Lior Sion
Yeah, yes. So I’ll start with a product market fit because I think this is this is magic and a lot of people Talking about it. But it’s really magic when it really happens. You know, when it happens, it happens, you know, and one of the things that happened to us very early on, is that, that, that we knocked on doors and we sent LinkedIn messages and so on so forth the way you you know, you hack around when you’re an early stage startup. The difference though, was that every door open, everybody answered that. Not everything ended up ended up with a deal. You know, it’s it’s not magic. It’s not that good of a magic but but every door open. And we saw ourselves from the beginning, from a five people company to 20 people company to the 30, 40 people company, speaking to the global CIOs and CEOs of companies, like you said, like Coca Cola, like like Walmart, Panera, and others. And it’s amazing that they are even speaking to us, you know, personally. And it proved to us there is the pain that we are talking about, you know, it’s he, that’s the product market fit, I think, actually the CIO of Coca Cola, as they actually approached us at some point, very young, they probably do. So there’s there’s a program in Israel called The Bridge, it’s a very good for them. It’s like an accelerator that, but they take no money, they give no money, and they take no no equity. Their objective is that startups in the program close deals with, it used to be only Coca Cola today, there are other big enterprises there. And you know, it’s like, it’s gives the the startups access to the biggest names in the world. But on the other hand, gives these big enterprises access to startup and technology. So it’s like, it’s a win win situation. Anyway, they approached us. And they told us that, you know, the CIO of Coca Cola wants us in the forum, and we’re like, Listen, you know, it’s amazing and everything, but we are a five people company, we don’t even think they can close deals with the companies like us. And it’s not exactly we are not exactly sure that we can solve something for Coca Cola, if you don’t know, by the way, Coca Cola has the biggest fleet in the world, they probably have more cars than you know, FedEx, UPS and DHL combined. Just though they are an amazing marketing company with great logistics, and we’re like, Okay, what, what we can do you how we can help you. And he says, You know, I actually thought about Bringg before you, I’ve been thinking about Bringg for two years of something like that. And I’ve been trying to do it in Coca Cola, I spoke to Uber Uber, well, you know, interested in doing their own stuff. And I was just looking for it. And then I saw something about you. And this is exactly what I want me to be able to enable
Jeremy Weisz
us to share this customer, he wants to
Lior Sion
shape it. He wants to give the experiences customers, that’s the most important thing. And and it’s a relationship thing, and it’s a global company, and they understand that happiness is very important to the customers and they want something like Bringg so this is how it started. Again, very early for us which which is which fortunate.
Jeremy Weisz
What was your pitch? What was your pitch to Coke and Walmart? That they’re like, Oh, this is because you obviously had a pitch down that you demonstrate that you solve a pain point for them.
Lior Sion
This is actually it was for Coca Cola. It was early Walmart was slightly later but for Coca Cola, it was really like that, like Uber eyes, your you know, your experience. And people know exactly, thousand. Yeah, it’s 2013 14. It’s like track in time tracking of whomever is coming to you with eta days and times and so forth. That was what about, you know, it’s it was a little bit later, it was about creating your own, they wanted to create their own crowdsourcing sheet to deliver from girl says that we met or, you know, we started working with them when they already understood that ghoster is going to be huge. Today, it’s obvious, right? A lot of the things this is what’s funny in this world of deliveries and experience, I’m talking about things now. And everybody’s like, but of course, you know, but yeah,
Jeremy Weisz
I watched a video of you talking in 2015 fight, you know, and it wasn’t so obvious early on,
Lior Sion
right? When when we started, you know, Amazon was a losing company, right? So So who says that they will win? You know, today, it’s easy to say, okay, Amazon is amazing. And, you know, for every $2 if not more these days, every $2 spent on e commerce in the US one on one is going to Amazon so it’s not a question anymore. And you say you want to have an Amazon like experience, everybody says of course. But you know, seven years ago, it wasn’t as clear, which is good for us because we are you know, we are the leading company, not many companies, if any started so long ago, when you’re selling to enterprises, you know, security and privacy and integration and capabilities and scale and performance. basic stuff. I’m not talking about features yet, but you know, the basic stuff that you have to have in order to work with, you know, with the biggest customers in the world, we already had that.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, yes. Like, Uberize your customer experience or like, let’s talk clear. So what happened next with Coca Cola.
