Meet The Disruptors: Eldad Postan-Koren Of Winn AI On The Five Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
It is all persistence. Holding your emotional situation, keeping on a positive mindset, and keep pushing. Grit is the best tool for entrepreneurs. We got the first yes from investors after 40 told us no. Each No is a knockout you need to raise from- faster, stronger, better.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Eldad Posten-Korn.
Eldad Posten-Korn, Founder and CEO of Winn.AI, considers entrepreneurship in all fields as part of his DNA.
He was the first COO of DreaMed Diabetes where he built it from the ground up and was responsible for the company’s initial commercialization efforts (Sales, Marketing, Customer service, and CSM). Before helping launch DreaMed, he focused on Value Creation at OurCrowd — a company that enables accredited investors to join top VCs, Angel Investors, and Strategic Partners in accessing fully vetted deals. In addition, he founded two NGOs (Shavot and The Sky is the Limit); served as the Hebrew University Student Union’s Chairman, and is a proud veteran Naval Officer.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Hi, I’m Eldad Posten-Korn, 37, the founder and CEO of Winn.AI, a startup that builds an artificial intelligence-based personal assistant for salespeople. The company has been operating for about a year, raised $17 million as an initial investment, and has 25 employees. For the past decade, I’ve also been an active entrepreneur, and in recent years, together with my heart surgeon wife Roni, we co-founded ‘Shavot’, a non-profit organization for girls’ leadership.
The idea behind Winn.AI came after leading sales at DreaMed Diabetes, where I also started as the first field salesman. The professional pain I experienced firsthand at DreaMed, is the same one we’re solving with Winn.AI today.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
The modern sales workflow is broken. As a leader you’re crafting a ‘sales playbook’, a collection of processes and content to support the ideal sales process, but then your actual salespeople aren’t embracing it. Why should they? The individual salesperson is already investing about a third of their time in following tedious administrative protocols, which they feel are counterproductive on many occasions. Winn.AI’s solution is all about bridging that gap. Our product join’s the sales person in their day-to-day sales meetings, and automatically tracks & captures the meeting minutes, thus enabling the salespeople to focus on their customers and not their keyboards.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
During the ideation phase, I also “dated” potential co-founders. I remember one of those dates, an hour and a half where I took maybe 10 minutes of talking. I wanted to run away. He generously came with me to the car. I got in a drive as fast as I can out of there.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who has been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
We were lucky enough to gather some great people around us, and we have some very inspiring advisors and investors. One of our VP Sales angels visited Israel and we were discussing the company name which was Liger back then. He said your bottom line value should be to improve the win rate. This was the moment we decided to change the name to Winn.AI.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Interfering with salespersons in our daily conduct is not good. Adding another system for them to enter, and changing the way they are used to working is a negative type of interference. This is the main reason I built Winn.AI as an augmentation of other existing systems. This will effectively disrupt the sales force where disruption is needed and welcomed.
Can you share five of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
It is all persistence. Holding your emotional situation, keeping on a positive mindset, and keep pushing. Grit is the best tool for entrepreneurs. We got the first yes from investors after 40 told us no. Each No is a knockout you need to raise from- faster, stronger, better.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
It feels like we’re just getting started. In the coming months, we’re going to add more ecosystems where we see high demand, and next year we’re going to officially launch our free product so that every salesperson on earth could immediately try our product. Our mission is to provide our users with an experience that they’ve never had before, and we feel the huge appetite in the sales market for such a product.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you? [Meitar]
Gandhi’s books are all great inspirations for me. I admire his crystal clear view of the world but more than this I appreciate the fact he 100% believed in leading by example. This was his force power.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Don’t offer help — give help” that’s what my parents taught me at a young age Since then, it has been etched in my mind.
At around the age of seven, a water pipe burst in our house and I just took a mop and started raking. They said, “leave everything is fine”. And I told them, “you taught me that help should be given and not offered.” That is the greatest gift that my mother and father gave me — to have a sense of responsibility, for myself and my environment.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Bridging the gender gap. Actually, I founded this movement called Shavot. Shavot lets girls strengthen their sense of self-worth and provides them with tools that will enable them to fulfill their aspirations.
The nonprofit runs several nationwide programs that encourage girls to develop positive self-esteem and to believe in themselves in the long run. Through meaningful experiences, combining elements of goal-setting, self-feedback, and learning about inspirational women.
With Shavot, participants discover new strengths, aspire to reach higher goals, and achieve them.
How can our readers follow you online?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eldad-postan/
https://www.facebook.com/eldad.postan
https://twitter.com/EldadPostan
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!