Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - The Near Death Experiences On the Way to Running a Public Company - Coby Hanoch

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

How do entrepreneurs and leaders survive the inevitable near-death experiences of their companies, in order to thrive?  Ilana speaks with Coby Hanoch, CEO of Weebit Nano (ASX: WBT) about his career journey and what it takes to grow companies, especially a public company like Weebit. Watch This Episode on YouTube - https://youtu.be/2d49Zpw7FHE ---- About Ilana Golan & Leap Academy:Website - https://www.leapacademy.com/Follow Ilana on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilanagolan/YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@ilanagolan-leap-academy

If there's anything I can tell young CEOs, it does take time and you shouldn't give up. And you will have that near-death experience because everyone has that. And every startup that I worked with has been there. And the only question is how you deal with it. And if you really believe in it and if you really believe in yourself and you keep pushing, you know, your chances of success are high. You know, don't believe all the naysayers. Welcome to The Leap Show. In The Leap Show, we're here to bring experts from around the globe who share inspiring stories, concrete tips,

and insight on what helped them become the best version of themselves and who they are today and create the incredible life that they wanted. Subscribe and follow us, share this with friends who are also driven and aiming for more because you'll hear stories and tips that you'll hear nowhere else. Hi, I'm Ilana Golan, CEO of Leap Academy, which helps driven professionals reinvent, leap their careers to the next level. Now let's get started. Oh my God, guys. So today we have a really, really, really special episode that for me is really dear to my heart. So when I moved to the US, I found a job in a small company called Vericity, a startup. And it was my chance to leap from engineering to finally be, you know, from coding to finally

be customer facing. And I really wanted to prove myself. And what they did is they gave me VCRs, if you remember how they look like. They gave me VCRs to watch sales training from previous years. And that's where I met Kobi Hanoh. He became my role model way before he even knew I existed. And ever since then, I've been following this guy. Because if you want to learn from a real leader, this is somebody you need to know.

He now runs an incredible semiconductor company. We'll talk about it. How on earth did he get to that? WeBeat, which reached a market cap of a billion dollars a trillion. And Kobe, thank you for being on the show. It's incredible to have you. Thanks. It's really good to be here.

Amazing, amazing. So seriously, I've seen your journey. You were my role model. I was a thousand, you know, um, steps away from you, but, um, I learned so much, uh, from your leadership style, from your sales style, from how you run teams. Um, but it is very, very different. And I want to hear a little bit about your journey and also the difference between being number one and being number two or whatever is very, very different.

Right. So I want to hear a little bit also about that difference for you. Well, I'll start off by saying that I noticed you from the beginning and I saw the potential there, too. So I just want to make that comment as well. You know, my my journey, by the way, I started as an engineer as well. And for many years, I was doing my coding and stuff until I moved into the business side. I was kind of forced to move to the business side. I learned a lot. I believe that you should always be open and keep your ears open and listen to everyone. By the way, you can learn so much from anyone and from your young engineers in the team and just people that you meet in the streets. I believe in just accepting any comments that I get, thinking about them and improving all the time. I believe in building a strong team.

I think that was something that very early on, I understood that I won't ever be able to do everything myself. And in order to make a company like Vericity successful, which I'm very glad that it was, one of the key things was hiring people like you and having really strong people who drive it. And obviously you need to lead the team. Being the leader is always a challenge because they say that the CEO is the

loneliest job in the world. And it is. It is. You are there. StockInversity, by the way, just to be clear, I wasn't the CEO. I was the VP sales. But leading the team, you're always needing to make decisions and pretty much on your own. But I personally believe in listening to everyone, letting the team express their opinions before I express mine so no one is tainted. And then at the end, compiling everything and reaching a conclusion together. And I totally see that because I think Veracity was one of the best teams I've ever seen. Like, you know, we all glued together. Everybody liked each other. It was a really inspiring place to work. And again, I think a lot of it is the leadership, right? I mean, again, the leadership is not the title. The leadership are people that follow you.

Right. That's where the leadership really comes. But yeah, totally, totally. And I think, you know, you mentioned it kind of a key thing for me type of politics, for any type of, you know, people in the team trying to do things that are not compatible with the rest or trying to push people aside. I mean, I want to see teamwork. I put a lot of emphasis and a lot of energy into making sure that the team works together. If I sense any tension in the team, you know, immediately I step in to make sure that it doesn't evolve into anything and that everyone continues to work together. I just can't stand seeing a waste of time and energy like that. And that's incredible. And I want to tie that also to the success of WeBeat, because I think that that leadership style and your way of making those decisions and making

those connections and making people see be seen and feel heard and all of that, that's part of what makes WeBeat successful. So share a little bit about WeBeat. And then I would want to go a little bit to how hard it is at the top. So we will go there, too. But share a little bit about we beat and then i would want to go a little bit to how hard it is at the top so we will go there too but share a little bit about the company but we bit is developing a new kind of non-volatile memory called re-ram it's resistive ram um it's uh you know for the longest time the the market has flash, and it's been out there. But it's been hitting more and more walls right now. And flash cannot scale down below 40 or 28 nanometers.

