Omer (00:10.160)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies, and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talk to Uri Haramati, the co founder and CEO of Tory, a SaaS platform that helps you discover, optimize, and control your organization's SaaS usage and costs.
So you're looking for a SaaS business idea?
Well, maybe you just need to solve something that frustrates you.
Today, Uri was having a hard time keeping track of all the SaaS applications that were being used at his company.
And when he talked to his peers in the IT space, he realized that they had the same problem.
And he started wondering how much demand there might be for a solution that solved this frustration.
And he'd been looking around for solutions, but couldn't find something that really solved the problem well.
So he and his two co founders developed an mvp.
In about two weeks, all it did was connect to your bank account and generate a simple report of your SaaS subscriptions and how much you were spending.
They used their network to find companies that needed their solution.
And they didn't charge for the mvp.
They just kept talking to users, collecting feedback, and improving the product in.
In fact, it took them one year to get their first paying customer, and that was through somebody they knew.
But the real milestone was when they signed pipedrive, their first unaffiliated customer.
And that was the real validation point for them.
The year of relentlessly focusing on their potential customers, and their product was starting to pay off.
It had taken a lot longer than they'd wanted, but they'd finally found product market fit.
Today they have around 50 customers and are closing in on their first million dollars in annual recurring revenue.
So I hope you enjoy the interview.
Uri, welcome to the show.
Uri Haramati (02:26.550)
Hey, great to be here.
Omer (02:28.230)
So I always like to ask my guests if they have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates them, or, you know, just tell us in your own words if you prefer, like, what gets you out of bed every day.
Uri Haramati (02:38.690)
So I don't have a favorite quote, but I think what gets me out of bed is building something that makes a change for someone and see it works.
I'm a builder in my nature.
I love to build stuff with if it's related to work or not.
And when I see people using that and it makes change for them, that what drives me when I wake up in the morning.
Omer (03:04.060)
Cool.
So for people who aren't familiar with Tauri, can you tell us what does the product do, who is it for and what's the problem that you're helping to solve?
Uri Haramati (03:17.260)
Sure.
So Tauri is SaaS management and it's a B2B enterprise SaaS software.
We help IT and large organizations manage their SaaS, which means understanding what tools are being used in the company, how much they are being used, how much you pay for them.
And by that also save, spend, save time and be more compliance.
Because today you have hundreds of tools being used in a single company.
I can tell you that you see numbers that companies got beyond 900 tools and part of our product is just discovery of what is being used and it becomes a huge pain of controlling and managing all this, the SaaS environment in today's companies.
And add to that the fact that everything, the entire management is becoming more and more distributed.
Because as you know from your podcast, many of the tools we use start from the bottom up.
Right.
Everyone could just start to use a new tool and maybe they will later on be managing it in the entire company.
So it's not like before when you had it manage these 1015 tools.
Now you might have the VP of Marketing, you know, in charge of the marketing software and they have ops people and it's becoming a huge, huge pain to manage all these tools and you can't add more people to manage more software.
And that's why we are here.
We are building this autonomous IT for managing SaaS applications.
Omer (04:55.280)
Okay, great.
So I want to dig into more about, like, how you came up with the idea and, you know, how the product works, because I think that's pretty interesting and I'm curious about that.
But before we do that, let's talk a little bit about your background because you're a serial entrepreneur, you've worked on a number of other startups.
And so I think there's some interesting information there that I think will be helpful for the listeners.
But tell us a little bit about, like, what kind of startups you were working on before this business.
Uri Haramati (05:33.550)
Sure.
So I had a couple of startups before Tori and the last one was pretty much in a very different area with consumer live streaming product.
We started back in 2012, which we had few pivots and iterations.
So at first it called Yevo and then it turned into Air and then it turned into Meerkat.
That pretty much exploded in San Francisco and South by Southwest and then we pivoted into Houseparty and it was a crazy, crazy rollercoaster we saw spikes in hyper growth and the hockey stick and then we failed and we needed to scale down the team about three times and we raised about $70 million in three rounds.
So there I learned a lot about building company, building the product, resilience you need and consumer and really building a company that's focused around product and productization.
And before that I had another startup and with Mercat and House Party, I was one of the founders and led the product in R and D and also was in charge of the entire operations of the company.
So as the company grew, I started realizing that we have more and more tools that are being used.