Lior Sion
So they had this, this thing in Vietnam, which was, you know, bring took me to the weirdest places in the world, it’s fun, it’s fun. We are actually working in 50 countries today. So I’ve been in many, many places. But you know, they they were in in Vietnam, they were trying to basically provide this, this Uber experience to what we call Out of Stock out of stock is a situation with cpgs when when small businesses that sell the merchandise ran out of stock, and and basically the biggest two problems there is first knowing when you’re out of stock. And second, a plan is squeaky. So we help with the replenish. So once you you know, it’s like an Uber, like find the desk, the wholesaler or provider or something and make sure that they have assigned driver and send the drivers and
Jeremy Weisz
so is it like an automated fashion like it automatically. So you know, they’re out of stock, and that allows them to just fill in the stock as soon as possible. Right?
Lior Sion
Right, think about Uber where they find the best taxi for you. Yes, we allow them to custom, the business logic for this what we call auto dispatch. So they custom the logic in real time to choose, you know, place with stock and business relationship, and so on and so forth. But basically, it allows them to do whatever they want. One of the things that we believe in Bringg, we always call it an unopinionated operating system. So we don’t have opinions on on what’s good on what’s not where an operating system, you as a business or customers as businesses, they are the professionals in their world. So they what we have them is to introduce them to the system and capabilities, and the belief that we have, and notice that it’s coming from the CTO, the belief that we have that technology is just a tool. Technology is not is not a target technology is just a tool to create business value. And my objective as a CTO is to create this technology that allows them to so one of our advantages, I think is that we you know we create as a system from the beginning we will not a service provider ourselves and try to do something else with the technology. We just created technology to serve others.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, I want to get deeper into what happened to Walmart, but I’m just play out the story of Coca Cola cuz early on, it didn’t turn out as someone would have expected considering the conversation.
Lior Sion
Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s a complicated world, the you learn a lot, a lot of people will tell you that you stir enterpreneurship or entrepreneurs can only be people who don’t know the world because it’s if you knew the amount of hardship that you will see you will never do anything, you will never leave the house. But, yeah, but but, you know, we went into the world of Coca Cola, the, by the way, the Vietnam thing was very successful, you know, in in all aspects. And then we learned about the stature. I mean, today, again, things that are very clear, but, you know, franchisee Coca Cola is a franchisee business, there is the HQ and many others are like that. And then it turned into basically the CIO is the head and they want us and then they are By the way, they became a customer and they become an investor even later. But from that on, you have to basically close a deal with every franchisee around the world. It’s a long process. It takes time. We have a few installations in different parts of the world. Like I said, I travel a lot. I used to travel a lot. I keep forgetting I don’t travel anymore. But yeah, I mean, it’s in the business cases, they change the very, it’s everything from everything.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. But originally you were talking to the CIO of Coca Cola.
Lior Sion
Yeah, right. He was like the entry point. And when the entry point is CIO. It just gets better.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. So Walmart, what feedback What happened? Walmart,
Lior Sion
Walmart, Walmart, I think the interesting feedback. Yeah. I think Walmart taught me that.
That sometimes, as another porno, many times people frighten you or you’re fighting yourself by what will happen if if big companies will do what I do. I’m a small company. I’m living What happens if former chooses to do what I do? And what happens if Google’s did does and so on? so forth? Right? And
Jeremy Weisz
weighs? All the big? Yeah, I mean, it’s a fear that keeps you up at night.
