How can AI revolutionize the way we build and test software? In this episode of Not Another CEO Podcast, David Politis sits down with Itamar Friedman, Co-Founder and CEO of Qodo, to explore the impact of AI-driven software development.
Itamar shares insights on how AI can enhance code integrity, optimize developer workflows, and shape the future of software engineering. From his entrepreneurial journey to the latest advancements in AI, Itamar dives deep into the challenges and opportunities of bringing AI into software development.
Takeaways:
From Research to Entrepreneurship: Itamar shares his journey from studying AI to co-founding Qodo, discussing how his background in machine learning and software engineering led to his mission of improving code quality.
AI-Powered Code Integrity: AI isn’t just about generating code—it’s about ensuring its accuracy and efficiency. Itamar explains how Qodo is redefining software testing by automating code validation and catching potential issues early in development.
Challenges of Building AI for Developers: Unlike other AI applications, coding tools must be highly reliable. Itamar breaks down the unique hurdles of building AI that developers can trust and seamlessly integrate into their workflows.
The Role of AI in Software Testing: Traditional software testing methods are time-consuming and often inefficient. Itamar discusses how AI-driven test generation is changing the landscape, making development faster and more reliable.
Scaling an AI Startup: Bringing an AI-powered tool to market requires balancing innovation with practicality. Itamar shares his experience of scaling Qodo, attracting early adopters, and iterating based on developer feedback.
Ethical Considerations in AI Development: With AI playing a bigger role in critical processes, ethical concerns are inevitable. Itamar reflects on responsible AI development, the risks of automation, and how companies can build AI that benefits users.
The Future of AI in Development Workflows: Looking ahead, Itamar shares his predictions for how AI will continue to transform software engineering, from fully automated debugging to more intelligent coding assistants.
Quote of the Show:
“I'm not saying that technical people should give up on that. Actually that's our superpower.” - Itamar Friedman
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itamarf
Twitter (X): https://x.com/itamar_mar
Company Website: https://www.qodo.ai
Ways to Tune In:
Spotify:
Apple Podcasts:
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7c6328f0-9b42-41db-8fe2-d263b4fbb261
Transistor: https://podcast.notanotherceo.com
#NotAnotherCEO #BusinessSuccess #Qodo
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:36 What You’d Do Again As CEO
06:02 Transitioning to CEO
14:27 The Role of AI in Software Development
21:28 Challenges and Insights as a First-Time CEO
32:21 Finding the First Customers
36:57 Strong Content and Alpha Code
38:22 Product-Led Growth and Sales Strategy
42:08 Fundraising Journey and Investor Alignment
51:57 Challenges and Vision for AI in Coding
54:59 Balancing Entrepreneurship and Personal Life
01:04:31 Advice to Younger Self
01:07:49 Outro
Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Itamar: I'm not saying that, like, technical people should give up on that.
[00:00:04] Like, actually that's our superpower. Today's guest is a serial entrepreneur. He's currently building his fourth company. He started his first one when he was a teenager. been the co-founder and CTO at all three of his previous companies. And this is the first time that he's in the CEO seat.
[00:00:49] David: He spent his career at the cutting edge of AI building transformative products that redefine the way we interact with technology.
[00:00:56] His previous company Visual Lead, was acquired by [00:01:00] Alibaba. as the co-founder and CEO of Qodo. He's taking AI to new heights, building tools that push the boundaries of automation, decision making, and software development quality. He's a technologist at heart, but also a sharp operator. Combining deep technical expertise with a strong business acumen. welcome co-founder and CEO of Qodo, Itamar Friedman.
[00:01:25] Itamar: Well, thank you very much for having me here, Dave. And you build like quite a big expectation. I'll try to, you know, uh,
[00:01:31] David: Well, I'm excited. Let, let's jump into first question. So what is the one thing you've done big or small at Qodo that's had the biggest impact? And you'll do, again, if you're CEO of another company in the future, which my guess is you will be.
[00:01:46] Itamar: yeah, you know, Coto is my life mission except of a family, et cetera. So this is the company that I'm going to work, uh, on and for, for a long time. But, okay, so I think to answer your question is, [00:02:00] uh, thoroughly and continuously sit, think. And discuss and push, um, uh, forward our culture. And I think like in the early days, especially my first, uh, company, it was more of a company than a startup, you know, as a teenager, et cetera.
[00:02:15] And also my second one, uh, when people talked about culture and values, I almost like puked. It feels to me like, why are we doing that? You know, all we need to do is just build like a really good, like a freaking product or et cetera, or give a really good service. Um, but, uh, over time, and then I'll love to elaborate on that.
[00:02:34] I learned like how, how much like culture, maybe the one single most important thing when you're building, you know, a, a company and not just like one, one time, uh, product. Uh, so I, I think that that one single thing is the most important thing that, that A CEO and a co-founder, but specifically the CEO needs to think about.
[00:02:55] I think it's the only thing that's actually vertical, like, you know, their sales marketing. [00:03:00] Uh, um, sorry, or horizontal, uh, uh, horizontal, I meant, sorry. There's sales marketing r and d product, but culture is horizontal for the entire entire company. Um, so, so basically, uh, when, when we started Qodo, one of the first things we've did, we've, we've done is thinking what, what are our, you know, uh, two, three main, uh, values?
[00:03:21] What are our principles? How we want the company to look like, uh, what is a kur? What is that like, how is, what does it mean? Like, how are we going to interview people, et cetera. That was very, very important. And by the way, I'm not saying we nailed it, the entire idea of, of culture, I think it is built, uh, a long time.
[00:03:37] It's not something static. So, so that's like, uh, it might sound trivial, uh, but, but, but like, you know, culture, uh, you know, you can read about it in the book, amp it Up by Frank Suman, but, but still, like, uh, I, I would, uh, like I would say that really like putting the effort on. On that as the first principle of how to build a successful company is something [00:04:00] that I've done only on this last, uh, company that I'm building.
[00:04:03] Coda.
[00:04:04] David: Do you, do you think that you've, like you said, you've really built two startups, but you know four companies, but even compared to the last company company, is it the same I mean, because I think you have some of the same people right
[00:04:19] Itamar: Yeah,
[00:04:19] David: table in this business.
[00:04:21] Itamar: I do not recommend at all to copy a culture of one company to another. Let me explain. If the same people are now building SpaceX or Netflix, I would have totally different, uh, you know, you know, let me give a more extreme case. If I would start, start building Facebook or, or the Facebook or, uh, uh, build SpaceX, I would build two different cultures.
[00:04:43] Uh, you cannot,
[00:04:44] David: people, with
[00:04:45] Itamar: Yeah, with the same people, like the same founders, uh, I'm not saying that the, that the same people are, are perfect for, for the same mission or, or, or, or, or market, uh, and, and vision and technology, et cetera. But let's assume that, that, uh, you, you can do [00:05:00] that. And, and, and, and there are cases like that.
[00:05:02] I saw a lot of people not from healthcare, doing the most successful healthcare company. Just an example. So let's assume that the same people, same founders are building SpaceX or the Facebook. I would build a totally different culture, for example, um, you know, move fast and break things could, could work really well for, for Facebook in the early days.
[00:05:23] But for SpaceX, I'm not saying it's not true. You know, they're not, they, they're brave and, and they're willing to risk and, and, you know, things to break, but it's not the one of their values move fast and break things, right? So I I I, I, I, I take a lot, uh, you know, from, from what I built in a previous company in a sense of.
[00:05:44] Uh, my learnings and, and some of the core principles and guidelines, maybe one or two values, et cetera. But I'm building the culture that fits for our market, for our clients, for our ICP, for, for our mission, for for our vision. So totally different. Like, [00:06:00] I would say, more different than, than similar.