And I love Software, I love SaaS.
I love using tools to make my life easier and my work even better.
And for me, if you know, you have this excitement about unpacking physical products.
So for me it's more or less about the same about using new software.
But at the same time I wanted to enable this agility in the company to enable everyone to use the best tools, but at the same time stay in control.
And when I started looking for solution, there was nothing out there that really deals with SaaS management.
So that's kind of where the idea grow.
And then I left houseparty and started Meerkat and then started Tori back in early 2017.
Omer (07:34.140)
Okay, so you had this idea and it was kind of born from a pain that you were having yourself before you sort of jumped in and started thinking about building the product or raising money.
What did you do to validate that idea?
Uri Haramati (07:55.100)
Right.
So first I started looking into what's out there, right?
Because probably I have this idea, but many people try to solve it before I did.
And that's my assumption always, right?
Are people trying to solve it today?
If not, there's a problem.
And I started looking outside and then I realized, hey, there's nothing really interesting out there.
Some company just recently started doing something around it.
But then I also trying to understand why there is nothing out there.
And that's kind of when I dive into the trends that brought me to this idea.
And these are all new trends and it's a new product, right?
A new category.
SaaS management is nothing you needed before because you didn't have that many SaaS tools and you didn't have the pain that you have today.
Right?
When an employee is leaving the company and they use 30 tools and the admins of these tools are all over the company, how do you know what to do?
How do you know how to remove this person from the right Tools.
Right.
You didn't have this before.
Add to that the change in demographics that you have more and more millennials and people that were born into the world of software.
And for them, using the best tools and the latest technology is something that is pretty obvious.
And switching between tools is obvious.
It's nothing that you had before.
So kind of learning about these trends also made it more clear for me that now is the best time to start.
Omer (09:18.660)
Tori and did you go out and talk to potential customers?
Did you try to figure out like how much of a pain this was for other people?
Uri Haramati (09:30.010)
Yeah.
So coming from a consumer background, for me what I learned is you should release it as fast as you can for people or customers or users and just start iterating with them.
And for me it was more or less the same.
I started researching and talking to some people and some potential customers, but I knew that I want to do something and release it fast, even if it takes two weeks just to see if there's something out there.
And that's pretty much what it was.
Tao, my co founder, joined me and later on Uri joined and then we said, all right, let's do something in two or three weeks when you can connect your bank account to the company and we will map your SaaS spend.
Right.
And we took our previous companies and some friends companies and, and we said, all right, let's do that.
And after two weeks or three weeks, they had something to see.
It was very low value, but you see there was something with it and that's where it all started.
And then when you have someone that you can work with, you can start iterating with that.
And there are two ways that we went at the same time.
One of them is iterating with these.
They weren't customer, they weren't paying, they were friends.
And they had companies about.
From the 10 people company to just started to 100 people.
Nothing is enterprise, no large customers or companies.
But we told them, hey, that's since you are a friend, try it and let's see what's going on.
And we are still building the product around it.
So one hand we iterate with them on the product, on the other hand we iterate with potential larger customers of hey, this is where we are building and showing them few steps ahead and trying to understand what are the needs, what are the pains around the issues we are solving and how we can solve it better for them.
Omer (11:27.080)
How did you find that first big customer?
Was this just outbound?
Were you just kind of knocking on doors, making phone Calls, sending emails.
Uri Haramati (11:35.240)
So we had about 50 or 104 of these small customers.
I don't call them customers.
They weren't paying.
There were like Test or Alpha Lions.
And then we knew we wanted we need to go to a larger or going up market for companies that starts with 200, 300 employees and above.
So the first thing was let's map everyone we know who is it in first and second degree of the three of us, that's Uri Natib, my co founder Tal and I and and start reaching out to them.
And that's what we did.
That was the first customers that we got.
And customers were there like they were Datorama Monday similar web these were our very first customers.
And then we started also reaching out by outbound additional customers which we believe that are relevant for us.
So the first customer that we got that is not somehow related to us in some level was actually pipedrive.
So we just reached out to pipedrive it.
We said hey, we used pipedrive back then.
We said hey, we are using your tool, we love it.
And we thought you might want to see Tori.
And from that point on they became a customer.
It was great ever since.
And they were our first customer who was no one we knew on a first or second level.
