Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - An entrepreneur & former Naval officer on Russia/Ukraine & Global Supply Chains -- with Ami Daniel

Episode Date: May 7, 2022

In Israel we sit down with an entrepreneur and former Naval officer, who has built a company that has had to navigate the twin crises of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the maritime implications of cracks in global supply chains. Ami Daniel comes to these crises as the co-founder and CEO of Windward, a maritime data, analytics and artificial intelligence company bringing transparency to what is among the largest but most opaque part of the global economy. Ami also brings his perspective as a former Naval officer serving in the Middle East. He talks to us about what he’s learning and seeing through his unique lens into these twin crises: Russia-Ukraine and broken supply chains from Covid.

Oil exports from Russia were thought to be down. We know now that they're up since the beginning of the war. And the reason is that it's exporting more with policymakers, journalists, economists, elected officials, and think tank scholars and analysts, often about world events and geopolitical trends. Well, today we're going to do something a little different. We talk to a practitioner, someone building what was just a few years ago an Israeli startup, and it's now a global enterprise. Now, when I was just in Israel last week, I sat down with an entrepreneur and former naval officer who has built a company that's had to navigate the twin crises of Russia's

invasion of Ukraine and the maritime implications of cracks in global supply chains, especially around China. Ami Daniel comes to these crises as the co-founder and CEO of WinWord, a maritime data analytics and artificial intelligence company bringing transparency to what is perhaps the largest, carrying 90% of the world's trade, but least understood and until now most opaque part of the global economy. Ami also brings his perspective as a former naval officer serving in the Middle East. So he talks to us about what he's learning and seeing through his unique lens into these two crises, Russia-Ukraine and broken supply chains from COVID.

So from Tel Aviv, this is Call Me Back. And I am pleased to welcome my friend, Ami Daniel, to the podcast. You should actually be welcoming me because I'm in Israel. You're not in the United States, but it's good to be with you in person. Welcome to Israel, Dan Senor. Thank you. Here we are at the Startup Nation Central Studio. It's pretty...

Flashy. It's flashy. It's coolup Nation Central Studio. It's pretty… Flashy. It's flashy. It's cool. It's cool. It's legit. You know, the on-air sign and we're in the Startup Nation Central headquarters. I encourage my fellow podcasters to come here and pod.

Okay. So, Ami, we've got a lot to discuss. Yep. Before we get into the current geopolitical hotspots, which are front of mind, I just want to rewind the tape a little bit on you and your life. So you finished, graduated high school, and went into the military in what year? So 2002. 2002. Okay. So you go into the military and you- I feel old now by saying that you don't have to feel old because i won't tell you how old i am okay it's older than you so 2002 you join

not syart mactal one of the uh elite infantry units not uh the paratroopers, not a tank unit, not one of the obvious high-tech units like Shmona Matai, 8200 or Tal Piot, you join the Navy, which is not a track we hear a lot about in terms of young Israelis going into. So did you want to go into the Navy? Yeah, listen, so by the way from a from an 18 year old israeli perspective guy actually all of these units are um the alternatives you would consider so a the top guys and ladies obviously would look at shmona matai which i looked at as well which is 8200200. Sorry about that. Being a fighter pilot, going to Sayeret Matkal, it's called Sheva Shesh, or the commando, or becoming a naval officer. It's exactly the same track with exactly the same people. And as much demand, people want to be a naval officer.

It's considered top five. The thing is, it's a very small community. So you have like 30 new officers, I would reckon every year, maybe 40. Uh-huh. So it ends up as a very small amount

of people actually doing that. Uh, I think the CEO of Outbrain, uh, which is an Israeli company traded in NASDAQ, is ex-Navy. Uh-huh.

Uh, Nir Zohar, which is the COO of Wix, is, is ex-Navy. they're both ex-naval officers as well i i know many others the ceo of tesla israel adigigi she's a good friend of mine she's ex-navy um i i think it's um i think it's something that was in front of mind because uh 8200 was was the top i think but in But in the last, whatever, five, six years, you have a bunch of ex-naval officers, founders.

Aleph, one of our venture investors, I think, introduced us as well, has, I think, five or six other companies at least, which all their founders are ex-Navy. I can name Daisy, two founders, ex-Navy, Wibbitz, ex-Navy. So it's becoming more and more relevant. And what did you do in the Navy?