[00:06:02] David: this is the first time in the CEO seat of building a venture backed company.
[00:06:07] Itamar: Right.
[00:06:08] David: Did you know that you want to be CEO? Like how, how did you come, because you've been very successful on the technology side, and now you're stepping into this role as CEO. How did that come? How did that come about?
[00:06:21] Itamar: Yeah. And I, I, I didn't imagine, uh, actually it was quite a hard transition to, to be frank. Uh, I love technology. Um, I think like the reason I got into entrepreneurship, like to, to start building businesses is because I was excited about the technology and not the business, to be frank. Um. You know, like building, um, um, building for example, as a teenager website in the nineties with flash and, and things like that was exciting for me.
[00:06:48] The concept I can do for loops in inside an animations, programmatical, programmatically, et cetera, that was, was what, what was exciting for me. And I [00:07:00] think that slap that I got, uh, at the later stages that business and, and product and marketing are so important, maybe even like, uh, more, I'll elaborate on that.
[00:07:11] I don't think like it's, uh, I'm a bit exaggerating or not presenting it the right way, but for, for the sake of this point, are more important than technology. That slap that I got, uh, got me like thinking. Uh, although CTO should a CTO should think about business and marketing and, and product, um, I did think that I need to do like a strong move to, to, to bring in new fruitation what I learned, for example, in Alibaba.
[00:07:37] Um, uh. One of the products that we worked on, uh, was kind of a photo album app, like similar to Google Photos or et cetera, and within a year and a half, we reached to 10 million months active users and, and continue to grow from there. One of the things that we saw is that you can develop a really good feature, okay?
[00:07:55] And then, uh, it could, uh, sit there behind the scenes [00:08:00] for, for months, over months. And, and, and then, uh, you, what, what could, what could actually, uh, make people start using it? It, uh, like, I know, I, I'm, again, I'm, I'm risking saying something, uh, like, uh, easy, like to, to, to catch, but hard to do is dis the discoverability of the feature, but even in a really annoying way.
[00:08:22] For example, discoverability by, uh, giving a gift, uh, if you're going to use that feature. Like a Dropbox, you know, the early days giving you 100 megabyte if you, you know, share a tweet or something like that. Or if you have an influencer using that feature and promoting it on, on social. And like for me as a tech person, I was like, oh, this feature is so good and the technology underneath it, so much AI being used here and like, you know, but then nobody uses it until you don't do like proper product operation, product marketing, et cetera.
[00:08:56] David: Hmm.
[00:08:56] Itamar: That realization like started like moving the wheels in [00:09:00] my head that, that, uh, I want to do more of that. Uh, and then like when I did it, like I, I got kind of, uh, fall, fall in love and, and decided in the la the next, uh, startup, uh, I'll, I will. Um, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll be the CEO and for some reason, uh, I'm, I'm enjoying it.
[00:09:19] But, but, uh, yeah. But, but we, we, I do admit that, uh, Coto is a very, you know, techie, uh, very, uh, you know, it's a developer tool, developer platform. So, so, so like, it it does strongly related to technology even, you know, when you do marketing and business and, and, and product.
[00:09:38] David: When, when you think about stepping into the CEO role being founder, CEO, co-founder, CEO of this company, um, what is something you expected to be easy that actually has turned out to be hard?
[00:09:55] Itamar: I, I, I would say that like if we talked about the four companies that, that, uh, [00:10:00] that I had, uh, by some of them are companies, right? The teenager and our startups. So one of them felt like, uh, like walking, you know, in the jungle and selling like, uh, spray, uh, against mosquitoes.
[00:10:13] And, uh, we can talk about what I mean. And then like another felt like opening like a, like a kiosk, like for selling, uh, you know, sandwiches in New York. The other one felt more like a desert, rocking in the desert, a famous death valley, et cetera. This one was like, uh, like in, in intentionally I wanted to be in that field is like being in the storm and, and, and not being in the middle where it's quiet, like one mile from the, the heart of the, the storm.
[00:10:42] And I wanted to be here. Uh, because, um, I, I want, like, I felt that theto, the, the per the perfect storm, uh, you know, creates the perfect opportunity. And like, you want to increase, you get, you get lucky if you, if you create lucky or you, you create [00:11:00] opportunity to, you get, get lucky, et cetera. And, and I wanted to be in that storm.
[00:11:04] Uh, what I didn't know is that this is gonna be such a fast, like an amazing storm. And as, and as the like, and as the CEO, you kind of need to be the captain that sees everything. Um, I know I have great people, you know, I have like the, the CPO and people are in charge in sales and marketing, et cetera. And, and I have great investors.
[00:11:28] But still, you, you need to like, kind of oversee everything. And it's such a fast moving, uh, uh, like field that, that it's, it's, it's harder than, than, uh, that expected. I actually saw that, that being in a storm, it just drag you along.
[00:11:43] David: Mm-hmm. Hmm
[00:11:44] Itamar: Like that's the idea. Like when you're in a desert, you don't know where to go.
[00:11:47] And, and, uh, and, and if you are in a growing market, you know, like the four step epiphany, uh, it talks about the four type of markets. And if you're in a growing market with growing competitors, you're gonna grow with it, et cetera, which is [00:12:00] true, but still, like navigating the ship, uh, within that, uh, you know, uh, storm is, is, is, uh, like harder, like, uh, um, information wise, for example, than I expected.
[00:12:12] And can you elaborate a little bit for, 'cause I, I just gave the brief intro in the beginning. Just elaborate a little bit of what Qodo does, what storm you're talking about.
[00:12:22] Yeah, yeah. Um, so Qodo, uh, is a, a coding, uh, platform for developers that focus on helping, uh, uh, putting AI to work for code review and code testing. It's a platform in a sense that has multiple agents, multiple tools that connects to, uh, different. Uh, parts of your software developed lifecycle. Uh, it has, uh, an agent that connects to your IDE, for example, JetBrains VS.
[00:12:48] Itamar: Code. It has an agent, connects to your GI platform like GitHub, Bitbucket, et cetera. It has, uh, uh, an agent that connects to your CICD and these agents work together with the developers to increase code [00:13:00] quality and software development across the software development life cycle. So if you are a CEO, uh, what you need to think about, or if you are the management, you think about if, if my r and d team uses Coto, I'll probably have lower, uh, uh, outages and, and, and, uh, less issues with my, if my clients and the productivity will improve, improve if the VP R and d I'm gonna explain myself less time, less time to the, to the CO and management why I have this fuck up or whatever.
[00:13:28] And my team, uh, will, will improve, uh, uh, the quality of software development. If I'm a developer, I'm gonna say, oh, I know, I know that code review and testing is critical, but it's tedious and I usually don't have the time, and I hate doing that. And now, uh, I can do that much more easily and I don't hate that anymore.
[00:13:46] So that, that, that was coto. And now, in, in the large scheme of things, we are competing in the, uh, AI assistance, ai, uh, tools for developers. And the, the market is [00:14:00] like booming, uh, with a lot of successful tools, which makes sense because it's one of the most, you know, um, uh, use cases, it's one of the best use cases for, for, for ai.
[00:14:11] So a lot is going on here. And even the, the foundation models, providers like, and, and makers like, uh, uh, open AI and Tropic, Alibaba Meta, et cetera, are, are developing in our field and they care about a lot about our field.
[00:14:25] David: Hmm. while we're on this topic, I, I'm curious, like where do I, I had another guest on who said, there's all the hype about AI and really it's not gonna do a hundred percent of people's you know, or even 90% of people's job. It's gonna be years before we even get to 70%. You know, where, do you, what do you believe?
