Category: Startups

  • Bootstrapping Vs Venture Capital

    Bootstrapping Vs Venture Capital

    For over a decade, I’ve started multiple companies that optimized towards raising venture capital. I was following the narrative Silicon-Valley and the tech media have been pushing for ever – that the path to building a successful tech companies goes through raising venture capital from “smart” and “value-add” investors. The first company didn’t go much…

  • How to fire yourself as a founder

    How to fire yourself as a founder

    In my previous post I wrote about the process I went through growing Gymdesk from a one-person operation to a company with over 10 FTE at that point in time. One of the least expected outcomes of this process was that hiring more people did not reduce the amount of work I needed to do…

  • Building A Fitness Tech Company During COVID

    Building A Fitness Tech Company During COVID

    In my previous article I stopped just before things got interesting. Gymdesk (then Martial Arts on Rails) had reached $12k in MRR in the middle of 2019, then remained stagnant for the rest of the year. $12k / month was enough for me to quit my full time job and dedicate my full attention to…

  • Startup Postmortem: Binpress

    Startup Postmortem: Binpress

    For over 5 years, my life revolved around growing my previous company, Binpress. In the months since we found a buyer for it, I’ve had some time to think about why it failed. Now that we’ve sold the company, I wanted to reflect on the journey my co-founder and I had with the company, from…

  • How videogames shaped my path in life

    How videogames shaped my path in life

    I just finished watching “The Art of the Game” (embedded below), a documentary about the evolution of digital games as the dominant media format. Me and computer games go back a long way. I got my first PC at the age of 7, a Commodore 64, with a briefcase of game cassettes. You would wait…

  • Why Israel Is A Startup Nation

    Why Israel Is A Startup Nation

    Israel has a population of 8.1 million and yet has more companies listed on the NASDAQ than any country outside the U.S.A, except China. A book released a couple of years ago called Startup Nation, has raised awareness to it being a hotbed for high-growth companies. Being from Israel and in the tech scene in…

  • After reviewing 300 startup applications, this is what I learned

    In a previous post, I wrote about why and how you should join the 500startups accelerator (or any premier accelerator program, for that matter). I briefly mentioned that I’ve been given access to provide opinion on applications for the next batch (Fall 2013), as a 500startups program alumni. To date, I’ve reviewed close to 300…

  • Post mortem: Why and how you should apply to 500startups

    A couple of months ago, I wrote about our first week in the 500startups accelerator program. With the program now officially (?) over, I wanted to share my experience with it and help interested founders understand whether it would be a good fit for them. Why should you apply to 500startups? When we first started…

  • The ABC of raising your seed round

    After failing miserably to raise 18 months ago, digging deep and bootstrapping our way to profitability, we made another attempt earlier this year and got a huge break by getting into 500startups. We are now in the middle of raising our seed round and are doing a much better job at it than previously. I…

  • Why we stopped raising until we no longer need the money

    Note: This now has a follow up post about how we successfully raised our seed round. There’s a well known mantra in the startup world that I used to believe in – “Launch early”. The concept is to launch a minimal product (MVP in lean startup terms), get real world feedback and iterate quickly. Feedback…