Lior Sion
By then. And yeah, used to use us to the secret I’m going to tell you. I mean, they can’t, honestly, they can’t, not because they’re gonna have good people, they have amazing people. But but the there’s, there’s an existing business. And existing businesses are never perfect. They always draw your attention. They always take all the resources, you could I mean, if any of those companies add extra resources to do whatever, and they don’t need them in order to face the troubles that they have in a day to day situation, they would be out of business, right? So they are fully exhausting all of their resources. And it’s very hard for them to do things that startups there is a isn’t startups keep coming up. Right. And those companies that are found in
Jeremy Weisz
other agile finds
Lior Sion
their edge, they move, they adapted to the situation. And you know, it’s there’s, there’s a reason for that. I think, by the way, one of our challenges that you realize that there’s one one is one of my challenges is as we go to become this company, right? Don’t forget that. We are, we are 150 it’s not that big, but somebody can come with five people understand the things that we can, so we have to make sure that we are agile and fast as well. But yeah, I mean, this is one of the things that I you know, Walmart, Walmart, I think has 10,000 developers around the world. You know, it’s a huge company, they have like 2.5 million employees, right? It’s like, it’s a country. But But, you know, they have their limitations, and everybody has it resource issues. Nobody can get the developers they want nobody. And there you go.
Jeremy Weisz
There’s and they have certain, you know, they have certain priorities, like you said, they’re presently serving their current customers, which is just a different model than what you’re doing, you know, so
Lior Sion
right. And no, they have to run huge stores, they have to run logistics of inventory, they have to purchase and buy and decide and there’s a website and then ecommerce, and then a million countries and, you know, whatever they
Jeremy Weisz
mean that also comes from you, you know, being in the inner workings of that because you were in rd at IBM,
Lior Sion
right? I’ve been I was very lucky. By the way, IBM, I joined 2000 I think six. It was a 50,000 developers company back then 400,000 total. And I joined as they were going through adapting to agile development cycles. And it was actually, I was astonished by how big company like that makes a change like that. committed to it. And how they move. Obviously not fast, right. Like a
Jeremy Weisz
huge ocean boat, right?
Lior Sion
It’s not two weeks, right? It’s not a decision. But he was much faster than I assumed. They took it really seriously they they they found champions. Today I can tell you that in a retrospective IBM is, is doing a lot of things correctly. Yeah. And and it was it was it was fun to see it was also I saw the power of selling a product when you’re a huge company. How many people are buying your product? Because it’s good. And how many people are buying your product? Because it’s IBM? You know, you have to be honest. But
Jeremy Weisz
why did you become a software developer?
Lior Sion
Of The first time I saw computer I became a software developer really from early on? Yeah, like fourth grade. Texas instrument? Never never played never again. Yeah, 82, wouldn’t you? Yes. But yeah, I don’t know.
Jeremy Weisz
Um, you know, what’s interesting, too, is, um, you decided after the army that you’d never be an entrepreneur? Right? Why?
Lior Sion
Um, you can you can basically say that my parents are entrepreneurs in high tech. They have their own office, right? And then my dad is a surveyor. So it’s not exactly an answer for no but but they started their own business, which is in a way that and they went to live in in in a city that they had my dad had work in and which was very remote in Israel. So So I live the life of what it means to be an enterpreneur including working on weekends, including the app times and the downtime and the stress and you saw that you felt I saw all of it. I saw all of
Jeremy Weisz
them. What were some of the Stress Stress parts of it.
Lior Sion
Yeah, it’s it’s stressful like I am seeing today on a daily basis like, you know, you, you finish one day and you’re the top of the wall because you just spoke to the CIO of Coca Cola. And then tomorrow, the investor says they don’t invest, whatever, you know, it’s it’s ups and downs. This is life. Personally, I think I was an enterpreneur Oh, my DNA is entrepreneurial. Yeah. Like he ality like, I started working. When I was five, I went to a grocery store and said that I wanted I wanted to join. So for a while I fought this instinct. Yeah. And I said, I will never do it again. But somehow, somehow it clicked on me and I find it. You can’t, you can’t escape it. Actually, if people ask me like, to be honest, I have to tell people if you want if you don’t have this bug, if you don’t have to do it, just don’t do it.
