Transcript: Being Smart Isn't Enough. This Is How You Make Things Happen | Dor Atias

Opening

Eyal David: [00:00] Good morning. Good morning, how's it going? Great, you caught... so, introduce yourself in a few words, Dor.

Dor Atias: [00:07] So, nice to meet everyone. I'm Dor Atias, almost 34. Married to Rotem. Dad to Gur, who's two. We also have a dog at home called Bambi. I'm one of the founders of Cycode and the CPO, Chief Product Officer. Although in practice I also run Engineering, so both product and engineering. At Cycode, we'll talk later about what Cycode does. I started my career at 18. I enlisted into a track called Gamma, ended up in the Intelligence Corps, in Unit 81. I was an officer there for about four and a half years, give or take. After the army I decided not to go to a cyber company specifically, or to offensive or defensive cyber, but went to a young startup called BlazeMeter, which has nothing to do with cyber. What BlazeMeter does, the product still exists, is load testing... what... wait a second, why didn't you take the, like, well-known cyber path afterwards? In the army I did everything. I built Android apps, I customized the Android operating system, I wrote Python scripts, I wrote for all sorts of things, doesn't matter now, and what I enjoyed most was the first system I built, where I met an end customer. Where the customer told me, like, this is convenient, this isn't convenient, I'd prefer it to work like this. And that was the first system I built, by the way, in the army, with no experience at all, and that's where I enjoyed myself the most. After that I built all kinds of systems that were like back-end cyber stuff, where I write something, and then someone takes it and at night does whatever he does with it, and I didn't always understand what he was doing. And also with the compartmentalization in the unit, everyone has their own compartment, they don't tell you, when you build something they don't tell you, like, where it's going. Yes, when I met a customer, I'd go a few times a month to the customer, which was another unit, so to speak, and see what they do, whether they're enjoying it or not. So I told myself, like, this is what I love, the interaction, not the kernel driver I'm writing. So I had all kinds of offers, but I decided to go specifically to a young company, they had about 50 employees at the time, really, I remember it was one small floor, and there I gave it everything and learned. So I went there, started as a backend developer, after a year and a half the company was sold, had an exit to a company called CA Technologies, after two years at CA, Broadcom bought CA, I moved to Broadcom. In total I was at BlazeMeter five years, I was a team lead, I was a developer, team lead, group lead over five years, three companies, but the same product, the same chair, the same office. And that's it, and then we founded Cycode seven years ago.

From Unit 81 to startups

Customers before code

Eyal David: [02:51] So basically you climbed up... not just you, the company also basically climbed up the types of companies, right? You also told me, when we came in here, by the way, thanks to Startup Nation Central for hosting us in the studio, you told me you'd been in this studio, or not the studio, this building, unless I'm having some crazy déjà vu. Back then, basically, for an interview, so interesting. How did you get to this? How did you basically roll from the company you worked at into Cycode? So Lior, the CEO, he was with me in the army, on the team,

Joining Cycode

Dor Atias: [03:21] And for a long time, ever since we were discharged, we kept talking about starting something together. At one point there was even an idea for some gym app, all kinds of nonsense. In the end we got to this.

Eyal David: [03:33] In the end you got to this, and we've been together ever since, seven years, like... So what does your day-to-day look like? Seven years at a company is a lot, right? A successful company too, it should be said. A successful company. What does your day-to-day look like?

Dor Atias: [03:48] So it changes all the time. Once it was like all the time, once it was even that... you know, in the first years I was even contributing code, I was on calls with customers all day, on calls with people all day. Today it's more customer calls, mainly strategic customers. Sorry, strategic customers. Mostly talking to people, mentoring them, trying to bring in strong candidates, those are the things I spend most of my time on. Tell me, and you and I talked about this before,

Eyal David: [04:21] But if I now have to focus you on the one thing that occupies you most today, in your day-to-day, what is it?

Dor Atias: [04:28] In the company, you mean? What occupies me most is people... you can talk generally, but... What occupies me most is people, retaining people, how to make sure they're happy, how to make sure they're not anxious, how to keep them motivated. People, that's what I'm good at, at least I believe so, maybe now someone will think I'm not good with people at all, but I feel that's my uniqueness, not the technology or... Is that something you also identified before? Like, when you worked at previous companies? When I worked at BlazeMeter, so again, I wasn't the developer, I don't think I'm the best developer, or that I was the best architect, I'm an okay developer, above average, a smart guy, I don't think I'm that, but... but what's special about me is that I know, like, how to... get people to follow me, I know how to convince people of the big goal, to explain the big goal, to raise flags when needed, to understand what's more important and what's less important. That's what set me apart as a developer too. I have a lot of passion for what I do, like again, I can be, in any profession I'd do, I'd probably be that person who thinks a few steps ahead, raises flags that something won't work well, and is always thinking how to optimize, how to improve. That's how I am in my role today too, I'm always thinking how to optimize, how to improve, what's working well, what's not working well.

People before technology

Eyal David: [05:50] What do you mean, how do you measure that? Again, when I talk about people it's a lot softer, right? So how do you do it? With people specifically, how to optimize or... Yes, yes, that's where I was going.