I was a naval officer. I was serving as a, what's called, called tactical warfare officer it means that there's a command information center it's the guy running it basically and my uh i wouldn't say claim to fame because it's maybe claim to blame uh i was uh the tactical officer on board the ins chanit which was a corvette that got hit from a hezbollah missile, July 14th, 2006, 8.42 p.m., which is, I think, the last time that happened before the Moskva, the Russian vessel who got hit by a missile and drowned. Was that during the Israel-Lebanon War of 2006?

Yeah, absolutely. This is like day three of the war, right? So I think since then, the next time it happened, it's now when the Moskva just drowned. So within the Navy circles, it's a very known event because this happens every 20 or 30 years.

And it's really a defining moment for you as a human being, the fact that you're on a vessel, suddenly you're hit by a missile, four people dead, 12 wounded, eight and a half hours of fire. You're on this while this is happening. I'm on this.

I'm running the CIC. CIC is? Command Information Center. There is the fog of war, so you don't really know who's who and who's where. All the raiders are down and they're up again. There's communication saying

we're firing more missiles. They are, they're not. you get towed away it's like a big big big event and how long was the event how long did this happen uh it took 10 hours so because the fire was there so we were very close to shore about 15 kilometers from shore it's like eight miles um then when the missile hit us uh by the way, another vessel got hit and drowned, the merchant vessel, a dry bog vessel. When a missile hit us, it had still a lot of fuel in it.

So actually the fire is a fire driven by the fuel in the missile. And it took like eight hours to take it out completely. So it's a very, very big event. And how old were you at this time? 21 and a half or so. I just think people don't appreciate when I describe the kind of experience

that young Israelis get across the board, all income, socioeconomic strata, all academic backgrounds. The fact that Eric Schmidt gave us this great line when working on the first book. He says you take the average Israeli 25-year-old and you put him or her up against their peers anywhere in the world, any day of the week Google will probably want to hire the Israeli 25-year-old because of these kinds of experiences and leadership experience and sort of the crucible for management and

leadership challenges. You just don't get that in most other parts of the world. I think you get other things, obviously, in Silicon Valley and other places. But absolutely, I agree with you in terms of becoming an adult and what does it mean for you and who are you and the repercussions of your actions absolutely i think even more so in extreme situations because i know a lot of people were in the navy nothing happened you know like the day-to-day operations or you know obviously you know they're great guys but really being like in a in a life-changing event where

it is up to luck or God, you decide. The fact that I'm alive today, it's definitely not skill because we could have been blown up completely. And you, so you, after how many years did you leave the Navy? So I lived in the Navy after six and a half years. When I'm in the Navy, I meet my co-founder, Matan. We fought together. So Matan is also a naval officer. Matan is also, my co matan is also a naval matan is also my co-founder is also

a naval officer and actually in the last year or so when i'm in the navy we have this new shiny thing uh called automatic uh information system or identification system called ais that ship starts transmitting their locations not navy vessels but, but dry bulk vessels, tanker vessels, container vessels, and so on and so forth. And I'm there in the Navy saying to the other guys, this is going to be big. Okay, we need to figure out what to do with this. So explain.

So just let's slow it down. So what is the it, and why did you think it was going to be so big? So in the Navy, whatever, 15 years ago, you would have sailed in the open sea, and you would have seen a blip on your radar, which means something is there. Meaning some ship. Some vessels. Some ship. Yeah, you're sailing in the ocean.

You're seeing the radar like in the movies going around and say blip, blip, blip. Right. So something's there. Something's there. And you have no idea what's there. And you start all this process. What does the electronic warfare say? What do we see from the bridge?

What do we see in the binoculars? Did somebody else see it? Did some other ship sail next to it? It's like a fuss, right? And then 2007, 2008, suddenly this automatic identification system comes, and you see who's there. So you get like a code? You get a code. You get the name, actually.