Jeremy Weisz
You’re a glutton for punishment.
Lior Sion
Doesn’t mean there’s an end. It’s like, my, my co founder. You know, I think from the second year that we’ve been working, he always uses me Listen, now we hire the first VP of r&d, your life is going to be amazing. From now on. It’s going to be you know, saving like sweet sitting from here and then a year afterwards. Oh, we hire the first this and that now it’s going to be so easy. And then oh, we raise our a round. It’s gonna be easy from now. I’m still waiting.
Jeremy Weisz
He’s a good visionary. He sells the vision.
Lior Sion
He sold what he needs to continue to work but yeah, I mean, yeah, it’s if you have to do it, you have to do it. So that’s a matter but if you don’t,
Jeremy Weisz
don’t how is the heart of the army shape you? What’s it was an interesting story from the army.
Lior Sion
Um, I think I something in in a computer unit in the army. I think I was the most injured soldier ever. They’re the closest thing I saw to combat was, you know, Doom. Ah, and yeah, I just kept hurting myself for some reason, just bad luck. I think technically, it’s which way I learned how to it gave him a background. So so I am self taught. I learned from books, there was no internet when I grew up. And this and and in the army, they you know, they gave me object oriented c++, all the basic stuff. And they were it was a very good. I had a very good teacher. I mean, the basics, you know, that he taught me. were amazing. So for me, it was a shaping experience on that side. Mostly.
Jeremy Weisz
How did you meet your co founders?
Lior Sion
Both of us are actually Ultra Runners. Oh, really? Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz
So for people who don’t know what that is, how long is
Lior Sion
how long running? Yeah, is anything that officially it’s anything that’s more more than a marathon?
Jeremy Weisz
Got, like 26.3 miles. You’re an ultra runner. point, point. 05. Yeah.
Lior Sion
So if you miss a turn in a marathon, you’re a runner. But yeah, I mean, I mean, 50 k, you know, 50 miles, 100 miles, whatever. It doesn’t really matter. At some point. What do you do to
Jeremy Weisz
train for that? You just
Lior Sion
want to learn? And really, you have to run a lot. Me Myself. You’re asking going? Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz
yeah. What do you like? What’s the longest run you over to 100? Oh,
Lior Sion
I ran is a is like 600 kilometers, give or take? So I ran from north to south, which is the longest route took me about 10 days. Wow. Yeah, it’s like 6070 kilometres, which is about 40 miles, 50 miles a day. But like I said, it doesn’t the distance doesn’t really matter at some point. Because you run you run and you run on trails running on flatland is not the same as running in mountains. And running in the rain is not the same as running, you know, dry. But it’s the experience is that you live the minute like I’m a person who always think about the future and I plan and you know, I strategize blah, blah, blah. And suddenly you find yourself you’re so tired, in an altar, and you’re so tired. You just think about what’s the next step, you obviously don’t think about the distance. Because you cannot think about the distance if you think you must run, just quit and Yeah, but you think about the next step, and now and what’s happening and how I feel and you know, and it’s fun. So
Jeremy Weisz
parallels entrepreneurship and a lot of ways.
Lior Sion
A lot. I fall in love to entrepreneurship. I think it parallels to the world to the life. Sometimes you have to think about the future. Sometimes you have to live there now. So 50 miles a day.
Jeremy Weisz
So at the end of the 50 miles, you just find someone’s house to stay at what do you do?
Lior Sion
Yeah, I mean, I mean, it varies. In some cases we we didn’t plan it like we planned sleeping outside. But in some cases there were people that heard about us and saw us and they invited us in and some some cases we set up.
Jeremy Weisz
And then what do you bring for for eating like for food and drink?
Lior Sion
Eat? You you eat? First you eat everything.
Jeremy Weisz
You’re hungry. I mean, you have a backpack with you now,
Lior Sion
but we bought we bought along the way.