Dor Atias: [06:00] First of all, I always notice, I notice the little things. What I'm about to say sounds a bit silly, but I notice if someone got a haircut, and they always say, like, how do you notice, how do you notice. So I always try to notice the little things, whether they're down, worried, whether they suddenly don't respond to things they used to respond to and care about. I'm on it all the time, I'm always trying to see how to keep them in a way that they enjoy. I never want someone to come to work and not enjoy it, because I always believe it's a loop: if a person isn't happy at work, they're not happy at home, not happy at home, not happy at work. So I always try to be there, I always try to say, guys, like, just to say, not long ago we had a crazy incident in the company that we worked on, we worked on that incident to fix it over the weekend, Friday, Saturday. It hadn't happened in seven years, and specifically a few weeks ago it happened. And afterwards I just told them, guys, each of you is getting two days off now, don't come to the office. And people just... I said, you don't have to take it now, you can take it next week too, if you feel like you still need to, like, live the incident or something, fine, come in. You've now got two days, we don't want... like, there's no question here at all. And then I added, like, you know, in the system, two days, you can take them. I always try to show them that in the end it's also fairness, it's not just work, work, even though supposedly it was their mistake, and, like, fix it because it's your mistake. But it's not, they didn't do it on purpose, they took ownership of the mistake, they come and want to fix it, they're kind of beating themselves up about it, so like,

An incident and ownership

Eyal David: [07:45] You need to show them the... something here really interests me. First of all, it's very refreshing to hear this, especially these days. But I want to ask, what kind of people are you hiring today? What's the DNA you're looking for? First of all, I look for a good atmosphere, that comes first.

The hiring DNA

Dor Atias: [08:02] At our company we love joking about every silly thing, so we look for people who fit that atmosphere, not people who are too heavy, that's first. Second, for me... Wait, have you actually rejected people because they don't fit that DNA? I didn't reject, I didn't reject, because there are also people who, in principle, are heavy, but you know that at the right moment they'll laugh and throw in the jab and the cynicism, there are those too. And there are other crazies there who joke all day. You need to find the balance, but we want people to enjoy coming to the company. Today, by the way, we're three days a week in the office, another legacy of COVID, and it works well. It works well, and I can see people want to come to the office. Like, we're moving offices in a few months, and we know there's one month where, because it's in between, they'll be at home. They're bummed. They're bummed, they say, come on, no, another month at home. And the war, forget the war, they were bummed they didn't see their friends, didn't see the... it bums them out, and that matters to me. I want people to work at a company that's not just a paycheck. That they feel a connection to the product, to the people, to their manager, to what they do. That's also why I, often, almost every week or two, at happy hour or another forum, I literally go through all the deals, I literally open Salesforce, show them all the deals, why we won and also why we lost. I explain why we lost, I explain why here we're about to win but the competitor is doing this and that, or the champion there needs this and that, and I explain the politics to them,

Business transparency

Eyal David: [09:29] Because I really bring them into it. You're really trying to encourage ownership, I'm looking for the word in Hebrew, ownership, the... I want people,

Pace through context

Dor Atias: [09:37] Like, when you drive people, you don't want to drive them... we talked about this, at a high pace, without explaining to them why they're at a high pace. So when I show them the numbers and I don't hide anything from them, I also tell them why we lost, that motivates them, and the high pace can be sustained. If you drive people at a high pace and you just, you don't explain why, you don't explain how much, you don't explain what will happen if we lose, what will happen if we win, then... Sounds like that was written in blood, huh?

Eyal David: [10:07] I'm kind of looking at the "simple" employee, in quotes, God forbid simple, but like the regular employee, and in the end he comes to the company, and today in Israel and in the world there's a lot, a lot of hype in the media, and we also talked about this over coffee, and you want to show that you're no less than them.

Dor Atias: [10:24] Now sometimes it's also, you know, things you don't control. And I want them to be proud of where they are, I want them to feel that, wow, this place is special because the CEO or the VP, doesn't matter, tells us about this deal and that deal. Does it work for you, do you feel it, how should one deal with it? Sure, it really works. Because people come and ask me, suddenly in the middle of the forum they ask me, wait, what does TFC mean? Just an example, termination for convenience, why do they want TFC? What's liability? I really explain all these things, like, why they're pushing back on the contract, or why this or that feature matters to them. I really explain it. I also tell them that sometimes it's not about the feature. I once told them a story about Black Hat. Black Hat is happening now, I was there last year. I came to the booth, came to some suite, and a customer came, two people from the same customer. Now, this customer we had lost to a competitor a year earlier, okay? He comes in, one is a nice guy who talks a lot, and the other one keeps his mouth shut, totally shut. Now, I see he's looking at the TV at the demo, and he doesn't say a word, but I can see he... I can see he has something to say, but he's not talking. Okay, so the whole conversation I'm like, deliberately turning to him, X, listen, what do you think of this? And then afterwards I went to the saleswoman, Lindsay was her name. I said to Lindsay, tell me, why didn't he talk? Like, I can see he's got something. She says, I don't know, I don't know. That same evening we also set up dinner with him. He agreed to come, him and the talker. We come to dinner, and I start talking to him. And then he explains to me, like, I said, tell me, why didn't you talk? Like, I can see you have something to say, I can see you have questions. Yes, you guys annoy me. I said, how did we annoy you? I don't understand, what are you talking about? No, a year ago you lost, and now I asked you, like, a year passed and they wanted to re-evaluate vendors, so they sent us an RFP, like, a document with all the... and the salesperson answered him, like, why do I need to answer an RFP for you, bro, you know the company, you know the product? And that annoyed him. So he told... so he came in burned. He came in burned and he told me, he said, at that moment I told my manager, that's the talker across the table, who meanwhile is talking and doesn't notice I'm... I told him, listen, fuck Cycode. I told him, why? Because he didn't answer you? Listen, I'm sorry, I don't think I'll talk to him, but that sucks, like, let's fix it. And we managed to fix it at the dinner and everything, and we did another demo, and then we were already starting to get into a good relationship, and at the end I tell him, thank you very much, and don't forget, fuck Cycode. He cracked up. And then I told this to my people at the office, I told them, listen, why is that? It's not this feature or that feature. It's that I gave him, like, respect by telling him, listen, I apologize. When I did that dinner with him, and told him, and explained to him why and how much and how, that's ultimately what won him over, not this feature or that one. He saw that I'm a human being in the end, he saw that I want things to go well for him, and sometimes that's what wins. So when I explain this to them, they understand that not everything is their feature, and there are other things, so