You actually get the name. So you don't just see the blip. Now you can see a blip with a code or name that tells you what? Out of the box. It says who it is. So it's not just a blip. It's a blip with who is it and where is it going? So you could say, hello, I'm a tanker named Dan, motor vessel Dan, and I'm going to Cyprus,

and I'll be there in five hours. And that information is coming from who? From the vessel itself. So it's a safety protocol that all the vessels have to transmit to prevent collisions, but it's getting into the Navy. Okay. And then it's starting to be picked up by satellites so now it's not just from picked up from a vessel to a vessel but also by a satellite

globally of what every vessel is transmitting and who controls those satellites private companies okay they sell that information okay and we're leaving the navy at this time and i'm thinking what year is this again 2009 okay so you're leaving you. And we're leaving the Navy at this time. And I'm thinking- And what year is this again? 2009. Okay. So you're leaving, you and Matan are leaving the Navy. 2009. We sit together and say, well, what could this mean and what could we do with it?

And at the same time, there are new types of satellites and we're like, we can bring visibility to the ocean. Okay. But at this point, it is basically air traffic for maritime, right? Yes. Before you see an opportunity, what this is providing is the equivalent of the way any air traffic controller anywhere, say in the United States where I live, any plane in or near its space, they can identify who that plane is, where it's coming from, where it's going. So now this exists for the first time for the sea. However- It's amazing, by the way, this didn't exist before. I agree.

However, and we'll talk about amazing and talk about Shanghai and talk about Shenzhen and talk about all these things. Yeah. However, I think what's even more amazing and you can see is that 90% of the world's trade, which is about 14 trillion or so, is going through ships. And still today in 2022... So you just pause that because even with all the tech and dot com and software and all the ways we think about commerce transacting, 90% of our economy moves on the sea. Yes. It's an extraordinary statistic.

And last, by the way, I'll give you another statistic. Last year, Maersk was more profitable than Amazon. And most of the people listening to this podcast wouldn't even know that. Wow. So, and the reason is, by the way, that 90% is transported by sea, it's very simple.

It's cheaper. By the way, it's also is transported by sea. It's very simple. It's cheaper. By the way, it's also more carbon efficient. So when you go to Amazon and you order a notebook, a pen, whatever, and it comes to you like that, it comes on air freight, which is why predominantly, which is why it's very expensive, which is why you're willing and unwilling to pay six bucks more uh per whatever anything and they have their own warehouses however if you're a what's called shipper which is a cargo owner in other words walmart adidas nike all your supply chains are built on ocean freight and fast forward the last two years, I think we've seen what we, my co-founder and I, built 10 years ago, to a large extent, I wouldn't say wasn't needed.

I would say wasn't very needed for many years because nobody cared. And I'll give an example, an Israel example, by the way. Zim, the Israeli liner. Israeli shipping company. Shipping company. Yeah. Container company. Shipping company. Container line. Okay. When broke five years ago, it printed money last

year. 4.5 billion of profit. But when broke five years ago, what's the difference? Did Zim get better? I'm sure it did get better. But it didn't get better to that extent. The answer is the world changed. And I think Michael Eisenberg, the guy who introduced us once. Mike Eisenberg, who has been a guest on this podcast. Oh, really? He's an Israeli venture capitalist for our listeners from Aleph VC. Michael's listening

to this and his ears are burning. Okay, so go ahead. And he's on the middest list, by the way, consistently. He taught me a good sentence for venture capital investing and for building companies cards get turned so uh uh it means in this case when we built the company it was great for a lot of years the take-up was predominantly from governments for your company for our company because all the rest of the people didn't really want visibility we went to commodity traders okay so hold on because i just don't so so so just explain briefly the the service and product you were offering to customers when you built this company. So our thesis was very simple. We could bring visibility across the oceans to what ships are doing. It's a very broad statement.

And we went with that broad statement to insurance companies, to traders, to shipping companies, to governments, to banks, basically to everybody. And you were saying for the first time, we can give you real visibility. Yep. And explain where artificial intelligence fit into this solution. Predictions. I got to say, candidly, when we built the company, we didn't do AI.

So we were not really into AI. It still was a visibility. AI is after you gather the data and you have a lot of data and you have analytics on it, AI is can I predict stuff? And we'll talk about it because today we do hardcore AI.

But back then it was about visibility. So I think what we've seen in the first six, seven years of the company, most of the take-up was from governments who said, well, these bad guys have a way to smuggle drugs, do bad things across the oceans. This company can help us catch them.

Smuggle drugs, do dark shipments of commodities. You know, oil, let's look at the DPRKs, and this show is about geopolitics, so let me touch upon that a bit. So you have the JCPOA with Iran, which I know you discussed before with previous guests. So this is the Iran deal of 2015. Indeed, which is limiting the export of oil.

