I remember the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" ever since I was a child.

 

Never could compile the entire range of themes, subjects & thoughts that ran through my head each time I heard it.

 

Ever since I knew myself I felt I'm:

1. Curious about many things - Some would call it a generalist.

After learning the basic laws of nature, I understood the importance & advantages of maintaining a constantly growing scope of hands-on knowledge.

 

2. Despite being a generalist, I found myself being able to deep dive into specific topics, both technical and commercial, without ever separating me from "both sides", as they all seemed to me as a part of a greater whole.

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It took me a while to understand that most people do not see things like that, and insist on separating between the two types of capabilities.

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Milestones

10'

 

When I was 10, I won the national swimming championship, under the guidance of the late Shemaryahu Nabel & currently MK Simon Davidson.

 

When I was 12, I had to decide between 6 times a week swimming sessions and competitions on weekends or going deeper into music & trumpet playing, which I started 2 years earlier.

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Decided with both hands and never looked behind.

 

Two years later, during which I've undergone close guidance from the wonderful and sensitive Nitzan Ein Habar, I got accepted to the top-ranked high school for arts, where people from all over the country come to matriculate in arts, without leaving aside math, history or science.

 

There, in the most creative way an adolescent can thrive, I got to study with some of the greatest artists of our generation - Yonatan Voltzok, Gilad Hekselman (alongside Alona Tal, Ania Bukstein, and many more).

 

We learned from grand art masters such as Amit Golan & Erez Bar Noy RIP, Danny Rosenfeld & Amos Hofman - an entire crew of jazz giants, straight from New York.

 

When I was 15, I got to play with a big band in the NYC Blue-Note club and took master classes with the great Lin Biviano in Berklee College.

 

When I was 16, I moved to live in NYC during my summer vacations and started learning from Berry Harris & John Marshall, while playing late nights with the giant cats of Smalls Club, including the legendary Jimmy Lovelace.

 

After being exposed to terror suicide attacks in my home city during adulthood, I felt that dealing only with music limits me from fully realizing my ability to contribute to my society.

 

Once again, I decided with both hands and never looked behind.

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I decided to do the best army service I could, as it was mandatory anyway - and joined the voluntary special forces, without forgetting for a moment my human morals & values, even at the most difficult moments.

 

The preliminary phases lasted for a few iterative one-week sessions, starting with a few thousand nominees.

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After a few rounds of those pre-recruitment selection series 60 of us were selected to start the 18 months long training regime, as 2 platoons.

 

20'

 

This period opened 1.5 years of extreme training that included lots of heavyweight distance carrying, counter-terror courses on many types of weapons, lots of Krav Maga & navigations, but also a lot of illegal abuses by our staff.

 

At some point they even killed two of us (Roi Dror & Ehud Shneor R.I.P), out of pure sadism, trying to make us tough.

 

After this happened, our commanders were thrown to jail and the army ran a reform in the unit's code of conduct.

 

When I was 21, I got to overcome barriers & extreme hardships, commanding a tactical team & making decisions under heavy fire circumstances & close combat situations that were the basis for some of Fauda's best scenes.

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After the intense army service, I took a B.Sc in Bio-sciences, as part of my "back to origins" process.

 

As I knew that all senses form an intrinsic part of nature, and since I've developed from an early age the sense of hearing, I opted to do a B.E in DSP as well, which later on proved to be useful for me to deeply understand concepts of Bio-Acoustics.

 

When I was 27, I established for my future partner in life her first business away from her homeland, and it still exists today, crafting custom-made large-scale three-dimensional mosaic art.

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While we were attending our first large-scale project in Israel, I was contacted by Amit Golan (RIP), my Jazz master from high school.

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Amit knew I did not continue playing during the 9 years that passed since I'd finished high school, so I was very surprised by the offer he came up with...

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It was March 2009, a few years after he had established the Shtriker - New School partnership for Jazz studies, a brilliant idea to facilitate high degrees from the big apple in center TLV, with tons of professionalism.

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To expose the program to new audiences, Amit & Danny Rosenfeld (to whom I owe everything I know about Jazz trumpet playing) decided to run with the Big Band they formed, for the Eilat International Jazz Festival Auditions.