[00:14:48] in what you're seeing. Because I think to your point, which makes sense specifically in development in engineering, it, does feel like a field that is, where [00:15:00] the most investment from a lot of people is going to kind of, to solve this. So I, would love to, I'm, genuinely curious to get your take on, where you think we are today, where we'll be in a couple of years, and, you know, specifically let's talk about development for now.
[00:15:15] Itamar: Yeah, I'm going to describe to you two figures. The first figure is two and two metrics. Simple software, complex software, simple task, complex task, and I'm gonna talk about that for a minute. Then the other figure is the famous mim, or where you have like the silly, stupid, person on the left, the middle is the, common developer on the right, the ninja developer and the Y axis.
[00:15:44] I'm gonna talk about how much code they're gonna write, and I'm gonna relate Hmm. to that, graph, and through these two visuals. I'm gonna try to answer that. So I think that what we saw is [00:16:00] basically in 2022, but then like a month or, like early 23, a couple of months after chat GPT, we saw that basically, copilot and ChatGPT can help us complete faster, simple, tasks for simple software.
[00:16:18] And that was really exciting because before that, like. Ai, like couldn't really, work. And as, we progress towards, 2024 I think first of all we saw that, we can do quite a complex tasks for simple software. For example, you can find a few, platforms that enables you to almost build a complete website, which is a simple software, but do that end to end.
[00:16:48] That's like a complex task in a simple software. We also saw in 2024, and especially in 2025, like ai, tools like Qodo for example, helping you to do [00:17:00] simple task in complex, software. And I think like throughout 2025 and 2026, we're going to start seeing, AI helping you, like the, dev team do complex tasks and complex software.
[00:17:15] That's gonna be around 2026. Now as time passes More and more complex tasks and complex software are going to be automated and semi-automated. So this is a major change in how, we do Fortune 5,000 software. If AI can help you with complex tasks in complex software, even, if it's not 100% okay, even if it's just like 50%, which, is a lot in, how we see it.
[00:17:48] and, I'm not saying that the other 50% is not gonna be semi-automated. So throughout the years, I think we're gonna see software development, change, a lot and it's inevitable. [00:18:00] okay. Having said that, it doesn't mean that in the next five years we're not gonna see, a developer, rule disappear.
[00:18:10] And that leads me to the second visual. I think pre ai, what you can see is that. again, X axis is like a junior developer, senior and tech lead, you know, juniors, they don't write a lot of code Mid, mid, mid seniority. They actually write most of the code that goes to production because the tech leads are actually focused on reviewing code. And when they write code, they're so, such a ninjas that they can write a little amount of code to do a lot, and they don't repeat themselves. They'll write it shortly, et cetera.
[00:18:42] Now, I think with ai, this is gonna change how? Okay. How, bear with me, I'm gonna add a third dimension, which is the previous visual. Now add, like the third axis of [00:19:00] simple and complex software, what's gonna happen, okay. Is that actually like. the, seniors, they're gonna write much more code over
[00:19:12] time.
[00:19:12] Much more code. Why? Because the, army of agents they're gonna operate and gonna write code for them will be considered as their code.
[00:19:22] got it then suddenly the technical lead, not only going to review code, but only gonna quote code, write code or review code by eye, it could be considered theirs.
[00:19:32] So their lines of code and production gonna rise. But poor juniors or in senior mid seniors, it means they don't need more. their, jobs may be going to reduce. So here is the thing, if you go to the third axis on the simple software, they actually can do much more than they could do before, right?
[00:19:52] Juniors suddenly can write much more, simple software, which they couldn't do before, and even [00:20:00] push that to production. So it's gonna be like this, two dimension histogram. a Gaussian histogram is gonna be turned into different distribution in simple software and complex software.
[00:20:14] And that's a really long answer to tell you
[00:20:17] David: No, it makes sense.
[00:20:20] Itamar: Yeah, the profession is gonna change, but the, the developers are not gonna disappear in the next five years. Technical leads can do much more. Juniors can do much more. Mid seniority can become more easily like seniors because they have AI tools to, use, et cetera.
[00:20:35] That's my prediction. for, the next five years, 10 years, 15 years is something else.
[00:20:41] David: Mm-hmm. thank you for, I actually, that made a lot of sense. I know that that took a, variety of virtual diagrams that you were, but it does make a lot of sense and I think, you know, you can feel even maybe that, [00:21:00] developer chart, if you go before even the junior developer, you have people who don't know how to code today,
[00:21:06] Itamar: Yeah.
[00:21:07] David: who actually join that spectrum because now people who don't know how to code are able to build simple software, simple tasks, and simple software.
[00:21:18] So you kind of like, now you democratize it even more. you know than it is today.
[00:21:23] Itamar: Yep. Agree.
[00:21:26] David: okay, so let me ask you another question. So again, back to you being CEO for the first time. The the next question is, what did you think was going to be hard? That actually turned out to be easy?
[00:21:39] Itamar: Yeah. Okay. I, uh, take the risk that it might sound a bit arrogant, um, but, uh, I, I, I, I, for example, like, you know, as a previous CDOI didn't. I, I did sales, but it wasn't my profession. And I was part of, you know, the marketing [00:22:00] campaigns, et cetera, but I wasn't leading marketing. And I have great people that, you know, are in charge of that.
[00:22:07] Um, but, uh, having said that, um, like as a CEO, you need, for example, to be able to interview people and you need to know something about that field to, to do proper interview. By the way, you can use other people, help, you can use your investors, for example, et cetera, to interview your, your leaders. It doesn't have to be only the vp, like, like every these days, like every position matter.
[00:22:31] It also be like a director or individual contributor. And, uh, as part of, part of that, like I, I, I found myself like learning sales rather reading books, but practicing it. Same, same goes for marketing. But it's not only that, like eventually, like these days, like I think CEO role. It's very out there and you need to participate part of the marketing part of marketing activity, and even, even if you have a VP marketing you, you need to lead it to like [00:23:00] together and the same go go for sales.
[00:23:02] And I, I thought it'll be much harder again, uh, putting like a bit of humbly saying, I'm, I'm sure that there I can learn much more and do much better, but I, I didn't, I, I didn't realize how quickly I'll feel comfortable. Um, you know, even, even doing podcasts, it's not something that I did commonly. And, and now I I, I even feel that, that, you know, I, I know I need to improve a lot, for example, answer question much quicker.
[00:23:29] And, but having, having said that, like I don't, I'm not shy anymore or, or so, so that, that was like something that I felt probably be very hard when taking, moving from CDO to CEO, I didn't talk about financial and other things that as a CEO, you, like, you oversee everything and as CTO, at least for not up.
[00:23:49] Huge company. Uh, you are part of it, but you don't have the ownership. I think it goes, uh, it's, it's, it's much faster, by the way, one small thing. Um, I read, uh, [00:24:00] the book, uh, um, uh, build to Last, and one of the things that, that he says there is that, um, they, they didn't found correlation between like, uh, CEOs that are, uh, you know, out there like Steve Jobs, et cetera, or charismatic, et cetera, to successful companies.
[00:24:20] Uh, they didn't find, like, despite what people think, they didn't find like the, the, the correlation, the connection. Um, in my opinion, the problem is that this, uh, you know, the data mostly comes from 1990. And, uh, and like even then, like I think CEOs, for example, were involved in marketing and sales, but I can understand why it wasn't that.
[00:24:45] Critical or, or the correlation wasn't, uh, one or, or very positive. I think today, if we take data from, I dunno, 2015, um, to, uh, like, uh, towards 2025, I do think we'll find correlation that, [00:25:00] that CEOs, uh, whether you like it or not, we should like it or needs to be up, up there like in, in, in, in, with the, with the clients, with, with, uh, with the audience, uh, uh, et cetera.
[00:25:12] So I thought it'll be very hard, and again, there's a lot to improve and, and change, but, but it's easier than, than I thought.