And you have Venezuela and the sanctions on PDVSA, which are limiting them from selling oil to some extent, to most extent. And you have the sanctions on DPRK. And by the way, you have something on Myanmar, by the way. It's not very well spoken but you do have myanmar and suddenly you have belarus and now russia so the way people uh circumvent sanctions to a large extent and actually the trump administration uh um was very adamant about that and did a very good job in closing that loop from the regulatory perspective they were the first ones in may 2022 nine years after we built a company to define something that's called deceptive shipping practices which is in other words how do people circumvent sanctions of goods transported through

the oceans they turn off transmissions deliberately they do ship-to-ship transfers they change the name like there's a famous movie by Nicolas Cage, The Lord of War, I think, I believe that was, where he exports drugs in a vessel and they paint over the name and paint over a new name. But that is how people do that. So 2020, the Trump administration comes out with this regulation

that starts creating a lot of traction on our side. People like BP and Shell and banks like OCBC, HSBC, all our customers start actually saying, well, we can't do business with anybody. We need to do due diligence on who's traveling the oceans.

And then COVID happens. And when COVID happens, supply chain crumble, and we need to talk about that. Before you get to that, just get back to the predictions piece. So when did you and Matan and your team say, wow, there's this thing called artificial intelligence, and so we are now, you identify this innovation in terms of effectively an air traffic control capability

for the maritime economy. And then you say, we could be part of that air traffic control, at least have visibility into it. And then AI comes in and you say, now we can take what, like, what can you do with the AI? You say it's all, it becomes predictions. So it starts with a small step. By the way, AI, there's a difference between ML and AI. Machine learning and artificial intelligence. To our listeners, I think it's really important that that difference.

I think a lot of people say AI. Not many people actually do AI. So it's a branch of machine learning, but it's a more advanced branch. So basically, we've been doing machine learning for years. So we started by bringing machine learning into predictions for marine insurance. It was three, four years ago. And we helped marine insurance companies, which still work with us many of them like score or guard um travelers which is a u.s company um to we help them predict the propensity or the probability of a vessel to

have an accident that's machine learning that's great so it means you have a risk score like a credit score for every vessel in the world and and they price their policies based on that. But that's not a hugely big market. By the way, a lot of the pushback from users in the marine insurance market was, okay, the machine tells me three, why? And when you do machine learning, and even especially when you do AI or deep learning, which is another word for artificial intelligence, it's a black box. So explainability is not the greatest feature of artificial intelligence. It gives you great output,

but not necessarily explainability. But then in the last couple of years, really artificial intelligence in the world, by the way, technologies like GPUs and Amazon and the availability of availability of TensorFlow from Google and a lot of knowledge in Israel, people who used to work for Microsoft or in other companies which really took AI to production are coming back to Israel. And now we're seeing this huge need with a crunch in the supply chains.

And I have to say, when COVID started, it made me and other people, obviously, but also me as well, and our CFO and all executive team, take a step back and think about life. Because it wasn't about, could we just do business? It's, what business are we in? Okay, great. We have this visibility. We have governments. We have marine insurance companies. We have traders.

But could we go bigger? That defining moment when you're staying home, you can't leave. And you need to think. And for some reason, you know, it's obviously Warren Buffett is basically maybe the greatest example of that, of, you know, the Oracle of Omaha that stays in and thinks and we stayed in thought. And then we came up, obviously, with two main areas

where we now apply AI, which I think are revolutionary. So one is supply chain. And I think it's all connected. This is, again, a podcast about geopolitics. So I think geopolitics and supply chain

are closely connected. And maybe you want to double click on that. But if you think about what's happening with Russia and with China, I think they're both really influential in the global supply chain. Before we get to 2020 and 2021, when you were building this company over the previous decade, did you ever imagine there would be this moment for your company and obviously for the world where we have a a pandemic that puts huge pressure on supply

chains and we would have a land war in europe the first one in you know the first major land war in europe in 70 years all happening at the same time, which obviously has direct implications for what you do. But could you have, like, did you guys, obviously you couldn't have predicted this thing or that thing, but just predicted something as so earth-shattering as those two events happening at the same time, effectively? No.