Communicating with customers

Eyal David: [13:24] I'm really trying to bring them into... There's another thing I take from this case, that it's much cheaper to fix things on the spot in a situation like that. Okay, so I'm starting to understand. And tell me, when we talked about this too, you told me that you, I kind of thought of it as a psychologist, right? You sit on the couch, you said, it's all people really, and people come to you, and you advise, and so on. What are the things you hear most lately that people come to you with? Let's say, I'll tell you a question, we have a WhatsApp community, you can sign up through the description. They asked, what should the person who wants to be, that was the most repeated question,

Dor Atias: [14:02] What should a person who wants to be meaningful in an organization do differently in the AI era? Yes. So first of all, I'll just answer the previous question, because it's a bit different from this one. What repeats itself mostly is communication between people: I told him this, he told me that, why is he behaving like this, especially across different cultures. We have Israelis in the company, Americans, Europeans, Western Europe, Eastern Europe too, they're all different cultures, they get along, they don't get along, and I sometimes need to explain to them what the other person meant and put them in the other's shoes. That's mostly what happens, why people come to consult and, like, gripe or complain. So I have a couch in my room, like, a real psychologist's couch, and sometimes people even lie on it like in the movies.

Global communication

Eyal David: [14:48] So I'm, like, there to help. Wait, okay, so two things are already coming up here. One is the matter of ownership, right? That you obviously expect, and the second is communication. I'm trying hard to stay in Hebrew. So are there other things coming up? Like, people come to consult and... just, because if we think about it in the AI world, in that world, what they asked, basically the things you're pointing to, that's what you're looking for, right? Right. So the question, two things, anything else?

AI and FOMO

Dor Atias: [15:20] No, there's also a lot of talk about processes. Processes keep changing, so people come to talk about that too, to understand how to optimize processes, whether within R&D, within product, or within the company. AI is disrupting everything today. Everyone constantly thinks they're in FOMO, whether I'm behind, whether I'm not behind, so there's talk about that too. So what do you answer to that? What are the questions? What do you answer? Listen, what I answer is that we're doing our best, first of all. Now, for a company running with dozens of customers, hundreds of customers, with tens of millions in ARR, a company that's been running for seven years, to come and say everything is AI, that's a bit populist. Because it takes time. A new company can say, I do everything with AI, I have no humans at all, which is also, in my view, nonsense, there's no such thing, like, it's a combination. Sure, you need to optimize, you need fewer people, I agree with that, but with no people at all, come on, who are you kidding? You just need to operate this whole thing, no? You just need to provide oversight. Maybe in a while it won't be like this anymore, but I believe in that less. You still need people. In the end I sell to people, not to robots, at least for now.

Eyal David: [16:29] Look, we're basically trying to formalize here, to understand in the AI world what the things are, that's what they asked. Ah, in the AI world, right, so

Beyond technical ability

Dor Atias: [16:38] I'd say that today what people look for is less the backend ace, the frontend ace, the DevOps ace. They look for people who know backend, say, well, but have a product mindset, meaning they can now take an idea and deliver it end to end. They can, they have interpersonal skills, they can go and talk to the Americans, they can go talk to the customer, they have the ability to understand what this thing looks like, so they know how to go into the right tools and do a certain design, they can build the demo. So you need communicative people, not just people who know how to write code, and that's what people look for, because today there's exactly a debate at the office,

Eyal David: [17:24] In recent days, about whether you even need to look at the code or not. By the way, that's also part of what Cycode talks about, but maybe tell us what Cycode actually does, and then we... Thank you. Cycode has existed for seven years,

