“8 Questions with Playfair” ft. Roy Shmuel @ Sightec
This is the sixth in our “8 Questions” series — in which we sit down with founders in the Playfair portfolio to share their entrepreneurial journey.
We first invested in Roy and Joseph back in 2018. We were excited by their vision for the future of autonomous flights and their lightweight, software led approach which had the potential to open up a wide range of commercial use cases and dramatically reduce deployment costs.
Fast forward to 2020 and Sightec is on track to deliver above $1.5m of revenues this year. They have been accepted to the prestigious Starburst accelerator (the world’s leading aerospace and defence accelerator), successfully integrated their products with DJI and Pixhawk based drones and are working with some of the world’s biggest aviation systems integrators on their autonomous flights programmes.
Today, we sit down with co-founder and CEO, Roy to hear his story from deciding to take the plunge as an entrepreneur, to building Sightec to where it is now. We hope this can help other founders and aspirational entrepreneurs in their own ventures, from day one to wherever they are today.
1. What inspired you to be an entrepreneur?
From a very young age, I have been enthusiastic about building new things and the ability to turn ideas into real-life solutions.
In my early career, I trained in corporate strategy and corporate finance at Deloitte and Citi, then in corporate development at Amdocs. Those experiences placed me as a connector: meeting lots of entrepreneurs and businesses, but always remaining on the strategy and deal-making side.
Having personally witnessed the world’s AI ecosystem exponentially growing over the past 5 years, I finally couldn’t resist the urge to build a business myself any longer.
2. Can you take us back to the beginnings of Sightec?
Sightec began when I met Professor Joseph Francos, Sightec’s CSO and my co-founder, in 2017. A visionary academic, Joseph had developed patented computer vision technology to dramatically improve the analysis of 2D and 3D images in real-time. He needed help bringing his research into the world and I was incredibly excited to connect the dots.
We saw the macro trends of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) playing out through drones and flying cars over the next decade. We realised that Joseph’s research could be applied to a number of areas that could make robots see like the human eye, namely: safely navigate from point A to point B without GPS, and analyse their ever-changing surroundings in real-time in order to take the appropriate actions.
Sightec’s mission was born: ‘Making Autonomous Fly’
3. What is the hardest lesson learned since day 1?
That is a hard question!
On a business level, product-market fit is crucial, and founders should be aware that this is a moving target in the early days. Have a clear ‘north star’ strategy in place, so that as changes come and go, you don’t lose sight of the mission and vision of your company.
On a personal level, managing yourself emotionally is critical. In the corporate world, you work hard, but in a startup environment, there is that additional stress factor. The ability as a founder to smoothen the highs of success, the lows of failure and the rapid fluctuation between them is indispensable.
Personally, my ways of achieving this are by managing the people around me and remaining calm and crystal clear at all times.
4. What has been your strangest day as a founder?
I was watching the news one day and saw that the Israeli Natural Reserve Authority were sending teams of people out into the bush to manually count deer and wild animals as part of wildlife preservation initiatives.
I rang them up, and one month later I found myself chasing deer at 6am in Northern Israel with a Sightec-equipped drone!
We succeeded in our proof of concept counting deer and are now working with the Israeli Natural Reserve Authority on a few use cases in which Sightec’s technology can help to protect wildlife.
5. What have you learned from your investors since you first fundraised?
I’ve learned that while as founders we fight for our businesses every day, the role of your investors is to see the broader picture and use that to plan ahead and navigate the ecosystem for you.
For example, Chris Smith at Playfair set up a 3-day investor roadshow with pre-warmed funds in London as part of our latest fundraise. I was positively surprised from Chris’ level of engagement in our day to day business development and fundraising efforts, so make sure you find the ones who will be working with you side by side, and leverage their network to achieve your goals.
6. As a founder, what is your proudest achievement to date?
Seeing the seemingly impossible on paper work in real life was a truly proud moment for my team and me.
I won’t forget the first time we took a drone out for a test where, mid-flight, we would shut down the traditional GPS onboard to see if Sightec’s software could take over. The drone continued flying exactly as before.
That was months, if not years, of work and research distilled into one brilliant moment of success.
7. Crystal Ball: What are your plans for the future?
The plan is to do everything we can to fuel the future of urban air mobility. Taking part in the revolution of the skies is incredibly inspiring.
Within five years, we want to see Sightec’s software installed on every delivery drone, whether it’s taking an organ to a hospital or delivering a hamburger to your door.
8. #1 piece of advice to an aspirational founder?
Many people see success as the ability to raise lots of money. Real success is the ability to execute on a plan and bring your vision to market.
At the early stages of your business, avoid taking on too much cash and burning it until you are clear on product-market fit. Then you can hit the rocket fuel and see where you land 🚀 🌑 🌌.