However, our chairman, Lord Brown, taught me a good lesson that says the world always gets more complicated, not less complicated. And it's accelerating in its complexity. So, and I think everybody who lives in the world can see that. Everything is happening much more quickly for us as human beings. Look at inflation. Inflation is rising really quickly now. And people are starting to react really quickly.

So, I couldn't imagine them. However, I can tell you, and actually it's a good reference to my navy days so in the second day of the war between ukraine russia and by the way i think it's important to talk about the human element for a second we have 10 employees in ukraine uh every podcast every time i speak about this i mention it i think from the human perspective it's a tragedy these are normal dudes you know they have nothing to do with politics they get paid money to write code that's it they don't they're not fighting they don't want to die they have babies and they fled some of them to moldova some in bulgaria some of them to levive in western ukraine one of them said in state in

cherniv and and i spoke to him a couple ago, and he said that it was basically like living in the Stone Age. So when you ask him, how did you go through it? He says, we had no convenience, we had no water, and no food. So I just want to mention that to everybody out there because it's nice to talk about geopolitics, but at the end of the day, there are absolutely normal people. When you see these images out of these cities in Ukraine and you change them from color to black and white, it literally could look like World War II with throngs of people crushing into train

stations trying to get out, millions of people, refugees trying to get into Poland, theaters, schools, hospitals being bombed to smithereens. It literally looks like from another century. So now let's talk about what you're seeing. What have you learned through the lens that you have that is happening? Let's start with Russia and Ukraine, and then we'll get to the pandemic in China. What are you learning and seeing that we may not see? Sure.

So first of all, I have to say people think of them as two different events. I think they're one and the same because from the global supply chain perspective, it's two events converging and impacting the trade and the shipping. So I think that's a very important point. So first of all, let's take a step back. Russia and Ukraine are not big exporters of containerized goods. They're absolutely big. Ukraine is a big exporter of wheat, which I think is one of the biggest impacts on the global food prices. Russia is obviously an energy powerhouse for Russian gas and Russian oil. I think that's really material. We'll talk about that. And I think these are big events.

Now, what we're seeing is, first of all, since the war started, effectively, the trade in Ukraine is ground to a halt. And we've seen about 20% increase in the trade of Romania and Bulgaria, which are in the western shores of the Black Sea. And our expectations, our understanding is just goods being exported there. The same events we're seeing in the western shores of the Black Sea. And our expectations, our understanding is just goods being exported there.

The same events we're seeing in the Baltic. So in the Baltic, less trade is going into Russia, more is going into the neighboring countries. And just for our listeners, so the Baltic Sea encircles Russia, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Estonia. Yep. I'm missing Lithuania and Latvia. Yep. Okay.

And so suddenly there's far less trade in the Baltic Sea or far fewer ships in the Baltic Sea going into Russia and they're increasing in all these other places. Yes. Why does that matter? So first of all, it matters because if you want to look at trade flows and everybody looks at different trade flows, so containerized goods, you've seen the biggest liners in the world basically take Russia off the map. Maersk, CMA, CGM, one, are not trading with Russia anymore.

And I think that is what we're seeing. We're seeing a two-tier world coming into effect on containerized goods, but also on oil. Some of our customers like BP and Shell announced they're not going to trade with Russia going forward. Some of the world's biggest trading houses, Vitol, for instance, said it's not going to do business with Russia beyond the end of this year because there's a bit of a wind down period. They have long term contracts. So I think what we're seeing is a two tiered world in which Russia is continuing to doing

business. By the way, oil exports from Russia were thought to be down. We know now that they're up since the beginning of the war. And it's a crazy phenomenon. And the reason is that it's exporting more into India, Pakistan, and China.

And is that well known to decision makers and policymakers around the world? Or you're seeing it because you're tracking all these ships. So you actually see what's actually moving. So we're seeing what's actually moving. We're also publishing it on our blog. And we have about 250 journalists subscribe to that.

I would expect policymakers to know that. I don't think that's a secret. However, what I think is, I think a lot of the policymakers right now are thinking week by week. And we're not involved, obviously, in the decision-making. We're a tech company. So we can take a step back and tell you where this leads. And I think this is leading towards a two-tier world. I know some of our customers, shipping companies, who've been offered eight to ten times the rates to pick up what's called lifting cargoes out of Russia. Ten times the money.

