Orlie Gruper of Mobilitech Capital on a value proposition in one sentence

Orlie Gruper

Thank you for hosting.

Orlie Gruper

A journey for a mobility nerd, that's a good pun, intended. So I'm Orlie Gruper. I am 19 years now in the field of mobility. I started in aviation, in the Air Force, [unclear @ 00:47], and after the army I was recruited to operate a private aviation fleet. After my BA I founded an electric motorcycle company, building the product, showrooms, garages all over Israel to maintain it, which was really a fun startup. I was the first female entrepreneur in the mobility ecosystem in Israel, about a decade ago. I sold my half, and then I represented the Israeli transport sector in the European Commission and in Europe. [unclear @ 01:26] I later joined EcoMotion and was nominated to be executive director for four and a half years. EcoMotion is a smart mobility community, over 700 startups, 15,000 community members. Three years ago I moved to the advisory board, where I joined Mobilitech Capital as partner. From the foundation, actually, five and a half years ago I founded Women in Mobility, which I just incorporated into a company in order to raise greater funds, in order to do bigger programs, and we just won a grant to launch a Women's CEO Academy for mobility, energy and manufacturing. So that's very exciting.

Orlie Gruper

I agree. I think when I founded Women in Mobility my goal was to grow the number of women in the field. But for the last two and a half years, from research I've been doing and looking at mobility from a woman's perspective, I understand that because we don't have enough women around the decision-making tables, we're making products and services that don't match women's needs. We talked a little bit about the health world before we started recording, and this is something that was very much present, and femtech is only now on the rise: understanding that female and male bodies are not the same, there is no standard. And in general, I think that once women are brought more into the front and into decision making, they think not only about themselves, so we'll see a more personalized journey for all humans, because we're all different shapes and forms.

Orlie Gruper

I would love it. I think the biggest thing is just to make a point of it, like Nike said, just do it. I'm just making a point of it, putting that as a company goal and company value. You made a point of it. I can share here that we found each other because you posted that you're looking to interview more women, and it's harder to find, and I volunteered myself, because I know exactly what it means to look for women speakers, and I'm happy to help find more. But it's to make a point of it, and then it just happens.

Orlie Gruper

Yeah, I have twins myself, two-year-old twin girls.

Orlie Gruper

So I do see a lot of companies, and being in early stages, I think marketing is something that companies make less of a point of, in the early stages of their life. I think that's a mistake. I think companies that emphasize marketing efforts, marketing efforts, I see it as a 360: it's marketing communications. Today marketing is not only about how the company website looks, it's even about how the CEO posts on LinkedIn. It's about the communications that come out of the company into the world, and the messaging and the values. So I think that most startups in early stages aren't putting enough into that, especially in Israel. Americans are better at marketing.

06:10 You see it also with companies coming from the Valley, they know how to tell the American dream. And marketing is also not only about how it's designed or branded. It's also about how you put your solution in simple words, that in one sentence you can tell your product's value, the value to your customer, and what's the bottom line of it: are you saving money, are you making them more profitable? So marketing is also not just about how things are branded, their look and feel, but really what's the one-liner of the company. I think that's something that needs a lot of effort and thought put into it. I saw great slides of companies that show you, in three icons, really just what the company is about. I think that's really the value of working well with the marketing team: showing your customers the bottom line of how much you're saving them, or how much you're growing their profit, or how much you're optimizing their processes, and what that does for the company. So it's really creating that perfected messaging that matches the need, it's really a 360 awareness, I believe.

Orlie Gruper

I think a startup, so if you have a startup at the beginning of retail, and you have Coca-Cola, right, Coca-Cola has all of the marketing budget to create all those publicities and everything, but the startup needs to create marketing that also creates a buzz, creates a virality about them, that's key.

Orlie Gruper

I think it really depends on the company, because we invest a lot in, we're not afraid of, deep tech. So it really depends on what the company is offering and what is their strategy to hit the market. We have one amazing startup called Evermile, and they created a really smart engine in order to optimize all of the deliveries for their local retailers, enabling local retailers to have a delivery system [unclear @ 09:26]. And with time they understood it's not just about the delivery, it's about enabling this whole management of orders. Today, as a local retailer, you have so many platforms connected to you, and you need to bring all of these orders into one place and manage them, and then, beginning to end, also enable the ability to go from order to reaching the house of the customer, to be very free flow and optimized. And they are aiming at local retailers, small companies, it can be someone with three to five branches, it can be a company with 50 to 200 branches, and it's still considered small in our world.