What Cycode does

Dor Atias: [17:35] Serves dozens, hundreds of customers, tens of millions in ARR, a company that's doing nicely and growing all the time. Around 120, 130 people worldwide, we have the US, Israel, Europe, spread out. What Cycode does is protect developers and the development pipeline. From the moment a person writes code, which today isn't writing code anymore but writing a prompt, so from the moment a person writes a prompt, I deliberately say a person and not a developer, until the moment the application, the software, the code reaches production. We give one application to the customer, to the big enterprise with tens of thousands of employees, to see where the risk is, what needs fixing, help them fix it from the start, like, address that challenge from the start, all the way to seeing what risk is currently in production. Even when you ship code or ship a prompt, it may be secure now, but in a day or two that won't be enough. Yes, you said a person, because it really can be anyone in the organization. Today it's anyone. Tell me, and you didn't start there, right? No, we started, seven years ago there was no AI yet. It was, today it's a feature in the system, which honestly I think is a feature people don't really look at, to tell the truth, it's there. Basically protecting the SCM itself. SCM is Source Control Management, that's GitHub, GitLab, etc. There are enterprises that don't have just one GitHub, they have several GitHubs and several GitLabs, and they have no single unified system that shows the problems in source control. Not in the code, in the source control itself, the system, the settings, who has admin and whether they should, when they logged in, whether they have MFA, all those things.

Eyal David: [19:05] So just before that you started talking, now that we have background, we have context, you started talking about the meaning of reading code or not reading code, right? Want to expand on that? So today,

Should you read the code?

Dor Atias: [19:19] The output you ship isn't necessarily, today it doesn't matter so much whether the code is pretty or not, okay? Because today when a person goes into the code, he doesn't go into the code. If he used to go into the code, if he wrote the code, he'd know how to get around it, even if it's spaghetti code, for that matter. Now, I'm not saying everything should be spaghetti and disgusting and so on, because in the end, in the end it doesn't survive reality. Because there has to be a person, from the start, who checks the architecture, who sees where it's going, who knows that a few steps from now we'll do A, B, C, so he builds it in an infrastructural, generic way, which the AI isn't aware of. Meaning, I actually believe we have an advantage in having built all the infrastructure before AI. Because new companies building this, say, they have some, they're not aware of scale, because they built something, it looks amazing, but soon the heavy customer will come and kind of crush them, and they're not even aware of it. Because the AI doesn't know where this is going to end up, what you tell it now, it lives in its own world right now. We said contractor, bro, so that's exactly the rebar you need for... Exactly. Now, if you think that, say, the foundations aren't good, then fine, you build a nice house, you build a nice house, but in the end, I don't know, the balcony will fall because the... I don't know, I don't understand real estate, but something there won't hold up. The structural engineer won't stay. So it's the same in software, you can't build something at scale if you choose the wrong database. Now, maybe a person who's just starting a startup and building something, he's on fire, look what a system you built, but he doesn't know what things he's relying on and what things he'll eat, you know, shit in the end, sorry for that. So I actually believe we're in a good position, because we built the foundations without AI. There was a lot of thought, and that thinking can't be done with AI, because AI isn't aware of all the specific problems of a customer. It's not like a customer we have has a problem and it's written somewhere on the internet that this specific customer has such a flag, it doesn't work that way. But AI gives us a ton of power, because today, thanks to the foundations we built, we develop tons of features, not features, new capabilities at crazy speed. A speed where now we're starting to say, wait, let's stop for a second and understand. That we're not just building for nothing. We're not building for nothing, that's clear, but when we build it right, what are the processes? Because today there's the question of whether you need to look at the code again or not. There are approaches that say you need to look at the code, there are those who say you need to look at the code and understand it, but it doesn't really matter whether it's one function or ten functions. You need to understand, there's this approach and that approach. And it's still not solved, there's like... Got it, so we dove in there, let's come back, I know you can, so let's come back for a second.

Good foundations

Eyal David: [21:51] Basically what you started telling me, if I understand correctly, is that the kind of person who in your eyes most needs to be meaningful in the organization, which is basically what we asked, is basically Dor. Right? It's someone who knows how to push, someone who knows how to manage communication, someone with a good enough background. That's a backend example, but it could also be product etc., who also knows how to identify a problem. Tell me, what is that thing that helps you so much? When you come in now, you have an inner fire, you told me before, right? Yes. What's that thing that drives you, that basically keeps you keen on it?

The inner engine

Dor Atias: [22:28] Again, sorry. I must, I must, when there's a problem, I have to solve it. I, again, if you ask my wife, probably not, she'll say I procrastinate. But if there's something at work or something important to me that has a problem, I want to be the one who solves it, I have to solve it. I don't rest until I solve it. For me that's, like, what drives me at all. Just now over the weekend there was a problem with a customer. On Friday night I was, like, on it, because I said, I'm not going to sleep until I understand it's resolved. And only at around two in the morning did I go to sleep, after I wrote to the customer, listen, I have good news, it's going to be like this and that, and he was happy. And I have to solve these problems.

