Parashat Lech Lecha

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The start of this weeks Parasha G-d told Abram to leave his home and his father’s house for another land.

This reminded me of my favorite chapter in Jason Calacanis book Angel.

 

Chapter 5: Do You Need to be in Silicon Valley to be a Great Angel Investor?

Yes

 

The real estate adage of  “location, location, location” holds true for the investor, founder, both tech and religious. Abram had to leave his fathers home of Ur Kasdim for Canaan. Even with Abram rejecting the idol worshipers of his home, the deep influence of the land meant he had to leave. When you want to build the next unicorn your chance of success increases when you go to certain hubs such as Silicon Valley, NYC, or Silicon Wadi.

 

Do Not Take Bad Money

After defeating Chedorlaomer and the kings with him, the King of Sodom said to Abram “Give me the persons and take the possessions for yourself.”

 

I will not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap of what is yours; you shall not say, ‘It is I who made Abram rich.’

 

Say after moving to the right location you are offered a beautiful term sheet, you must consider where the money is coming from. Venture Capital is not a short-term relationship. You must ask yourself is this a company I would want to see my name associated with. Will they be with me in the good times and the bad?

A post by Fred Wilson  Who are my investors speaks about this exact topic.

Not all money is the same. The people that come with it and who are behind it matter. That has always been the case and remains the case and we are reminded of it from time to time.

 

 

Parashat Noach

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This weeks Torah Portion is about Noach, the flood, building of the Ark and tower of Babel

Noah was six hundred years old when the Flood came, waters upon the earth.

Genesis.7.6

The Myth of the Young Entrepreneur is not supported by research The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45. Don’t believe if you are past 30 you can no longer start the next big thing.

While important to get feedback on your startup, be mindful of the audience.  Don’t listen to longtime critics, and focus on the task at hand. For 120 years Noah was laughed at for building the Ark. Not for the structural integrity, but for the social integrity he represented.

 

The Importance of Unity

 

After the Flood Noach’s descendants, King Nimrod brought together the people to build a city with a tower reaching the sky

If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach.

When you are building a tech startup one of the first decisions you have is what language should we code in. Engineers can and have spent hours on deciding what language to code in. (R vs Python for Data Science is a common fight). Being able to talk with team members in one language has a multiplier effect for efficiency. Don’t only consider the bottleneck of the technical language but the social language as well. This generation all spoke the same language, and with that, a great tower was created before being the project was abandoned due to the disunity of the people being broken out to different languages.

Parashat Bereshit

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“Bereshit”

The name of this weeks Torah portion “Bereshit” which literally means “In the beginning.” In the creation of the universe, we are bound to find lessons on creating a startup.

One verse that stood out to me was

And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”

“Let us create man: shows how man was created differently than the creatures which used “Let the earth bring forth.”

Hashem consulted with the Angels on if and how man should be created. When Moses wrote the Torah this verse in the plural implies multiple creators ” Sovereign of the Universe! Why do you thus furnish a pretext for heretics to maintain that there is a plurality of divinities?” “Write!” G-d replied. “Whoever wishes to error will err… Instead, let them learn from their creator who created all yet when he came to create man he took counsel with the ministering angels. (Midrash)

Here we learn Hashem taught that one should always consult others before embarking upon major new initiatives.

Another quote from Pirkei Avot

 מַרְבֶּה עֵצָה, מַרְבֶּה תְבוּנָה. The more counsel, the more understanding.

If Hashem the creator of the universe sought counsel from his administrators that he created; how much more so a CEO should look to his advisors and directors for how to launch a new product.

 

G-d said, “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.”

Similarly number one on Paul Graham’s list of Mistakes That Kill Startups is being a Single Founder.

“Starting a startup is too hard for one person. Even if you could do all the work yourself, you need colleagues to brainstorm with, to talk you out of stupid decisions, and to cheer you up when things go wrong.”

 

The data does suggest that having a co-founder is optional, I would doubt that the solo founders had no outside help along the way. No man is an island.

 

Parashat Ki Tavoh

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

“Ki Tavoh” What happens after you arrive in the land.

The name of this weeks Torah portion “Ki Tavoh” which literally means when you come, as in when you come to the land of Israel. and talks all about building a society, but I want to focus on three words

We know the Torah doesn’t use a single word unless it can teach us a lesson.

