Itamar Friedman shares his journey of building Qodo, an AI coding platform that raised $50M in capital from top-tier investors like TLV Partners, Square.
Itamar Friedman shares his journey of building Qodo, an AI coding platform that raised $50M in capital from top-tier investors like TLV Partners, Square Peg, Canva, Robin Hood, Sousa Ventures, and Vine Ventures. He emphasizes culture as a strategic asset, embedding values like “move fast with confidence” and “persistence” into Qodo from day one.
For example, when I did my first startup, I actually at the same time completed at least my master degree. I didn't go all the way to to PhD because of a startup, but I did force myself to do the master uh degree. I did them in parallel. It was good because I have a degree. I learned. But the fact I think you're spread on many things, it's actually a problem. I think focus on on one thing. [Music] All righty. Hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So today we have a a founder that is a successfully exited founder. Now on to his next baby. We're going to be talking about the journey, you know, that he's endured uh building, the scaling, the financing, all of that good stuff that we like to hear. And we're going to be talking about why he's doing things differently now when it comes to culture with his next company. also the process of going through an acquisition and then how
to think about ideas that perhaps you know could be ahead of its time and and obviously it's all about balance but in this case you know our guest he likes sailing and there's quite a lot of uh things that relate sailing to entrepreneurship but again brace yourself for quite an inspiring combo and so without further ado let's welcome our guest today Frma welcome to the show thank you very much pleasure to be here so born and raised in Israel give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up over there? Yeah. Um it's a great place to be like a lot of uh people are talking about tech and innovation. Uh it starts really young. Um uh it's not by surprise that I went directly to university during like learning like machine learning etc. And there's also like an ecosystem of uh giving and and teaching which is really wonderful. Now in your case, you know, how did you get into problem
solving? You know, what was that thing about computers that really got your attention? Okay. My uh most embarrassing story is that somewhere uh beginning of uh high school, I think like uh one of the teachers raised his hand and asked uh who knows what is Windows and I was sure he's talking about like the actual window and I raised my hand. I was only one of few. And uh that started I think it was Windows 95 or or or before like uh 3.1 what was was it like uh so that's uh how how like I I I went from not knowing anything to building the high school uh network computer network and operating system and everything like installation of everything etc. And from there actually led to my first company wasn't a startup uh like uh doing uh web development uh during the 90s. Yeah I'm quite old. So obviously unbelievable 14 already you know figuring it out. Now in your case you ended up um you know
starting your your computer science degree getting the bachelor's doing the masters and it seems like machine learning was what really caught your attention you know in that in that domain. Now one thing that I wanted to ask you is instead of going at it and starting your company after you finished your studies you actually joined a company that ended up getting acquired by Nvidia. So why joining others versus starting your own if you already had that entrepreneurial box starting at 14? Yeah, I I knew I'll go back to you know building my own company but uh there were two considerations. First uh I felt that and I still think I'm not Mark Zuckerberg and I wanted to gain experience and and I think that like I find it really important uh to be realistic. I'm not saying people do do not chase dreams already when they're 20 or something but I felt that for me it's better and the second thing
is that already then I had some uh initial understanding that opening a company by itself is not a mission like it's like you said like solving a problem and being passionate about some some mission that something you want to change in the world and uh I felt that I didn't have I didn't had it yet by by that time. So then the company ends up getting acquired by Nvidia that company and that's ultimately where you decided to really take ownership of your own future and you actually co-ounded you know you went at it with co-ounding a business and being the CTO. So what was that journey with visual lead to uh to to to get going? Yeah. So back in the days uh somewhere uh the ra the rise of the mobile phone just the beginning uh we felt that we are having a problem where mobile phones are not connected well enough uh uh to the physical world and that was like a pain that we felt and we thought
it's a it's a big opportunity. So we started like developing uh machine learning capabilities, computer vision capabilities on phone and uh one of them was related for example from on the spectrum of scanning cure codes all the way to uh let's say scanning logos. Uh back in the days it was quite challenging and let alone doing that on mobile phones but we did pretty well and that enabled a few use cases. for example, payments uh uh peer-to-peer payments for example, at least on the on the east uh uh side of the world. Uh it was quite popular. They skipped on the PC and they moved directly to mobile phone and they were quite ahead on on payment for example. So that's why uh it led to like doing a lot of uh activities in in Asia and China specifically. And yeah, that that's that that how we we started like a visual lead and uh and eventually like Alibaba was one of our biggest clients and
at some point uh it turned into acquisition which was an interesting story by itself. So let's talk about that acquisition you know talk to us make us an insider there because obviously the uh the acquisition terms they are obviously confidential and they were not disclosed but it was rumored for about you know eight figures you know perhaps you know close to 50 million but how was how was that journey like that process because as a founder going through that full cycle of being able to you know build scale finance exit I think that exit is like a really big one you know it really gives you full visibility into what the journey is. So before getting to that visibility and clarity, make us insiders here. How was that acquisition like? What was the process like? Yeah. Um so I'll start with the positive note and then I have also a negative note which is maybe the news. Uh most of my
partners, investors hate when I say it uh the negative one, but I'll start with the positive. So first of all, like uh although it was uh our first acquisition, we were first- timerrs. uh like we already knew relatively like how business work and how we need to have alternatives etc. Basically, we weren't like aiming for the exit to to most extent. We were uh starting a series B uh uh like uh motion uh was almost preemptive uh for us and and then uh Alibaba being one of our biggest clients and uh like they were uh kind of interested to see like other other opportunities uh rather like having us uh grow independently and they were interested in a site in Israel etc. So I think closing the what I just started to say at the beginning of this uh is that the fact that we had alternatives uh that we had like the series B and and there were more alternatives really helped uh uh the negotiation
and also like that there were good relationships. Um by the way having good relationship is also one of the difficulties. I mean, I'm not sure that for everyone and uh maybe I'm a bit being sensitive here, but when you're going into a series B, usually you get into some relationship with the investor and when you're doing acquisition, you have probably a really good in relationship and then saying to one of them no was actually quite quite not not a good feeling. Uh but I guess this this is life and this is business and and eventually make makes sense. So that's like one important part like having relationship and and uh and also having like uh alternatives etc. The negative thing is that uh that basically like I I saw uh like being acquired as as a failure but actually the right path. Um because um I was I as as a founder when we were heading the series B I kind of knew what I want to
do with the series B money but at that point I felt that I'm not sure how uh I'm going to progress from C to D etc. And and that for me was a really big red red flag and and and and all the discussion started with all the board directors like uh raising their hands for for like taking the series B and I'm the only one for for the acquisition to some extent and and my question was very simple like we know what we're going to do in the money with the the next year but does somebody in this board like know what we're going to do like where we want to get with this company? uh and uh I I can I can talk about did we have a vision and we lose it like we can talk about it but at that point I felt that we need we need to take uh and and for me like anything then making a huge influence and sorry for being a bit arrogant making a huge influence on on the world is a failure. So the fact that we…