Eyal David: [23:13] And that's what drives me, that's what... But how do you manage to replicate that further in the company? Because we talked about it in... Because you explain to people

Replicating ownership

Dor Atias: [23:20] What the price is of whether the customer is happy or not. If this customer closes, it gives us the option to reach such-and-such ARR, it opens doors for us to this and that and that; if you do this POC well, then this fund will look at us. I explain the rationale to them, I never hide from them why this customer. Just an example, not long ago we had a POC with some big company, and we knew, like, it wasn't hidden or anything, we knew this customer also belongs to some fund, doesn't matter, and this was the technical DD for whether they'd want to invest in us or not. Now, it wasn't that we were even raising a round or anything, we just knew there was a fund looking at us, without us, like, wanting to raise a round, we're not raising right now, and still we want the fund to be impressed by us, because maybe soon we will. You always find, A, you probably always go for things with high stakes, right? Yes. Sometimes there are also small customers that on principle I have to win, because I know who the competitor is and it gets on my nerves. But then they always come to me, rightly, my employees say, Dudu, come on, enough, it's 30 thousand dollars, come on, leave it, we have more important things. And then do you let go? It depends. It depends, because sometimes I can't stand a competitor beating me. Because sometimes that win is a sign of things to come. So I, I... What do you mean a sign of things to come? If now a competitor, suddenly a new one I haven't seen, is in some POC and beats me, that means he has something I don't. I don't want, I don't want, I don't care about some 30 thousand dollars. It's a lot more than 30 thousand dollars. It means there's a competitor here beating me on something I don't have. It could be the price, it could be the product, I have to understand what it is, I have to win. So the money isn't what's interesting, it's not what interests me. What interests me is understanding whether this competitor, new or not, doesn't matter, is drawing a line in the sand, I get it. That's, that's, like, the ARR doesn't interest me. What interests me is that I have to understand who this customer is, who this competitor is, what he offers that I don't, why this customer is even considering him with an enterprise. Like, that's what bothers me. So I come and explain, listen, we can't lose to them. Even if we lose to them now, it'll bum out the salesperson, the salesperson will say, wait, what, the competitor, this competitor beat us, like, wait, what am I doing here at Cycode? So I try to explain to them that, like, we want salespeople to stay, they're the ones who bring us the money, the ARR, they're the ones who ultimately make this company develop, grow, pay salaries, like, I explain this to them. Sometimes I let go, sometimes I say, okay, because say a 30-thousand-dollar customer comes now and asks for lots of features, I already tell the salesperson, listen, this isn't... first of all I'm not committing to any feature, forget it. If it's a quick win and it's fine, let's go with it, but I also need to set that boundary, it depends. If they start getting too noisy, loud, like, asking for too many things, then I recognize it's not worth it. But still, every customer always needs, I try to understand what, against whom, I look at Salesforce all day, to see what's happening, updates, because ARR isn't always the only thing that matters. Tell me, and how is it with the other founders, are they in the same mindset? Yes, we're all like that. Each one, Ronen and Lior, each is a different character, and each is good at something else. Ronen is a research type, he gets to the bottom of things, he's that figure people look to. Customers look at him and see, okay, he's the one who'll lead me and explain what's right, how to do security right, how to build the program right. He's very creative, Ronen is very, very smart, he's very, very creative. So he's good at those things. Now give him a product to build, I always joke that code he wrote seven years ago still causes us bugs to this day, so we always laugh about it, him and me. Lior is the person facing investors, facing customers, very much an operator. He was a programmer in the past, so he also understands all of this, so he's not some CEO who doesn't understand what he's selling, he understands very well what he's selling. And you're the engine, I get it. And I'm the contractor, I'm what they call making it happen. I see a wall, I break it. And this split works, because I'm also, of the three of us, the people person on the other hand. Also, because I'm passionate all the time, I also cause, so sometimes there's tension with the Americans and such, so Lior is more American than me, Ronen is also more American than me, so

Small deal, big signal

How the founders split roles

Eyal David: [27:36] Slowly I'm... you know, when you told me people person, so like, fine, obviously it's a person who knows how to move people, but what always comes up for me is how we're always told, well, a people person is someone who's easygoing, who's pleasant. No, I'm not pleasant. No, actually pleasant. I'm pleasant, but not always.

A people person

Dor Atias: [27:52] Which has advantages and has disadvantages. With Israelis it works great, up to a point. Americans, my not-pleasantness, for them it's amplified. For some reason when I do something unpleasant to an Israeli, he's like, okay bro, all good, it depends. And with Americans it's, how did he talk to me. Now I also always forget that I wear a founder's hat, so when I say something, it's amplified anyway.

Eyal David: [28:16] But Americans get more offended. That's interesting, okay, people person, we'll talk about it in a moment. What, did you learn to keep quiet more?