The portion talks about agriculture it talks about day to day life, then all of a sudden there are these three words “Vesemacta Bechol Hatov” Rejoice all the good. The obvious question, I should rejoice the good? What else would I rejoice, and besides why do we need Hashem to tell us to rejoice over good? The answer is the emphasis is not on the word Tov-good but rather the word before it, Kol-all. Rejoice all the good even sometimes when it doesn’t appear to be good.

I recently read a book called “The Gift of Stuttering” written by a friend Moe Mernick. In the book, there were many extraordinary stories, but there was one that really stood out. The story goes a couple was walking on the sidewalk one day with there toddler daughter, and the daughter took a sharp left turn and ran toward the street with oncoming traffic coming toward hers.
You could see the state of shock on the parent’s faces, and as the little girl was approaching oncoming traffic, she tripped and fell and began to cry. As the parent realized what had just transpired, they picked her up and expressed gratitude that she fell.

The daughter thought “Don’t you love me? Can’t you tell that I got hurt? Why are you rejoicing?”

The daughter looked at them confused. The daughter thought this is the worst thing that ever happened to me. I fell scraped my knee, and I got hurt, and I’m crying, and my parents here are expressing gratitude, why? Don’t they love me? All things happen for a reason, the little girl wasn’t able to see that. The parents, on the other hand, had that broader perspective and were grateful for the good. Sometimes in life, you are the little girl, and you scrape your knee, and you think its the worst thing in the world, but in reality, it’s actually your biggest gift. As entrepreneurs, we need to fall, we need to fail, its part of the package. The critical thing is to get up and learn from those mistakes. Onward and upward.

And of course, it applies to all aspects of startups. The product bugs, failed marketing campaigns, no traction, the critical thing is to turn failure into opportunity.

The Torah teaches us “Vesamachta Bechol Hatov,” “Rejoice all the good.” Not just the apparent good, but even things that on the surface don’t appear to be good. It’s all about perspective in life, and in startups. It’s all about what we learn and how you leverage your failures
This weeks Torah portion teaches up so many valuable lessons, but these three words teach the importance of gratitude and perspective, two things that can help sperate between the winners and losers.

 

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

Parashat Ki Tetzeh

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

Ki Tetzeh is jam-packed with mitzvos (commandments) of all kinds

This weeks Torah Portion Ki Tetzeh Which means “when you go out” is super unique for so many reasons. Number one, its the portion with the most commandments in the entire Torah. The portion starts with laws of war, divorce, it talks about day to day routine things. But then there is this one commandment that stands out. The Torah talks about if you see a nest with a mother bird and chicks and you want to take the chicks, don’t do it while the mother is still there, send the mother away.

What does this have to do with day to day life? Also, guess what the rewards are for this commandment

Torah teaches us a very valuable lesson here about morals and ethics and compassion. even when it comes to birds, even when it comes to trivial things in life

This commandment called “Shiluach Haken” aka sending away the mother, along with respect for one’s parents, the reward is a long life.

With most commandments in the Torah, we don’t know the rewards we will get if we fulfill the commandments, not so with this commandment, the reward? A long life. Now the Torah literally means that if you fulfill this commandment along with respect for one’s parents, you live a long physical life. but what I think it means is, a long and sustainable lifestyle

It’s not only about the years; it’s about the type of life.

Behave with ethics in everything you do and that is how you build a sustainable lifestyle. A lesson for entrepreneurs, could not be clearer. If you want to build a sustainable business behave ethically. Not only people are looking and not only with the big things, the way you treat employees, the way you do your marketing, in everything. The goal of every entrepreneur? To build a sustainable business! The Torah tells us how! Good ethics, good culture should be at the foundation of everything you do!

Every meeting. Every strategy every announcement, every milestone. Ethics. Morals. Compassion

The mitzvah of “Shiluach Haken” belongs right there in the middle of all the commandments about how to build a just and ethical society because that is how you do it. By behaving compassionately. Ethics and morals need to run through the veins of the organization and manifest themselves in all aspects, without exceptions. Even the most trivial things!

Its just birds no one is looking maybe I don’t have to act ethically right? It just a small announcement perhaps I’ll lie to the press maybe I won’t be upfront about my employees. No! The Torah tells us. You want to live the longest sustainable life behave ethically even when it comes to taking chicks out of a nest. Want to build sustainable business ethics in every aspect of your organization.