Jeremy Weisz
God, you just stop off and yeah. So Guy is the one who’s also an ultra runner. So
Lior Sion
my Raanan was my co founder he left about two years ago. And we took Guy as the CEO. Yeah, two years ago, he came Guy came from Spunk. I actually, and know Guys from Emblaze, which are both of us worked in about 20 years ago. Really? Yeah, incidentally. And then he moved with with the Emblaze, and then other companies to the US. So he was 18 years in the US. And then he came back to his lab. I stayed here the whole time.
This is Guy? Yeah. Well, Raanan and myself, we you know, I used to raise these to have the ultra running site of Israel, we called it Distances, obviously. So we just, you know, it’s like was like a content site. And Raanan was writing in. So this time when you actually,
Jeremy Weisz
when you’re running for 50 miles they are what are you doing? Are you listening to music books, like coding things in
Lior Sion
your brain? What are you missing? Everything. It’s a long time. It’s a long
Jeremy Weisz
time. It’s a long code, bring on your hundred mile trip or
Lior Sion
a lot of it. It goes a lot in your head, you listen to podcasts, you listen to books, and all the goal. Sometimes you run without anything. Sometimes it’s music, I actually do my some of my goals, like my business goals while I’m running another 50 miles. But if I ran like 1015 miles like I can talk during, yeah, um, so you know, it’s a time saver. So actually save time. I don’t waste it.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, I Yeah, totally. I figured that was such, that’d be the case with you. I’m your co founder. So what ended up happening?
Lior Sion
we scaled we grew. He’s an amazing entrapreneur. He knows how to start things from nothing. He’s like a bulldozer, like nothing can stand in his way. But you know, at some point, we go and what replace what needs to replace in a bigger company, what needs to replace this capability is the ability to build the system. It needs to be agile, it needs to be fast and needs to be dynamic, but it’s a system. And it wasn’t for him. And you know, his kids grew up. He has four kids. And yeah, I think one of them actually joined the army today. Wow. Which is also funny, because I was in it. But her Bat Mitzvah, this is how when we started and now she’s joining the army. Wow, there you go.
Jeremy Weisz
Is that that’s got to be a tough decision and a tough conversation. I imagine.
Lior Sion
It depends on on the depends on the maturity I think and and needs in life and how much you’re connected to who you are and what you want to do. I mean, as I said, we’re still friends, good humans. I think we speak every two or three weeks. We both run still. So that’s good. And yeah, so So it’s, it’s a maturity thing.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, I think I was talking to a founder the other day, we are and we’re just talking about this exact topic is one person who started their company, and it’s just it’s kind of grown beyond them. And even what they wanted. And this is people are going through this every single day. You know, it’s like their baby. And it’s almost like you’re kind of, you know, releasing it to the world or releasing to the next stage. You know, right.
Lior Sion
Yeah. So I think I think this is a very good comparison. I mean, I always compare it to my kids. And at the end of the day, what you know, at least I believe, what’s our objective with my kids, my objective and my kids is that they will be happy. It’s not that they will be with me and they will do what I say then bla bla bla bla that to be happy. No. That to at the beginning, at least for the first 25 years. But someday, they may be allowed to leave the house, and it will be outside of my control. So So yeah, you have to I hope that I will be mature enough to let my kid go and do his stuff. Because this is crazy. But yeah, I mean, it is what it is.
Jeremy Weisz
Um, I want to talk about just some big challenges milestones along the way. Um, at what point in the journey do you decide to raise money money from the get go.
Lior Sion
Yeah, from the get go. I mean for for Raanan and myself, this was our first startup. I was CTO and Get and with Clarizen and Get is like an Uber competitor in a few countries get. Gettaxi? Yep. And I had my own startups. Before Raanan actually had an IPO with his, with his previous startup. So it was not a first kind of rodeo attempted this. Yeah. And, and like I said, Raanan has four kids at the time, I had only one. But we knew that we need to, we need to not not immediately Let not like on day one, but within six months, we’re going to have to raise money. And we did.
Jeremy Weisz
How was that process?
