Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Turning Challenges into Success
By Saar Yoskovitz, CEO of Augury
If you have the inner urge to build something, starting your own business is the only way to scratch that itch.
I am a firm believer in jumping in with both feet and becoming completely immersed in your passion. If you think about it rationally, building a company isn’t a bet — it’s a calculated risk, an investment. That was my mentality when I left my home in Israel to move to New York last April, a 6-month-old baby and a startup in tow.
Augury was born in Israel in 2012. With a background in electrical engineering and physics, I teamed up with a software engineer who had also spent a significant amount of time working with machines. When we noticed a void in the predictive maintenance market, we decided to use our expertise to fill it. That journey has led us into the realm of the Internet of Things.
Every entrepreneur’s experience is unique. For Augury, the road to get to this point — one where we are ready to take on global customers — was even harder as immigrant entrepreneurs. That said, those same challenges have led to some big wins for the company, which is why now is a great time to bring a company across the ocean.
Logistical nightmares
As an immigrant entrepreneur, logistics become your biggest enemy. When you’re starting a business, the fact that you’re dealing with an entirely new bureaucratic system becomes apparent in just about everything you do, from employment to contracts to finance. You find yourself double-checking every action you take to ensure that you’re abiding by local laws.
Markets vary across international boundaries
We also found ourselves dealing with a completely different market. The industrial market in Israel is very different from the one in the US. Starting a company meant we had to find creative ways to crack open the U.S. market from across the ocean, and in 2012, that market was not ready for the Internet of Things.
Long distance working relationships
As were initially established in Israel, we still have an R&D team based there. “Company culture” is an overused term in the startup industry, but its buzzword status does not take away from its importance. Preserving that company culture — one that we spent years building abroad — across the ocean is a primary challenge we’ve faced since moving here. We want to keep the company aligned toward one common goal, and for that you need positive communications. Time changes, language barriers and cultural differences make that especially difficult.
With the challenges of immigrant entrepreneurship come some unexpected successes. The best thing you can do as new company in the U.S. is use those challenges to your advantage.
Embracing cultural diversity
The more diverse the team, the better. We actively encourage other immigrants to join our team. This fosters a dialogue with new points-of-view that help us find creative solutions. Having a multitude of different cultures present also means that work is never boring; you can hear conversations in four different languages in our office.
Turning time lost into time gained
While awaiting approval from immigration, we focused on our weaker points. We used the wait time to fine-tune our messaging and single out our target customers. We were able to do enough research and gain enough insight on the industrial internet and the Internet of Things to be truly prepared for the next steps. Now, as customers emerge, we can move quickly to meet their needs.
Never abandon your roots
When we started in Israel, we were working under a very lean startup model. This early mentality has now become a part of Augury’s DNA. It makes investors happy when you can meet business milestones using less capital than you projected. We remember our roots and we refuse to take anything for granted.
America is widely regarded as the land of opportunity and for some it is a goal within itself to build their lives here. It helps that the market here is primed for newcomers. To pick up your family and build a company thousands of miles from home is no easy task, but there’s no better time to do it.