The Torah could have taught us how to behave ethically in bigger things in life like doing business, but no it takes about taking chicks out of a nest. The most trivial matter and it says then is when you need to behave ethically

Being ethical with big things isn’t that difficult. It’s when no one is looking that is difficult

None of us are stealing millions of dollars for our startup but sometimes you know, you might bend the truth a little bit. The Torah says no, even the smallest things. The reward for behaving ethically for the mundane things. Sustainability. Behave ethically with the little things in life, and you will live a long life. Same goes for your company

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

Parashat Shoftim

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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 , mentor at Google, Microsoft, and many other accelerators across Israel. Add Hillel on Twitter

Tevunah Tabernacle

Understanding Tevunah

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Parashat Eikev

Parashat Eikev

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

You know usually I have to extract lessons from the portion to talk about how to build a successful company. This week I didn’t have to look very hard. It’s all about building a successful society. The portion goes into great detail about the Jews entering the Land of Israel, and how to build a successful society. But what’s interesting is there are two contradictory instructions that G-d gives the Jewish people.

The first one G-d says is don’t fear, he tells the Jewish people that the nations surrounding Israel are going to give us a hard time. He says don’t fear. On the one hand he says no fear, anything is possible. On the other hand, he says there is no room for ego. Not everything is about you and you can’t pull it all off. There is a very famous sentence in this week’s portion. “My strengths are what build this successful society”. Ego

Fear and ego have no place in building companies

While those two principles might seem like they contradict.  They actually don’t, they complement each other perfectly, anything is possible when you work together to build a society. It is that balance that entrepreneurs need to strike in order to begin to build a successful company. No fear of competition or anything else, but also no ego.

Let’s not forget that Mark Zuckerberg was told just yesterday not to even go near the Social space because Myspace owns the internet, and Steve Jobs was told the same thing because of Nokia. If you are building something, and no one has ever told you it’s impossible then you are doing something very wrong. Don’t fear those people, learn from them.

While you put fear aside and you focus on execution, another thing you should be putting aside is yourself, and stay focused on the mission. You want to build a successful company, look at the Torah for a guide on how to build a successful society. No fear, but also no ego

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

Parashat Devarim

Parashat Devarim

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This is  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 , mentor at Google, Microsoft, and many other accelerators across Israel. Add Hillel on Snapchat and Twitter

 

 

 

Parashat Matot

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

Usually I focus on a story in the portion or a section of the portion. Here I want to talk about four words. The first section of this week’s Torah portion talks about promises and commitments and the four words are  כְּכָל־הַיֹּצֵ֥א מִפִּ֖יו יַֽעֲשֶֽׂה  Everything you say do. The context of those four words in the portion is when you make a promise and you can’t keep it, how you need to behave and what you need to do. We are going to talk about something else.

I have talked about the importance of communication in the past, but I don’t think any of us understand how powerful words can be. Setting expectations for good and for bad. Hard times in a startup are magnified exponentially by a lack of communication. And the same applies to good times.

You have a PR campaign, don’t use superlatives to oversell what you are doing. Just tell me what you are doing. Overpromising under delivering is a recipe for disaster. Like the Torah tells us, once you guarantee something, once you promise something once you commit to something, you must deliver. And that applies even more so to startups

Of course this principle applies externally when it comes to PR, when it comes to Social. But it applies internally in your company   over communication all the more so. Of course we are all tempted to oversell and make it seem bigger than it really is. But fight that temptation. Because big promises create big expectation. We’ve all heard the stories about the companies the startups, that raises millions, hundreds of millions dollars, with big launches and big splashes, and big noise, and then crashed and burned

Trust me I am the last person to tell you not to make noise not to do PR. But just make sure your promises align with your deliverables. That’s all. The Torah teaches us that despite what you might think, that it’s just a word right. I just said something I didn’t actually do anything, it’s nothing tangible. No. Words are very powerful. Commitments are everything

The Torah then talks about the detailed and long process you need to go thru once you make a commitment and a promise and can’t deliver upon it. Same goes for startups long process.

כְּכָל־הַיֹּצֵ֥א מִפִּ֖יו יַֽעֲשֶֽׂה  Everything you say do. And if you can’t do it, then don’t say it

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