Real Life Superpowers
Oded Barak: "Resilience, consistency, and some discipline are needed"
In a conversation with Noa Eshed and Ronen Menipaz on the podcast Real Life Superpowers, Oded Barak, co-founder of Five Sigma, discusses the motivations of stepping outside of your comfort zone.
"You got to grow a serious stomach," said Oded Barak on the Real Life Superpowers podcast. "I mean, we we almost shut the company, two or three times, we got to a point in which we were a month and a half from no money, a domain expert who decided to leave, investors that were like, well, we're not going to inject more good luck. And few other bad news in one week. We had some serious crisis. And I think resilience, consistency, and some discipline are needed, but you got to have the stomach. You're going to have some really great months, and weeks, you cannot get into euphoria. Celebrate a little bit. But know that’s probably going to pass as well, you’re going to have some hard time and you cannot mourn and agonize too much when it's a downturn."
Having identified a need in the insurance landscape, he left a promising career as an executive in leading global corporations, to co-found his startup Five Sigma - to date, they’ve raised $26 Million USD, and dozens of insurance carriers and Insurtechs use their solution.
They discuss:
- The motivations of stepping outside of your comfort zone and walking away from a stable career to “hunt your own food”.
- Identifying a supply and demand gap and doubling down on it
- The importance of experimenting and testing ideas, embracing uncertainty, and navigating with it as a given
- The power of agility, paying attention to feedback and not sticking to a “set in stone” plan
- What you need to consider in your go-to-market strategy
- How to work your way up to tier-1 clients for your startup
- Navigating stress
- Actively seeking blind spots
- And much more!
Enjoy your listen!
Noa Eshed: recognized as a thought leader by the Daily Telegraph. Her book "The Smart Marketer's Guide to Google Adwords” was an Amazon no.1 bestseller. Her digital marketing agency Bold Digital Architects has acclaimed several industry awards. She previously co-founded and distributed Israel’s only national magazine for students, and is a certified lawyer (Hebrew U grad) and journalist.
Ronen Menipaz: an Israeli investor, entrepreneur, tech advisor, and founder of numerous business ventures in the entertainment, adtech, and fintech space. During his 25 years of entrepreneurial experience, Ronen has been involved with over 100 startups in Israel, 30 of which he founded or co-founded. Two of those startups went public, while five were sold and four more are currently privately profitable companies.
