Rami Tamir shares his experience with multiple successful startup exits, highlighting the importance of adaptability, a strong go-to-market strategy,.
Rami Tamir shares his experience with multiple successful startup exits, highlighting the importance of adaptability, a strong go-to-market strategy, and long-term vision over solely focusing on an exit.
so basically what I did is I picked the hardest thing to get into in the university and I said worst case if I don't like it I'll just go down in the list and I really really liked it it was like a match for me made in heaven I enjoy solving problems apparently that's what you do when you do software in the daily basis all the time so that's what I do till this day and for me it was an instant love [Music] all righty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show so today we have a really fantastic founder you know a Founder that has done it many times and with a lot of success you know every single you know uh time around that he starts a company he comes with a hit with a nice outcome so uh he's become an expert baseball player I would say you know when it comes to uh being a startup founder because every time you know he gets the ball he hits it out of the park but again today
we're going to be talking about you know the building the scaling the financing the exiting so all of that good stuff that we like to hear but then we're going to be talking about how to jump you know into an opportunity where you see larger corporates that are maybe looking you know for it also you know how to create something you know out of a perhaps you know like a like a problem that you seeing as well as you know how to really think about the origin stories and how to start to really build a foundation of what could be you know a really meaningful business again uh brace yourself for a very inspiring episode and without further Ado let's welcome our guest today Ramy Tamir welcome to the show thank you thank you thanks for having me so originally born in startup land but in this case it was in nased so give us a walk through Memory Lane how was life growing up for you it's was a
small City same city as Jesus was born in so that's that that's a good starting point but in reality it's a really small town uh up in the north very very quiet life I'd say so in your case as anything you know in in Israel you need to go to the Army you know for you uh it was 5 years I'm wondering what do you think the Army gave you you know in terms of discipline and and I mean I I've seen that a lot you know working out very well for folks what what do you think you know it was the positive you know factors that you took from that experience with you this is a this is a great question and I can see it today with younger people but you're kind of starting the army with a you know young person just off of High School and within a year in my case you command people and you kind of in charge of people's life it kind of gives you instant maturity instant responsibility responsibility in
the Army is something that is complete there's no excuses uh you either get the job done or you don't get the job done so that's something that soers you very very fast you get to grow fast and you have to make decision in Split seconds and kind of optimize for decision making rather than you know being wrong wrong or right obviously it's better if you're right but you have to optimize for you know for when you make the decisions so nothing Waits the combination of all of that and actually working with great people because in the Army you get to meet kind of the top people it's an amazing experience it's hard it's not easy but at the end of the day uh you go from 0 to 100 in about few months which is amazing so for you going from Zer to 100 you know I guess say also software you know thinking about scale and and and and thinking about problems that's what you studied uh why software out
of all things to be honest it was random back then I didn't know what I want to do I just left the Army uh I was trying to figure out what to do and my brother was going in that direction I say hey you know what maybe it's something for me as well so basically what I did is I picked the hardest thing to get into in the university and I said worst case if I don't like it I'll just you know go down in the list and I really really liked it it was like a match for me made in heaven I I enjoy solving problems and apparently that's what you do when you when you do software on a daily basis all the time so that's what I do to till this day and it was like yeah for me it was an instant love and obviously that's what you do to in adventure world I mean in your case your first gig was working for a startup you know and you guys went from like five employees to like 200 in no time but what what
picked your curiosity about smaller companies versus you know going more like the larger Corporation you know route again there's not a lot of large corporation in Israel back then it was very little um coming from the Army I really like small outfits you can influence you can learn you can look sideways and know what's going on it's not something that is hard to understand so I gravitated towards small companies and the first company was someone I knew kind of said hey are you interested in joining us I said yeah sure and we started working from a basement of a house in a small town here in around Tel Aviv it was amazing yeah we grew from five people to 200 people because of Technology was like amazing but as amazing was our lack of understanding of business so we we knew nothing I wasn't a Founder there I was an engineer I kind of promoted very fast didn't know how to manage but I I
found myself managing people very fast uh but as as fast as we grew We Shrunk down uh because we realize we have no clue of how to make a business out of it how to make it kind of something that sticks and this is something that I I still carry because I think the technology was amazing uh interestingly enough we were trying to do something very similar to what YouTube is now but back when there were only modems and the bandwidth was not great so we had to develop amazing technology to get there end of the day nothing was ready for something like that well I mean in your case after that experience you went at it with Consulting for how long did you do Consulting before you realized that there was a an opportunity that made sense to serve people like Cisco so I decided to do some Consulting after this gig because I wanted to kind of clear my head try to understand am I ready to actually
start something on my own or should I join another uh opportunity so um I had a lot of assets coming from that that company so I just spent six months working with companies uh coding helping them develop uh around video networking that was my strength it was great but it was boring because when you're a consultant what you get to do end of the day is the non core things uh you get to do what the companies kind of wants to bring up very fast and usually they you have to hand it over very fast so after six months although it was very lucrative I made a lot of money out of it but uh I decided it's not for me and back then I met with my partners until today my partner until today uh Benny Schneider and we started our first company together the first was around networking I like I like I like um you know in here um the quote of Richard Branson that says that the ideas there like buses you
got to make sure you get in the right bus right uh before the door closes now in your case the way that you guys went about that is you seize the opportunity and I want to talk about the way that you guys went about that because literally you know in this case it was a really fast you know type of cycle from point A all the way to point C with pentacon so how did that you know uh Journey how was that journey of really seeing the opportunity and being like let's go because this was also your very first business that you were co-founding so walk walk us through that so we started out doing something else we wanted to do kind of if you know what packet processor is back then it was all the rage so we set out to do that it was staring people talked about it that was interesting and you know when you start a new company you're going to people and you pitch the idea you get feedback you morph
you morph you morph one of the places we went to to get feedback obviously was Cisco because Cisco back then I'm not sure if people know that today Cisco back then was what I know apple is today or maybe Google or it was a giant amazing business so they say yeah that's is interesting but we have something more interesting we are working something new and if you're interested to actually join and develop a component in that that'll be very interesting for us but it's up to you uh so seizing the opportunity is is daunting because what we had to do is come up with a it was starting with Hardware develop a whole Hardware whole chassis two type of line cards in speeds that were were not common back then and Cisco was coming up with the line of products in a year so we had a year to actually kind of go ahead and bring that to Market because if you miss the bus they'll have to come up with a
new with another…