Parashat Shoftim

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

This weeks Torah Portion is called Shoftim which literally means “judges,” and deals with building a society, morality, and ethics

The Portion starts off :
שפטים ושטרים תתן־לך בכל־שעריך – Judges and police officers you should put in all your gates.

The Torah says “Don’t take bribes because bribery makes wise people blind and righteous people crooked.”

So why gates? Additionally, a few verses later the Torah teaches that as judges, it is forbidden to take bribery because of bias. What signifies a gate? an opening when you leave things open and don’t put external controls like judges and officers then you face bias.

Important to not leave things up to yourself and your hunch. Only sometimes you’re subjective

How do you build a righteous society, by putting external controls by every opening and making sure that those external controls are not biased?  If you ever tried to critique an entrepreneur surely you were met with defensiveness and subjectivity because as entrepreneurs we are deep in it.

No Matter how objective you think you are, bring on external controls.

We, as entrepreneurs by definition are biased, So out judges and police officers at every opening. It’s never fun to hear that your biggest competitor is kicking your butt or that your product is just not delivering. You have to be prepared to accept external criticism.

You can’t answer them. Only external controls can.

Is your product advancing as fast as you projected. Is your marketing as you predicted? Send yourself hard deadlines, and use external tools to answer those question. Every possible opening of your organization try to use external controls. Such as data, can give you a glimpse into whether things are working or not

Billy Kiely, the VP product of InVision, once said “Time investment is the biggest enemy of creativity” When you are in it, you are not thinking creatively. To elaborate on that point when you are invested heavily in your product and direction it is super difficult to look objectively and creatively at it and maybe pivot. Don’t leave any openings unsealed to subjectivity. That is how companies fail. When you convince yourself, you’re succeeding.

The Torah teaches us that every opening put external controls and make sure those controls are not biased, that is how to build a strong society, and that is how to build a strong company

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