So they have a different marketing strategy in order to reach all of these businesses, compared to another company we invested in that's doing solar paint, to paint a vehicle solar. Because then their marketing campaign needs to be completely different, because the customers aren't that broad. It's not thousands of businesses within the UK, it's the 40 top OEM car manufacturers, and finding, within those, the paint shops. So there, it's much more precise. So the marketing strategy for each is very, very different, and also very different stages. So I think this type of generic metric doesn't exist when we look at startups. When we see that marketing will be a key enabler, then we start drilling down, and we want to see them working with different channels, platforms that they market through, how they do partnerships, what is their strategy on onboarding, from just clicking into their website, for social media and stuff. But I think that's more, social media would be a strong metric more for B2C companies. There you would like to see more detail. We, being in mobility, automotive, are more into B2B.

Orlie Gruper

So for SaaS companies definitely you want to look at the MRR, ARR, and see how that grows, and find the moment where there will be the hockey stick, and what that "aha" moment would be and what that looks like. For most other companies, I'd say, most of other companies, it's pipeline traction, and then I want to see a clear definition of what the pipeline milestones are. And that's also something that we've worked a lot with different startups, and also startups that I advise, is to really define the customer journey, from first [unclear @ 13:26], reach-out email, whatever, to closing, because each company has its own metrics.

Let's say a POC cannot be the first one, right, there's a lot of things that happen until you create that first POC. Yesterday we prepared a board deck for one of the startups, and they found a new way to validate the ability of their customer to even be able to do a POC, so that became one of the milestones before. So I think even just saying "pipeline," it's really important to open that up and to know how and where to put all of the clients in that pipeline, and what are the milestones, how long does it take to pass from one milestone to another, what are the probabilities of each one of these to pass. So then you can also calculate, in an easier way, your projections.

Orlie Gruper

I think usually the round A is a good time to look at the company branding and messaging and really tidy it up, because a lot of times in pre-seed you're doing like a quick and dirty logo, you just want to get out there, you want to start, and show your value proposition and show that you're getting enough traction. And then once you do that, I think towards your round A, or after raising it, is a good time to revise the whole marketing strategy, branding, and to really think about it, look at it from the outside: where are the places, virtually and physically, where we need to be present, is it specific conferences globally, is it doing pop-ups, is it doing special webinars for our users.

And there I think it's time to really tidy up that marketing plan and to have a person full-time just doing that. I know some companies, especially around A, sometimes their budget is still tight. I think outsource marketing is also not a bad word, because there are really good agencies today that do a really good job. Sometimes you don't need the whole bandwidth of having a person full-time dedicated to it, but even if you have someone outside the company doing that for you, you have to have the champion within, who's leading and pushing them, so that needs to be defined as well.

Orlie Gruper

I think the biggest marketing mistake is that if you are post a B round and up and you don't have a CMO, huge mistake. On one hand I understand wanting to put a lot of money into R&D and to develop, but I can tell you, from all the startups that I see, and I've worked, I was a startup, I've worked with startups, and now as an investor you really roll up your sleeves and you deep dive, we meet a lot of startups for deal flow, so I can tell you that over the years the startups that are business-led succeed much more than the startups that are technology-led.

When you have a strong marketing, business, product team that are close to the customers, close to the market, know what the market wants and how they want to hear it and what they are looking for, that helps a company succeed much more, to perfect their technology, from a technology to a solution. And I think that's where a lot of startups fall or stumble, because they are so focused on making the technology better, with more features, or whatever it is, they're missing a huge part: listening to the customers, understanding their need. And then maybe they're developing things that aren't really matching the market's needs, or matching a small fraction of that market. So I think that's the big marketing, business and product point: being close to the market, and being the company's North Star in that sense.

Orlie Gruper

Yeah, because I'm a big believer in technology, and I believe that technology can solve anything, but if you don't know the problem, if you don't know what questions to ask the data, if you don't know the challenges that the industry is going through, then you're creating a technology that isn't answering it in a perfect form. I always tell, also, because I used to host a lot of delegations to Israel, and the industry globally, most of the time when they hear a startup pitch, they hear the pitch, so what is the solution they're bringing to the table, they're not deep diving into the technology to try and understand that if you did these and these and these changes it would match exactly what I'm looking for. So I always was telling delegations, you know, challenge them, because they're agile, they can develop very fast and adapt their technology very fast to your needs.