[00:25:19] David: Hmm. So couple from 2021 forward, it's
[00:25:28] Itamar: Yeah.
[00:25:29] David: uh, there's gonna, the correlation is it? I, I believe that it is so easy. We're talking about it right here. It is so easy to build product now. It is so easy to copy someone else. It's so easy to generate content that what, what differentiates you? Long term is the thought leadership expertise, being out there, community.
[00:25:59] [00:26:00] Like those are the things, partners, what, whatever. But the moat is not the product anymore. You, I, I would say, I mean, maybe may, you know, maybe in some extreme cases, but generally speaking, I, I believe that so much. I, I think if we look forward now post kind of the advancements of companies like Qodo and all these other things and chat, GBT and I, I actually believe that the human being at the helm of the company and the other people in the company, having that presence and being out there and building that community and being trusted, that's actually gonna be the moat.
[00:26:34] You know? Um, so that's one. Two, I spent a lot of time with technical people who, maybe they weren't co-founder before, but they were a VP of engineering. They were in DevOps and they become CEOs. I find that a lot of them, they're comfortable coding, they're comfortable in the product. They're, and in the conversations that I have, I'm [00:27:00] basically trying to like, pull them out, you know, of, of that.
[00:27:04] They, they, they just go back there naturally because that's where they're comfortable. How, I don't know, I'm, I'm trying to get, like, do you have any advice? Like how did you force yourself? Did someone tell you you have to do it? Like, I I I'm saying 90 something percent of the technical founders that I meet, especially in the early days, are really, this is not natural to them.
[00:27:29] They're like, no, no. Hire a head of marketing to do this and I'll, I'll code, I'll co I need to code. 'cause if I don't code, the customer's not gonna get like that. That's what I hear. So I'm curious if you have any sage advice for that, for that cohort of people, for how do they get out of their comfort zone?
[00:27:47] Itamar: Yeah. Uh, the best thing I think I can do is like, share my own story, uh, because I do feel like it's, it could be a bit like personal, how you do that. So like, personally I was. Very, very, very, [00:28:00] very, like hooked into tech. I'm talking about like, um, I hope it's not too much information audience, but when I was in the WC restroom, I was like, reading archive.
[00:28:11] If you're familiar, it's like the, the, you can download the app and register to a few, like, um, machine learning stuff, et cetera. That's what I, what I would do, like a newsletter that related to, uh, um, now I can call it AI back in the day. Like we feel uncomfortable. We call it like machine learning, deep, deep learning, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:28:28] Okay. And, and like, I actually needed to, to pull out, like, to, to disconnect, like really, um, extremely like change the books I read e even I would even claim to some extent not only, not only the technical books, but also the feelgood books, the science fiction books, I'm, I'm not kidding, um, from science fiction is a bit more technical oriented and let alone like the, the actual like books, uh.
[00:28:54] You know, not anymore. Uh, deep learning by Ian Goodfellow. But you know what I [00:29:00] just said, uh, bill to last, uh, I think I mentioned, uh, amp amp it up, uh, in this conversation. So Right. That, that, that, that set of, and to some extent, even the people you, you meet daily and, and who you talk with, that changes. It, it changes the re uh, although we're quite old, but it's kind of like a re rewire, um, your, your brain.
[00:29:23] Like otherwise, like you, you'll be pulled like automatically. Like I, I do believe that there's a lot of, I'm, opening up brackets here. Oh my God, that's such an engineering statement, but I'm opening a bracket and saying like, I do feel that there's a lot of resemblance, like between LLMs and our brain, a lot of them.
[00:29:39] And for example, I think like a lot of what we're doing here is almost like producing the next token, system one thinking so to change that, at least. the, automatic thinking you need to rewire and like, what do you think every day? Who do you talk to every day? who, are your circles, who you're gonna dinner with, et cetera.
[00:29:59] That, that,
[00:29:59] David: [00:30:00] Hmm.
[00:30:00] Itamar: my suggestion. And for me was kind of like, like almost like a clear cut at the point that I said, should I be the CEO or not? Should I be the CEO Then I thought about everything that's gonna mean once I decided like a clear cut, like, uh, it, it took time, but the decision to to, to do that was, was a clear cut.
[00:30:19] David: I think that is actually, I think that's very good advice. And I, I would actually say that, um, that is exactly what people are not, you know, they're, they, they're like, well, I'm CEO. But I'm still gonna do the things the way I used to do the things, you know?
[00:30:36] Itamar: Yeah.
[00:30:37] David: um, anyway, I I love that advice. I, I, I'm gonna definitely highlight that when we publish this.
[00:30:42] 'cause I think that for me, at least with technical founder, CEOs, co-founder c like that, that's something that they need to hear. Um,
[00:30:49] Itamar: But by the way, just
[00:30:50] David: Yeah, go
[00:30:51] Itamar: more thing, like sometimes I, I, I hear like Microsoft, CEO, Satya and, and like, uh, Thomas, the CEO of, uh, GitHub, for [00:31:00] example, saying, or Mark Zuckerberg, uh, saying, um, Hey, on the weekend I did this project and I coded, et cetera. I, I, I, I'm not saying that like technical people should give up on that.
[00:31:13] Like actually that's our superpower, right? That's what makes, that's one of, that's their superpower. That's one of their advantages. Like in, in might be one of their advantages in the field. But if that, that shouldn't be the, the, the, the core, it should be an advantage. It should be like a foot, like you have a technical.
[00:31:37] A technical, uh, uh, foot, uh, and, and not, it's not like, but you need to change your brain. That that's what, how, how I, I, I maybe like visualizing it.
[00:31:46] David: a
[00:31:46] Itamar: Yeah.
[00:31:47] David: the rewiring
[00:31:48] Itamar: Though you need to rewire the brain, but without, I'm not saying like losing your, losing some of the, some of, some of the knowledge and, and using your hands, like code, use your product, uh, be, be [00:32:00] out there, et cetera.
[00:32:01] Be technical. Use that advantage. You probably can automate some of your co tasks, et cetera. So do that. But, but you need to rewire your, your thinking that I just don't, don't give up on being technical, but, but how, but, but it shouldn't be the main, the main, uh, you know, property, the main characteristic of what, how your day look like.
[00:32:21] David: so I want to a, actually, this is a good, uh, this reminds me of something I wanted to ask you, which is what, how did you find your first customers? Five customers? 10 customers? Was that you going out there and, and finding them? You know, was that people that you were friends? Like, how did you find those first set of customers?
[00:32:40] Itamar: Yeah. Uh, so I wanna tell you that even though like this quarter and it didn't finish, we doubled our A-R-R-A-R-R. Uh, and it not like a small number. We are 100% inbound. We actually started, uh, outbound now. Um, even when the seed investor invested in us, we told them, Hey, here's the introduction we can do for [00:33:00] you in like 99% of the cases.
[00:33:02] We told them, please do not, and, and I'll tell you why. So I actually, what I'm saying to you, like, just answer you quickly. I actually, uh, I was in the front together with my co-founder, of course, steady Creto, uh, in front of the clients, but we waited them for them to come to, to us, and then we fully took over and, you know, pulled them in through the pipeline.
[00:33:21] It wasn't a pipeline by back then through the,
[00:33:24] David: Yeah.
[00:33:24] Itamar: design this through, uh, a process, some process. But, but we waited for, for them to, to come to us. And I'll, I'll tell you why. Because one of my learnings, uh, from, um, from, from my earlier startups and, and basically it's the second one, the earlier where more like companies is that there are two school of thoughts.
[00:33:45] One, uh, all it matters from you need to move from one stage to the other. You know, it doesn't matter how, I mean, like, let's, let's say that stages, let's say you're a VC-backed startups. You're a VC-backed startup, and your stage is your se series, like your [00:34:00] rounds of, of funding, like C the a, b, all you care is how you move to the next step.
