Yoav Oren: Why His First Startup Idea Failed (And What Fixed It)

0:00The following programming is sponsored by Marc J. Bernstein. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of this station, its management, or Beasley Media Group. Entrepreneur, founder, author, and financial advisor, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing business owners turn their visions into reality. At March Forward, Marc and his partners and associates think out of the box to partner with their clients in regards to their visions for their lives, their businesses, and their legacies. And through his innovative work with the Forward Focus Forums, Mark connects entrepreneurs to resources that help to fuel their success.

0:35Founders Forum is a radio show and podcast where entrepreneurs share their journeys, reveal the stories behind their successes, and the lessons they've learned. Join Mark and his guests for a mix of inspiration, valuable insights, and a bit of fun. Now, let's dive in. Good morning, America. How are we today? I asked, it's a serious question. You can't answer me at the moment, at least not to my face, but think about that. How are you? That music, by the way, at the beginning is music that I wrote every once in a while. I'll mention that. It's a song called Should I? And I wrote it when I was a teenager, and I was writing a troika of songs.

1:15One was my three idols. One was an Elvis song, one was a Beatles song, and one was a tribute to Bob Dylan. And I mention that because I was thinking about Bob Dylan this morning because all I keep thinking about is the words that keep coming into my head is the name of one of his famous songs called The Times They Are Changing. Man, I just see it every day, and I want to ask our guests. So first of all, our co-host today with me is Pete Meyer, who we just did a show with, and he is chair of Cause Connect, CEO of Cause Connect and founder of Cause Connect. and listen to his show if you haven't already heard it.

1:54And our guest today is named Yoav, and as always, I'll introduce it in a minute. But Pete, what do you think about when you hear those words, the times they are changing? So I was saying, you know, I have kids, so I've definitely experienced the times have changed dramatically. I mean, their childhood is so profoundly different than mine, but they're the same kids. So it's like as much as times change, things stay the same. So there's something to that. And that's another line that Paul Simon added to a song that I always think about. The boxer, years later, he said, after changes upon changes, we are more or less the same.

2:31So I get it. So Yov, what do you think of? So I think that every generation looks back and says, oh my God, the times are changing, right? I think it's a natural thing. I think what's interesting about today is the speed of change. I was listening, I was at an AI lecture last night, and they said that the time that it took for humanity to reach 50 million telephone users was about 15 years. The time that it took for people, for 50 million users to go on the radio, get a radio was eight years. The time it took to reach 50 million users on ChatGPT was, Any guesses? 12 hours. A month. A month. I was going to say.

3:18I was overly optimistic. Okay. But like the times are changing, but they're changing so fast before our eyes. I think that's something that, you know, it's taking me time to dwell on that. Yeah. And technology, think about the industrial revolution that happened over a lot of years. Centered. The technology revolution is like, it's almost a new revolution every six months. You know, it's crazy. iPhone, by the way, smartphone, four years. Yep. I remember. By the way, I think about it. I went to the 1964 World's Fair. It shows my age. I was a kid. In New York. New York World's Fair. And they had, I think it was a GE exhibit where they had picture phones.

3:59You know, as a kid, we had the Jetsons, you know, the cartoon show. And people were talking on these picture phones. And all those years, I kept thinking, you know, we have BlackBerrys. And I'm like, where are those picture phones? When's that going to happen? And they had it, you know, as a setup, it was like a standing screen, you know, which we have today. And then just all of a sudden, you had like smartphones. And it was like, oh, the whole games, we skipped the whole like TV on a stand that you're talking to. We went right to like everything's in your pocket, like everything's in your pocket.

4:27It's amazing. So Yoav Oren is co-founder and CEO of ZOOG AI, speaking of technology. And let me tell you a little bit about him. And by the way, I met him because his father is Michael Oren, who is the former ambassador of Israel to the United States and is now representing the American Technion Society, of which I'm on the board of directors. I mentioned the Technion one here. In fact, we're going to be having a series soon of Technion entrepreneurs, a whole series about the Technion. So anyway, I got to meet Michael, and Michael introduced me to Yoav. and Yoav's a very interesting younger man who's kind of an old soul I'm sensing from the conversation.

