In September Startup Grind Tel Aviv hosted Eyal and Maya Gura as part of our monthly
meetups featuring successful enqueuers and investors. The power couple sold 3 startups (The
Gift Project, PicApp & PicScout) in a single year.
In addition to investing in startups and their significant charity work, they are each working on new initiatives. Eyal co-founded ZebraMed, a computerized medical imaging service that is expected to revolutionize healthcare everywhere.
He has many ventures already operational in hospitals around the world, while Maya his co-founded MissBeez, has a platform that empowers woman from around the globe to be independent.
They provide on-demand beauty services. MissBeez is already available in three major cities and continues to grow.
Eyal and Maya shared with us in an interview conducted by Ram Yonish, how they manage to
balance their personal lives. They have been raising their children and often working together. The couple has some key secretes to their continued success:
Persistence is the key to a successful entrepreneur.
This may come as no surprise that the couple attribute part of their success to sticking with their goals. They both practice persistence both in their private lives and in their professional lives by believing in their product.
“Find the people who are most passionate about your ideas, and they will be your best champions.”
They don’t have to look for the most well-known investor or expert in their field, but rather the people who will help you drive your idea forward. It is also best to have the right stakeholders is crucial to the success of a business.
Learn how to fall –
The falling he is talking about is also from Aikido which he practices. And from the ultimate failure of his first startup. Eyal believes in the importance of “learning how to fall, and not be afraid of falling.” Shake it off and move on to your next challenge.
In addition, a failure can teach you the significance of prudently running your business, something that
doesn’t always come as naturally to first-time founders.
Find a mentor -
Maya taught us the importance of finding a "mentor for life," someone you can trust to guide you through difficult decisions, and who can help you avoid making unnecessary mistakes. She would not be where she is today, she told us, without the sound guidance she received.
“Look for the Iceberg… and chooses a growing market”–
Identify market trends that are likely to create a need for a product in the future. With ZebraMed, Eyal identified a future shortage in radiologists, alongside a growing population and growing consumption of medical care, meaning a growing market. His startup provides a solution to this by offering AI reading of CT and MRI scans.
First-time startups shouldn’t patent early on –
Patenting is both complex and costly, so early-stage startups and unexperienced entrepreneurs are generally better concerned with growing their company early on. If you get there, you can always have the “Apple vs. Microsoft lawsuit,” but that is rarely the case.
Scaling is timing –
“Good scaling is when you have a good market fit – a product that suits the market.” Many companies tend to scale prematurely, and then run out of cash. So be patient, and scale when the time is right.
Credits: Written by Techelet Hazony | Photographer: Liat Mandel