And a lot of the advanced designs are at 22 and below. So you need something there. But our rear end is orders of magnitude faster, orders of magnitude lower power consumption, better endurance, resistive to radiation, and even environmentally friendly. So it's really a great technology. For me, the move to Webit was kind of, it was definitely not a natural one. I didn't grow up in the device and process world and analog design side of things. So it was really a challenge to move into, I mean, you know, obviously I had my gut feeling. I had a general knowledge of what's happening there, but, you know, definitely not anywhere close

to understanding really what is happening in this technology. And the big challenge was to just hire a stellar team. And I am so proud of the team. I mean, I wake up in the morning and I say, I just can't believe I have this team. You know, I have each and every one of these guys and girls or women. It's just amazing, the team that we have, starting with the board of directors that, you know, I don't think any smaller or mid-sized company has a board like this. It's really an amazing board. And going to the VPs and below the VPs, you know, these are people that have so much experience, that know their material.

They're very well known, even I can say at the worldwide level. And they know how to do the job. And so I'm lucky because then I don't really need to understand all the details of this technology. Which I think is amazing that you say that, right? Because I think for a lot of, you know, CEOs or even just leaders or managers, right? It's really hard to let go and to know just enough to make the decisions, but not too much to micromanage, etc. So how do you balance this a little bit? Well, in WeBit, it's easy because no matter how much I would try,

I just don't know the technology well enough to do that. In Vericity, by the way, it was a challenge. I mean, there was a period where, you know, I guess I can say with all humility, I knew probably more about verification than most of the engineers working under me. And it was a challenge when we would go to customer meetings to never talk about technology when I had my engineers with me. They had to be the front talking about engineering. I think you might remember it from some of the meetings. After the meeting, I would pull them aside and I'd give them my comments and I'd give them my inputs, but never in front of the customer.

The customer has to know that they have the strong engineer in front of them, the expert and everything. And so it's very important. In Vericity, it was really a clear decision that I made. Sometimes I had to hold myself because sometimes the engineer would even make some mistakes and stuff that I would say, you know, I need to. And maybe sometimes I would make a small hint and the engineer would understand and do things. So it is a challenge, but you need to understand, you know, even if you know everything better than any single person in the company, even if you can do everything better, you're not going to do all of that. You just have 24 hours in a day, and you have to let go for the company to be successful. The most important job of the manager is to empower the team, to have the team. You know, there was this book when I was a young engineer, the one minute manager that talked

about, you know, the manager doesn't need to do a lot. He just needs to give direction and that's it. And it's true. You need to have a strong team. You need to empower them. Each one of them is a real expert in their domain. And even if you know sometimes things better, you know, you can advise, you can help. But, you know, don't, I mean, the moment that an engineer feels like the manager is limiting them, is belittling them, is, you know, it's dead. It's gone. I mean, you know, you won't get much. An engineer that you empower will continue to make an effort, continue to improve, and you continue to get so much more out of them. So that's really a very basic thing that any manager needs to understand. Unfortunately, I've seen managers that don't do that. And you can see the results. I think you can. You can see it by the team. You can see it by the companies. But share with me, it's still very, very different, like you said, to move from VP sales. And you had other roles between, but from a VP sales to the number one, right? Share with us a little bit about some challenges that you had to go through in WeBeat that, you know, just kind of shook you to the core, but also created where you are today.

Well, I joined WeBeat six years ago, minus a few, three weeks, I guess. And, you know, when I joined WeBeat, the whole company was, I think we were four people. You know, there was only one engineer in the, no, I'm sorry, two engineers. We just hired a second one. So we had two engineers. And, you know, the company was really at an extremely early stage. You know, it was really nothing. And I'm not an expert in this domain.

I have a good gut feeling. And it was a challenge to start getting, first of all, to learn the lingo and to understand. And then, you know, going and hiring people. Now, obviously, in the beginning, everything relied on me. And yes, I did make some mistakes. You know, one of the mistakes was even more significant that I remember I was saying, maybe I'm really not in the right place. Maybe I need to just, you know, resign, you know, let someone else, a bigger expert in the field, move forward. I'm glad I didn't, you know, because it isn't my job to be the technical expert. And I

hired the technical experts and I hired the team. And I think today we have this very good balance between, you know, really, really, really strong engineering managers and an engineering team and so on. And myself, where I have a good enough gut feeling about it and understanding that I can understand, you know, I can actually make the decisions. They give me all the advice and then I can make the decision based on it. But I know what I'm deciding. I have a great board. I have, you know, my board includes amazing people like Dady Perlmutter, Atik Raza, Yovani Sankoen. Each and every one of them I can talk about and I can tell you just how amazing they are. And they give me the advice.