5:09And as I mentioned, he's CEO and co-founder of ZOOG, a cross-generational communication platform. Now listen to this. Prior to founding ZOOG, he was the entrepreneur in residence at Reimagined Ventures and before joining that, he had several leadership positions at SimilarWeb. He served as company's chief of staff, working hand-in-hand with the CEO and senior leadership team who was responsible for establishing and managing the company's China operations and served as the general manager of Greater China. China is an important part of his history, as we'll find out too. In this position, he was responsible for the company's data, commercial operations, and managed a team both in Israel and in China.

5:48And during his tenure at SimilarWeb, he personally ran and closed deals with some of China's greatest tech giants, including, is that Baidu? How do you say that? Baidu? Perfect. Alibaba, JD.com, and closed the largest deal in company's history at the time with Huawei. How do you say that? Huawei. Huawei, thank you. Prior to his positions at SimilarWeb, he relocated to Shanghai. He was relocated by a major institutional company where he set up and managed company sales and marketing operations in all of Asia. He's worked and studied in China for over a decade. He has a degree from Columbia in Eastern Asian languages and cultures and Chinese, cum laude, by the way, as well as an MBA from Shanghai Zhaotong University, summa cum laude.

6:37And he lives in New Jersey with his wife and three children. I want to thank both of you gentlemen for coming three hours from different directions to get here today. Meet in the middle. To be in person with us in Philadelphia in the radio studio. By the way, we had that little blip with the microphone. That was Shane getting back at me. for what I did this morning. I'm going to confess on the air now. We had very loud Jewish music. I certainly have nothing against Jewish music coming in while we were trying to prepare for our show, and I couldn't figure out how to get it out, so I went out and turned down the slider.

7:08I turned off the radio station. So if anyone is listening and heard that blip, my great apologies. But Shane just got back with an inoperating microphone there for a while that wasn't turned on. But anyway, we're laughing about it all, I hope. anyway. So, you know, you know, you know, where would you like to start? Because there's, you know, there's a lot of places we could start. I want to mention that you're a dual U.S. Israeli citizen and your childhood included time in Jerusalem and a small community in the Negev. You're deeply involved in martial arts. How did all that influence you? And let's talk about your journey upwards.

7:46First of all, it's great to be with you, Mark. Same here. Thank you for having me. Good to be in Philadelphia, despite the three-hour drive. I guess there's so many different ways we can take this. And there's a lot of different places where we can start. And I think I said to my wife yesterday, I'm thinking about my journey and it's very different data points. And it's hard to kind of, you know, draw that line of how these are all connected. Right. And I said - But from the outside, I see that they are. Yeah, I'm trying to make reason of it sometimes myself as well. I remember saying to her before we got married, I said to her, I hope you're in this for the ride because it's going to be a non-linear thing here.

8:29I kind of know this. I'm interested in a lot of different things. And I'm interested in challenging myself and trying out new things. And I think ZOOG is definitely a testament to that. Completely out of my comfort zone when we first started. Different than anything else I've done. but if I do there is a way to connect the dots so we can start really anywhere we can start what we're doing right now we can take this back in history well I'm interested in your interest in martial arts your interest in Chinese and Asian languages and culture as an Israeli American or American Israeli I'm not sure which way you consider it we you know, it's interesting that you went in that direction.

9:16And, you know, how did, how did, why did that happen? And how does that connect to where you are today? So yeah, the interest from, it's probably one of the earliest memories I have. I always knew I was going to be a martial artist from a very young age. I am very ADHD, very hyperactive. So my first martial art class I was kicked out of when I was six. And when we moved, we grew up in a small desert community in the Negev, as you said, where Ben-Gurion is buried. And when I was a little after the age of nine, we moved to Jerusalem. And it was traumatic for me because I was used to roaming the deserts and picking up a backpack when I'm seven years old and just walking down and then hiking around and walking barefoot.

10:01By the way, a very distinct image of I've been there at Ben-Gurion. Oh, it's beautiful. It's on the hill there. Yep. Beautiful. Magnificent. But what I did when I came to Jerusalem, my parents finally found a good dojo for me to join. An amazing teacher. And I fell in love with the martial arts. Really did. Are you the oldest of your siblings? I have two younger siblings. Gotcha. I have a sister and a brother. And I loved it. And I was, from a very young age, I was determined to. I didn't compete. The martial arts that I did was not competitive, but I would come home after school and I trained for hours alone.