And the reason is that Russia really needs to export oil. And the way it works with energy and oil is you can't just shut it off. If you shut off a well, you can't just start it the day after. Everybody knows that. So they have to export oil somewhere. They're selling the crude at a $28 to $30 discount, world crude, for instance. And I think that has a very big impact. So some of these shipowners, traders will continue to do business with Russia and some of them won't. And I suspect that this is having a broader effect in the world of ESG. And we should talk about that.

ESG used to be, are you good for the environment? Actually now I think people like Nike who pulled out of Russia or Apple pulled out of Russia are thinking of ESG as, who am I? What will my customers think of me? Where am I standing on the lines of history? And some companies like Shell,

you know, in the Second World War, I had heard this from Shell themselves, Shell did not take a stand. They provided fuel to both sides. This is the first time ever Shell has taken any side. Switzerland has taken sanctions on Russia. It has never happened.

Singapore, it has never happened. so i think we're really seeing a defining moment in life right now um but i'm not sure personally it leads to stopping russia from doing it because their economy is not you know they're still exporting oil and gas to india pakistan and China. So until somebody shuts down that faucet and these lines, not sure what's the effect. Okay. And now let's talk about the, what China supply chains and what you are seeing. I know you've written a lot about Shenzhen. So, and the pressure from the zero COVID tolerance policy in China and the implications for what it means for China doing maritime business with the world. Sure. So first of all, when we talk about ships, I think it's important to understand they're a part of the chain, they're not all of the chain. So the way this goes for our listeners is you have somebody exporting something.

The truck picks up the container out of the storage and it takes up. You need to choose a liner. You need to choose Zim or Maersk, for instance. And then you choose that. They pick up that container of that line and they take it from the storage area they take you to your factory or your whatever storage they put your cargo in that container and then they drive the box the port they put it into the gate into the ship and then it goes out so china has a manufacturing perspective

but also an exporting perspective. And I think the lockdowns are affecting both. So people can export less, but they can also manufacture less, if that makes sense. Meaning China? Yes. I know. I mean companies that have factories in China. Okay. So what are the implications then going forward?

You talked about with Russia, we're seeing like a two-tiered system setting in. That's a long-term trend that you see locking in. Is there a long-term trend coming out of the supply chain crisis? So, yes. So first of all, right now we're seeing 200% more container vessels, I did twice, waiting outside of Chinese ports versus February. Okay. So lockdowns in China doubled the congestion outside of ports. So as we speak,

one out of five container vessels in the world is stuck in congestion. Let me just repeat that. One out of five container vessels in the world is stuck outside of port because in congestion. Let me just repeat that. One out of five container vessels in the world is stuck outside of port because of congestion. And China represents almost 28% of all vessels waiting outside ports. So absolutely it's having an effect. But I think you should also think about it as a butterfly effect.

So the fact that there are more people waiting outside in China means there's absolutely going to be an effect on LALB, for instance, in the US, Long Beach and Los Angeles, or Rotterdam and other places. And that's where then AI really comes into the picture because I think the supply chain problem,

which we saw with AI, like the carbon emissions problem for vessels, are things humans can't really solve in their hands. And this is where I've learned to turn to AI. There are problems which have too many factors of complexity, and congestion supply chain is one of them. And I think what we've done is we've built AI that is able to predict when a cargo will, a container or a vessel will come into the port or will be unloaded on a global scale.

So all the vessels, all the world, all the time, up to 30 days out. As far as I know, I don't know if any other organization had really solved this problem because it is humongous and it influences a million organizations around the world. And it only came about in the last two years. You didn't have that two years ago. Nobody cared. There wasn't a demand or the freight rates. Freight rates are up 15 times for containers over the last two years.

And reliability is down from 80% to 30%. So it has never been less reliable to ship a cargo and hasn't been ever more expensive to ship a cargo, if that makes sense. Yes, which has its own inflationary pressure. Sure. Okay. I want to switch gears before we wrap. You run a startup, what is effectively a startup.

