Dor Eligula of Bridgewise on earning enterprise trust in Japan

Dor Eligula

I'm good, good. How are you?

Dor Eligula

Sure. So first, thank you again for the opportunity, it's a real pleasure to be here. So a bit about myself and the journey: I'm Dor Eligula, one of the co-founders of Bridgewise. I'm 29 years old, already a second-timer with my fellow co-founder, so it's our second startup together. We started together nine years ago, and here we are. The vast majority of my professional life has been with the same team, in the same field: fintech entrepreneurship. It's been nothing but great, and hopefully it keeps getting better. About the journey: as mentioned, I started on the entrepreneurship path when I was 22, right after I graduated with my master's in law from [name unclear], all in parallel to my duties as an IDF soldier. Then we started our first company together, called Index, where we priced diamonds algorithmically, to break down the wall between the diamond industry and the financial industry. We managed to do that very successfully. After we sold that company, we all sat together and thought for a couple of months about what we should do next, because we like working together and we knew we had been successful.

02:04 So why change something that isn't broken? We started Bridgewise, which is our current company. The scale of Bridgewise is bigger compared to the previous one, and it has been nothing but a blessing. We're all leveraging our experience and knowledge in the relevant fields: myself on the business and marketing side, Gabby on the innovation and business side, and my co-founder, my twin brother, on the operational side: legal, compliance, finance, and more on the product side. So again, a pleasure to be here, and that's a glimpse of my journey up until now.

Dor Eligula

Of course. It's a billion, or a hundred billion dollar question, because so much of a marketing budget gets decided based on these KPIs. It's a very big question, but I think especially at startups it's an ever-evolving answer. The answer I'm giving now isn't the one I would have given you two or three years ago, and I'm not sure it will be the same answer two years from now. Coming back to the question: I'll answer for the past and the present. On the future, I'm not a prophet yet, on the past. Especially based on the profile of the company: we're a B2B enterprise software company, and we specialize in the fintech and capital markets fields. It's a very unique industry in a way, very high-touch, face-to-face oriented, where it's less of an online sales, traditional SaaS process. In our case it's more relationship-based, high-touch, as I mentioned. So of course it depends on the profile of the organization. Generally speaking, the big weight on our sales organization, or growth organization, is business development, or relationship-based sales, ABM, it can be named in many different ways.

In our case the KPIs are mostly driven by supporting the sales team, with the most basic KPIs like opening the relevant opportunities in the target markets, defining what the target markets are, and so on. But also more specific KPIs, like specific deals we want to close. So working hand in hand with the relevant sales team members, doing specific activities to close a deal that's already in the pipeline, or generating the opportunity with two or three relevant named accounts. Because, as mentioned, we're an enterprise SaaS company, so we know the names of our clients or our prospects, and just targeting them is not an easy task, and getting their attention is not an easy task. Coming back to the question of how we define the KPIs: we look at the growth targets for the upcoming year, and then we break that down into the steps we need on the sales side and on the marketing side, and how those work together to achieve the goals. So it's first setting the target, then going back to understand what specific steps we need to take to potentially achieve those goals.

Dor Eligula

Sure, I'll give you an example. Two years ago we already knew we were about to reach 100% market share in Israel, and we are now indeed at 100% market share in Israel. We knew that to keep growing at the same pace we needed to grow into other markets, so we had a big project led by the marketing team. We called it "Project Where To," meaning, by definition, which markets we're targeting next. After we had product-market fit proof here in Israel, and some minor proof in other markets, we needed to grow the business and grow that proof for the potential investors of the next round, that's usually how it goes. So we ran a big project, and the aim of that project was to define what the target market is, what the next ones are. We did some research and found some very interesting, non-obvious results. For example, one result was that one of the most promising potential markets for us was Japan, and that was surprising. When was the last time you heard about Japan being one of the first target markets for an Israeli startup? Not a lot.

Dor Eligula

Yeah, indeed. But all the numbers, all the data criteria we set at the beginning of the project, pointed to going for Japan, or at least having it as one of the top three countries to go after.

Dor Eligula

Yes. For example, as we all know, Japan's population is getting older, in terms of the population, so there is a big generational wealth shift, or at least a coming one. Second, there's been a big change in the participation of retail investors in the market: the NISA reform. NISA is a new kind of savings account, an individual savings account exempt from capital gains tax, so there's more incentive for retail investors to participate in the market. Third, for example, the low interest rates in Japan compared to the growing interest rates in the more developed markets at the time. So it was all three, plus some more data points, that led us to see there was a real opportunity for us in that market. There's never a clean right or wrong, but according to the criteria we set in the research, those were the relevant data points. If you believe what you set out at the beginning is the right criteria, you follow it.