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The band was comprised of some of the most talented young players in Israel, including drummer Amir Bresler, pianist Omri Mor, and then some.

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The only two "old" guys Amit had decided to join the band as reinforcement were the legendary trombone player, and my personal friend Yontan Voltzok.

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So when Amit called to offer me to join the trumpet section I was pretty shocked, but after a few minutes, I accepted the challenge.

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Trumpet playing involves more than 8 different muscles, so it is just like going to the gym - If you train regularly you will stay fit. If you take a long break from your training regime - you'll lose your fitness & endurance.

 

Getting back to fit the orofacial muscles after 9 years of break requires some amount of patience, strength & will.

 

I had to pass hours of drilling & training alone just to be able to produce a proper tone.

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Doing it inside a 4-month timeframe, during which you also have to attend 3 weekly rehearsals, 3 hours each - can be pretty tough. 

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In parallel, I started to investigate the business opportunities that Latin America had to offer, specifically Colombia in the post-guerrilla era.

 

I saw a country on the shores of both oceans, with much to go ahead in terms of development & agri production as well as with a high percentage of cardiac-related diseases in a population that was just opening into concepts of vegetarianism & healthy diet.

 

Following the trends - but also being aware of the environmental need for a change in many value chains - I noticed a market that was open to new tastes and highly valued good nutritive products, or cosmetic products.

 

After confirming there was no local production of the raw materials used to prepare the products I thought would fit, I started commercial relations with various offshore producers.

 

Within a short period, I scoped a high-quality portfolio of more than 40 products, spanning over five categories.

 

As part of my bootstrapping process in an entirely foreign country, I created a 1k potential clients table, from which I qualified leads, defined personas, and handled all branding & marketing tasks related to each product.

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I also had to manage inter-continent shipments logistics, with all the relevant regulatory compliance procedures.

 

In parallel, I finished my last 2 years of studies in a long-distance format, taking the exams in the local embassy, located some 400 km from where I started my next venture.

 

While I flew to Bogota for a week of 3 exams in a row every 3 months, I also scheduled meetings to advance pending topics with prospects and regulators.

 

30'

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While most people go for the common loop of university=> work=> debt=> vacation=> work=> retirement to a countryside home - I clearly remember not being able to see myself working all my life, just to be able to live close to nature towards the end of it, even though I was born in an urban surrounding.

 

When I was 30, I bought land near a 4M population metro area, and with intensive hard work converted it into an eco-productive farm, where I introduced new varieties & techniques.

 

The farm features Guadua Angustifolia construction methods for minimal environmental effects.

 

At the same time, I also finished my investigation of the monetary system, which led me to understand & apply the potential growth of cryptocurrencies, as well as to offer my car for sale in return for BTC back in 2013.

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When Colombia signed an FTA with countries in the EMEA region, I was already deployed on both ends with logistical capabilities, starting to deliver the first shipments of goods initially to the HORECA sector.

 

I managed to convince some of the top chefs & industry leaders to start working with the ingredients my company supplied.

 

As the FTA approval process advanced - it took the republic almost seven years to approve it internally, due to many objections presented to the Supreme Court - I started also contacting the major retail stores, which were very receptive to the unique portfolio offered.

 

The problem was that my competitors sourced from much closer origins, which were already under an active FTA.

 

Even so, the quality of the products I brought was much higher.

So we started in small local pilots, targeting only the relevant zones, in terms of power purchasing.

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Our first clients were pioneers, people who saw before others the clear advantages & benefits of working with us & using our products.

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Soon enough my company sourced to all the major chefs in Colombia & Ecuador.

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After living abroad for more than 10 years, and as my wife's father passed away, I realized we had a 5-year-old daughter, whom my fathers only saw twice in their lives, during short visits we made.

 

I saw the decline in my dementic mom's health, and the struggle my dad had to treat her, and I knew that I had to make a hard turn and recalculate.

 

There isn't a fortune in the world that could have made me feel good, staying far from my parents - who gave everything they had for me - while I knew they needed my help.

 

Once again, I decided with both hands.