10:41And when I got a little older, I'd wake up at 5 a.m. and train. And it was a dream of mine always to see, I knew that eventually I was going to go to China. I knew that I wanted to take a period of my life where I devoted just to this and see what happens. If I take everything else out of the equation, I take off obligation to family and friends and just devote a period of my life where I'm doing this. And after the army, I served in a combat unit in the army at a very significant service. And then after the army, I decided to go and live my lifelong dream and go to China, but I needed money to do so.

11:22So I came to New York and I got a job working at the Gerson-Larmer Group, semi-consulting firm. And I worked there in New York, you know, in this consulting firm to make money to go to China. And then I eventually I left to China, spent about a year there training in a school with a teacher for about eight to 10 hours a day. So an amazing experience. It was almost like going to a monastery or an ashram or something like that. It was even worse because when you picture a monastery or an ashram, you're thinking, oh, it's going to be beautiful and somewhere in the mountains, right? This is like torture.

12:05You're thinking mountain mist and the whole thing and monks with ropes. And I trained with a grandmaster of my style where I grew up with in Jerusalem and he asked me to go to this specific village in China. And this village was nothing but a beautiful monastery. It was like industrial China. And there was no mist. There was a lot of pollution. So there goes my romantic vision of it. By the way, I had to adapt as well. I was like, this is not what I pictured. Right, right. But it was amazing. And I've been back and forth to my teacher many times. And we're still in touch today. And very, very close.

12:49Very interesting. And you still practice martial arts? I still practice martial arts. Very interesting. How about your kids? Have you brought that to them? I've tried. And it's always, as I'm sure both of you knew Pete as well, it's a delicate balance being a parent of, okay, I want them to do something, but I also want them to develop their own unique character and to decide what they want to do. I've tried to put them in martial arts, and they weren't interested. So they're both, both my older kids are very, very active. My daughter is a competitive gymnast. And my older son is very, very seriously into basketball and now baseball when we arrived in the States.

13:31But he plays basketball competitively as well. So you were still an example to them, just not in the way you thought you would be. Yes. Which is the way parenting comes. I keep on trying to teach him a bit, but less interested. Gotcha. Today. Um, let's talk real quickly about, you know what? Let's not because we're right about break time. We're going to get right into ZOOG right after the break. Okay, let's do it. So let's do the break and we'll be back in a minute on Founders Forum. ZOOG is a video creation platform that helps families create personalized interactive videos where they become the characters inside the story.

14:05Think Netflix. If your family could star in the show, using AI and augmented reality, grandparents parents and loved ones can create magical stories songs learning adventures and birthday moments in just a few clicks with no editing or technical skills required what makes zoog unique is that it creates a natural family flywheel around storytelling and learning a trusted family member creates for the child the child watches and re-watches the experience families begin reading and creating together and over time children start reading and participating on their own. ZOOG turns family interaction into a natural learning experience by blending storytelling, creativity, and participation in a way kids genuinely love.

14:48Download ZOOG today on the App Store or visit GetZOOG.com to start creating together. You can also access ZOOG's special Founders Forum offer using the promo link in the episode show notes. We are back on Founders Forum with our guest today, Yoav Oren, and also Pete Meyer, who is co-host. And Yoav, I want to ask you about Zug, and let's start with, you start where you like, but I want to ask you both about what gave you the inspiration for it, and how did you begin? So I'm not sure which came first. Okay. Maybe we'll connect the dots here. Yep. Okay. I was working - I knew that was going to happen.

15:30Okay, great. I got back from China. I lived in China. My older son was born in China when we were there. Did my MBA there. Eventually moved back to Israel after being away for a long time. And in Israel, there isn't really a lot of industries. You go into tech. That's what we have and we do it exceptionally well. Really well. Very well. But I knew I wanted to keep one foot into the Chinese market and help. Whatever I was doing, it had to be connected to China. I was in similar for a few years. And after a few years, randomly, I received a phone call from a Netflix producer. And he said to me, you know, we're producing this show about martial arts.

16:12We're following an actor, Frank Grillo, around the world. And we want him to experience the local martial arts in different countries. And that way, kind of have a cultural window into these different countries, different places. And we want to do a show in Israel. Can you help? I'm like, I have no idea if this is serious or not. I said, listen, I'm going to be in New York next week. Let's meet. And I meet this guy in New York and he shows me a trailer and it blows my mind. I'm like, oh my God, this is legit. A real movie. It's a real thing. And I basically take out a piece of paper. I said, okay, this is what we're going to do in Israel.