The interesting part was that we showed it to our board and to some potential investors, and luckily, it was someone who was not actually an investor of ours, not then and not now, and he half-mocked us, saying, okay, you can do research, but I've never seen a successful startup do this in Japan. We said, listen, this is the data, this is the research, we believe in it, let's go for it. Now I can happily say we've made it in Japan, or we're about to. Two of, let's say, the largest organizations in Japan are already clients of ours: the Japanese Stock Exchange and Rakuten Securities, two giant organizations in Japan, which were not the obvious clients for us to go after, especially at a relatively early stage for a startup. It wasn't quite a bet, but it was a gamble we had to make, an educated one. It was all thanks to our amazing marketing team, who did very thorough research, and we believed in them, and here we see the results. Of course the sales team has executed very well since then, but it couldn't have happened without the marketing team's thorough work, not only executing the plan but actually doing good research.

Dor Eligula

I think it's a combination, I think marketing. I'll take a step back, with your permission: marketing teams cannot do everything, especially in the startup phase, in the early stage. They can't, and you don't want them to, because it won't work. You can expect it, but you should be worried about what you're expecting, because they simply cannot do everything. So very early on we decided the marketing team would support the research, and of course the execution of the sales process. Why the sales process? Because, especially as mentioned, in this kind of high-touch business, the people involved in the sales process matter enormously. So mostly, the trust you rightly mentioned was built by us, the sales people, but it was also built through activities the marketing team helped us with. For example, we ran, I think it was two or three dinners, specifically for executives in the Japanese market.

These dinners are usually very intimate, so it wasn't an event with 100 or 200 people, more like 10 people, tops. By having 10 people around the table, eating and drinking together, you can tell the other side is here for a process, not just to close a deal and walk away. So this is an activity that helped us both from the sales process, and of course it came out of the budget, because it was the marketing budget, but it was also about understanding the real need of that specific deal. We could have run a big campaign, digitally or through traditional media channels, but that specific channel of meeting face to face and sitting together for three or four hours was the most useful. I know that especially in KPIs and marketing you always talk about ROI and time to ROI, so the highest ROI for us, relatively speaking, when it's not a big expense to host a dinner, it was an amazing move we made together, where we identified the need, planned the most budget- and ROI-efficient step to take, and executed it.

Dor Eligula

I think the answer, again, there's no clean answer, otherwise it would be one Torah everyone would follow. I think the answer for us is alignment of interest. And how do you get alignment of interest? In our opinion, compensation. If everyone is compensated, besides the base of course, but everyone's bonus and everyone's extra compensation or compensation package is built on the same vector, it will help alignment of interest happen. And because, as you mentioned, we don't want the marketing team or the sales team giving excuses or good reasons for why it wasn't a problem on their end. We don't want problems, we want results. If the results aren't as expected, we want the team to work together to solve those problems or issues and get the results done.

Again, in our opinion, it's compensation, because that's what drives people, of course, along with the success and everything else. But if you put everyone's target in the same direction, it will benefit the alignment of interest. I can tell you that in our company, the KPIs of the marketing team are not necessarily opportunities, because if you don't provide good, valuable opportunities, it's a waste of resources. So we're all aligned on the vector we're following: actual bookings, actual deals closed, actual revenue closed. That's why everyone on the growth team, and that's why we call it one team. There's no marketing team and sales team, there's one growth team. Of course there are people associated with marketing and people associated with sales, but they work together as one department, shoulder to shoulder, and their KPIs are the same. That's how we minimize the, quote unquote, tension. There's no right or wrong, but that's our way of doing it.

Dor Eligula

Wow, that's a big question. My immediate answer would be whether they're business-oriented. I believe a lot of founders, especially in the early stages, know a lot of marketing people who know how to market themselves and not the business, and that's a big problem, because they also give marketing people a bad name in the early stage. You need to identify those who just know how to market and sell themselves versus those who will actually dive into your issues as an entrepreneur, your problems, and solve them with you, because a lot of founders, a lot of entrepreneurs, are not marketing experts. Let's put it right: we're either business-oriented, like sales, or tech-oriented. Marketing is a big black hole for most entrepreneurs, and marketing people know how to brand themselves well, so there's a big problem, you need to identify that. So one of the qualities will be actual experience, not only on paper. I can tell you the best marketing teams, the best marketing people, I've worked with are ones who have been on the sales side, because they know the day-to-day pain of the sales people, and don't just talk about the big, fluffy KPIs marketing usually talks about. So that's one.

Two, and this isn't exactly a quality of the person, but I like and this is generally speaking, not just about marketing: I like a friend reference. If I have a strong reference from someone I really trust, either who works for us or who I know through any other connection, that's in my opinion the strongest reference or quality I can have, because when you hire someone you're taking a gamble on them. Even with a long hiring process that takes weeks, with home tasks, you can't really know how this person really is, how they really work, the day after the contract's signed and onboarding is done. It's a big risk, onboarding someone, putting resources and time into them. So the second thing is a strong reference from a friend. And the third: business-oriented, strong reference from a friend, and third is people who ask me questions about our business and really want to understand how the process goes, and don't come and say, "listen, this is how it should work," as if they know better. Going from theory to practice is, most of the time, very challenging. So those who want to understand the current practice on the business side, and want to understand what they can fix or enhance, that's what I look for. So those are the three things I'd say immediately.

