Being a Pioneer-Entrepreneur

Or, what I’ve learned from Mobileye’s founder, and early investors.

Being a startup founder from Jerusalem, I’ve gotten to meet many of Mobileye’s early stage Angel investors, and I got to talk with Ziv Aviram (founder & CEO) several times at different occasions.

In order to keep this real, full discloser though — no, they’re not my “friends” or colleagues, and thus I’m not tweeting out a congratulatory tweet or writing up a post as if I do know them well.

However, there’s two important notes that resonated with me from those conversations, that I think are worth thinking about after this amazing accomplishment.

We’ve Had to Pivot 7 Times

Almost a year ago, at a networking event, I asked Mr. Aviram what I always try to ask before I end a conversation with someone with such experience. I asked him — “tell me one story from your journey you’ll never forget, and I’ll try to learn from it”. (BTW people don’t always come up with “lessons” to teach you, but they always have stories to tell…).

Mr. Aviram told me the story about how they had to pivot from a consumer-facing system being sold to car owners, to a B2B model and actually began working on Autonomous cars. Then he added — “with all the years we’ve been working on Mobileye, we’ve had to pivot 7 times. This is many years of work, and a lot of pivots. It’s never easy, but never give up”.

We always read about the success of companies, even now with Mobileye, but rarely do we read about their struggles. And when we do, it’s usually “too late” and we read some sort of “post mortem” that we anyway dismiss, because “hey, obviously they failed — look at the mistakes they’ve done”…

“with all the years we’ve been working on Mobileye, we’ve had to pivot 7 times. This is many years of work, and a lot of pivots. It’s never easy, but never give up”

But this is the thing with startups — how far were the Mobileye guys from failing…? Were the analyst that shorted the company a couple of weeks before, detached from reality…? How many times, during those many years, did Mobileye walk that thin line between shutting the company down or being able to give another push…?

“Now What?” Moment

For someone who is not familiar with what a pivot involves, let me try to explain it like this:

You don’t get up one day and say “ok, stop that, let’s move to this” and continue working as if nothing happened. Building a startup is running a sprint, throughout a marathon, as the saying goes. You don’t just stop a sprint on the spot and turn around. It takes a few seconds to slow down, catch your breath, re-focus, and start running again and build up the speed. Imagine a giant ship that has to change its course. It may be one click of a button, but how many little parts in that giant ship have to start moving, and how much more money would it cost in fuel to turn around, and is it even worth it… and what about my previous direction — am I admitting I failed with that? — so why should it work this time… Don’t forget, usually this is all happening when morale is low, because things aren’t working out, so how do you find the strength to start over again when you’re depressed…

At this point, it’s easy to give up. It’s easy to fall to the “fail fast” narrative and assure yourself, “you’ve done everything you could”.

But, if you’re truly obsessed with solving a problem, like many VCs and founders like to talk about, you can’t give up, and you don’t stop till you find the right solution to solve that problem.

This is the real type of pivot founders should go through. Not the pivot of product (as in problem+solution), but of mentality. Moving from a low morale of “it’s not working”, back to the feeling you had when you started with “we can do this!” and coming up with a better\new way to solve that same problem, because you’re obsessed, like Mobileye did.

But, if you’re truly obsessed with solving a problem, like many VCs and founders like to talk about, you can’t give up, and you don’t stop till you find the right solution to solve that problem.

Being a pioneer

The second point is about being a pioneer in a space. Trust me on this one, it is super hard. Building ZUtA for the past few years and Consumer Robotics being in its early days, I can tell you exactly how this all feels.

As a startup founder, you face a lot of difficult times, as it’s not easy to start a business in general.

As a pioneer in a space, it means that there’s actually no space. Therefore, the dream of the future you’re trying to pitch and sell, is even greater, and it’s harder to see, and will probably take longer. It’s one thing convincing people that your solution is better, it’s another thing to convince them that this problem is solvable, it’s worth solving, and you know how…

As a couple of early Mobileye Angel investors phrased it — “Amnon & Ziv told us it was going to take 15 years. Boy, were they right”.

To understand how rare it is for pioneer-entrepreneurs to succeed, you have to remember that the time startups have, is mostly a function of their “air”, that is usually provided by their investors, especially in the early days, especially when you have to pivot.

Building up a new space requires time, but also the right people who can understand and really see into the future, together with you.

When pitching investors, they constantly compare you to other models and look for examples — from their personal experience, or from the market — in order to better assess your chances of success. That’s how our industry works.

But if there’s nothing to compare you to, then there’s probably no one from your field who had success — and therefore money into the field, is “new” money — and the pioneer-entrepreneur has to explain, not only how this is a “blue ocean”, but why he knows this is even an ocean… And even if it is an ocean, maybe there’s a reason there’s no fish there — maybe the water is contaminated, or not worth swimming in…

As an pioneer-entrepreneur in a space, it means that there’s actually no space. Therefore, the dream of the future you’re trying to pitch and sell, is even greater, and it’s harder to see, and will probably take longer.

Seeing the Mobileye headlines, to me, it’s about a group of pioneers, that kept on going for 18 years, and were able to restart and pivot 7 times.

That is the story of this success, not the number of the deal.

Let’s celebrate the journey of resilience and not giving up. Focus on the incredible grit they had, and if you had a drop of jealousy or negativity to say about this, it will disappear. And if it doesn’t, go try and start your own company.