[00:34:07] How you move from C to A or, or, or from a, A to B. And you know, then think about the next problem. You're gonna have this, this, uh, uh, makes sense, uh, because you know, the world is dynamic and things are changing anyway. Why, why, you know, thinking so far ahead, the other, uh, school of thought is like, Hey. Uh, maybe I'm gonna make my current, uh, my current, uh, like stage harder by trying to figure out how to do things right for the next steps.
[00:34:41] But then when I pass that, my next step might, might be easier. Okay. So, and I can't tell you, which is right, like, you need to think like, it depends on many, I mean, a few CRI criteria, like a few thing that you might wanna think about our school, school of thought is, is the second one. So we [00:35:00] want at the seed stage to, to say, we want to see that our messaging is working.
[00:35:05] We can reach our audience or more, our audience can find us, et cetera. Uh, right. So, and, and might be harder, but if we do that, then probably the next stage would be easier. And uh, and, and, and we had a reasoning why to do that. And so, so, so bottom line, the way I got to my first clients is by Twitter. Or LinkedIn or you know, the social, and then they, and they went to our website
[00:35:29] David: Really.
[00:35:30] Itamar: the mess, they saw the messaging.
[00:35:31] And, and by the way, it's still like that today. Like we're 99%, uh, like inbound only now, you know, we, we, we only now like recruited our head of SDR, you know, et cetera, and, uh, and, and so on. So, because eventually you do want to go like out online, I learned, uh, from monday.com and from Slack, even that at some point, even if you have a really strong product led growth, uh, I intentionally didn't send PLG okay, because, [00:36:00] uh, uh, like, uh, uh, product led something.
[00:36:04] Then even then, like in most cases, you still want the Salesforce, not necessarily the, the SaaS, but a Salesforce in, in your company. And you want to, to have, uh, being able to capture the inbound and also use the branding to do outbound. So I, I'm, I'm all in. Like, I, I, I do. Like, want to do an outbound, and we're starting to work on it like now, but generally we wanted to get to this stage when the inbound is working.
[00:36:31] So, so that's how we got to our clients.
[00:36:33] David: tweets, your LinkedIn posts, you
[00:36:35] Itamar: Yeah.
[00:36:36] David: like those are, that's the way that you
[00:36:37] Itamar: And also the company, uh, it's like a, it's like a tango between me and my, sorry, myself and, and the company pro profile and also others. Like we, we have, yeah, we have also other, like, people in the company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Yes. That, that's how we got it.
[00:36:55] Oh,
[00:36:56] David: Wow.
[00:36:56] Itamar: maybe I'm cheating in one. One thing is that we also have [00:37:00] strong content, like social posting is not only necessarily like, uh, should post, should posting. Okay. For, for example, uh, for example, uh, a year ago, it feels like a, a decade in our world, we, we published a paper in an open source that is called Alpha Code.
[00:37:16] Uh, alpha, C-O-D-I-U-M, and, uh, it's, it's on, uh, basically what it, it does like, it's, it's a tool that with a click of a button, I'm not kidding, with a click of a button, you can reach a master programmer on coding competition. Our submissions are better than ai, DeepMind Meta and Salesforce. Who are the other companies that are competing on that coding competition?
[00:37:40] There's another coding competition that we yet to reveal or practice there. Um, we, we wanted to compete on the big league, uh, uh, which is Code Forces competition. And obviously that content, uh, I'm calling it content because I'm putting my marketing head, uh, hat,
[00:37:56] David: Right,
[00:37:57] Itamar: uh, right. Uh, if I put the CTO hat, I care [00:38:00] about the technology and everything we can do in the product in it, but from the marketing perspective, that hat it was like gold to, to, to create the, those social, social campaigns.
[00:38:10] So I just wanna say it's not. Just shit posting. Uh, but, but actually posting which, which is meaningful, give, give valuable, uh, information and even tools to, to our audience.
[00:38:21] David: Hmm. I like when you talk about this, you know, you, you have such this strong pull and inbound from the market, but you are already investing in sales. You know, I remember distinctly, I remember so well hearing Olivier from, uh, Datadog, the, the founder and CEO of Datadog speak, and he was talking about how they had just the craziest. Like product led growth or you know, just people installing and
[00:38:48] Itamar: No.
[00:38:48] David: and paying for it on their credit card. And he said they actually very early, like really, really early in the, in the business, they hit this kind of wall where the growth kind of started to slow. And I mean, it [00:39:00] didn't stop, but it started to slow. And what the realization was is that they had all this inbound, but they were getting like a thousand dollars contract, 5,000, you know,
[00:39:10] Itamar: Yeah.
[00:39:10] David: and they didn't, they weren't optimizing, they weren't actually calling the customers. And I, I remember him distinctly talking
[00:39:17] Itamar: Yeah,
[00:39:17] David: when they started hiring their first salespeople, one of the salespeople went into the database and found that they had 10 different individual developer accounts at Disney.
[00:39:27] Itamar: exactly.
[00:39:29] David: Disney Corporate and said, you already have 10 to, you know, and now that became a, I don't remember how, you know, a million dollar deal or whatever it was. And I remember that so distinctly because I think so many people who do product-led growth, they kind of, because it feels amazing.
[00:39:43] I mean, I've been in that in the early stage where people just installing and buying and you know, it feels amazing. And a lot of people don't actually make that investment sales because esp again, especially technical founders, what I find is they're like, I don't want sales. I [00:40:00] don't want to think about it.
[00:40:00] I don't wanna deal with it. There's some very well known companies who are like, we have no salespeople and we will never have salespeople. And salespeople are terrible. And in reality opportunity with these accounts is definitely much bigger than what it is. Just self-service, you
[00:40:15] Itamar: Yeah,
[00:40:16] David: So I love, I love that
[00:40:18] Itamar: the reason we're doing it because, uh, we probably, uh, uh, like read the same blogs and podcasts, like we, we, we are preparing for that, and we try to learn, like, obviously we're gonna do a lot of mistakes, but, but, you know, I have a joke. I, I, I hope it's funny, you know, basically as a first timer, you, you do every mistake you can, uh, and the second time, or you do every second mistake, you can as a third time, you do every third mistake you can.
[00:40:44] And the fourth, like, that's how, how it goes. So, so basically like. Trying to do only one out of four mistakes, um, which I would like buy and right, right away. Uh, having that statistics, uh, is, is also like trying to [00:41:00] learn who are the companies you wanna learn from their journey and try to apply. And Datadog specifically is one of the four, like companies that we take, uh, we, we take our learnings that inspire us.
[00:41:13] Uh, so, so that like, definitely one of the reason we started with the sale. So there's a reason. We are two years old company. We, we are a 2-year-old company, two and a half if you include like the, the, the day we decided to, this is what we want to do. And, you know, we started the presentation. There's a reason why, uh, we have seven digit deals.
[00:41:32] Uh, and, uh, we, we, uh, we are an, an, uh, Gartner magic quadrant. Uh, so, so early, you know, I, I didn't care about that. Like, uh, we suddenly appear there and then I Oh, oh, that's cool. Okay, let's talk to them, you know. And, um, and so I, I think it was be because of these learnings, um, and, and, and, and applying them, by the way, I, I think, like I'm bragging quite a lot.
[00:41:54] I, I do want to tell you that we have a lot of problems, a lot of issues, and I do a lot of [00:42:00] mistakes. Like I would buy today, like one out of four, uh, mistakes. Uh, although that, that's my joke, but I, I, I think I'm more like a one out of two or whatever.