16:50And I tell him, we're going to take you here. I'm going to take you here. Great. Amazing. I have no idea if this is ever going to happen. But two months later, I get an email. We're coming. these are the dates we want you to be with us what can we do so i end up spending about two weeks with a netflix production in israel going all over the country and experiencing different martial arts in israel in that way explaining but but what this experience was it gave me this profound experience in the entertainment world you're you're in the film too right i am in the film as well uh they decided to put me in as well and i absolutely loved it and i always knew that I wanted to do something entrepreneurial.

17:29But after this experience, it kind of convinced me that when I go out and do something entrepreneurial, it will be in kind of on the nexus between entertainment and a problem that's dear to my heart. And that was kind of like a big push in the direction of ZOOG. We started ZOOG as COVID broke out. I left Simula in January, 2020. My wife gave birth to our third child on February 2020, March 2020, we were already on lockdowns. And the first thing that happened in lockdowns, you know, in Israel, we're used to seeing our families a lot. We live relatively close and I was used to seeing my parents on the weekly basis and suddenly we're disconnected.

18:11We can't see them. But so what we're trying to do is what the rest of the world tried to do. We tried to have Zoom conversations with them and FaceTime and it just didn't work for my kids. It just didn't click. My kids couldn't handle small talk conversations They weren't interested in these calls. It created a lot of friction. And I said, there has to be a better way to do so. And this is kind of the premise of how Zook started is really the idea of merging entertainment and using entertainment as a gateway of communication between two different generations who experienced technology in a very different way.

18:44And this is what we do today. We take entertainment and we make the grandparents or any relative that's not living, I guess, in the same household. And we allow them very, very easily and a click of a button to create content that's all educational, get them to start in the content. And that way we create this ping pong of communication between the children and the adults in their lives. Quick question, because I never asked you this question, I don't think, but did that work? Did that heal for your children? Because you're still remote from your parents a lot of the time and your wife's parents.

19:18Did that solve the problem? Yeah, it was amazing. We did this, we started off. Let me give an example because that will explain how Zoo works. Yeah, yeah. So we started off actually, you know, we said, okay, the problem is in these Zoom calls, they're not entertaining, they're not interesting for the kids, they're too complicated to set up. So we have to fix live communication. And when we tried to fix live communication, we said, okay, let's put a layer of interaction on top of the live communication. So our first beta product was a live communication app where grandparents could read stories in a live call or play basic games like trivia questionnaires and so forth.

20:00And we launched this in the States with about 100 families. And this ran for about two months. And we learned a few very important lessons from this first experiment. The first was that by far the type of, I guess, entertainment or what people like to do more than anything else was read stories. In retrospect, because it gave them kind of a framework, to communicate, right? There's texts, there's illustrations. I know what I'm supposed to be doing in any given moment. But at the same time, there's enough room for self-expression, right? To being entertaining. The harder lesson was about the type of communication itself.

20:40And this is where we felt all the friction was in the live aspect of it. Because if you think about it, there are many moving parts. You have to have the grandparents has to be home and available. The kid has to be home and available at the exact same time. The parent as a mediator has to be home and available to give the kid their device so they can have the call. And then if you threw in, you know, bandwidth issues or different time zones, these calls were just - Or the mood of the kid. What's that? Or the mood of the kid. Or the mood of the kid, 100%. My kids, oh my God, getting them in the right mood.

21:13And this is where we decided to have a major pivot and said, okay, what if we don't make this live? What if we make this asynchronous? we allow the grandparents to record content for the kids whenever they want and then they can share it whenever they want the kid doesn't actually have to download the app so they can view their recording on any device and whenever they want they can watch it repetitively as kids as you know love my kids I can't tell you how many times I've watched the same movie with them over and over again but also you have the added value that anything you create on ZOOG is also saved forever So we're creating this family memory album, this archive, that kids can go back.

