

We will be a multi-billion dollar company. This is one thing that I can see. How we are a multi-billion dollar company. And I believe we will be a standout in the market, a standout in the market like that every CRO, when he starts, okay, I need Salesforce, the CFO will say, I need Datarels. We are not replacing any ERP, we're not replacing any payment system, no, but I need Datarels. I need Datarels because without Datarels, I don't have my single source of truth. I don't have AI. In 3 years from now, they will be able to develop applications themselves. They won't need us to develop applications, right? Okay. On DataRace, we are the platform. We have the data. We have the permissions. They have all the infrastructure to develop any application. So yeah, I want to be the standard and of course, multi-billion dollar company. And this is the vision.

Amazing. Amazing. I wanna transition to a little bit of your background. So you mentioned, you know, you started as a software engineer, a technical person. Did you always know, like, as a, when did you get into this? Like when you were really young, you know, when you were a kid, like when did you start to get into this? And the question I ask everyone, which I personally find very interesting, is like, did you always know you you wanted to be an entrepreneur? Did you, was that something like that you dreamed of from an early age or you kind of came about it because of the time at Cisco and seeing this problem? Like give me a little bit of your backstory, you know?

So I dropped out of school at age of 14. And at the 10th grade, I had enough. I couldn't, fit into the standards and I left. By the way, it's an interesting story because until age of 40, I was sure that I left school. At age of 40, my birthday— no, it's a real story. In my birthday party, my mother shared or exposed a letter that I received from school that they They actually, how do you say, lay off.

You found out if.

Yeah, they forced me to leave. Yeah, they, I mean, I couldn't, I thought it's my decision. Okay, I'm not there, but my parents, they knew that it wasn't my decision. I mean, the school actually threw me out of the school, but yeah, so I, anyway, I spent the my, my years at home. And I, most of the time I was in front of the, between the basketball court and the computer programming. I'm not any kind of a genius or any kind of super smart programmer. I'm okay. I'm a good programmer, not something, you know, that, but I really enjoyed it and I was sure 100% that I will be a CTO. I mean, that was my dream. Okay, CTO, someday I will be a CTO. I had no aspiration of any kind of to be a founder, to be an entrepreneur, to be nothing. Only on my days In my days in Cisco, when I spent too much time biking my bikes, I started to think about, okay, how I make some impact and how I do something with my life and make it more interesting. And I decided to start the company. But it's not something that I, it's not part of my, no one in my family is a founder, not my parents, my brothers, sisters, none of them.

Do you think that something about being, you think that culturally in Israel with Startup Nation and everyone start, do you think there's an element of that that gives you this view of I can do it? Because I think one of the things I've learned from all these interviews that I've done is a lot of people say, I couldn't have started my company. I wouldn't have started my company unless I saw this other person. In some cases it's their family. In some cases it's their friends. And so like someone did it and I then have the confidence that I can do it.

Yeah.

You know, do you think that there's an element of that or the problem was just so clear to you, you know, and you wanted to have an impact that you just, you know what I mean?

Yeah. I, I, I, was 100% sure that it's possible. And I think that this belief or understanding that this is possible is because of the ecosystem here in Israel that you can see that it works. I mean, if you are actually, you pick the right people, you pick the right, you build the right technology, And you believe and you're ambitious enough, you can build amazing companies. And yeah, this sense of possibility, it's all, it's in me.

It's powerful. It's powerful when you're surrounded by it, you know. In terms of your, you know, you mentioned your family, you mentioned your kids clicking on LinkedIn and everything. You know, you started this company at a point in your life I started my company when I had no kids. I wasn't married, I had no kids. It's a very different, it's hard when you have a family, a grown family, young family. What kind of sacrifices did you make or did you go into it with the mindset of I'm going to have that work-life balance, which I don't know if that's even possible for what we do, but I'm just asking, how did you handle that at that stage of your life?

Yeah, there is no work-life balance. I mean, and this is something that I say to every entrepreneur or every founder that, you know, I have an idea, I want to start a company. There is no work-life balance. It takes 100% of your mindset. Everything else in your life is the second priority. It's so total, totally, it's not total, how to say it? It takes—

It's all-consuming.

Yeah, it takes every part of your brain. My youngest kid today, he's 16. When we started the company, he's 17. He was 7. And he used to say that my father listened to half of what I'm saying. Okay. This is how we describe my always, you know, half brain distracted. Half brain is not with the person that I'm speaking with. Half of my brain is on the startup, on the company. So, and yeah, this is a thing that a price that you cannot You cannot run away from this price. It's part of the game. And, you know, if we want, we, I'm saying we, the founders, and we want to say, okay, there is a world, or maybe there is also positive things about it. I hope that my kids, when they look at their father, they first, they are proud and also they learn that it's possible. And the same sense of possibility, I hope that this is something that, I don't know, justify or compensate the part that they will miss in—

I'm sure. Well, I can't even tell you how many of the people I've interviewed on here that the reason that they are where they are is they said because they saw, like I said, their parents, their, you know, worked, you know, did what you just described, press the LinkedIn, you know, whatever that case was, go on the delivery runs with them, sweep the floors, you know. And so I'm sure that that's the case. Okay, let me, last question for you, knowing, knowing Everything you know today and all the experiences you've had, both working at companies, but also as a founder, what is the one piece of advice that you would go back and you would give yourself at the very beginning of your career?

Start a cyber company.

First person to answer that, but a very good answer. Probably a lot of people thinking that. Um, okay, good, good answer. Um, Didi, thank you so much for doing this with me. I mean, the specificity where you talk around the journey that you've been on, I really, there's so many people in that part of the journey that just need to find those, you know, it's not easy, but need to find those knobs to turn. And so hearing that, I really, I think that's going to stick with a lot of people. So thank you very much for doing this with me. I really enjoyed this.

Thank you. And if we were able to help even one founder with their, you know, in the tough period of their journey, learning. So, uh, we did our, uh, good thing for today.

Couldn't agree more.

So thank you very much.

Um, thank you, thank you. Well, hopefully everyone listening, I hope you enjoyed. If you did, please share this out with your networks, and we'll see you for the next episode of Not Another CEO Podcast. That's a wrap for this week's episode of Not Another CEO Podcast. Thanks for joining. For show notes and more, please visit NotAnotherCEOPodcast.com. We'll see you next week.