[00:42:08] David: Let's just quickly talk about fundraising. Um, so you've had experience, you sold the last company, um, you're in a hot space. I, I, I assume you had a lot of investors that were interested, you know, in, in investing. Can you just talk me through that fundraising process? Was it really easy? Did you have a lot of people kind of showing up with term sheets?
[00:42:32] How did you choose, like, just walk me through that fundraising.
[00:42:35] Itamar: Um, in, in the seed. And, uh, and a, uh, almost the same process occurred to me, like basically, um, like when I know that I'm going to raise money, I'm gonna like, say dates just for the sake of the, uh, you know, to make it more visually, easily understood. Understood. For, for our audience, let's say I want, I know I don't wanna raise on, on May for example, [00:43:00] so, uh, around January.
[00:43:03] I'm not kidding. I already have in mind what's my story. It it, I should, because basically I should already have it a year, a year ago. And I'm trying to, you know, fulfill and, and, and, and, and around January, like, you know, I'm starting to shape the sharpen, uh, the story, which is amazing journey because basically what it means is that take, taking some of your hypothesize and thinking that, that you had.
[00:43:31] Uh, looking ahead and start sharpening them because what, what, what does a round mean? A round series, another round of funding means how, what I'm gonna do with this new money looking forward, right? So if I was so busy, uh, uh, what I'm doing so far, which is path of the story, while kind of having an, like a, some understanding of the next step.
[00:43:53] Now I wanna sharpen that. So you start a Jo Journey around January, do that, and you start, you know, checking out, you know, [00:44:00] some VCs, uh, starting to, to build a relationship with some of them maybe you already have, but you increase, uh, relationship building, et cetera. And, um, and, and you get the feeling what works, what, what's not, uh, what's important for them that you're, you're missing, uh, et cetera, by the way, a, a small, uh, opening of ADEs and then I'll close them.
[00:44:19] I do think that. To some extent, you shown you don't, you don't need to fucking care anything. What the investor tells you, I'll, I'll explain that. Okay. Basically, you need to care about how you think you need to build a, a successful company, and you need to convince yourself. Once you are convinced, you will find investors that are also convinced in your story.
[00:44:42] And some of them will tell you no because they have a different, like a different way of thinking, a different like philosophy, et cetera. So you need to think what's the right way for you and, and your company or more accurately for your company and for yourself. Convince yourself, and then you'll convince the right partners that are agree with you.
[00:44:59] It doesn't mean that you [00:45:00] want to find an investor that are yes, yes men, uh, yes sayers or whatever, but, but they need to align with their philosophy with, with, with yours. Okay? So
[00:45:09] David: married basically. It's like, you know, comfortable with who you are and then finding that partner. Right? I mean that I, I love that actually, the way you just said that. I think people need to hear that because I think a lot of first time founders try to make their pitch fit to what the investor says
[00:45:30] Itamar: Yeah,
[00:45:31] David: wants, basically, and, and their thesis versus. I, I think of it like marriage, like, am I comfortable with myself? Do I know who I am? Do I know what I want in life? That person exists somewhere. I mean, how many venture investors? Thousands,
[00:45:44] Itamar: yeah,
[00:45:46] David: someone's gonna match up to your vision. It may take a hundred meetings, but someone's gonna match up to that.
[00:45:51] Itamar: yeah. Take agree. And, and then like that. And, and then if I close that brackets, and so during like let's say February, [00:46:00] March, you kind of try to, uh, understand, uh, which type of, uh, VC. Uh, uh, fits your TEUs, your philosophy, and, and you start building that, that list. Now, there's different school of thought, like here, uh, different, like, should I go to 100?
[00:46:15] Should I go to 50 10? There, there's, there's gonna be totally different. It's gonna be a totally different, um, uh, uh, um, tour, uh, according to the number that you choose. Just an example, I specifically like to do that, that like, uh, homework in advance and eventually come to 15, the mo like, not more than that.
[00:46:37] And, and, and, you know, you can say I'm lucky, or we, or, or we, we, we have the right story or whatever, um, that we can allow ourself just to go to 10 or 15. But practically, like eventually that's, that's what I do. And then, uh, and, and then, uh, like around April. Uh, you start sending those more clear emails, Hey, I'm visiting San Francisco, whatever.
[00:46:59] Uh, [00:47:00] and, and, and may, uh, uh, would you like to meet? They are aware to how things, they, they know much better than you to sniff and understand that something is cooking here. And they start asking you, oh, it happened to be that, uh, I'm not there that week. Can we meet next week? Because they wanna be, uh, they wanna be first, right?
[00:47:20] David: in the
[00:47:20] Itamar: Uh, yeah. Like, thing like that. And, and, you know, you can check the ground. You can say, oh, I can't, like, I can't only that. So do you, do you prefer to, to skip and you'll find, you know what, I can meet on Monday, you know, something like the first day of the week, you know, of that week or something like that.
[00:47:35] David: Hmm.
[00:47:35] Itamar: In, in, in most cases. And, uh, we just started the, the tour and like, uh, within seven days, I think we got like. Uh, two term sheets and then, then, then additional ones. And, and we picked like, and there was a clear match between our teis to, to the investors. And now you can, you can start optimizing if you like or not.
[00:47:55] Uh, and, uh, for example, on the brand of the VC or, or [00:48:00] et cetera, for me at early stage, it's much more important, much more important to have alignment on the teis and the people you're gonna work with really, really closely, rather like, uh, uh, on, on the brand of the, of, of the vc. Like I think we have amazing brands, but, uh, uh, but, but, but still, like, uh, someone can, can say, I don't know, like maybe Sequoia could, could have been better, like brand wise, just an example.
[00:48:25] So, um, so in, in my opinion, like the partner, uh, uh, and, and like the match, uh, not, not only like the tip. Uh,
[00:48:33] David: with?
[00:48:34] Itamar: but by the way, not only the test of the, of the vc, but the specific part, the specific partner, it could change, but still like, uh, uh, um, you want to start? So, uh, our, our Series A is a, a square peg, for example.
[00:48:48] They're the first seed into, uh, first investor into Canva. Um, just an example. And they have amazing companies in, in that are really ambitious. I love it. Like, uh, ai, doc, ai, a [00:49:00] doc, like one of the leaders in, in healthcare, they have, uh, uh, for example, ex sogo and tomorrow that are digging in the under the earth in satellites in the sky, and doing like different like, so like really ambitious like VC and, and we are aiming for something really big.
[00:49:17] We didn't talk about Coto too much, but, but I can double click on that later. And then we have SUSE Ventures. Um, they're, for example, one of the first checks and, and Robinhood, um, and then, and some other like amazing companies. And, and, and they're very, very, very, uh, um, you know, visionary and founder first and also very well connected in, in the valley.
[00:49:41] And I wanted that foot foot as well. And they, they, uh, uh, they're very like doing hard work to understanding the market and who you are and who the company is. And I felt that that's very important when you're talking about series A and and seed. So that I, I really [00:50:00] connected, uh, to, to how they think. So that these are the two, our two investors, um, about, about us a bit to explain why it was so important for me to find visionary, um, investors.
[00:50:11] So, so basically, when you think about the future, if you're talking about AI that's gonna write most of our code, you can, we can start to think all our code, most of our code doesn't matter. Like a lot of code is gonna be written by, by ai. It means that it's also going to complete, complete features. End to end.
[00:50:29] It means. That people are not necessarily going to review most of the lines that AI is gonna write. Are you, do you feel comfortable with that? Like, it could do it, it could do so many things. You know, it fi it. The, the task is complete. The feature is running. Who says that underneath? It's not sending data somewhere, you know, or doing differencing coda.
