After I left PwC, the doctors recommended checking my bank account homepage only once a month. Any more often and I would see a growing overdraft through a tear. I needed to earn more money to support the journey into physical product entrepreneurship I had just begun.
But I was lucky. Luck is a special word. The interpretation I connect with most is the combination of place, time, and work, weighted at 10%, 10%, and 80% respectively—a broken-down version of Pareto. In other words, invest 80% of your resources in working so you can reach the right place at the right time, the remaining 20%. And once the opportunity arrives, you need to seize it with both hands.
As the saying attributed to Einstein goes, “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” Shauli is a great spirit, and he needed my professional help.
Shauli and I reconnected after an introduction from my best friend, another great person. We were at the same point in life: we had started companies at the same time, each was our first venture that was truly our own, and we both kept encountering opposition from mediocre minds.
Physical product entrepreneurship that began in Las Vegas
While vacationing in Las Vegas, Shauli found himself at a pool party with full pockets—phone, wallet, keys, and so on—and a strong desire to jump in. By the time he came out of the water, he knew he had a real need to solve. Together with two partners, he founded Smartag.
I immediately understood what Shauli meant. The daily physical burden of carrying things in my pockets had always bothered me. For me, as for many people, a vacation is not just a chance to disconnect; it is also a chance to walk around with empty pockets. Smartag became my first client as an independent consultant.
It was an energetic, early-stage startup. The main reasons they hired my services were strategy and fundraising. As always, I was drawn to the markets.
My interest in researching new markets—in this case hotels, water parks, cruises, live shows, and events—led me to write a business plan for Smartag , develop Excel-based business models, and prepare investor materials that could have sailed through a Lehman Brothers due diligence process.
As always, I needed to experience the technology myself. Watching tens of thousands of partygoers at five hotels in Eilat during two successful pilots that Smartag ran over two weeks confirmed what I felt inside: a touchscreen cannot replace a customer’s interaction with a physical product, in this case a smart wristband.
*Photo: the Fanjoya pilot, with hands in the air wearing smart RFID wristbands that could be used to buy drinks*
Physical products looked me in the eye, and the picture was clear
With my newly registered business, I happily committed to working only with clients whose products I truly connected with. Something about physical products and their visible effect on customers called to me. For founders and makers, a startup with a physical product offers something uniquely satisfying.
When you watch a customer using your product, you can look them in the eye and see the experience they are having. The feedback is so clear, the picture sharp and in HD. Walk into a room and see someone using your product, and you cannot remain indifferent.
Then Papa called too, this time with a vision that was impossible to ignore. At the time, one in three children in the United States was described as obese, and every child I observed seemed hooked on looking at a screen.
Born in the 1980s, I grew up on the boundary between open fields and screens. Papa and I met during military reserve service, in places with vast open spaces.
We began with a vision, and it was love at first research
We decided to meet and discuss his vision: getting children away from screens and physically active in the space around them. His company was called Coyotta (it was later rebranded as the incredible BlazePod ), and I fell in love with it immediately.
I spent dozens of hours studying smart toys for children, cognitive conditioning, BOM—the bill of materials, or the cost of building one unit—BLE, Bluetooth Low Energy, and, above all, myself.
I built another business plan, strengthening my conviction that learning about new markets is an endless passion. Papa also introduced me to a new area of expertise: the challenges and processes involved in designing and manufacturing a smart physical product. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from him about technology-driven product innovation and about combining entrepreneurship with being a father to a beautiful, growing family.
. *Photo: Papa smiling after winning an Indiegogo competition, a combination of innovation and a remarkable personality*
Working on smart wooden furniture through my own startup—you can read more in the previous chapter—on Smartag’s smart wristband, and on Papa’s smart consoles made me realize how much support the Israeli ecosystem lacked for physical products. Somehow, these challenges do not deter us.
Physical products have another important quality that draws people into the adventure of making them: contact with the product has a real physiological effect on the body, ideally a positive one.
That positive physical effect addresses a real need, and good startups always begin with a real need. Alongside other wonderful people working in the physical world, many of us are trying to give other founders a smoother ride on the entrepreneurial roller coaster. In the next chapter, I will say more about that realization and the importance of physical product design.