Dor Atias: [28:23] Because you said, every word I say carries much more weight. So I didn't learn to keep quiet, I learned to phrase myself, and also I didn't learn to phrase myself. It's funny, I use ChatGPT a lot for this, because first of all on Slack, when I talk to a person face to face, on Zoom, he sees I'm nice, but on Slack the tone sometimes comes out, first of all, like, I don't have time, I write things without thinking, and then it sounds much less pleasant. So when I have time I tell the chat, listen, take this, make it, like, American politically correct, help me. But they find out that, say, with them, I just took over Support, I run product and engineering and I took on Support too. So Hagar told me, listen, they're panicking. The Americans there are panicking. But why are they panicking? I don't get it. No, no, Dor, they're panicking. I say to them, what do they have to panic about? Like, everything's fine. And then I got on a call with one of the Americans, and when I finished the call he told me, listen Dor, I don't know why I was panicking. Like, I don't know why I was panicking, now I understand what you're saying and it's all fine. So Slack makes it so that, like, people read you in the wrong tone, and that often causes conflicts. So it's important to have face-to-face conversations, it's important to do Zoom. Tell me, is that something you invested in over time or is it natural? What, in what? This humanity, paying attention to details, I understand that's ingrained in you. I don't remember, like, investing in it. I do remember. I remember every time conversations with Ronen, with Lior, with my employees, who tell me, Dor, you need to watch what you say, how you say it, and every time it touches me. Yes, I don't, when they tell me this I kind of get annoyed, what do you want, what did I even say, and so on, and then I go home and I'm bummed, why did I say it, how did I say it. So I always try

Eyal David: [30:01] To improve. Do you have some example like that, something you did recently?

Dor Atias: [30:10] Think about what you can disclose, I don't want to cross the line. But there were many times when, like, something would happen with a customer and I'd get angry. I'd see what you're angry about on Slack and write, like, why and how much and this isn't serious and excuses, I don't know, like. And I realized that, like, there's no place for that and I need to calm down a bit, it doesn't help that I get angry. So I often think before I speak. That's also, by the way, not only about work, in life too I often try to think ten times before I say something, how I say it. Because I'm a bit of an impulsive person, so I'm working on it. The Dor of the past isn't the Dor of today. How does today's Dor actually control it? In a conversation like this, fine, it's easy, but

Controlling impulsiveness

Eyal David: [30:53] In a conversation that's more emotional, what works for you? So what sometimes works for me is first of all I, say,

Dor Atias: [31:00] Bring in grounding, or step out for a moment, or stand for a moment, listen a second. I set expectations, I say, guys, listen, I'm a bit, like, I'm not the calmest, I want you to understand for a second, this is a topic that hurts me. I set those expectations within the conversation itself, and then the person across from me already understands, like, that they need to, I don't know, lower the tone, or that I need a second to calm down. I try to set those expectations in the conversation. I didn't use to do that. I used to sit in a meeting, silent. And like, the whole meeting, we're talking about something, I'm fuming, and I'm silent, and when they turn to me, suddenly I come out at a hundred kilometers an hour. They know why I'm silent. So Lior always in meetings, or Ronen, always says, Dor, what do you think? And then I start opening up. And I understood there's no point in that... So from the start I speak, I say, even if it's unpleasant, I say it honestly, and I do the opener, I say, guys, this is what I think, you know me, I'm not looking to phrase things nicely, I'm not that, you know how much I appreciate you, love you, everything's fine, but this is what I'm saying. And then they kind of accept it, once I do that opener. It used to be silent Dor, and then suddenly boom, he gives his doctrine angrily, so that also needs to be talked about. Can I tell you something about that?

Eyal David: [32:09] I recognize a bit of a similarity, with me too. I actually discovered, I did that too, and then I discovered that if I start with an opener, it really closes the room, so now I actually step back, I let people talk, and then I do it, yes.

Dor Atias: [32:25] So I think that's right, because in the end, you know, if you frame everything beforehand, people won't open up, or they will. I do just try to say, if I feel like I'm overwhelmed, then I say it. And it works well, it works well when you set that expectation about what you feel because of the situation. Say now we're having a conversation about something that isn't working, so you kind of say, it's just important for me to say that this thing matters to me, but this and that and that, and I do want us to talk about it. And how do you protect your employees' self-confidence? That's a very, very important thing today. In general, but especially today. It's work, it's work, managing people is work. Each person is a whole world, each has the things that bother them, each has the things that move them, that annoy them. I have a lot of employees who report to me directly and indirectly, and I know for each what will annoy them, what will make them happy, what will light them up. So I adapt myself, you know, both by tasks, I adapt myself, and in how I talk to people. Like, to one I'll say, I'll say the same thing, the same message to both, in two different ways, because each takes it differently and needs it that way. You need to learn each person somehow, you can't say the same thing to five people,

Employees' confidence

Eyal David: [33:40] You can't. No, there's always context, that's clear, I'm with you. But also the way you say it: some you light up with what's in it for them, some you light up with how the organization is going to improve, some you light up with the fact that there was some... like, each one has their... what's in it for them... each, again, is a different world, and you need to know how to adapt to each employee. Tell me, how did you get so good at understanding what's in it for whom? I don't know. Because with yourself too, when you talked about how you light yourself up, how you keep yourself motivated,

Dor Atias: [34:07] You were always looking for, like, my incentive, right? Yes, but I can't say... First of all, I think I'm good, but I have a lot to learn with people. Like, I wasn't, I say I'm a people person, but I don't think I'm some expert. It fits me with these people, maybe with other people it wouldn't fit, by the way, I don't know. But I didn't learn it or anything. I think Rotem, my wife, also helps me a ton with this. She kind of... sometimes I explain, I'm already in a problem, but I explain to her what happened, and she suddenly gives me a perspective that I... she can also point that perspective out to me in the moment, but in the end I take it for a moment and say, wait, she's right, I need to... So that also helps me a lot, a lot. I also sometimes take problems to my friends in the industry who aren't necessarily in my role, but say developers, friends of mine who are developers, or team leads, who are like... or friends who are CEOs, not necessarily Lior my partner, and I kind of listen, I let them work through the situation for a moment, and then I say, wait, let's see what they say. And I learn from that, because looking at an event only within the company isn't necessarily right. Because maybe I'm now talking to X, to someone else, and he'll tell you, listen, sure, you're right, like. And I want, like, someone else who loves me, appreciates me, who won't be afraid to tell me the truth to my face because I'm his founder or something like that. Because no problem, that carries weight, and then suddenly we look at it from a different perspective, that often I'm wrong, and then I kind of go and fix it. But I don't think I'm perfect, I have a crazy way to go with people, with myself.

