Parashat Devarim

This is #Snapchatorah for where Hillel Fuld takes the Torah portion, learns some lessons and apply them to entrepreneurship and startups.

The old Testament, the Torah has five books; this week we start the fifth Devarim. Which literally can be translated as things. Devarim also has the root דְּבָרִ which means ‘to speak.’ Because this week’s portion and this entire book is basically a book of storytelling.

One of the many stories repeated in this week’s portion, is the story of the spies where the Jewish people asked to go examine the land of Israel before entering it. When they asked to go examine the land and send spies the word latur is used, “to go look.” That word is also used in another place in the Torah when it talked about not following your eyes to sin. In both instances when the word latur is used it is a negative connotation, because they followed their eyes, their instincts, and not their brain

Because of that Sin, the sin of the spies, the Jewish people were punished throughout the entire bible, and throughout our entire history. All for the need to examine with your eyes only. From this story we learn that instincts can sometimes be dangerous. In startups they are very dangerous. Don’t just look, Analyze.

I feel this very strongly, when it comes to marketing in startups. Often, very often entrepreneurs say to me “Do this, do that, get this guy to tweet about me, get this guy to put…” Strategic.

Sometimes, often times, what you see is very misleading. You need data!

You think a Tweet from Kim Kardashian about your sports startups will really help you long term? Really did you analyze that, did you look at the data. Because I am pretty sure it won’t. How many times have you heard CEO’s say do this because our competitors are doing it? I’ve heard that a lot. But how do you know it’s working for them? Because it seems to be working. Analyze. You have an idea for a company, for a startup you are just going to run with it right? Wrong. Analyze the market, does the market want this? Does it exist 100 times already? Stop and breath.

We learn from this week’s portion, from the story of the spies that is repeated in this week’s portion. That the eyes when detached from the brain can be a very dangerous thing. When it comes to building your startup, in marketing and other areas don’t just do things because they seem like the thing to do. Be analytical be strategic and measure everything.

All the cool kids are launching their products with tons of press so I should to, All the cool kids are raising mega rounds of financing with insane valuations so I should to Really should you? Don’t just look around and reach conclusions. Look around internalize digest analyze crunch the numbers and then reach conclusions,

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Hillel is a Co-Founder at ZCastApp, mentor at Google, Microsoft, and many other accelerators across Israel. Add Hillel on Snapchat and Twitter