Photo: From the YouTube channel, AsafAvidanAntonir
Despite the image that is sometimes reflected in the financial press, TV shows and nicknames like “overnight millionaires”, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs go through a “roller coaster” during the life of a startup, meaning a long, tiring and even discouraging process, with a lot of uncertainty and downs along with some ups and downs and small victories. But apart from those entrepreneurs and maybe a few of the people closest to them, most of us have no idea what it really looks like up close, in the grueling everyday life.
The Israeli entrepreneur Assaf Avidan Antonir decided to take action, and record on video the entire journey he was going to go through: from the phase of choosing the idea for a startup, through the pivots, raising funds and disappointing pitches to funds, to the first paying customers and the long-awaited exit in millions of dollars.
From an office in his sister’s room – until the sale
In the video, Avidan Antonir documents all the life stages of the startup he founded together with his partner, James Shah, whom he met during the two’s studies at Berkeley: starting with the stage of unsuccessful ideas in 2017 (when he was only 24 years old) such as putting sonar on drones to cover larger fishing area; and a focus on e-commerce and fashion, with video analysis. At this stage Avidan Antonir had already reached cold emails and meetings with media outlets such as Mashable, Wall Street Journal and Vox (the parent company of The Verge), but after a meeting with one of the media outlets, who could not understand what they were doing and even hung up on them in the middle of the explanation , they decide to change direction and approach.
The two threw the initial ideas in the trash, and decide to establish Onyx, a startup that develops a fitness app that uses the depth cameras of the iPhone to track the performance of the exercisers in real time. The video starts at such an early stage, that Avidan Antonir records himself watching the iPhone X announcement under stress, to see what innovations are expected this year and even follows the rumors and reports before the announcement.
For experience, the two turn to the venture capital funds only after they have a demo that works and looks impressive, but even though this time it seems they are on the right track, Avidan Antonir documents the first refusals they receive from investors, and after them – also the first investments that arrive.
During the video we are exposed to the frustrating moments familiar to many entrepreneurs – such as the beta not being ready in time; Apple’s first approvals for uploading the app to Appstore and appearing on the main page of the store; The first money coming in from monetization; The transition to an “office” in his sister’s room to a “real” office in a work complex; The first closures that led to a jump in downloads; The first purchase offer they refused; And even an investor who did ghosting in the middle of the process, only to establish, according to them, a competing company that develops exactly the same product.
The video ends after the two receive a purchase offer and document themselves in the processes of receiving the term sheet, due diligence and at the end of the sale of the company to Cure.fit. According to the reports, the company was sold for over 12 million dollars, with each of the entrepreneurs pocketing about 5 million dollars.
When the documentation is just as important as the project itself
Although the video does not document critical business moments such as the meetings themselves with the investors and potential buyers – but it does offer a video glimpse of the amount of investment, thought and physical and mental energy that such a process entails. In a conversation with Geektime, Avidan Antonir says that the video you see is the result of about a month’s work on about 8 hours of raw materials that he reduced to 45 minutes, and then he helped his brother who works as a director and editor to reduce and tighten it. From my conversation with him, he treats the startup as a startup, and this video as an equally important “project” for him. When I ask him why actually shoot at all, when he also knows that the chances are that the video will end with the closing of the company and not with its sale, he claims that “I’ve always been into content. But I wanted to make a project out of it. I thought if I was taking pictures, I had to succeed. There were moments when it didn’t work out, but I told myself that we had to do it. Even though we knew the chance was small… I told myself that if I set up a startup we would try to do something big. That was the beginning, and James (Avidan’s partner, AB) didn’t understand what I wanted.’
If you failed, would you release the video even then?
״Depends on how it ended. Even if there was no exit, it depends on what would have happened, and how it would have ended. Good chance I would release a project but maybe I would do it in a different way. There is value in this too. I wanted people to have the opportunity to see the process, and maybe avoid our mistakes… Many times I told myself that we would neither succeed nor release the project or it would become about learning and not about success. I think I would have taken that out too.’
Avidan Antonir says that even though sometimes his partner seemed a bit disturbed by the filming, he never asked him to stop filming. “James is the most fluid person I’ve ever met, even in the most difficult moments and during filming. You can see in the video that sometimes I catch him when he can’t see and he rolls his eyes. But it didn’t bother him. What’s more, in my opinion he didn’t understand what the vision for the project was. A day or two and the evening before we took him out we had a viewing party and he saw it for the first time. He was pleasantly surprised that we captured moments he doesn’t remember capturing. He was very pleased at the end.’ According to him, the only moments that did not make it into the final film were moments when he was extremely discouraged:That was really a mess and I’m really trying to think. There are moments when things don’t go well, when Growth stops for a few weeks or meetings don’t go well. Sections that you don’t have the strength to script. I always had this project in mind, so I documented almost everything.’ However, he does regret not documenting the moments when the two talked about another potential sale down the road, and a 3-hour meeting with executives in San Francisco that was not recorded at all. “These are sections that could have been interesting, but I look back and realize that this is just a footnote in the story.”
They tell you it’s a lot of fun and you only see people’s successes on LinkedIn. We wanted to show what the story really is
“Take the risk. At most, learn a lot and try again.’
We are interested in the difference between reality and the visual that is presented in the media or in LinkedIn posts: “I mainly want people to see what the process of building a startup is like. This is the process we went through and people go through different processes – but I know many good friends who built companies with completely different endings. We all at some point dreamed of building a company and just started without knowing what it was. They tell you it’s hard, they tell you it can be very lonely, they tell you it’s a lot of fun and you only see people’s successes on LinkedIn. We wanted to show what the story really is, to show the ups and downs and we wanted to share. I like to share, and we saw it as an opportunity to do an interesting project where you can share the experience, and I hope that at least it’s something fun to see even if you don’t learn anything from it.’
When I ask him what message he would like to convey to female entrepreneurs and young entrepreneurs who will watch the video and decide whether or not to pursue their dream, he replies: “The lesson is simple, if it’s something you want to do, start and try, and at most it will take six months or a year.” We are in a privileged place, we could do it and our parents supported, and we worked for several years. If you can take the risk, take it. At most you will learn a lot and try again in the future.’
Meanwhile, the two are already talking about setting up another startup. Will this journey also be documented? “Good question, but most likely not. Once was enough, but maybe in a few months I will change my mind. Not a bad chance, but after seeing the work and all this, I will concentrate 100% on the startup itself and not on the video.’