Dor Abuhasira, founder of Percepto, shares his experience in raising over $73 million from top-tier investors. Watch the full video — free, no account needed.
Dor Abuhasira, founder of Percepto, shares his experience in raising over $73 million from top-tier investors. This substantial funding indicates a Series B or later stage of fundraising for his autonomous drone tech startup.
because i was very focused on the tech and i'm i'm still in love with the products and the tech i i must admit that i love what we do but i think as you build a company you got to focus on on the biggest uncertainty for your business and you have to focus on how you're building your business i think it's help everybody if we help these entities startups exist so i'm happy to help and i hope people do the same alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show so today we have a super exciting founder we have a founder from israel and i think that we're gonna be learning a lot you know building scaling you name it uh especially as you know startup nation you know it doesn't get better than speaking with founders from israel so i guess without further ado let's welcome our guest today dora abusa abu hazira welcome to the show thanks a lot uh great to be here so born and raised
there in israel uh in growing up in a kibbutz so so how was life growing up uh great actually uh i think you know today i'm a father we are uh uh you know we are so concerned about what happened to the kids in each stage each year is so critical when i was growing up i think about it uh in the kibbutz there was a system where uh when you're a kid again zero to six uh your parents will let you sleep in nothing not in the house like in one place where you have one person guarding all the kids which today sounds crazy but i remember it as a great experience uh so just to all the parents out there don't be so hard on yourself whatever you do it can go okay afterwards so how how was that the because you know probably the people that are listening they're not that familiar with with the whole concept of kibbutz i mean it's like uh communism in inside of a community i mean how how how is that
so can you like explain to us what what that is exactly and and and you know how that was for you as an experience yeah so uh look generally in israel uh was founded in uh 1948 uh there were uh uh groups of people assembling different parts of of israel and when they were building their communities they chose to to do it in a uh in an equal way meaning a community where everybody work and they share whatever they make and their share the load of work and that includes also taking care of the kids and and doing whatever a community had to do so originally when there was uh nothing in israel and everything was harsh and it was actually very effective but you know as uh uh the rest of the country was was not uh sharing everything it was uh more capitalist more western environment and i think over time people saw that it's uh getting better outside the kibbutz and inside the kibbutz they
were not enough incentive to people to to do the hard work and originally most of the kibbus didn't survive but as a kid it's a great environment you are very close to your age group there's a lot of outdoors so i remember remember it is a great experience and overall i think i had a great job within israel so then let's talk about the uh computers because you were exposed to computers early on now and to the whole world of innovation and technology so how was that a first thing exposure or or that love at first sight that you started to develop for this you know tech environment so i think that for me it wasn't uh um more exposed than anybody else you know i had a computer because uh uh my dad got me one and i always liked them uh i like to program them i play all you know the old games that people were born in the 80s and playing game in the 90s no uh and in school i was doing computer
classes and and kind of doing my my work around computers but unlike many israelis who are building companies after dealing uh with computers and uh and building products actually in the army intelligence units uh for me uh uh i i did uh my arbor service which is a monetary in israel uh in infantry not related to uh to tech and went back to tech and university so uh for me i went into tech actually much later than most people do uh when finding a company you know when they're 22. uh it was when graduating about 2018 israel after doing uh army service and a very long trip around the world around south america about a year uh so it's it wasn't that i got into tech very early uh if anything very late compared to some interpreters but i mean pretty much at the same at the same as in the same situation as other people there in israel because everyone needs to do the army and and in your case
you did infantry so nothing a special you know unit for uh technology and whatever so so i guess for you i mean how was that you know a journey of going through the army and perhaps you know some of the good stuff that you got out of it and and anything that you can share with us so uh for me uh the army is a big part of building my character and uh uh kind of a put me in a situation where i will be happy will we have to counter myself to solve problems to uh uh lead people in in difficult situations to uh prove to myself uh that i am able to uh to lead and i'm able to uh um to solve hard challenges so for me it was building character more than anything else and i think for entrepreneurs in general that's probably the most important thing that you can ask for uh i again i was always uh frustrated that uh you know people who are building technology products in the army when they finish
the army they are ready to go for me there was another process going to university and and and working in [Music] tech companies for a while before i felt i was ready to to build my own product and and do my own thing uh but i'm not really uh neither of you know those steps along the way so then so then when you finish the army you decide that it's time to pick up the studies and do electrical engineering why out of all things electrical engineering so it's actually a good question because i think i know that i want to study basically engineering and i knew i wanted to be in the highest level that there is and over the 90s in israel uh semiconductor was very big electrical engineering was kind of owning semiconductor and it was they are the strongest departments in the universities so when i ask people who are older than me what's the best kind of engineering uh uh that i can go to they
said well go to electric engineering and you can go to a different easier one if you want to uh uh that's what led me to engineering i really loved it i loved understanding the bits and the lower level of how uh you know products work uh but uh as i think in many cases it was more random than and i loved transistors uh uh and and i think that today it's actually changing uh today if you are thinking about where most of the focus is probably more software engineering uh and i was you know in the transition between those uh trends so also there's an interesting transition that happened in your career because rather than you know doing the the whole you know movement of startup nation there in israel you decide and do corporate so so tell us about that journey from corporate to to startups well i think that for me uh um it's not that i really knew i was going to build a company as soon as i
started i know i want to be involved with something like that but i didn't know if i'm going to build it because i didn't know how how it's done so when i graduated uh for me the logical next step was to go to work somewhere and see what i can do and i think that's an important step uh if you go to work for a corporate especially for a good r d team then then you get proficient very fast in in in how you really build products that is not what you really do when you are in the university and uh in my story that was a very good next step to kind of build for myself the understanding of how uh r d and high tech in general works and and what i can you know what is my worth uh in building products and uh you know for me it was very important uh some people can do without uh i don't think there's one lane you have to go through but for me i think when i was working in a corporate i learned two
things first you know i can build product and second i don't want to work in a corporate for the rest of my life uh uh and and did that transition working the corporate kind of knowing more startups more people building products thinking about this stuff with my friends and kind of realizing what we can do uh as we end up doing building a perceptive and obviously 2013 was um was a really interesting year that was the the definitely the segway and and the moment where you uh perhaps stumble across drones so how was that moment yeah so uh in general um i have a very good friend uh review friend and we used to build stuff together uh in our garage next to our house and one thing that we used to build in 2013 was drones it was very easy you know go online and over a weekend we could build a product that we realized could do a lot of uh pretty amazing things you can send a drone a mile away
get an…