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I started Rapidly organizing the farm to be remotely controlled via CCTV and started giving online consulting sessions (before the COVID outbreak.)

 

As local currency was fastly declining, I also cut slim margin logistical operations, hired local staff to do the handling, and stayed only with the more relevant ones.

 

 

I orchestrated the move back to my homeland from more than 13k km distance, to live not more than 500 mt from my parents.

 

Since then it had proved to be the right decision, as more than 5 times I found myself rushing past midnight to the ER with my mom.

 

I arrived on my own 3 weeks before the family, to find an apartment & a kindergarten for the kids.

 

I started working for the MFA as an international projects & integration manager of G2G sustainable development programs.

 

In this position I had the chance to work directly with top-ranked policymakers, exposing them to applicative solutions relevant to their challenges, thus helping to shape & implement their wide-scale strategic national\regional development plans.

 

To support my mom spiritually by giving her recognition in her final years, I opened an instagram account on her behalf, featuring all the thousands of marvelous authentic cermic art works she is crafting even today.

 

I also took some massive tech courses, spaning from cybersec & networking to DevOps, ML, and even fintech related topics.

 

At some point, after the 2020 stocks fall & back bounce, I built an automated equity valuation algorithm, that enables me today to be notified whenever a stock or a fund enters a buy or sell zone, taking into consideration numerous factors that are constantly being live scraped from the web, as well as the desired ROI one defines.

 

I called it NotiVest, then changed to Investication (= Investment Notification).

Soon enough I will open the option to purchase it online.

 

At the same year, on March 15, when the global panedmic was bursting, while learning ML in an online Stanford university course, I came up with the idea of coughit - a cough related disease recognition system, based on AI of course.

 

I quickly teamed up with an AI expert & a mechanical engineer, and we started conducting preliminary tasks, while I started sketching the GTM & MVP roadmap, in order to promote converstaions with potential investors & collaborators.

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We managed to get the attention of the country's top HMOs, long with their willingness to share data, in order for the engine to be able to conduct learning at high scale.

 

I also pitched to Prof. Shimon Eckhouse, a highly valued medtech investor & inventor, gaining his full attention with the idea, resulting in more than 60 minutes of deep diving.

 

His fear was not regarding the idea, which he claimed to be possible to implement.

 

From his years of experience point of view, he was not sure whether specific COVID identification will be possible.

 

And the initial tests we did proved he was completely right, as the models could not go above 90% of accuracy.

 

As I did not quit my day job, I still had to arrive almost daily at the office.

Hybrid work was just beginning to appear, and I had special permission to move during the curfew months.

 

As we worked with long geographically distanced partners, normally there were lots of travels from both sides.

 

All of a sudden we had to reinvent our approach & delivery methods.

 

I was nominated as in charge of the process and started a long-term process of reshaping the entire project's procurement & management methods.

 

After 2 months we were already functioning fully online, and the demand was only growing.

 

We established a fully long-distance based (pacific islands, LATAM, Central Africa) complex projects, which involved physical shipment of HW, with online training & qualification sessions, on integration & usage topics.

 

In the second half of 2020, as the skies were opening slowly back again, I was already scheduled as a keynote speaker at one of LATAM's first agtech conferences.

 

2 months before the conference, on a cloudy September morning, just 10 minutes after I left my daughter at her school, the road had taken another direction.

 

I woke up in a hospital ER exactly 90 minutes after the last time I remember looking at the car's clock.

 

The phone inside my personal bag told me so.

I remember thinking about how kind the ambulance crew must have been, for also rescuing my gear with me.

 

Took the phone & unlocked it.

Saw a WhatsApp message from an unknown number.

 

Entered and "the picture got clearer" (I deliberately censored & blurred some parts from the ones I share here) - my car was crashed from behind by a minibus while driving on the highway to Tel Aviv.

 

The number was of the paramedic that pulled me out of the car while I was unconscious, and practically saved my life.

 

My head screamed from pain, and I was all naked with my clothes cut by trauma shears.

 

I Took my right arm and touched the part that most ached in the back of my head.

 

The hand could enter into my head!