Right.
Omer (13:09.520)
And so pipedrive was the first paying customer.
Uri Haramati (13:12.000)
No, they weren't the first paying customer.
Like similar web Monday Daturama they were our first paying customers.
In terms of paying customers, pipedrive was the first paying customer which we reach out completely outbound, unlike someone that we know of a cold connection or cold intro or second like second level connection.
Omer (13:35.910)
Got it, got it.
Okay.
What did that sales process look like?
Because it was interesting.
You said hey, you know the product we kind of built in a couple of weeks and it didn't do that much from what you described, it sounds like it was a nice way of generating a report from your bank account, an alternative way to look at your bank statement.
And so how did you make the connection between a very simple product to getting to a point where a business is willing to pay you for that?
Uri Haramati (14:07.340)
Right.
So there was about one year between the two.
So when we started with the first initial customer, the initial tool that took us about two, three weeks to develop, then that the place when we started iterating with 70 companies that are kind of friends, small companies, no one was paying.
And during that time took us about a year until early 2018 to start and iterate with larger customers on the potential product and the upcoming features while we are developing them.
So then in early 2018, we got our first customer.
And by that time, it wasn't just the dashboard, it was much more than that.
And it was much more than just scanning the credit card.
There was also shadow IT involved and different dashboards and understanding app usage and all different integrations that we've had.
Omer (15:06.410)
Okay, got it.
So you started with a, you got this basic sort of MVP done in a couple of weeks.
You got that out there and you used your connections between the founders to find people who would use the product.
They weren't paying for it at the time, but just as valuable in those early stages is somebody who's willing to commit some of their time to try the product and give you useful feedback.
And then so you were using that to iterate and improve on the product.
And then a year out is when you were able to sort of take what you had done and start working with some of these bigger companies and finding the pipe drives, you know, the first unaffiliated customer that you're not related to or in some way or another.
Uri Haramati (15:56.650)
Correct.
And it's important to distinguish the discussion we had in the first year with these three customers because we knew that they will not be our customers and we needed to take their feedback with a grain of salt.
Right.
Because they are not in the size of the relevant customers.
They are not the same positions.
So when you are talking about 20 people company, the user of Tory might be the CEO and founder.
Right.
And the CEO and founder will not use the same story as the IT person in 200 People Company.
And we were aiming for the IT and the 200 People Company.
So the goal in the first year was less about getting product feedback from them in order to develop the product.
It was about testing the technology and building the technology around them while getting feedback from the larger customers on something that is working and getting to work even more.
It's something that is easy to mistake, you know, getting feedback from the wrong customers.
Omer (17:03.290)
Yeah, that's a, that's a great point.
Because if you start out with those customers and it goes back to like having clarity about who your target market is and where you're headed, and you could easily have spent I guess a year building a product for a SaaS company with less than 20 employees.
Right.
And then probably wouldn't have been that helpful.
Uri Haramati (17:25.700)
Yeah.
And there are great products for SMBs and small, small companies that they know they want to get this market, but for us it wasn't that.
And you need to also, sometimes you just learn it on the way.
Right.
Omer (17:41.460)
Yeah, yeah, totally.
So what are you guys doing in revenue today?
Uri Haramati (17:48.650)
So now we are reaching our first million in ARR.
We have about 50 or so of the paying customers, which is for me it's amazing.
I never sold anything before.
Tori, coming from B2B, everything around sales and marketing, SaaS, marketing, that's totally new for me.
Omer (18:09.390)
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that.
Like what?
So you've basically had to.
Even though you've had this experience with startups before, this has been very different in terms of SaaS and B2B and learning about sales and marketing.
So when you think about this sort of, this journey you've had to go through over the last couple of years, what were.
Well, let me ask it another way is like if, if somebody is in a similar situation to you, what advice would you give them to think about in terms of like getting good at sales and marketing as a founder?
Uri Haramati (18:50.440)
Right.
So for me it's really, it was learning everything from scratch because I never did anything like that.
I never sold the software.
I don't know how to manage pipeline at these days and you know, how sales process would look like.
And I think one thing we did that worked well for us in a very small team, when you have just the founders and a few developers, was that both me and Uri, my co founder, we were selling the product.
So in most cases in these stages would be either the CEO selling the product and he's the salesperson and Uri was the VPR and D back then.
