Field: Internet of Things
Personal: 32 | Married | A BA in film and an MBA from Tel Aviv University
A "frequent flyer" platform for fashion companies. "For every item you wear outside your home, you accumulate points. We supply the fashion companies with smart buttons sewn into the garment, and the customer has to activate the platform in order to start communicating with it. We chose the fashion market because it has great potential. On the one hand, marketing budgets are enormous, while on the other hand, technology hasn't penetrated it yet. We're on the verge of cooperation with one of the major fashion companies. It will be the world's first smart collection."
"We made a lot of mistakes. At first, we tried to create technology that could use Bluetooth to detect remotely what someone is wearing. We even did a pilot with Donna Karan in New York, but it didn't work. We had to decide whether to close or change the startup. We had nothing and no money.
"Investors who didn't believe that hardware could be put into clothing laughed at us. That was four years ago. They told us that there would never be chips in clothing, and asked what we'd do with the hardware. We believed that it was possible - it came from naivete."
"It depends on what age group is involved. People in their 20s have no problem with it; they're used to living like that. People over 30 have a problem."
"We worked day and night to launch the product with a certain fashion company, and one day I got up and discovered that they had told one of the major newspapers that they had invented our product . They took full credit, and even said that they would launch it. After that, they completely ignored us. I was in total shock. The first thing that my father, Zvi Slominsky, who was CEO of Alvarion, told me was, 'Fuck them. Go ahead with the others.'
"After five months, the same company that tried to steal our idea encountered a technological obstacle, and came back to us with their tail between their legs. We politely told them to fuck off.
"That was a relatively small company, with a turnover of $50-70 million. Instead of them, we signed an agreement with a company with $1 billion sales a year. I thought I knew where I was going, but due to the circumstances, I found myself on a different path with a customer that could really change processes in the industry."
