From Developer to Successful Machine Learning Entrepreneur: David Moss, Co-Founder, President and CTO of People Power Company (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When did this insight on senior care come to focus?

David Moss: We knew we wanted to get into senior care around 2016. It takes time to orient that product in that direction. We had to keep the company alive. We wanted to position this technology more in this direction.

It was in 2018 that we received a $4.5 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to create assistive solutions for people with Dementia and Alzheimer’s. That was key. That enabled us to focus on commercializing this infrastructure and go out there with something that is valuable for this population.

Israeli Founders Building a FinTech Venture: Omri Dor, Co-Founder and COO of Obligo (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: When you went out for seed funding, what did you have? Did you have an MVP?

Omri Dor: We started working on it. In the beginning, it was me and Roey. For his other businesses, he had this building with offices. We were sitting there figuring out some stuff. We started thinking about what the product would look like. At that time, the market we had in mind was the Israeli market, which is a peer-to-peer, single renter, single landlord.

From Developer to Successful Machine Learning Entrepreneur: David Moss, Co-Founder, President and CTO of People Power Company (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: All these things that you talked about fit under positioning. Product positioning makes or breaks the business. You have to hit the right pain points, the right go-to-market strategy,and the right segmentation.

The next question I want to ask you is, you were tinkering with certain ideas in 2009, but the real idea around which you started building People Power took several years. Something like four years?

Israeli Founders Building a FinTech Venture: Omri Dor, Co-Founder and COO of Obligo (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the genesis? What was the idea?

Omri Dor: I should mention that ever since I was 20, I would always keep a record of all my ideas. I would try to classify them. I would do due diligence on my own ideas. I did this a lot. Every once in a while when I hit something that is big, I would call whichever friend of mine was knowledgeable and would be a potential co-founder.

From Developer to Successful Machine Learning Entrepreneur: David Moss, Co-Founder, President and CTO of People Power Company (Part 2)

David Moss: We realized that one of the big barriers to entry is that people have to buy some thing before they realize the value. We got to thinking about how do we get past this barrier to create more of a freemium model of the IoT. In 2013, I came up with the concept that we could transform a spare smartphone into a free internet-connected security camera. We created this app called Presence which did just that.

Israeli Founders Building a FinTech Venture: Omri Dor, Co-Founder and COO of Obligo (Part 1)

Omri tells a wonderful story of validating and navigating his original FinTech idea in Israel and building a company in the US.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

From Developer to Successful Machine Learning Entrepreneur: David Moss, Co-Founder, President and CTO of People Power Company (Part 1)

We have a huge audience of developers, engineers, and programmers who want to transition to becoming successful entrepreneurs.

This conversation explores the journey of such a developer. Fantastic story!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

4X Serial Entrepreneur from India: Kashyap Deorah, CEO of HyperTrack (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: So you had Naren on your Board for a while?

Kashyap Deorah: Yes. I said, “I’ll go with Nexus if you’re on the Board. Would you have the bandwidth for me?” He said, “I have all the time in the world.” He actually lived that. I never felt short of time with him. He would make time with me.

Sramana Mitra: Tell me about the business. You had early customers and validation. You had a significant financing round. What were the next major milestones?