So, yes, I am alone as a CEO and I do need to struggle with a lot of stress. But I do have people to consult with. And by the way, my VPs, even though they report to me, and even though I'm theoretically not supposed to share everything with them, we are a team. We are very open. I am very open with them. I think, again, that's another thing that makes WeBit successful because when the VPs are in the loop, they know what's going on. They can give me their input. I consult with them on things that aren't in their domain. And, you know, it builds that team spirit and it gives me that feeling that I'm not alone.

And so that's, I think, the key point. Yes, it is the loneliest job in the world, but you can make it much less lonely if you work right with people and if you build the right team. I love that on so many levels, because I think, you know, you speak about a lot of things that usually people try not to speak about. And I think that makes a big difference. But tell me a little bit, again, there's one thing to join, you know, as a CEO and start a small company. First of all, you chose a semiconductor company, which is a comes with a whole different level of. Oh, yeah. And you build it to a billion dollar market cap. You guys just

got some kind of placing. I want you to talk a little bit about it. How did you do that? What do you feel? It's an amazing ride. It's an amazing ride. You're absolutely right. I mean, semiconductors, it's hard to think of a more difficult domain to be in. And my shareholders, you know, they obviously none of them are experts in semiconductor and the challenge to talk and explain to them what is going on, just how difficult it is. I mean, it's like almost impossible to really convey the complexity and trying to close deals now and things. So, I mean, I joined the company. The company in US dollars was about $8 million market cap.

You know, it was like nothing almost. Today, like you said, we're more like $800 million market. Actually, on Friday, it was announced that we are moved into the asx 200 uh index so uh it's uh it's very flattering and it just adds more pressure of course uh to deliver um yeah it's um i've i you know you you talk about semiconductors the other side of it is being a CEO of a public company, which adds way more pressure. I was a CEO of a private company before, so I went through it, but it's nothing like being a CEO of a public company. You know, the regulation and everything, the scrutiny of things, and then you can't make mistakes and so on.

It's, it's a huge challenge, but I love challenges. I mean, you know, it's kind of crazy. And sometimes I think I am crazy because I, I enjoy this challenge of, you know, doing something that people tell me is impossible and, and going and doing it and looking back and saying, wow, you know, I mean, now I'm going to be closing six years in Weebit pretty soon and looking back and saying, wow, you know, I mean, now I'm going to be closing six years in Weebit pretty soon and looking back and saying, wow, I did do something here. You know, we took the company 100x on the market cap. I hired a team from having just two engineers

to having this whole team of real experts, you know, moving this technology. And by the way, there have been so many companies that tried to develop pre-RAM technology and failed. It's not trivial to develop pre-RAM technology. And we made it and we have it qualified and we are now working with customers. And very soon, you know, in the near future, next few months, we're going to be announcing first customers and really pushing the business forward. So, I mean, it's always that feeling that, yeah, I can do it. I'm going to show people that I can do it. And I've had people tell me, you don't understand semiconductors. There's no way you can manage this company. And I've had people who told me, you're crazy, Australia. I mean, come on. And it's so far away. And how are you going to manage that? And I mean, I've had so many people try to

kind of tell me how hard it's going to be. And I think every time someone did that, they just gave me more drive to prove them wrong. And it's fun. It's fun. I mean, you know, what we've done and believe me right now, we're under more pressure than ever. You know, everyone's waiting for us to deliver first customer agreements. Everyone's waiting for us to have more foundries as licensees, you know, to grow revenues and so on. But I know we can do it. I know we can do it. I know I have the team and I know it's going to be even more fun. And that's incredible. And first of all, the naysayers, they're always going to be there and the challenges was always going to be there and the only question is are you willing to stop right and and i think what's beautiful about seeing your journey from the sidelines um is a you don't stop but i think there's another element like some people because they kind of feel like the overnight success has to happen immediately

they never get started they don't realize that it can take six, 10 years, right? For that overnight success to happen. And that doesn't seem to scare you. Like you, in fact, take it and create the impossible and take one step at a time and just see it form. Yeah, I guess it's, you know, I know that things take time. You know, when we started Vericity in the beginning, you know, that was a huge challenge. And most people don't know, Vericity was actually so close to bankruptcy at a certain point,

two years after we started, we didn't pay salaries for several months, we were really in a very, very tight position, where it was clear the company was going under. And, you know, the thing is, just never give up, never give up until it's done. And just keep fighting. And we managed to get some funding, you know, at that moment. And we managed to get, we had a very important release to make. We did a basic rewrite of the code, which by the way, most people don't know, but in most companies, the first version of the tool that's written is written so poorly that after a while, you just need to throw it away and rewrite the whole thing from scratch. And we ended up doing it at that point.