Dor Eligula

Sure. My immediate answer would be asking them about their failures. Asking someone about their failures, like why did you leave your last job, or with their CV in hand, you can ask about the things that aren't the positive parts of each of these past experiences, because those are clearly not part of the CV. If they can't name any, that person is definitely not a marketing person. So this is one thing: ask them about their failures. If their failures are mostly blamed on third parties, you know, it's never 100% like that, but my immediate read would be, okay, he'll come here and have the same excuses. But if someone says, "listen, for example, here I failed because" no one is perfect, even Elon Musk sometimes fails.

So if you can learn from your failures, because everyone fails, and say, "okay, this is my observation after failing in those situations, this is what I'll do better," especially given your founder experience about your company and the specific fields you want them to excel in, that's the one question. We can, of course always follow up on these questions and dive into the specific failures, you can understand the real character of the person in front of you. Usually, I like to work more with people who came from organizations of a similar size and experience, because someone who's ex-Meta, ex-Google, has a lot of glamour, but the real struggle of a startup is very different: budgets, room for mistakes. When you make a mistake at Google, it's fine, such a big machine can absorb mistakes, but the tolerance for excellence at startups is way smaller, and mistakes happen faster. Yes. Those are two things I'd usually flag as positive or negative signals, but again there's never a strict right or wrong.

Dor Eligula

Wow. I think a lot of founders, and we made this mistake too, think they know better because they're the founders. The title doesn't grant a lot of wisdom, by definition. I can tell you at Bridgewise we made that mistake too, and we fixed it. Now we have the best marketing people I know, and I've seen a lot, with the right experience, the right attitude, the right character, everything it takes. So that's one thing. But two, once you work with them, you need to listen, you need to say, okay, you're the experts, because founders are definitely not better at marketing, otherwise you shouldn't hire these people. I want them to be better than me.

I don't want to be the most brilliant guy in the room, never. So we have them as the most brilliant people in their fields. So, of course, understand their needs, understand their budget and needs, and give them the tools to achieve their KPIs. You can't just let it go because you've allocated some budget and resources from management, you have to help them understand how you can help them, because they're the ones who need to execute. As management, you need to understand their needs and trust them. Otherwise, if they don't deliver, at least you know you gave them the best opportunity to deliver. So if you trust them, trust them all the way, give them the tools, and let them execute and deliver.

Dor Eligula

That's a big question. It's a big question because I guess I'm not fully aware of the misconceptions, otherwise I would have fixed them. But I think a big misconception is that the founders, the founding team, need to control everything and know everything. I don't think that's right. I don't know if it's a misconception, but I've faced some investors and other founders who wanted their founding team to control everything. I don't think a founding team can or should control everything. I can tell you at Bridgewise, both the marketing and technology, the CTO and chief marketing officer, are not part of the founding team, but their contribution to our leadership has been nothing but crucial to our success. We're four founders, and still the CTO and chief marketing officer are two very, very experienced executives who bring us a lot of value not only through their professional ideas and leadership, but also their management skills, and their character. So, again, you can't control everything, and you can't centralize everything in your hands, whether you're one, two, three, or four founders, or more, you cannot centralize everything. Trust your management, and bring in strong management. Don't save money on your management team, that's a big mistake startups make to save part of the budget. The management team is everything you have.

Dor Eligula

Yeah, buy more Bitcoin, a lot of Bitcoin. Always more. To my entrepreneur self, not my investor self, as an entrepreneur it would be: invest more in people, earlier. More, and earlier. A lot of entrepreneurs, when they raise their first round, say, okay, let me save as much as possible to get more runway, and so on. But that actually costs more in the end than hiring the best. Don't settle for anything but the best, because manpower is the number one expense you have, generally speaking. Don't settle for anything but the best. I can tell you we made that shift two and a half years ago, and since then you can see the velocity of the company, the scale we're at, or the scaling up we've had since that decision, it's been nothing but amazing. I think that's one of the crucial points that's made us successful so far, and that's the number one tip I'd give any entrepreneur.

Dor Eligula

Yes, hire only people who are better than you. The way I always like this approach: if I can't learn from you, and you can't give me value, then I probably don't need to hire you.

Dor Eligula

I think a question I was asked about two weeks ago by a friend of mine, a very good question, not specifically about marketing but about entrepreneurship in general. He asked me what's the number one tip I'd give a fellow entrepreneur, and it took me a minute or two to actually digest the question, because I'm not usually someone who looks inward very much, I'm busy doing, not observing myself. So it took me two minutes, and then I gave him an answer that I think, I don't want to sound too cocky, was a brilliant answer. The answer was: find the piece of motivation that can make you do irrational things, just to give you some background: this year I became a father, to a one-year-old, adorable daughter.

In that same year I flew to Japan about eight times, a 15-hour flight each direction, so about half a month total in the air. That's not a rational decision to make. But the drive for success, and the potential growth of the company and proving to that investor who mocked us that we could succeed in Japan, made me, made us, take these irrational decisions and steps. Being a tech entrepreneur isn't a rational move to begin with: statistically only about 5% of companies succeed. You put your best years into it, your best time, and so on. Of course the reward, if you succeed, is very big, but it's not a rational move to make. So find that specific piece of motivation that gets you through the irrational steps along the way, and build on it.

Dor Eligula

Sure.