Scortex
The co-founder of Scortex claims that the target niche of the company is unique. It develops hardware for AI. In the beginning, the founder (a physics graduate) noticed that manufacturing automation worked well, but quality control was still done in the same outdated ways. He wanted to replace human inspectors with AI able to detect defective products.
The product: cameras with software that recognizes defective merchandise. However, the slow sales cycle in manufacturing made for slow growth in the start-up. Furthermore, many companies still aren’t technologically advanced enough to use this solution.
PopChef
The co-founder of PopChef claims their concept was simple: delivering fresh and healthy lunches directly to the offices. Being the first to get in on the online lunch delivery industry, the company quickly got seed funding from angel investors.
The company used data analysis to forecast requests and optimize delivery routes. It wasn’t easy though. Competing food companies entered the market and the fight for customers got fierce (with discounts and costly advertisements).
Key takeaways?
They claim that an international mindset is very much desired. That is one of the reasons why Israeli start-ups succeed – since there is very limited local market, founders have global mindset from the beginning.
When it comes to staff, hire people smarter than you – but you also need to convince them to work for someone who is not as smart as they are. That is why almost 30% of your time should be spent scouting for and communicating with possible hires.
To attract people, give them your trust – let them for example choose their own time schedule. Reasonable remuneration is also important – you can offer stocks to make people stay with you.
-jk-