Parashat Miketz

This is 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 Miketz which means ‘After.’ The story is of a very interesting one with endless valuable lessons for entrepreneurs. Last week we talked about Jacob and his 12 sons, including Joseph his favorite one. Joseph is sold into slavery where he is falsely accused of something, and thrown into Jail.

After Joseph is falsely accused and jailed he encounters some of the king’s officers who have a dream that Joseph then interprets with the help of G-d according to the commentary. All that was in last weeks portion. In this weeks portion, Pharoh himself has a dream and those officers they remember Joseph, and they tell Pharoh there’s this guy in jail, they tell him who interpreted our dreams successfully and suggest Pharoh invite him to the palace, which he does and Joseph indeed interprets his dream as well. Long story short after Joseph successfully interprets pharaohs dream pharaoh is impressed he takes Joseph out of jail and puts him in charge of the treasure of all of Egypt.

Let’s break this down for a bit. Joseph by his own brothers is sold into slavery, then falsely accused then jailed but he doesn’t give up. I don’t know about you but if I was betrayed by my own brothers then falsely accused and jailed. I’m not sure I’d spend time bothering interpreting some random dudes dream in jail. I’d be pretty down on myself.

What ends up happening is what we call Middah k’neged Middah or Karma.  Because Joseph spent that time interpreting those dreams. He ended up ruling half of Egypt. Huge lesson for Entrepreneurs, First lesson; there will be many hardships don’t let them get you down, move on. But there actually is something much much more important here. If I had a dime for every entrepreneur or investor that didn’t do anything unless it generated instant ROI on their time, I’d be an investor myself. As an entrepreneur, I can not tell you how many times, hundreds and hundreds of times of meetings I’ve had that were not clear they would generate any ROI but ended up generating tremendous ROI. Karma is an entrepreneur’s best friend. Unless it’s his worst enemy don’t always think of the instant ROI sometimes just do good. I’m not saying your time isn’t worth money, it is. But not everything is about money and when somebody asks for help be prepared to offer that help. Even if that helper’s guidance doesn’t boomerang back and help you in your future, worst .comes to worst you have helped someone and in most scenarios, at least in my experience it absolutely does come around.

Joseph could have easily sat in jail and have said dude leave me alone, I don’t have the patience for your dreams but he didn’t he offered help. And boy did that ROI come fast. But this goes beyond meeting others and giving guidance and experience this is true about marketing as well. don’t always measure the instant RO think the long game. Do you think Joseph in his wildest dreams has ever thought his brothers betraying him selling him into slavery than being falsely accused in jail would lead him to save all of ancient Egypt?

As they say, challenges if they don’t kill you make you stronger that’s first of all, and second of all do good and the ROI will come back in spades.

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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