My co founder now is the chief product.
So we both were selling the product.
So the fact that both of us were kind of salespeople, it helps us a lot in learning from each other, you know, shadowing each other and getting better in our pitch in our sales and improving the sales process for us as founders.
And in the early days, obviously, I think the first like 25, 30 deals, that was just us.
Omer (20:00.750)
Okay.
And let's talk a little bit about like how you were doing that.
So let's start with like, what did the outreach look like and what were some of the lessons you learned from that?
Was this a matter of sending cold emails and trying to get a demo set up initially?
Uri Haramati (20:19.710)
So when we started with our first customer early 2018, we pretty much tried everything.
So we tried email outbound, we tried LinkedIn outbound, some PPC, both on LinkedIn, Google and Facebook, and with very small marketing budget.
Right.
So the PPC was ridiculous.
We had I think around 2018.
We spent around, I think 40 or $50,000 on marketing and that also included like a conference.
And I think that back then outbound worked a bit better for us because we were more on top of it.
And it's easier for you when you're not a marketing person to start with an outbound of something you really believe in.
Right.
Because I'm still selling my company from day zero until today.
Right.
I'm selling it to investors, I'm selling it to customers, I'm selling it to employees.
I know how to sell the company.
And the vision about selling the product and going through the sales process, that was something that is new to me and closing deals like that.
So I think outbound worked well for us back then, but then at some point it's not enough.
And for us it was outbound and then getting a demo.
And then we pretty much tried everything.
We tried a free trial, we tried a paid poc, we tried just starting to pay all kinds of onboarding or implementation periods and what worked.
And I think back then paid pilot worked for us, but then we changed it to free trials.
One of the things that I was thinking is we had one month paid pilot and then we saw we are selling to the IT and Tory is connected.
We have more than 70 integrations on Tory and we are connecting to very sensitive data sources like the ERP netsuite to pull the finance data G suite and Slack to pull users and usage and stuff like that.
So our belief was larger companies, they won't connect these systems so easily.
So you need them a one month pilot in order to see the value.
Right.
Because it takes time to.
But then it was something different that I saw that once you set, when you set it up like you can start a free trial of two weeks.
The perception of a free trial, they find it much easier to connect these data sources because they know it's limited in time.
Unlike the PoC.
The paid PoC, which was all right, we need to get ready for that.
We need to get through finance and security and legal, even for the paid pilot.
Right.
And that I'm talking about 5000 employee company, when you have CISO and CIO, they were just all right, it's a free tile.
It's a different perception.
We're just trying it now.
Let's connect the system, see how it works and then decide.
And that was something that was really surprising for me working with larger customers.
Omer (23:34.410)
Yeah, that's really interesting because I would have thought that the paid pilot or proof of concept would work better because they would feel more, I don't know, more confident about hooking up some of these data sources to a new product.
How did you figure out that the free trial worked better the way we tested it?
Uri Haramati (24:00.270)
And that's something, that's my belief coming from consumer that everything can be tested in some way and we shouldn't be afraid to test it.
Right?
It's better to test something on a very short or small scale than discussing it for three months.
So the idea was we had a large customer that we talking about, the POC paid POC and it took about two months for them.
And we started talking and yeah, we need that approval and debt approval.
And then we talked about ourselves internally.
Hey, why don't you have this free trial for the two weeks?
So I thought, all right, let's offer that to them.
So we offered them, hey, we're just offering for this month we have a free trial of two weeks.
So they said immediately on that call, all right, let's do that.
Boom, the next day they signed up, connected all the systems and boom.
And you see Valentory on day one.
And that was the proof for me that this thing works.
But we are still iterating a lot around it.
I can tell you that.
Earlier this year we also tried free trial from the website.
Until then we had a requested demo from the website.
Requested demo was all right, let's schedule a demo and get either whatever.
We talked about the paid pilot, the free trial.
When we had the free trial from the website, we got a lot of these small customers that are just not relevant for us.
And IT add a lot of noise into the system and it was very hard to manage.
And that was one part.
The other part was we got larger companies but non relevant people from the large companies.
Omer (25:45.930)
What do you mean not relevant people?
Because I would have thought the relevant people would be the ones signing up, coming to the website and signing up.
Uri Haramati (25:53.610)
Me too.
What I mean is, let's say you have a 5,000 people company, right?
