Inspirational Interview: Fiona Disegni, CEO, Rentez-Vous
Rebecca Rachmany, CEO, Gangly Sister Productions: Hi! I’m Rebecca. I’m the CEO of Gangly Sister. And we’re going to be interviewing business people about what inspires them, on how they got into business. Rebecca: : Hey, it’s Rebecca, here I am, with Liat, and we’re here again talking to successful entrepreneurs about what it’s like to be an entrepreneur.
Liat Mordechay Hertanu, Founder, 24me: So hi, thanks Rebecca for coming over. I’m Liat, from 24me. I’m the co-founder and marketing manager of 24me. I’m also a mom of 3 kids. I started 24me a year and a half ago together with my husband, Gilad. The whole idea was, as career-driven, and with 3 little kids, we felt we were overwhelmed with daily life management. Trying to find solutions to help us manage our daily life, like calendars, task managers, stuff like that we just felt like nothing really worked. We found ourselves working for all those tools and products. One day we came and said “There must be a better way”. We thought about 1 place that would tell us automatically what’s going on with our day to day life, tells us what happens, and will also help us complete, just with one tap, all those tasks.
Rebecca: : Yeah I really liked that, because there are so many things, like I can’t remember to renew my insurance or my car renewal. <points at imaginary phone> “Oh, you need to pay your insurance, would you like to do that. Click! OK, and it does that.
Liat: once upon a time someone sent us an email and he told us that he had a stroke 2 years ago and since then he’s coping with this stroke. He quit his job, he can’t do anything, he tried to, you know get a system from 30 different products to help him get on top of things and nothing really helped him. And then he found 24 me. He said, listen, the relief that I feel now using 24me, I know when my payments are due and where everything else is happening in my life, it’s so organized for me. I feel so relieved. It helped me so much. When I read this e-mail… Gilad called me and said “Look at that.” I read this e-mail, and literally I had tears in my eyes, understanding that this product really helped someone in real life with a real problem. That’s something really rewarding and amazing.
Rebecca: : In your first startup, you said you ended up with a lot of inventory, and hardware, and you didn’t proceed with that. Are you sorry that you tried that?
Liat: No, no, not at all. It was the best experience for me ever, to understand my strength. And what I managed to get, with those two experiences, is to understand that I can influence people. You know, I approached the CEO of a baby bottle company, it was a very successful one, it did millions in selling baby bottles. I managed to convince him that I have something that works perfectly, and the idea was the right thing to do and he joined me to the team. I remember that day, and I said “Listen, he agreed to work with ME.” I was so happy. You build by this confidence of yours, because I said “OK, I achieved something, the maybe I’ll choose for myself to do something else even more difficult. When you get these achievements, you get confidence in yourself, in your abilities, in the way you can do it, you can succeed.
Rebecca: : I think that’s true, there’s a moment. It’s not even about the success. There’s a moment where you actually achieve something and you say “Oh, if I can do this, then I can do that.” And you know there may be obstacles, but there is that moment, where you say “Oh, I can do this,” and I think that that’s the moment where it can become addictive, like, you said. Well, I can do it, so why would I do anything else?
Liat: Yeah, I think that there is, you mentioned addictive. I think that every entrepreneur, that’s what I believe, anyone can say something else. An entrepreneur is someone who has issues with excitement in a way. You must have it. You can’t ignore it. When you say you’re an entrepreneur, you’re admitting that you are addicted to excitement. So it goes together in the same package.
Liat: We send each and every person who downloads 24me an e-mail, a personal e-mail that we greet him and we thank him for using 24me and we encourage him to write back and say what he likes, what he doesn’t like, even to say “hi”. That’s something amazing that created a flow of response from the market. Users feel comfortable to send us feature requests. If things don’t work, this is the best way of work together with them, instead of getting a one-star review, a very bad review. You just work together with them to understand what’s the problem and then you know what? At the end of the day we get a five-point review because they got amazing support and an amazing experience with the support.
This idea turned out to be a very successful one.
Rebecca: : Did you think it was going to be a good idea?
Liat: No, we just started it. We thought, “You never know.” We just asked that. We didn’t see that done before. We just thought, let’s combine it in a way that it will look like something very personal.
Rebecca: : Do people just say hi?
Liat: Yeah! People just say hi. “Hey, you said that I just can say hi, so hi.”
Rebecca: : But what keeps you going?
Liat: What keeps me going is that I’m really happy, doing something that I really believe in. 24me, the idea to create 1 place, an automatic place to manage your day-to-day life, and help people saving time, so they’ll have this extra hour to do what they want to do, what they love to do. That makes the big difference.
Rebecca: : Ok. Great. So you said the whole idea of 24me is you save time. So what if I gave you 1 hour today? Everything else you planned is going to happen, but you get 1 hour. And no limitations of geography, you could be magically somewhere. What would you do?
Liat: Great question. So I have something very modest. I have something that I really want to do for the last 6 years and I haven’t found the time. During the last six years I purchsased books. Tons of books. I think I purchased 42 books. If I only had 1 hour I’d take the time to read those amazing books that I have in my library. I really love to read and I don’t have much time to do it. I read technical stuff, you know, stuff related to my career, but you know those books that really connect you to yourself, you know psychology or just romance. That’s what I would do in that 1 hour.
Liat: It could go together with a good glass of wine too.
About the author
Rebecca Rachmany is the CEO of Gangly Sister. As a high-tech entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience, Rebecca is a partner in the Microsoft Ventures Azure R&D Accelerator. She has served over 100 high-tech companies and startups in their marketing efforts.
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