 

I took it out and pulled it back in front of my eyes. It was covered with blood.

 

My wife was 7 months pregnant at that time with our second child, waiting for me to call her as I normally do when I reach the office.

 

This time I didn't know how to tell her that after all, I was alive, without causing her to enter into contractions, just from the stress of receiving such a notice.

 

She took it overwhelmingly cool and contacted my sister to come to the hospital.

As we hung up, my best friend from the army appeared.

 

"What are you doing here? How did you know?" I asked.

 

"I called you when you were evacuated from the car and the paramedic told me everything"

 

When I was 37, I started to re-learn some basic skills that the accident took from me, such as remembering the name of the person I just met or being able to do some basic physical movements like wearing a shirt.

 

I could not lift my newborn child with my right arm, nor could my ears & head suffer the pains from his loud voice, even when he was just laughing.

 

I've entered a year and a half of rehabilitation, which included surgery & intense therapies.

Saw so many doctors during that year, more than I ever visited in my entire life.

 

Though I felt as if within 6 months I got old by 20 years, I insisted on carrying on working online, as the challenges & opportunities this period brought left me just too curious.

 

The work at the MFA once again included lots of traveling, hence I could not continue in that position due to the disabilities the accident left me with.

 

I moved ahead to serve as a Solution Architect in a rising Agtech startup.

 

I had the opportunity to be a part of major digitization & sourcing transition processes for some of the largest F&B companies worldwide.

 

Together we worked on cross-continent projects that were shared with their providers, to enable visibility into flows that were done in old-fashioned analog methods up until that point.

 

The final goal was to lower costs, make production more efficient, and monitor environmental factors, to comply with regulations.

 

40

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2 weeks before I turned 40, after stopping on my way to a friend's surprise party, in order to take the weekly team meeting just before the weekend, I left my 'safe job'.

 

I did not feel it brought happiness to my life, while the C level sold us excuses for their mismanagement during the financial crisis.

 

Even though the company has raised two rounds, the CEO & CFO made so many mistakes, that during the 2 years after the B round - they made 2 rounds of layoffs, taking out all the professional core personnel, while bringing in hotshots that were supposed to march the company to the next levels.

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Soon enough I found myself surrounded by the ones who survived, talented brilliant people who also became friends - product managers & developers with high capabilities - and we were all managed by C-level people who were not connected to the core of the business.

 

I started seeing how it took my managers ages to give us relevant feedback, while they were busy on their stuff.

I noticed how much time it took them to review pending tickets & items, and in general - they were not seeing the direction the company was heading towards.

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They were too busy to notice that the big-shots managers they brought were simply not delivering.

 

The requirements & client's strategic change requests were transmitted weekly to the management in all relevant channels, yet it seemed as if they were all up to "high-level" discussions, without seeing the fact that the product was not generating enough value & traction.

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The same day I decided to leave, I also decided that I would not let others block my creativity, nor I wait for others to promote my ideas.

 

As mentioned in the beginning, I was never extroverted, and though I have studied (and still am) a wide range of disciplines, I'm often asked why am I not writing about it.

 

My ready-to-draw answer is that 'I don't have time', but the truth is I always thought 'no one will read it'.

 

Nevertheless, I straight-ahead entered Wix & opened this new website account, just to place some things I already had in mind, and pick it up from there the next week.

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That same day, on the way north to the friend's surprise party, I also had a pre-scheduled meeting during which I was presented with a product that is going to revolutionize the entire Fruit Ripening process worldwide.

 

All I can say for now is that it's a combined SW & HW product, accessible for the client via a mobile app, and of course, there's also an AI element embedded,

 

As the founders know me, they offered me to join as the CTO.

 

I believe in taking small steps that can make big changes, and I only needed one demo of the product to understand its potential, so I accepted the offer.

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In parallel, I also joined the integration team of the Israeli branch of an American B2B fintech company.

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In the next months, the challenges are adding up in addition to my regular daily tasks & projects.

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This site was born to provide practical & applicative tips, tools & insights from my experience, as well as to learn from my readers some new directions.

 

May we bring value & enjoy every second of it.

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Thanks for being here.