And there will be a couple of people that are relevant for tory and the IT.
But then developers see SaaS management.
So he think maybe it's for managing my SaaS.
We are a SaaS company.
I should subscribe to that and then understand and see that it's not that.
And there's another challenge with what we do is that it's a very new category, right?
There's not yet the category called SaaS management.
And all of our companies, all of our customers, they never had a solution like that before.
It's not that I'm telling You, hey, I have a CRM, it's better than yours.
Why don't you switch to my CRM?
People come for SaaS management, they don't really know what they are there for.
That's also one of our challenges in marketing and sales.
Some of them come for the spend optimization.
Some of them come for the security risks that they have.
Some of them come to save time they spend on the different tasks around SaaS management.
And for that, the demo and the request demo and the higher touch onboarding was necessary and I believe it still is necessary because you don't know exactly what you need and you don't know exactly how these solutions work.
Omer (27:21.910)
Like, yeah, I think it can be really tough when you're in a new category because you've got so much more work to do to get people to understand what the product does and how they should think about it.
And so I'm interested in kind of how that's working for you.
Like today in terms of positioning, I come to the homepage and I can see manage all your SaaS apps in one single place.
Tory lets IT professionals discover, optimize and control the organization's SaaS usage and costs.
So I don't know, maybe it's because I watched the video or something, but I kind of got it.
But I'm curious how many people are coming to the homepage reading something like that, requesting a demo and they still don't really understand what the product does.
Is that still common?
Uri Haramati (28:20.300)
Yeah, it's not that it's not that it's common.
And that's one of the validations for us that we're doing the right thing, is that we see more and more educated customers as time goes by because you have more competitors and they are investing in marketing.
So back in the days when we just started, we needed to tell them what we are here for, why we're doing, why they even have a problem.
And that's tough.
And today they are coming in a more educated level.
But still, when you are looking on a large organization, the scope of each person in the organization is becoming lower and lower, right?
So the person that is signing up from an enterprise, they might not care at all about SaaS spend, they might care only about security, right?
And unlike the startups or the small companies, when pretty much everyone is doing almost anything, or when the company just started and it is doing everything, that's it.
But then they are coming and asking, are you managing my contracts?
Are you?
Can I pay to the SaaS tools from Tory, stuff like that which we are not doing.
Right.
And that's kind of what.
There are many parts like that.
And that's part of building this category of SaaS management and also us educating and at the end of the day part of what we are doing in the next quarter, next two quarters is getting to next level in terms of our messaging and our positioning and the market is growing.
So you have more idea of where everyone is within this market.
Yeah.
Omer (30:01.060)
Now you mentioned that as you focus on increasing leads, you were getting a lot of people who were signing up who weren't good quality leads or the wrong people.
And now if you go to the website, I don't find an option to sign up for the product anymore.
The only call to action I can see is to request a demo.
So presumably that's there to help you to do kind of better qualify the leads that do come in.
And like how are you doing that?
What does the process look like to qualify leads?
Uri Haramati (30:35.860)
Correct.
It's both that and us going into more and more account based approach.
So we don't want to kill the option to talk to us, but we know who we want to target, we know who want to reach out and we want to get them through outbound or other methods.
And the process, if you ask the process of qualification.
So now they are getting.
And some of these processes are relatively new.
Right.
Because we started building a go to market team earlier this year.
Before that you were talking now to the product, to the sdr, to the AE and to the marketing guy at the same time.
Right.
So both when it's the founder only the founder is doing both the qualification and the sales and everything all together.
But today when we also have an SDR and account executives and marketing, so we have initial qualification in terms of size and position and then we have additional qualification in terms of need and education level, which is pretty much intent and knowledge and then it goes to the sales.
Omer (31:49.410)
And then how does that initial qualification happen?
Is that just over email or you have a sort of a discovery call with a lead when you do the demo?
Yeah.
Uri Haramati (31:58.010)
So it's both over email and discovery call with Elite.
And it's.
Some of it is, it's still.
We are iterating in that.
Right.
We're constantly testing new and different parts.
Omer (32:07.850)
Yeah, I mean so now I was going to say like something you said earlier is that you know when you, when you have.
It's much easier to sell to somebody who knows they have a problem and they're looking for a solution.