Lior Sion
Surprising, actually. Yeah, I mean, I mean, we started with with this concept of branding, we started talking to everybody, everyone, like from retailers to deliveries to, and, you know, mobile workforce management to a lot of those companies. One and two investors, which is something that I strongly believe starts to talk start talking to investors as soon as possible, not because you’re raising money, because you’re trying to understand what they are looking at and what they’re looking for. And you fine tune your your speech and you know, whatever. Yes. Along those with this time, we spoke today to the to the T mini to one, which is a NASDAQ traded company is really though, that that has fleet management. And the reason we talked to them was about the fleet management. They heard what we were doing, and they said, you know, are you raising money, we might want to invest. And we said, we don’t know, blah, blah, blah. They actually said, you know, we can invest up to a million dollar. And if it’s interesting, let’s do it. Long story short, we had a few options, a few VCs, they ended up investing it one, which is something I’m happy to do that to this day, they invested in a seed of 2.5, which is more than they’re used to, but there was some competition there. They’re a great team. They are an amazing family. You know, on the on the personal level, which, which I think is super important as for your investors,
Jeremy Weisz
at what point Lior, where’s the product at when you go to invest? Like, do you have something to show them? Is this an idea that you talk to? I’m sure everyone’s in different stages of where they invest. But the early on investor is what did the company in the in the platform look like?
Lior Sion
Yes. So CSS, I’m a good developer. I’ve been doing it for 30 years. Yeah. So there was there was a working prototype. Yeah, that time we actually had one or two customers already. You know, we had most of it. The concepts even didn’t change that much during the year. They became much nicer once we hire the designer because I’m not a designer. But But in terms of the product, the definitions didn’t change that much. We are quite lucky in that we didn’t do a pivot or something like that. We knew what we wanted to do and we went with it. So they’re the working product not only Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz
so they could see it they could feel it you had customers and now you want them just like with a sketch or something like that.
Lior Sion
So at the beginning we we came in with a sketch but like I said for in the beginning, we didn’t even know they were investors, we came to talk to them as fleet management company. But but it doesn’t really matter even for for investors, I strongly suggest that you talk to them from day one. Even if it’s like you know, an investor that only raises 10 millions and they are not doing seed and you need to seed round and they are not relevant to you. You want to know what they say what they think about how we you will be ready for round a and you want to know if there are things around seed that they don’t don’t accept. And you want to show them that you are making folders. Just speaking to them, you have an idea you have a sketch and then three months later you’re speaking to them and you have a prototype and three months later you ever pull that and it’s just like the sketches showed. That means for them that you’re an executioner, you thought about something you did it. We’re not talking about money at all at this point. But you’re already there for them. As you know one of the things that they need to course write about you once they want to invest, they cross Do you have an execution, you do what you said obviously they will look at the business model and a lot of things but but you want to create this dislike this story in their mind. So document and by the way, the same time you improve your pitch You talk to a few investors, they don’t understand what you want. And then you talk to a few others and they understand what you want, but they’re not convinced that it needed. And then you talk to a few more and then it started making sense.
Jeremy Weisz
Lior on, what’s the best advice you got you had in this journey, whether someone decided to invest or not invest what’s what’s a piece of advice, someone left you with that made you think maybe made you change something or keep them in the same?
Lior Sion
Charge more, Charge more,
Jeremy Weisz
that’s what they said,
Lior Sion
charge more, we actually I remember the day that we decided to charge $200 a month from customers, we will scared. I can say a few words, I don’t think it’s allowed in podcast, but we were very scared. And who’s gonna pay $200 for this, you know, it’s like, why. And, you know, today, we are closing multimillion dollar deals. So apparently, some people will pay once, by the way, once we did that change, to 200, I think three months later, we did to 600 2 months later to 2000 it was very fast, we suddenly, you know, the appetite open, and we understood that people are willing to pay and it’s amazing.
Jeremy Weisz
Who told you that you remember
Lior Sion
now that like, six years ago?