[00:50:52] What we're doing is we're talking about code integrity. We're talking about making sure that the code that that is written [00:51:00] by a human developer or AI fits the company's best practice. Compliance values, uh, functionality, et cetera as a whole. That's what we call it. Code integrity, not necessarily just quality.
[00:51:13] And we're thinking about the vision. You, you will have AI that are more focused on generating code faster and Qodo AI to focus on making sure that it doesn't harm, uh, you know, society, humanity. Uh, the, the company's culture and, uh, and et cetera. I'm talking about the the end game. Um, because in the middle there's more concrete stuff, like less bugs and issues, uh, you know, uh, more high quality software.
[00:51:39] But, but as we go, and that's like quite, you know, fascinating at least for, for me and many, uh, like, uh, vision and important, uh, task to, to give to the world. And, and we needed the, that, that vc like, think with us. Think, think ahead.
[00:51:57] David: tell me what is the biggest, I know [00:52:00] Qodo is a new company, but what is the biggest challenge you face so far at Kodo and, and how have you overcome that?
[00:52:06] Itamar: I can tell you something specific, like I'll say it in a sentence, but the problem is a bit bigger than that. I would say, like, one thing I can say, there's a lot of noise. Like, you know, when there's a storm and when, when there's a, a, a new technology, like a mobile or cloud, you remember the early days in mobile, like we had like 1 million application.
[00:52:27] Hey, here's application of, uh, uh, I can use to, you know, shave my, my beer. Like, what? Why do you need that? My friend? I remember my friends like showing me that I, I said it in my heart, uh, like, Hey, look, I paid $1,000 for a diamond screensaver. You remember that? Like, uh,
[00:52:43] David: that.
[00:52:44] Itamar: okay, so, so like, it feels a bit like that right now.
[00:52:47] Now, now I, so there's lot noise, but I would say like, frankly, like it's the easiest answer. Uh, but the more accurate and complete answer is that, and I tell it [00:53:00] to investors and, and also new employees, they're also investors, right? They're investing their time. Uh, we're bringing the best people in the world and, and, uh, um, best fitting in the world and, and they're invested in their time and their career.
[00:53:12] Is that, um. We are trying to tackle on three, uh, uh, challenges, uh, at once. Where usually as a founder, you wanna make sure you have only one, which is tech product, and go to market. Seriously. Like as a founder, you want to know, okay, I know how to solve easily the product and tech. The go to market is gonna be a challenge or et et cetera.
[00:53:34] Like different cons, cons, constellation. And the thing is that when you're talking about code quality, software development, quality, code integrity, what we're trying to tackle, the technology is not there yet. Like LLMs is not enough. Uh, like there's a lot of technology to be built and it's not the right podcast, right, to talk about it.
[00:53:53] The second thing is, is the, is the, is the UECI, it's not solved. Chat is gonna take everything over. [00:54:00] Everything in code generation, maybe. But in code integrity, no, for sure.
[00:54:05] David: Hmm.
[00:54:05] Itamar: And, and then in, in, um, my chat is a very important interface. We push it everywhere, okay. But it's not gonna solve, it's not gonna be the ultimate solve, like your XUI.
[00:54:15] And when you're talk about the go to market, Hey, here is the noise. Okay? Like, uh, there's a lot of noise, uh, and, uh, and, and you need to rise above, above the noise. And here's the importance of why the CEO and other people need to be involved in marketing and creating good content, creating good product, but also bringing it to, to the front, uh, et cetera.
[00:54:36] So that, that's the real challenge. And also it connects to your previous, one of your previous question, you know, you like, uh, with everything that is going on over the, like, have, it's, it's becoming really challenging to be on top of things. And, and, and fortunately and unfortunately, there's all of this like, uh, uh, is, is connected.
[00:54:54] All of these, like it's umbrella of, of, of challenges that are, are connected.
[00:54:59] David: Um, [00:55:00] I want to transition to your background a little bit. Um, did you, you, you start a company as a teenager, so you knew you wanted to be an entrepreneur. Where does that come from?
[00:55:11] Itamar: Yeah, I, I, I do admit that, that I think the early, early days, like the first few days, years were more on the technical, like, what's, what was exciting? It's not so easy in the nineties to get a job as, as a teenager, like 12, 13, 14 years old. Um, today it's much easier. There's so many, like, you can do, don't, don't catch me.
[00:55:37] Like Fiverr, Upwork, uh, who knows actually who, what's your age? Who cares, you know, like online if you do a good job. But back then, like, it wasn't that easy. So, so like being an entrepreneur to some extent was an opportunity for me to, to do technology and that, that, that was, was exciting. But as time passed, like I, I.
[00:55:58] It's, it's like really [00:56:00] appealing to, to control your future, being able to navigate that more, more easily. And, uh, that bug, uh, was injected towards the end, uh, of that first, first company. Um, like understanding that I want to be, uh, entrepreneur. Uh, I, I, I feel that still the, uh, being entrepreneur at that age, age was more like, uh, still, although still like, involved like into technology because, because it, it, it, I, I could influence for example, the fact that I can push the company, um, that, that I'm the CTO of to be on a cutting edge or, or I can oversee the overall challenges.
[00:56:47] Supposedly you can say that, um, that you can do that as an entrepreneur, like, uh. In, entrepreneur, in, inside, in, in, in, in, inside a co corporate. So, so I think [00:57:00] like, uh, the entrepreneurship like grew, grew over time and, and, and, and, and especially I have to say, uh, after starting to work and, and, and companies, um, and not actually being entrepreneur.
[00:57:14] For example, I worked in Mellanox and one of the most successfully successful Israeli companies, for example, sold to Nvidia a few billion dollars. And um, and, and today I think it's in charge of like 13% of its income. Like something crazy. At least at some report I saw that and I was like, automating, automating, uh, verification of chips.
[00:57:38] Like, makes, makes sense, right? Machine learning, although it's early days, that's what we do at Coto just for software. And, and, and I remember like I wanted to influence some things in the way I wanted to do that. And there was so much convincing and need to be done,
[00:57:53] David: Hmm.
[00:57:53] Itamar: uh, that, uh, although I was like a worker number 180 and not [00:58:00] 180,000 like I was in Alibaba, uh, okay.
[00:58:02] Uh, but, but still so much convincing. So, so, so part of like more technology wise, but as, as I grew and I told you the story before, I, I learned that like, I wanna also clearly, like I have a vision. Like I, I have a vision what I want to change in the world. That point where it's not only, not only how I want to do things, but also what I want to accomplish and what I want to change in the world and, and, and like the impact that I wanna wa make and, and how I like all of that.
[00:58:31] If you have that as a whole, that's when internship in my opinion, like comes really strongly, at least for me. I also, I heard, I think I, I can say it because I heard that the CTO of Duolingo saying it so I can, I could quote him, he said I became, uh, like a CTO enter, uh, because. Uh, uh, I didn't want to work for someone else.
[00:58:51] For me, it's like, it's true, but it's more like I have a vision of how I want to build things and what, [00:59:00] what I want to achieve in the world, and, and that pushed me.
[00:59:02] David: Hmm. you have a model? Do you have somebody that you, growing up now, like is there someone that, a mentor that you have, like where do you, where do you get this?
[00:59:18] Itamar: Yeah.
[00:59:18] David: do you, do you not? Is it a bunch of people kind of surrounding you?
[00:59:22] Itamar: weirdly, uh, although there is a lot of heroes that I, I, I saw throughout the years, uh, actually the people were much closer to me.
[00:59:31] Um, uh, those that I admire and looked at, including my uncle, my, my grandpa, my my managers, um, one of them, for example, is my professor and mentor throughout, uh, the university, uh, professor Le Selek, uh, manure, et cetera. And from each one of them, like I learned something else. For example, my uncle was an inventor, uh, throughout the nineties, et et cetera, and a Japanese company actually.