And if you have to if they're earlier in the life cycle and you have to convince them that they have a problem that needs to be solved, that's tough.
Uri Haramati (32:26.930)
That's tough.
And it's also sometimes they do have a problem but they don't know that there is a solution for that.
Right.
That's I think more proper way to describe it that they do have this problem.
I have a problem.
I'm losing control over SaaS.
I have a problem with offboarding the employees when I'm talking about it.
Right.
Have a problem with license management.
But they don't have the, they don't know that there is a solution for that.
So they also might not search it.
Omer (32:54.020)
Yeah.
And so as the team has grown, inbound is something that you've been able to kind of get that to work.
Like are people now, are there more people out there looking for a solution or are you finding that outbound?
It's still the primary way to find customers.
Yeah.
Uri Haramati (33:19.500)
So we always see increase in relevant inbound like qualified leads coming from inbound but the more interesting leads and larger accounts came from outbound.
So we are looking to invest more in the outbound.
And one of my and our mistakes of building the go to market team is you know when we increase the efforts of inbound without the proper qualification.
So the AES, they had too much or too many contacts to deal with that many of them were not relevant and at the end of the day it led them closing less deals instead of focusing on a smaller amount of contacts that are more relevant.
And that's.
That comes when you are setting up the go to market team at once and invest more efforts on marketing that is pouring more leads into the machine and then the AES are taking them but the leads are not that well qualified.
So it can kill the sales side of things.
Omer (34:26.730)
Yeah.
And when you think about sort of account based marketing, are you still targeting the same types of companies?
Has that become clearer for you over the last year in terms of who is your ideal customer, who isn't?
Is that still an evolving process?
Uri Haramati (34:44.660)
I think it's both.
So I think we have an idea who is our gear customer profile and we are targeting these through account based marketing and account based sales.
But at the same time we are investing some efforts to test other types of customers.
Like not saying these are the customer profile and that's it.
And this is how it's going to be forever.
We gonna spend a lot of effort around that.
But still have this doubt is this also a good market for me or that Also good market for me.
And I'm not saying go all over the place, but invest some effort as a test to see what's up with this kind of.
This size of customers or that type of customers.
Omer (35:31.830)
So, yeah, I want to talk a little bit about testing because you said you kind of came from a background where you sort of believe that everything can be tested.
And I think that's a.
A great approach.
I guess some people might argue, well, you know, some things when you're doing like a B testing, you need to have a certain amount of traffic to really kind of get sort of statistically relevant results.
So when you think about testing, like, what's your approach and what sort of results do you look for to feel confident that you can move forward with a decision?
Uri Haramati (36:09.540)
Yeah, so it's.
That's.
That's totally different from B2C.
Right.
So in B2C, it's easier to take product decision that are based on testing.
I'm not saying it's easier in general to take product decisions, but it's easier to roll out tests for 100,000 people.
And back in the days, we had about 2 million daily active users.
So when you want to test something, you release it, and then you have pretty much results fast with high confidence.
It's totally different when you start a B2B, especially when it's Enterprise B2B.
And until today, we cannot do a B test.
Right.
We don't have enough customers, we don't have enough flow.
We don't have.
We cannot do AB test.
So the tests that I'm referring to, still large part of them is based on gut feeling.
Is this a good result for me?
Is this enough for me?
Did that prove what we wanted to prove?
But it sends you kind of an indicator there's something there or there's nothing there, and then you can say, all right, we close this deal because of that.
Let's test it again.
Let's try that.
Or let's put two times the effort on that part.
This is what I mean about testing.
It's not black and white.
It's never is.
Also, in consumer, when you have the high numbers, it looks sexier like that from the stories, but it's never black and white.
Like, it's not that you're changing a button and boom, everything works.
And the same goes with testing on B2B.
It's boom.
You have very small amount of customers and usage.
You're not going to get conclusive results, but you get something that will help you move a little bit.
Forward.
Omer (37:54.500)
Yeah.
So, you know, I think you're doing a lot of the same things without sort of going through like, through to like true a B testing where you're focused on one thing.
It's like this is the market that we're focused on right now.
Maybe we internally, we have some ideas that these two, two or three other markets might be potential areas for us to also go after.
And, you know, can we run some small tests there to see if there's some signs of life?
And if there are, we can kind of explore that further.