21:55And in 20 years from now, a few old recordings that were sent to them by their grandparents. Very special. This is where we are today. I have so many thoughts about this now. You're motivating me. I don't have grandchildren yet, but I have nephews and nieces, or grandnephews and nieces, that ask about me and I ask about them, and this would be a great way to communicate with them that I'm thinking about. Practice for my future grandchildren. It's super easy. We make it. It's very, very intuitive. It's click of a button and you're inside the story. I'm going to show you this in a second. Unfortunately, the audience can't see this, but you will see this.

22:34I did sign up for it. I do have an account. Okay, amazing. Great. I'm going that far. We only have a few minutes left, so I'm not sure if we have time to look at it. We can look at it after the show. Yeah, I'll definitely show it. But Pete, you must have questions about this because I know you... I think the asynchronous part is brilliant because I mentioned the mood. You know, kids, you try to have a serious conversation now. It's not going to happen. It happens when you're driving to school or you're taking them out to the backyard. It's the same thing. When they want to hear from their grandparents, they can hear or interact with their grandparents.

23:03Exactly. By the way, same thing for the recorder too. The fact that you can record something uninterruptedly. My parents would get upset at me because I put the video in front of them during dinner time and the kids were like throwing the phone around, throwing food around. That's not interesting for them. Let me record something uninterruptedly. Let it be meaningful. Let me share it. And you watch it whenever you want and how many times you want. And do your parents and your in-laws do that now? Yeah. They're all big Zougu. Nice. By the way, we don't usually spend this much time on the product.

23:35I would say it's not an advertised about your story, but you've managed to do both. We know a lot about your story. We can't do this show without explaining Zoug and what it is, or otherwise it doesn't make sense. Very similar to Pete's show, by the way, too, because he's got a kind of unique outlook in terms of the line between commercialism and philanthropic giving. So we can't not talk about this. Let's talk about challenges you've had with the business and where you are and what your future vision is in the little bit of time we have left. How many hours do we have? You've got two and a half minutes.

24:10Oh, my God. Okay, so I was like the first challenge. We did something that was very unconventional. We built a startup. First of all, a consumer-facing startup in Israel, which is not conventional. Israel is very much a security, cyber-focused market, B2B enterprise software-focused market. Consumer is still the stepchild, unfortunately. Hopefully, it's going to change, but that was a big challenge, raising capital for a consumer business, let alone a consumer business that was focused on grandparents. Not an easy thing. I felt that in our journey, I was always - And parents had technology even.

24:45Yeah, technology, of course. Building technology for grandparents, which was unconventional. I thought it was a great thing. Like we're doing something that really has service, but it was a hard thing raising capital in the traditional venture capital route for us in Zoox. That's always been an uphill battle for us. Right. There's always a delicate balance between, okay, how do we create a product that has amazing content but the content is always interesting and changing. So in ZOOC, not only every content is different, every line and every story triggers a different effect. So there's a balance there between how much I want to create an abundance of content so people will come back to the product versus sustaining the quality of that content.

25:33You don't want to be static. It can't be static. No, it can't be static. So raising capital, content creation, keeping the content creation quality and flow has been a challenge. and then of course in any consumer facing business marketing right in order to go to market you need big marketing dollars and that's always been the challenge for us balancing that out gotcha yeah um we we don't have much time your three-year vision for zoog and for your life if you'd like um so um two things one we want to go deeper into the relationship and offer different ways that this relationship manifests so today we're offering asynchronous communication i see zoog expanding into live communication as well and other different experiences that you can do throughout the platform.

26:16Playing games together, e-commerce is something that we started playing with so people, grandparents can purchase gifts directly on Zoo. So one hub for this relationship. The other thing is we see a flywheel, a natural flywheel, where you can see the grandparents sharing content. The children are viewing it as a family with their parents. Then the children are reading together with their parents on the platform. and then the next progression would be children reading and practicing literacy on Zouk because they're encouraged to read because it's much more interesting to see themselves part of the story.

26:50So those are two areas I see natural progression for us in the next few years. I hate to tell you, time flies on the show when you're having fun and we're done. That was short. Very short. It goes quickly. Thank you so much for being here, Yoav. Thank you for having me. We're going to have to do it again, I have a feeling. Pete, same thing. It's so nice to be here again. Thank you, Shane, for surviving through this day with me. And thank you all for listening and have a great week. And we'll see you next week on Founders Forum. Founders Forum was brought to you in part by March Forward LLC. We partner with entrepreneurs like you to assist in accomplishing your future vision, your life, your business, your legacy.

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