Feedback for founders

Eyal David: [35:48] And you're also humble. Listen, and beyond that, you also advise companies, right? Young companies. Yes. And giving feedback, that's very, very hard there.

Dor Atias: [36:00] It depends. If a person wants to hear, if a person comes and consults with me to hear feedback and improve, that's his mindset, that's fun too. If a person comes and is very sure of his position, then it's not fun, because you talk to the person and he's like... So first of all, when I go, when I choose whom to advise, meaning, in the end it's mutual. They need to want me to advise them, to connect with me, but I also need to connect with them. So I don't go advise every company, I meet a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of them talk to me.

Eyal David: [36:35] Only cyber? For now only cyber, yes. Cyber or enterprise. What other areas interest you? If, just, I'll ask you this way. If you were going to start something new now, which areas really stand out to you as interesting to get into?

Dor Atias: [36:51] I think, we're on Product Builder, even though we're talking about a lot of things that aren't product, but I think what really interests me is the ROI of things. Every department needs to... like, I'm always thinking in my head about optimization, even before AI. How to optimize, optimize, optimize, whether this product gives me what I need or not. So I'd try to build some product, either in the product world or in the company world in general, that comes and explains to me the ROI of everything I do. That's what really interests me, because this problem exists for me today too. I don't know whether this feature I built, whether it was worth building or not, how much money it brought me in the end, how much it cost me. There's a lot of data. When product writes a feature, they know what to expect, so they put the metrics they're looking for into Mixpanel or whatever, but there are things they're not aware of at all, that they didn't think about. There are things they know, but there are, like, they know there are things they don't know at all that they need to look at. And there's tons of data behind it, so, like, it's a real problem. So if someone knows how to solve it and has something like that, and someone is listening to me now. Let's define it: you're basically talking about how it would be cool to know this in hindsight, but

Product ROI

Eyal David: [38:04] But even cooler would be to know it in advance, prediction, like, yes, okay. What do you mean by things, wait a second, what do you mean by things that weren't taken into account? Risks?

Dor Atias: [38:19] No, there's, just an example, there was a feature we built five years ago. That feature, about five years, six years. One of the features is, say, comments. We have a finding in the system, and then someone can comment on it. Now, we built it because we were just starting out. And it was also some onboarding feature for one of the developers. Suddenly, a few, this is a story from a year or two ago, okay? I go in, and suddenly I see some 500 thousand comments. I say, wow, people use this, and nobody can tell you they use it. No customer talked about it, but they use it. And they write comments, and they tag people, but it doesn't really tag. And you kind of say, wait, I as product, like, didn't even think to measure this. After all, there are all sorts of dead zones in the product where, oops, you didn't handle things right, and there's tons of data, so I'd be happy if something popped up and told me, listen. Of course. I assume there are solutions for this, but it's just an idea, yes? I'm talking generally about everything.

Eyal David: [39:16] What other areas sound interesting to you today?

Data, not gut feeling

Dor Atias: [39:20] The whole marketing and sales thing, again, did I do something that returned the money or not? Events, a lot. Everything today needs to be based on data, not on feelings. Both in our product engineering department and now in support, we try to measure everything. Quarterly planning, how much we did, how much we didn't, how much on-plan, everything very, very, very calculated. And planned. And planned, and like, without it you can't have a discussion to improve, because you can't argue on feeling, feeling, you'll argue with someone until tomorrow. You know, a few years ago there were a lot of arguments with CS, that there are unresolved bugs, bugs not this. Until we took it for a moment, had a discussion, saw, wow, they're right, because it takes time to fix this, it takes time to fix this, and we need to build a process around it, so... So maybe, just, I'll take a second, but I have to say that actually I want to be, like, the next company, fine, God willing there will be a next company, I don't know yet, but honestly I want to be either a teacher or a member of the Knesset, I haven't decided yet what I feel like.

The urge to teach

Eyal David: [40:24] Why?