And if not, then then maybe you know, we just kind of move on and look at some other markets or potential sort of customers to sort of go after.
And, and I think it was important that you said, hey, this is not like, you know, try to do everything or like, let's build a product for everybody or every market.
Right.
This is more about staying focused but continuing in parallel to test other ideas in a manageable way to see if there's might be some other opportunities that you've overlooked.
Uri Haramati (39:04.240)
Yeah, I think that's totally it.
I think it's absolutely what I meant.
And I think it helps you also when you have, you say on whatever domain in the company, we say, this is how we work, this is where we go.
But let's test that part at first.
It allows you to focus on where you go and do one thing in addition and not just going all over the place.
And it also helps you to define the other thing as a test.
Right.
So when you say let's test this, that you start a test, you finish a test, you have results from the test, unlike.
Let's do that and let's do that and let's do all those five things together.
Omer (39:43.680)
Yeah, yeah, totally makes sense.
Okay, great.
So we should wrap up.
We're going to go into the lightning round.
I'm going to ask you seven quick fire questions.
So just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
You ready?
Uri Haramati (39:57.160)
All right.
Yeah.
Omer (39:58.120)
Okay.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
Uri Haramati (40:02.310)
I think that would be let some fire burn.
Some fires, you just need to let them burn.
You don't need to solve everything at once.
Omer (40:13.030)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Uri Haramati (40:15.670)
I think getting things done, that was one of the greatest for me.
When you get to do more and more tasks and kind of managing different domains, that was a great one.
Omer (40:26.230)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?
Uri Haramati (40:31.260)
I think that's endurance.
It's something you need to grit, to just have a thick skin and be able to move forward and forward.
Omer (40:38.860)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or
Uri Haramati (40:42.660)
habit that would be airtable.
Omer (40:45.020)
Do you use that to sort of stay organized?
Uri Haramati (40:46.940)
I use it for so many things.
I think they took database and got it for everyone and that's a great, great tool.
I can tell you exactly because we have Tori.
I can tell you that I'm using about 90 tools on a monthly basis for my work.
So I have a bunch of tools that I love.
Omer (41:07.900)
Wow.
Yeah.
You did confess that earlier, right?
You'd love to try new tools.
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Uri Haramati (41:18.220)
Wow.
There are so many.
I think every time is what annoys me at the same day.
So there was a point that it was a proper mail client for salespeople.
Just mobile and desktop mail client that integrates with everything, all the right CRMs, capture all the data, prioritize everything for you.
I didn't even check what's out there in terms of sales or parts like that.
But that's something that was bothering me lately.
Omer (41:52.050)
That's a cool idea.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Uri Haramati (41:57.810)
Interesting.
I completed an Ironman triathlon a couple of years ago.
Omer (42:04.129)
Wow.
Uri Haramati (42:04.850)
It was a long one.
And then I became a dad, so that's where it stopped.
Omer (42:11.410)
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work that
Uri Haramati (42:15.360)
will be building stuff?
I like building really low tech like wood, concrete at home fixing.
That's one of my biggest passions.
I always love to have some side project of my own of building something that is on an ongoing project.
If I don't have one, I feel something is missing.
Omer (42:37.360)
What's your current project?
Uri Haramati (42:39.200)
I recently moved to the US from Israel so I just got my road bike here.
So my current project is disassembling them.
Next I'm going to paint them and then I'm going to reassemble them all over again.
That's a time trial bike.
Omer (42:55.450)
Wow.
That's pretty cool.
All right.
So Uri, thank you for joining me today and kind of, you know, being so open and sharing your story about Tori and you know, some of the successes you've had as well as some of the the mistakes and lessons you learned along the way.
If people want to find out more about Tory, they can go to Torrie, which is T O r I I h q.com and if folks want to get in touch with you what's the best way for them to do that?
Uri Haramati (43:35.170)
So that's my email.
That's uri like yuri.
That's u r I torihq.com awesome.
Omer (43:42.370)
Thank you again.
Thank you for making the time to have this conversation with me.
And I wish you and the team all the best of success.
Uri Haramati (43:49.570)
Thank you very much.
And I love your podcast.
I heard it from the days we started, and I got to learn what building SaaS means, and I'm very happy to be here today.
Omer (44:00.850)
Thank you.
That's very kind of you.
I appreciate that.
Cheers.