[00:59:56] And, and I asked him, how, how come you have like four patents, so [01:00:00] impactful, et cetera? And, and, and one of the things he told me is that, Hey, I'll tell you a little secret, but don't tell it to anyone. Okay? Basically, I don't invent anything. I just take one thing that works well in one domain and apply it to other domain.
[01:00:12] It's the easiest way. And, and like, uh, when you think about it, like, I was like, what? Uh, and then like, you think about it, a lot of inventions are, are, are like this. And, um, and, and just for example, like my uncle and et cetera. So I would say like, people close to me. That are, uh, thoughtful, ambitious, uh, hardworking, um, uh, et cetera, or, or, or my, my heroes and, and mentors.
[01:00:39] David: how, how, um, you know, this is this, I mean, in my experience running a business like this, building a business like this is all encompassing. Um, and it takes over your, your life, you know, in, in a lot of ways. Not in a bad way, actually, I don't think. But how do you balance that [01:01:00] with your family, with, you know, other parts of your life?
[01:01:04] You know, like, do you believe in work life balance? Do you believe that that exists? Do you care, you know, um.
[01:01:11] Itamar: yeah. I, I am, uh, married plus three under seven. Under seven and a half. Uh, it's, uh, maybe that would, should be the answer for the, that is a easy, the, that easy thing I, that easy thing that was much harder than I thought when we got to three kids.
[01:01:28] Uh, basically there's more kids than than amount of hands that, you know, I have, or my wife have, which means that, uh, it makes it hard for each one of us to, you know, be alone. And, uh, yeah, obviously you can, uh, you know, uh, offload, uh, offshore offload, uh, like, uh, some things, but eventually you, you should be a father, right?
[01:01:47] Otherwise, why did you make kids? So it's not one of those things that I can bring VP of Child, uh, you know, or something like that. Uh, and, um, and, and, and I think that that's, that's, that's [01:02:00] very challenging. And, um, I, I, I think that we need to treat it really seriously. Um, uh, for example, I can tell you that, uh, today, uh, during lunch, I took my wife to, uh, to a date, uh, you know.
[01:02:15] Uh, so we like, even if you just like framework frame, frame it this way, right? She, she works not far, far from, from where I was at that time. And instead of, you know, eating quickly during, uh, walking or, um, eating while working in, in, in the office or, uh, uh, uh, lunch or lunch with one of our prospect clients, et cetera, you treat it seriously in the end.
[01:02:40] It will take like one hour and a half, two hours instead of 10 or 15 or or 30 minutes. But that, that's seriously very, very important. Just, just an example. And, and, and, and I think that, that, that I, there's no, like, you can, you can hear that work life balance. No. Like it [01:03:00] is, I even can't compile that sentence.
[01:03:03] It, it, it's, it's, it's more like how do you, how, how can you, how, how can you make it work together? Uh, how like. How can, how can we make it work together, for example? That's one of the reason that I'm relocating to New York. I, I feel that I, I see that I'm flying a lot to New York specifically, and, and then, um, New York City, I mean, and, and, and then like if there's a path where my family can be there and then, uh, you know, uh, have less flights or, or, you know, less long flights, et cetera,
[01:03:36] David: Hmm,
[01:03:37] Itamar: and if it works out, then it's not only for the business, but I'm actually also doing that for the family.
[01:03:44] Uh, so it's like, it's a mutual, like actually you can think that maybe for AI dev tool, um, you know, dev platform, you, you might want to relocate to actually San Francisco or, or the Valley. So part of the consideration is the family and that [01:04:00] let's get into like, oh, actually, uh, you know, Sunnyvale is much better place than, uh, Brooklyn or whatever.
[01:04:06] We, I heard a lot of things, but.
[01:04:08] David: it's
[01:04:08] Itamar: for,
[01:04:09] David: it's not. But we can, you know, that's a different
[01:04:11] Itamar: yeah. So, so people, it's a different discussion, but it doesn't matter, like if it this or that is better, I can tell you for my family, it's better that we relocate for New York. So part of the decision, it's like, can we find a combination that's good for the fam, the, the, the company and good, good for the family, uh, at the same time.
[01:04:28] David: hmm. okay. Last question for you. Knowing everything you know today, in your entire career and all the different businesses you've been a part of, including this one, what is the one piece of advice you would go back and give yourself before you started your first job?
[01:04:43] Itamar: Yeah. Um, so I, I, I, I think that, um, like one thing that easy to say is the culture thingy. Like I, I got it to too late. Uh, I, I think it's very important. I, I, I think even I will look forward, I think I will [01:05:00] tell myself that I even didn't, uh, I should even put more effort into it. I'm not kidding. Uh, but it's, it's actually.
[01:05:06] Uh, something like that. That's, to some extent I can even say that that is the fish and not the hook. Um, and, and, and I think that one of the most important, uh, uh, thing for, for me that I, I didn't do enough in, in my opinion, is like, learn everything on, on myself instead of learning from, from others. Uh, like reading, uh, books, reading, uh, uh, listening to podcasts
[01:05:36] David: hmm.
[01:05:37] Itamar: like yours, uh, and, um, et cetera.
[01:05:40] Like doing that work because it's so, like, by the way, like you can even frame it in a bigger scope, like investing in yourself and investing even in sport. Uh, right, right. Not going like build yourself. And, and not necessarily like quickly jump into [01:06:00] like building something, building the product, building,
[01:06:02] David: hmm.
[01:06:02] Itamar: know, by the way, you can find conflict in what I'm saying because I don't know, like if you look on Mark Zuckerberg, I dunno, maybe he built himself like so amazingly reach before the Facebook and, but basically he grew, sorry, from as, as far as I understand.
[01:06:19] Like maybe I'm, I have misunderstanding or I don't have the knowledge throughout the process of building Facebook. Okay.
[01:06:24] David: Right, right.
[01:06:25] Itamar: meta. So, so it's not one way to go. Uh, but I think that, uh, um, for most people, with all the respect, like myself, uh, I didn't necessarily came naturally born with all that knowledge and intelligence and whatever.
[01:06:42] That maybe Mark Zuckerberg had, and like building yourself is so important and have different set of skills and, and, uh, that, that, that you need to have, for example, as, as a CEO in, in my opinion, like you can't nail it with one thing. You need to know how to work well with people and read people. And, uh, you need to, uh, uh, you know how to [01:07:00] think about the world, uh, predicting, uh, uh, vision, uh, et cetera.
[01:07:04] You need to know how to work with, with investors and, and finance and legal and things like that. You, you, et cetera. So, and, and, and I think like investing in, in yourself and reading and learning, and I, I'm not still do that just in time. Uh, I'm talking about like for developers just in time compilations or the for, for, for some people, like, for the education people, there's just in time learning, it's actually a term I think, and like, I'm not saying like do that, but but invest in yourself and, um, yeah.
[01:07:34] If every day, if I, if I need to say once, if, if I have an alarm clock. And I need to choose one thing that will tell me every morning when I wake up. It's like, learn something this day today.
[01:07:46] David: I like that. Um, well, I'm very happy that we did this. I'm happy that Barack put us in touch and, uh, connected us. And, um, thank you. There was, there's so much in this conversation that, that [01:08:00] I think is relevant to all founders and CEOs, but I, I really think technical founders and CEOs can learn so much from this.
[01:08:08] So thank you very much for doing this.
[01:08:10] Itamar: My pleasure. And I enjoyed, uh, uh, reading some portion that's still going through it, through your, uh, booklet and, uh, and uh, throughout, through, through our discussion. Thank you so much for having me here. And.
[01:08:23]David: Thank you. Hope everyone enjoyed if you did, please share it with your networks and we'll see you for the next episode of not another CEO podcast.
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