Dor Atias: [40:26] A teacher because I, first of all, back then, before the army and all that, I was kind of at an after-school program, helping kids with homework. I really, really loved it, explaining to them how to think. I was also a private tutor a few years ago, until I stopped. I love explaining things to people, I love teaching them new ways, I love... I had a student, I don't know, seven years ago, a high schooler studying computer science. No, it wasn't working for her, she wasn't succeeding at the... and then I wanted to explain it to her in all kinds of new ways, I don't remember now what, but I wanted to make her enjoy it. In the end she got some 90-something on the matriculation exam, and she was happy and all. But I want to make people look at things differently. In my career I want, like, to see the next generation and try to help. The problem is that teachers' salaries are... well, you're solving that now, not really. So for me right now, right now no, it's not relevant, although I thought about doing on the side, like, remedial lessons in high school, but you need a teaching certificate, at least that's what they told me, so I don't have the time to do it right now. And Knesset member, same thing, I want to, like, improve and do it. There are a lot of things that bother me, we won't talk politics now, but a lot of things bother me, small things that bug the ordinary citizen, and I'd like to do that, I'd like to do something meaningful for the country, for citizens. But that's also a question, because I'm a very outspoken person, and can say things I'm not supposed to say, so I'm not sure I'm such a good fit for that job. But you're a people person, and there's more money in it than teaching, so maybe,

Eyal David: [42:02] Tell me, and what you said is interesting, you basically love to teach. Yes. Is that something you also find yourself doing day-to-day, today, do you bring in... Today I don't have time for anything.

Dor Atias: [42:13] I wish I had the time to go teach, or... the moment I have a free minute, I'm probably sleeping with Gur, but I really, really love it. If I could go teach now somewhere that fits my schedule, I'd do it. I love seeing a person succeed. There was some, I don't know, eight years ago, there was a kid of a friend of my mom's, doesn't matter, who wanted to learn programming. And he didn't really understand what it was about, he didn't understand what it is, like, everyone's talking about it, and I can't figure out how to approach it. And then we solved it with, like, there's some game of... a game with some monkey, where you can explain to it how to do things. He got really, really excited, and suddenly he succeeded at these things. And to this day, ten years later, he's not into the monkey anymore, but he says, I remember Dor, who kind of gave me the confidence, because I told him, you see, you did it, you did it, you focused and you did it. So to this day, like, even now he says, Dor told me back then, you focused and you did it. That sentence of mine kind of stuck with him. So I want to be meaningful to people and help them be better. And that's also what they get from me at the company, and that's also what drives me, making people better as a result. Listen, how amazing that at age 31, right? No, four. Four, sorry. You sharpened all these things for yourself? That's stunning to me, really. It took me time. Again, I'm not perfect, I'm not, I have a lot to learn. I'm not, I'm talking now, you know, as if I'm somebody, but I have a lot of things I'm not good at, tons of things I'm not good at. And I mentioned them here too, right?

Eyal David: [43:53] And I need to improve and... I'll cut your humility short. Listen, just before that, there's another question that came up, and you actually connected it for me. How do you actually identify people who... as they said, take ownership and don't just talk, but like you said, I'm not somebody special. How do you identify such people?

Spotting ownership

Dor Atias: [44:09] So first of all, whenever people come to me with a problem, I say, like, let's say someone comes to me with a problem, some employee, I tell him, why are you coming to me with a problem? Bring me a solution too, don't just tell me what the problems are, I have enough problems in my life. Come, you have a problem, tell me, and also give me the three solutions you propose. So a person who comes not only with a problem but also with proposed solutions, for me that's a person who takes ownership. A person who comes and makes decisions, and doesn't just come and tell me, this is the status, and expect me to tell him. That's what taking ownership is about.

Eyal David: [44:36] So we've added another sharpening to the previous question of what's expected today. It's also much easier to get to solutions in the end. Much easier, but people still,

Dor Atias: [44:45] Still have, despite Claude and Cursor and the chats and all that, they still have the fear of doing things they don't know. So you need to keep pushing them to do things they don't know. You also need to give them infrastructure for it. We now have someone in the organization who's an AI Enablement Lead. He kind of takes everything across the whole company, a very strong DevOps guy, who takes everything in the company, talks with everyone, with Sales, with Operations, and sees what takes them a lot of time, what doesn't work well between departments and within a department, and he tries to give them the infrastructure to create what they need.

AI Enablement

Eyal David: [45:16] Because people are still afraid. Which, by the way, is also a great field to get into today, going into companies and offering that service. Right, right.

Dor Atias: [45:24] Interesting. There are also companies, by the way, that do exactly this, by the way, in Israel, like, SaaS companies that basically come in and build that AI enablement. But in the end, for a company to succeed in being AI-driven and all the buzzwords, it needs infrastructure. You can't just give the whole world Claude and say, we're AI-native. That's just BS. You need infrastructure that's secure, scalable, and so on. It doesn't work to come and say, we're AI-native, come on, don't fool me. Come, build the right infrastructure, make it run securely, especially for security companies, make it work at scale, make sure you haven't drained the company's bank account, that it's not doing the wrong things. That's making it AI-driven, not just saying we use Claude and we have skills. That's not really AI-driven.

Truly AI-native

Wrap-up

Eyal David: [46:12] And if you can also measure this whole thing and show it really helps, ROI-wise, then even better. Listen, Dor, it was great, it was, we really talked broadly. You talked about how this is called Product Builder, right, but it's also you, your own product, so I think we talked more about that actually, it was interesting. We'll put a link to your LinkedIn if people want to ask questions. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun, too bad it's over. It went fast, yes. Alright, thank you very much, bye bye. Bye bye, see you. Wow, that went fast. Right?