The entrepreneur who failed in “Ninja Israel” has now sold his startup

Photo: Wisio

Many entrepreneurs say that they founded their startup after they recognized a need in the market. But the story of Adam Frank and the Israeli Wisio is a story about a need he recognized in himself, and came precisely after a failure. Today (Monday) Wisio (formerly ScaleAbout) announces that it has been acquired by an American company.

Lost 25 kilos, added thousands of kilos of followers

About three years ago, Adam Frank decided to take action, and tried to be accepted into the “Ninja Israel” program. Yes, not exactly the usual route of the traditional Israeli entrepreneur. He began working out, shedding 25 pounds along the way, and was also accepted into the program. At the same time, he decided to document the process on Instagram and began to gain thousands of followers. At this point he was in a weird position, where he has quite a few followers, but he doesn’t really have a way to generate any income from his Instagram account because he doesn’t have enough followers for various sponsorships and advertisers. In a conversation with Geektime, Frank says that according to the studies he saw, there were another 50 million small content creators with him, and this number is about to triple in the next two years.

At that time, in 2019, he also began to notice that his inbox was filling up with questions from followers, and he felt that he could share his knowledge as a consultant or mentor to his followers, and identified a potential to establish a platform that would also help him make money from it, and continue to produce content over time. Together with Idan Maor, the CPO of ScaleAbout, their joint startup, they pivoted to Wisio, a complementary platform for content creators, ours was slightly reminiscent of Cameo: the followers of the content creators can enter the creator’s page in Wisio, and order a certain service from him such as advice, tips, mentoring, assistance, etc. Users can upload paid videos, recordings or text, which go directly to the creator, who in return sends you a response.

Maor claims that Wisio is the first platform that managed to bring a new business model to all those small or large influencers (although we will remind them of Patreon): “We are the first company in the world that saw online followers as much more than a like, a view, or a moving wallet. We saw them as human beings with The most basic need for human contact and treatment from those creators they follow.” Besides the platform, the company has developed new products that allow them to identify those influencers and creators “before they discover themselves”, and a system that is able to recommend to creators complementary services that it can offer depending on the field and nature of its audience. “Pelatorma today has thousands of influencers of all kinds, in all fields, from all over the world – mental and spiritual advisors, artists, musicians, singers, mentors, coaches, mothers, etc. who make their time available for their followers and make a living from it.”

Purchased by an American company

Today (Monday) the company announces that it was purchased by the American Outlook Amusements. Although Vizio refuses to state the purchase price, conversations with officials in the field reveal that it is in the millions of dollars. Since its establishment, the company has raised about 2 million dollars from investors such as Fusion, Jumpspeed, Samurai, fresh, fund and angels such as Ofer Yehudai from Fiber, David Siegel from Meetup, Clark Wahlberg from Invision and more.

The purchasing company is an American company that manages a marketplace for providing consulting services in the field of spirituality and the soul, and according to Maor, this purchase indicates that the company wants to gain a foothold in the world of influencers. “The combination of the knowledge and resources of Outlook together with the unique technology and Wisio’s experience and knowledge in the influencer market, will allow us to build new tools that will allow influencers to make their personal connection accessible to all followers on social networks through technological and product adaptations and changes. This will start from adaptation and focus on the world of spirit and soul and will expand later to other areas,” according to Maor.

Frank explains that the entire development team and only part of the business development team (a total of about 15 people) will continue with the new company, but notes that “it mainly depends on the abilities and experience of the employees in the face of the new vision and requirements”. Frank will continue to serve as CEO of the Israeli branch of OA.

Although Frank and Maor reached a rather celebratory point, the two say that this problematic period also took its toll on the deal: “The pressure increased the closer the deal was to closing, and on the other hand, the excitement for the joint effort also increased. As in any negotiation, we had to compromise, especially in the spirit The sensitive period we are in now, but in the end we managed to maintain the vision and the main goal for which we founded the company”, according to Maor. Frank claims that when the two founded the company, they did not plan to sell at all: “I will not believe any entrepreneur who will tell you that he went exactly the way he imagined he would go… All along we concentrated on the profitability problem of the small creators and tried not to fall in love with any solution. We got excited and jumped at the successes, and dived and we crashed from failures and despite this crazy roller coaster of the startup world, it was important for us to enjoy every step of the way, because, as we know, the statistics of success do not work in favor of the founders. Indeed, we were privileged to work with amazing people, who supported, accompanied, and taught us a lot, and allowed this venture to be A significant journey for us, both on a personal and professional level.”