Jeremy Weisz
Um, you know, one of the things you talked about before is you can’t make mistakes as a startup. And you refer to there’s an outage of one hour versus three days. You remember what I’m talking about?
Lior Sion
Um, I hope I said you can make mistake, and oh, you can.
Jeremy Weisz
I mean, and there’s just there’s less of a, I guess, leeway when you’re compared to a larger company is when you cannot
Lior Sion
completely score. Right? I outages and bugs, and so on and so forth. Everybody has. And I think actually, this is one of the things that differentiate or can differentiate, you know, that you don’t have bugs, because everybody has bugs, but how you respond to them. This reliability, this partnership, this this, you know, honesty about who you are, what you’re what you’re trying to learn, and sometimes you mess up. One of our customers actually told us once that that, you know, he said with us, and it’s a multi million dollar customer, and they said, Listen, you are one of the most difficult companies to work with, and we love you. We will never replace you. I wish everybody were like you. And it’s good or bad and bad. You know?
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. What did they mean by that?
Lior Sion
So we are challenging our customers, them to succeed, we have this belief, we are in a very challenging environment, not only ourselves, our customers, Amazon is fighting from one side, technology is changing laws and wars and regulations are changing gold time COVID-19 suddenly appears a lot of challenges or so and a lot of companies fail. And we said, What’s more important for us with our customers? Is it that they will be happy? Or is it that they will be successful? What’s more important, and we decided that we want our customers first to be successful. Second, close second, right? We don’t want an angry and angry customer. We care about our customers deeply. Further, they will be successful, close second, that they will be happy. And and because if they are not successful, at the end of the day, they will not want to work with us or they will just close down and cannot work with us. So we need our customers to be successful, we actually build the company in the business model, and on the fact that they’re successful.
Jeremy Weisz
What’s a time Lior that you remember that you had to challenge someone that maybe it was uncomfortable to challenge that customer but you did it because you wanted them to be successful?
Lior Sion
Oh, it happens all the time. Yeah, it happens all the time. It’s easy. But that’s easy, because some of the concept of product work. By the way, we didn’t say that at the beginning, but I’m responsible for product and technology. But in product, it’s very easy to think about ideas, some sometimes people mistake for that for people to think about ideas. Actually one of the most difficult things about product is what to say no to Hmm, because most of the things you say no to you don’t have the resources. You don’t have the time you don’t have the capabilities. It’s not important enough. It’s true. It’s a good feature. I’m not even arguing about the features, mostly because the features are good. People are smart, and they have ideas. They have a need. But yeah, but but most of the features just don’t need it. They will not move the needle, right? And these are the features that you’re looking for. It’s nicer, it’s easier. It’s faster, you know, some features do this and that. But it’s important to concentrate on things that that actually will make it successful. So It’s easier said than done, you know, just said is much easier. It’s a gray
Jeremy Weisz
area, because how do you decide on what needs what’s essential as opposed to maybe a nice to have?
Lior Sion
Right? I can write a book on that. But that’s, that’s the that’s the, that’s the work of a product person. And this is what product people do. But to your question, yes. So you have you have to work and talk to customers all the time, about what’s needed, what’s not needed? And why.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, you know, I have two last questions. I always ask Louis, this is Inspired Insider. One is what’s been a really low moment, challenging moment to push through On the flip side, what’s been especially proud moment, before I ask those two questions, I encourage you to check out Bringg.com, and that’s B-R-I-N-G-G. Like you see, if you’re watching the video, you can see it behind Lior there. Those are the two Gs and Bringg to Don’t forget it, it’s two gs.com that one g so before I ask that, Lior, I’m curious, talking to you, um, who should be using Bringg that is not using Bringg, like we’re talking directly to those people like listen, right? You need to check out the platform. Why means if you have check it out, why are you using it? Who should be using it?
