Erik: What's the role of venture capital in building a company?
Idan: It's a tool that was put in place to allow us to actually build things that might
not have, you know, financial and business viability from day one.
And, so that's great.
It's an awesome thing, the fact that there's a mechanism out there where you can, you know,
someone can put faith in you because he thinks you have a good vision and an idea and a theme.
And he can let you—he can give you that lay to go and build it, for a while, before
you need to commit to any real business, because, you know, he understands that it will take
time to build the product that you later can sell or you later can monetize but at this
point, you can just start out of the blue and make it happen, or maybe there's a learning
process in that product that you need to achieve and you're not gonna be able to pinpoint the
right answer exactly from day one, and it will take a process and he's willing to be
patient with that.
So that's great.
I think that if you look at it, for instance, definitely today, then on one hand, a lot
of people measure success by being able to raise venture capital and that's extremely
wrong, in my opinion, it's just it's becoming this competition or—people are getting so
much credit for being able to raise money, being able to raise money shouldn't be a lot
of—shouldn't get you a lot of credit.
It means that someone out there believed in your vision, it's great.
There's so many other ideas out there and maybe someone believed in your team and that's
even more important sometimes, or most of the time, but at the end of the day, your
ability to deliver on the product and the business is much more important than actually
being able to raise money.
I really wish that there were these tools also for other types of businesses, if someone
wants to put together a restaurant, there's no need for him to struggle and definitely
in today's economy, not being able to bring together a quarter of a million dollars to
open that restaurant, yes, the numbers are not the same as the internet industry, it's
not gonna explode, it's not gonna grow as a hockey stick and you're not gonna be able
to monetize it in the millions.
But there should be better tools for other types of businesses to get built and established.
So I wish that more people would take these tools that maybe—or some variation of them
that were invented for venture capital, as we know it today for technology world.
And apply it for other types of businesses.
Today we look at venture capital as tightly coupled with technology.
Venture capital should be much more tightly coupled with entrepreneurship.
So just someone having a good idea and having a good vision and being able to build a good
team and go out and build a business, so I love the fact that there's now, you know,
for instance, Alumasc doing space acts, this is awesome, yes, you know, yeah, it might
be a business—a huge business in the billions of dollars just because of the cost of sending
rockets into space, but still just someone being able to go out and do that, and I don't
know if he would've able if he wasn't Alumasc and didn't have billions himself.
But still, just the fact that I think these businesses are starting to see, you know,
it's not pure technology, it's not internet, it's not gonna acquire million of users, no,
it needs probably like 10 actually that are gonna pay for these missiles.
But it's still gonna work.
Same for cars, you know, if it's from like Tesla or something like that.
Just—I would love to see many more people supporting these kind of businesses.
Just—or cameras, you know, why is the camera market not ready for disruption?
Like why can't someone build a better camera than what Canon and Nikon has been doing for—Nikon
has been doing for 50 years I'm sure someone can.
So for instance, now with those Litro that came from a little bit of a different angle
-- I would like to see many more businesses like that.