And I think that's something that came in order to compensate for the fact that sometimes I knew that many of these startups aren't really touching, in a perfect way, what they're looking for. And sometimes things get lost in translation, because a lot of times I was talking to the delegations afterwards, and I asked them, "What did you think about this, what did you think about this company?" And they said, "Oh, that was good, a good direction, but we're looking for something more like that." And I told them, "Okay, so why don't you say it?" So a lot of companies are losing business because they're not touching exactly what they're looking for, and your client is not going to tell you that, they're just going to say okay, thank you, or no thank you, or interesting, where it's not interesting. So love these details. And a startup, be clear in what you're offering, be clear in what they're looking for and how you're answering that.

Don't use too big of words that don't mean anything, because as a startup, sometimes you don't want to miss out on an opportunity, but then you're talking too big, and it's really hard to understand your unique selling position. It's really hard to understand: okay, so what's your secret sauce, what do you bring to the table that I don't have, [from] a hundred other carbon credit companies. So I think that's specificity is key, but also specificity to every specific client. I think, also, how, when you're looking for a job, you need to, well, you love entrepreneurship, so I guess you're not looking for a job as many times, but it's advisable to match your CV to what the company is looking for, to the job description. So I think that also, when you are creating a presentation for an important client, don't use the same presentation, it's not one fits all. I would go into the company's website and see exactly what triggers them, look, if someone from the company spoke on a podcast or in a conference, and really see what are their challenges, what they're looking for, what is their vision, and make sure that I'm talking their language.

Orlie Gruper

I would like to debunk that a startup is no peach, no honey, it's blood, sweat and tears. If you don't, some entrepreneurs I meet aren't 150 to a hundred thousand million percent in, they're like doing this well, doing something else, and it's okay in the beginning to just initiate the first idea and to research and all of that, but once you create, you understand this is what you want to do in your life, it's blood, sweat and tears. I always say it's not wearing a company hat, it's wearing a company overall, this is what you do when you wake up in the morning, what you do all day long, how you go to sleep, these are your thoughts, what you dream of, food, what you dream of, this, this is everything. And I think there's a lot of talk on work-life balance and all of these things, and wellness today, and burnout. I've never met a unicorn [founder] who finishes work at four.

I've met them when they finish work at four, but then they go back at six to 11pm to come back to work, that's for sure, that's for sure, kids' pick-up, and go to your dancing class, and then go to work until 11:00am, even more, maybe, but yeah. I believe it's a lot, so the whole wellness thing, doing a marathon and not a sprint, is always looking at ourselves as a battery, and always making sure that if we deplete, we recharge, and it can be in little things, I don't think, you can just go outside and take a moment to breathe and recharge, or you can party hard a whole night and then whatever, whatever does you, whatever is your thing, there's people that wake up every morning and do sports, that's their thing, and that's what helps them. So each person has its own battery, and you know what fills it, we definitely need to make sure that our battery is full the whole time. I think that depleted people are also not creative, it will be harder for them to solve problems, and to be agile. And that's something that's very needed.

Orlie Gruper

The beginning of my journey, I'm the type that lives to the fullest, and I wouldn't have it any other way, so I live with no regrets. I would just say, keep doing you. I kept doing me, even when I founded the Electric Motorcycle Company, everyone told me, do you know what this market is, of importers and motorcyclists, and everything, they're sharks, they'll eat you. I said, okay, but I'm a dolphin, dolphins can swim with sharks, it's fine. I don't have something I would have done differently.

Orlie Gruper

It's just that even the mistakes, I've learned from them and they helped me grow, and I'm very much a person that goes into the deep waters and swims, and learns how to swim while doing things, so of course there'll be errors and things, but everything, let's just continue to evolve, roll, run, fast, high speed ahead, all engines on.

Orlie Gruper

Which question did you need to ask but you didn't? I think we didn't talk about the marketing persona, the type, how to find them, how much equity to allocate to them. I will say that there are specific companies, and you need to look at yourself, there are specific companies where I would demand the CMO in the beginning.

Orlie Gruper

I think anything that's B2C, for sure, because the consumers are less forgiving with bad marketing. The B's [businesses] are able to look beyond that, if you lower their expenses or grow their income. But the consumer isn't, so definitely if you're doing something B2C, you would need to have a CMO from the beginning.

Orlie Gruper

I think it depends on the person, I really think it depends on the person, but if it's a person that's worth it, I think they can transform things, and if they work well. I would also, in the hiring process, see the chemistry, not only of the CEO with the CMO, but also the CMO with the business and the product, because that I think is an important triangle, and I would have them come in for the second and third interviews.

Orlie Gruper

Me too, it was fun and I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you for hosting, and good luck on the continuation of this.