Yep. We are watching right now what looks like some kind of correction shakeup in the tech markets. We all cite this statistic, something like 50% of the companies on NASDAQ have lost something like 50% of their value in the last few months. You're on the front lines of building a startup. You're in an ecosystem of a lot of startups. Israel has the highest density of startups in the world. So you are in this world, you're spending time with a lot of entrepreneurs. What is the implication for people, young

entrepreneurs like you building companies? So I got to say, I think that long-term, I don't think it matters because so much riches have been created and so much capital here in Israel, for instance, over the last five years. People look at it, I think, as a correction from insane to really, really big, but it's still really big from the entrepreneur perspective. Actually, from the employee perspective,

there is a difference, I think, because I know many people who are on paper very rich, but in reality not very rich. So I think the lesson is I don't think there are shortcuts. We went public in London in December, which is very out of the ordinary because this company is not, unfortunately, it's not cookie cutter. I'm saying unfortunately because it's much easier running than a company which is very out of the ordinary because this company is not, unfortunately, it's not cookie cutter. I'm saying unfortunately because it's much easier running than a company which is cookie cutter. And I think we're okay because the London market is very different than NASDAQ.

But I understand that to build a company, you need to create long-term value on long-term revenues. And actually, the flip side of what you just said is people are expecting NASDAQ companies to be profitable faster, and they're running away from companies who are going to lose money forever. So I think that's part of that correction. So it's not just correction in tech, it's correction in big deal loss-making tech. So I think that's one thing. The second thing is there are no shortcuts.

People have done SPAC. We've been offered to do a SPAC before. We've walked away from it because I didn't think it was a good deal. And I think doing a SPAC for a company which is IPO ready, has $100 billion revenues and growing quickly, that's great. Doing a SPAC for a company with $300,000 of revenues, which was never meant to be public in the first place, that's not a good idea.

So I think in building a company, I'm not sure there are many shortcuts about that. I do want to, and I think it's, I read a lot, and thank you for having me on the podcast. I think for us, what this means is focus and execution. We have the capital we need in the bank. I think we now have the brand, is focus and execution. We have the capital we need in the bank. I think we now have the brand, we have the board, we have the tech. Now it's about execution, execution, execution. I'd like to recommend a book, Amp It Up by Frank Slootman.

I thought you were going to recommend Startup Nation. You're running the show. You already recommended Startup Nation. No, but really as a founder, I think- What's the book called? Amp It Up. Oh, Amp It Up oh Amp It Up okay got it by Frank Slootman the chairman CEO of Snowflake

and I think when and people don't talk enough about that but building a company there's a difference between a founder and a CEO

some founders are also CEOs I think I only understood what it means it means to be CEO in the last two or four years

and I'm fortunate to have you know a mentor to be CEO in the last two or four years. And I'm fortunate to have a mentor and a coach in the form of our chairman, Lord Brown. But I would really encourage a lot of entrepreneurs. Lord Brown, you should say his full name so people know he's a former. Lord Brown of Mattingly or the right, the honorable, the Lord Brown of Mattingly. John Brown, he was CEO of BP. CEO of BP, right. And he was invested into our board, became our chairman, and I'm fortunate to have him as my mentor

because making that transition from a founder entrepreneur to a CEO is not such an easy feat. And I believe the CEOs are the glass seedings of the company. So you need to grow faster than anybody else and learn faster than anybody else and execute better than anybody else and flip the switch like LeBron James used to do before playoffs, I guess, better than anybody else. And I think this book I'm reading from Frank Slootman really makes a difference. Wow.

We'll leave it there. You squeezed in a book recommendation, a dig on LeBron James for not making the playoffs. By the way, the Brooklyn Nets just got swept out. Oh, of course. We can talk about that. Kyrie, my man. Yeah, heartbreaking. And KD.

And you also shoehorned in an incredible pop culture reference, which was the Nicolas Cage movie from 2005, which is the first time anyone has referenced that movie on this podcast. Lord of War? Yep. Yeah, yeah. So that was impressive. Thank you. We will put the book in the show notes. Ami Danielle, thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. That's our show for today. To follow Ami Daniel, he's on Twitter at Ami Daniel 1. That's A-M-I-D-A-N-I-E-L and the number one. You can also go to his website, WNWD.com. WNWD is short for Winward. I'm a big fan of Ami's, so much so that in a personal capacity, I was an early investor in him and Matan

as they were building Windward. I have no involvement in the operations of the company, but just wanted to provide the full disclosure. Call Me Back is produced by Alain Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.