Our Spotlight on Dscovered — “Communicating and Decoding Design”
Dscovered is looking to revolutionize the graphic design industry. Similar to Pandora, but for graphic designers, Dscovered makes use of taste-mapping technology that helps businesses quickly find the right designer for them, while providing the designers with taste-driven tools that offer insights and recommendations for better developing each design project.
Dscovered is the brainchild of Limor Goldhaber. “I am an architect by trade, graphic designer by choice, and entrepreneur by nature,” Limor said in regards to her profession. She first began experimenting with digital design in 2009 and quickly became fascinated by the potential for designers to create pieces of communication that change lives.
Limor is joined by Ronen Gol, Dscovered’s Chief Hacker and Technologist. Ronen mastered a handful of programming languages by the age of twelve. At fifteen, he was accepted to university and began studying Computer Science, and now holds a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and Management from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.
As an architect and graphic designer, Limor spent a significant amount of time on what was often a lengthy and frustrating communication process with her clients that required countless iterations and meetings.
“I was convinced that there must be a way to code the process of getting to know a client’s taste. On average,” Limor explained, “it takes several weeks to find the right designer for a project. With Dscovered, it takes about eight minutes”.
Limor teamed up with Ronen and the rest of the Dscovered team to develop the algorithm that learns the pattern of a client’s taste and, in turn, offers insights and recommendations for each project. Since Dscovered’s earliest days, Limor and Ronen have adventured across the world from Israel to the Palo Alto, California offices of UpWest Labs. Along the way, the Dscovered team has learned invaluable lessons about life as an entrepreneur.
“I’ve learned two important things in my journey as an entrepreneur,” Ronen said. “The first one is that those who don’t give up live long enough to win, even if it means the have to go through endless iterations. The second thing I’ve learned is not to keep your ideas to yourself. The most important thing in building a company is feedback.”
Limor reiterated these ideas and added four main takeaways. “First of all, focus is key. Do one thing and do it amazingly well. You can’t solve too many things at a time. Even Rome wasn’t built in a day. Secondly, whether it’s the design, the code or even the marketing, it’s important to take a step back and look at what you’ve built with fresh eyes. Features we often felt strongly about weren’t always as powerful in our users’ eyes. Next, be the user. You have to use your product to understand the experience your users will have using it. If you won’t use it, why would anyone else? Finally, it’s OK to have doubts, but it’s not OK to be hysteric about it. Anyone that goes through untracked paths will sometimes feel lost, and that’s fine. As entrepreneurs, it’s in our nature to doubt every axiom, so why would we behave differently when it comes to our own? However, even if you doubt a feature or a solution, you should never doubt yourself.”
While very important, these lessons are not unique to the Silicon Valley. One can learn that focus is key from Israel, too. What is impossible to learn, however, if one is not exposed to it, is the culture of a community.
“I discovered that here in the valley, almost anyone will meet with you,” Ronen said in regards to the Silicon Valley. “There is a great ecosystem here and people are eager to help each other and share their experience. I think that’s what makes the valley so successful.”
Being in the heart of the fire is critical for a true understanding of the market. “When in Israel,” Limor added, “we knew that we were thousands of miles away from our users, but we couldn’t grasp what this meant. Being so far away from our users was like a glass ceiling for us. We didn’t know our users and the certainly didn’t know us. We thought that with the right marketing efforts and with the right product, the users would come. Needless to say — they didn’t. Only when we got to UpWest Labs and had the chance to meet our current and potential users did things shift. We had the chance to learn more about their biggest pain, so we were able to adjust the product to fit their needs. It was the first time that we realized that we couldn’t stay away from our market.”
The lessons that the dscovered team has learned on its journey will not only help it create a better product, but they will enable them to lead even more successful ventures in the future. When asked about her passion for this project, Limor said, “Being an entrepreneur is not a lifestyle choice — it’s who I am. I live and breathe design, so I find inspiration in every designer that joins us and in every project created through our system.”
Originally published at upwestlabs.com on June 15, 2013.