And we managed to get that release out. And the rest is history. We grew the team, we grew the business. We were selling more than $100 million per year. We sold the company and everything was nice. But one of the things is practically every startup I know has gone through what I call a near-death experience. Okay, it's always there.

And with WeBit, you know, back in the beginning of 2019 or end of 2018, I was there like, okay, you know, everything, everything, everything is going against me to the point of how am I ever going to get out of this? And I just didn't give up. I mean, I just said, you know, I'm not going to let it go until, you know, it's dead. And I kept pushing and I kept, you know, finding solutions for the challenges that kept coming. And eventually we got out of it. And then, you know, in 2020, we really managed to get things already all really nicely organized. And we did some really nice raises and the company took off. So, I mean, if there's anything I can tell young CEOs, it does take time and you shouldn't give up and you will have that near death experience because everyone has that.

And every startup that I worked with has been there. And the only question is how you deal with it. And if you really believe in it and if you really believe in yourself and you keep pushing, you know, your chances of success are high. You know, don't believe all the naysayers so so so inspiring and so true and i think vericity was eventually sold for to cadence design for what 300 million 315 yeah yeah at the time that was considered a big exit it was a huge all of these billion dollar exits yeah it was a huge exit. Yeah, it was a huge exit. And so that, you know, that's incredible.

So what is one thing that you feel, and maybe it's some of the things that you already shared, but that you went through that people don't necessarily know that built you to where you are today, Kobi? Well, one of the things in my history that not many people know is I actually, you will never guess how many addresses I've had in my life, because no matter what you guess, you need to double and triple it. And, you know, it's definitely above 30 or getting close to 40. And one of the things that happened to me is when I was three months old, my parents moved for the first time to Uruguay. I actually spent my first two years in Montevideo. And so the first language I spoke was actually Spanish. Another thing that people don't know. So and since then, my family moved internationally, you know, I got

to live in New York and Texas and California in the US. I lived in Paris and in Lyon. And I've been moving around a lot. Two things that happened were, A, I needed to always adjust to new environments. I needed to always adjust to new people and new friends. And B, it was new cultures, not just new people and new environments. I actually had to adjust to different countries and different cultures. And I learned very early on that different people in the world have different logic and they don't think like you. They have a different way of thinking. And I learned that when I'm talking to someone, I always need to try to think of how they interpret what I say. You know, we all think that we're speaking English and everyone understands it. And I have endless examples of people saying something in English which the other person understood exactly the opposite.

I mean, to the point of exactly the opposite. Or just misunderstood deals that because of one word that somebody said, were just about to blow up because the other person understood it very differently. So I've had that happen to me early on. And I think that's one of the things that made me more successful as an international business person is that understanding of cultures

and always thinking of how the other side understands me and not just what I'm saying. Oh, that's so brilliant, because I remember the very first question that I was asked in Veracity pretty much is, why do Israelis always say no? And I was like, it's not a no no it just means that we can start negotiating exactly exactly yeah so there's uh you know we probably don't have time here but there are endless examples of things that one culture says and the other culture understands very different and um you know it's it's been fun to to see it and to be able to control it. And yeah, so that's part of it. That's something that I feel happy about. We should do a whole episode of that, I think. That would be brilliant. We should totally do

that. It's going to be fun. Well, many people have asked me to write a book about it. And I have my, you know, kind of my chapters that I'm going to be putting in it, I, you know, after a wee bit, I might end up writing this book. I love it. I love it. I love it. So, Kobi, I think this was an incredible talk for so many people, so many people that have bigger dreams, that want to do things And either don't start or, you know, it's just really, really hard. So first of all, anybody, you know, that is looking, you know, in the chip design space, you guys get a look at this, because in this level of leadership, and this level of growth, these guys we bit are doing the impossible so first of all take a look at them

um but for you kobe last famous words what would you say to our audience just believe in yourself that's it you know you believe in yourself and what you're doing and always imagine yourself after all of the trouble and you know when you reach the success and and you can make it you can do anything oh this is so powerful thank you so much kobe this was so so so beautiful that's great to be here thank you for having me always good to talk to you oh so fun so so fun thank you for listening and hope you enjoyed this show don't forget to subscribe follow share this with friends i'll see you in the next leap show