Lior Sion
So I think COVID-19 is changing a lot of things. And I think one of the most one of the most interesting trends in the world is that people are staying home more. And people are investing in their home both because they are in there. And also because they have time. And so I am a strong believer in home improvement, like the Lowe’s and the Home Depot’s. The experience, though is is is challenging, if you’ve ever ordered. I think it there was some Leo leeway for a while because people will go home all the time. And you don’t really care when it’s coming because you’re just stuck home and you’re just waiting for something good to happen. But but it’s ending, right the people come and leave and basically they want to be back to controlling their lives. And you want to know when somebody is coming again. And I think there is huge, huge, huge in the whole big and bulky you know arena which is delivering big stuff, closets, home improvements, and so on so forth. I think there’s a huge value.
Jeremy Weisz
So Lowe’s Home Depot, who else
Lior Sion
IKEA, you know, we are we are in 50 countries. So the brands very what we just said is the US mostly I got from Canada, probably IKEA. IKEA. Yeah. IKEA for one. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. All right. Well, I’ll email this to Jay Stein, a past guest, there was Jay Steinfeld, who built up Blinds.com started with $3,000 built over $200 million in revenue and sold it to Home Depot. Now he worked at Home Depot. So Jay, I’m gonna send this to you, you can watch it. Um, so last last two questions Lior what’s been a challenging moment, low moment, in this crazy journey.
Lior Sion
Everything has been challenging.
Jeremy Weisz
You wake up in a cold sweat?
Lior Sion
Yeah. From everything, you know, I think
I’ll give you two answers. One of them might might not be the normal one. And it is a small country. Most of the startups are building to be two different markets. These early market is not big enough to be interesting. It’s an advantage and a disadvantage. But But anyway, it is what it is. It does mean that as a founder, you travel a lot. So I used to travel before COVID, like once a month to the US, which is a minimum of a week. It’s not there, quick jump somewhere. And, and it’s a challenge. It stands on the family challenges, you know, like I can’t even remember the last time I slept for two straight nights at the same place. Sleeping in a hotel is a bonus not sleeping on the plane. So so it’s been it’s been a huge challenge throughout. Especially on the family. It’s now I have a one year old. And because of COVID I’m home and Sunday, I see all the things I even see when when my first kid like he’s walking and he’s talking and it’s trying and it’s fun. And on the first go. So that’s a challenge. Low points. Speaking of low point was the every time that they left and my kid is crying. It’s a low point.
Jeremy Weisz
I thought that’d be a high point. If they’re crying, No, I’m just kidding. Oh,
Unknown Speaker
yeah. Because you’re
Jeremy Weisz
not sorry. Good because crying cuz there, you’re there, you’re leaving as a low point crying. throwing a tantrum is a high point, right?
Lior Sion
No, but the I mean, you know there is there are these points that you know you are you are not performing to the best of a customer, you really care about your customers there are sometimes have low points and are unsuccessful. And when you care about what you’re doing, it’s important for you to deliver value, it’s a low point in your any like that. Yeah. A high point. Also there are many of those. So like I said, intrapreneurship is ups and downs all the time. You raise money, it’s a high point you you win a huge customer. It’s a high point, I remember the first time we were there, you know, more more than a million dollar deal. It was amazing. Today, we kind of do it almost all the time. So it’s not it’s still amazing, but you don’t feel the same. And even thinking about it is makes me happy. Like we are in a place that, you know, it’s respectful. And and I remember I actually one of the things that I loved the most was the first time we hit 10,000 deliveries a month. I actually we were again, we were very small. We were like five people that back then. And I told our ideal Android developer who is still with the company, by the way people stay with Bringg for a long time. I told him listen, we you know, we hit this milestone, he said, there’s no way Wait, you know, 10,000 deliveries, it’s not going to happen, man, it has to be bogus. And that we do millions a day. So I always you know, every so often I remind him that, you know, remember that.
Jeremy Weisz
I love it. Lior I want to be the first one to thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey, your experience your knowledge everyone should check out Bringg.com Bringg.com. You know, it’s funny to look and see the excitement of the team and the company at 10,000 deliveries and $200 raising the prices to $200 a month. So phase everyone check it out. Lior thanks again.
Lior Sion
Thank you Jeremy.
