Conversation with Amitai Ratzon, CEO Pentera
Transcript of conversation.
I had the distinct privilege of sitting down with the remarkable Amitai Ratzon, the visionary CEO of Pentera. Amitai's journey is nothing short of extraordinary, and our conversation delves deep into his inspiring ascent to the CEO position at the age of 40. Join us as we explore his incredible journey, from propelling Pentera from a humble beginning to a staggering $100 million enterprise, to orchestrating successful fundraising campaigns exceeding $100 million and fostering a thriving team of 350 exceptional individuals.
• What Motivates Him? - What keeps Amitai going every day?
• How did he become the CEO of Pentera?
• Growing the Business: - How did he make Pentera successful?
• First Day on the Job: - What did he do on his first day as CEO?
• Values in Business: - How do his personal values affect the way he runs the company?
• Maintaining Company Culture: - How does he keep the company culture strong with such a large and diverse team?
• Key Lessons: - What valuable lessons has he learned during his career?
To listen to the podcast: Spotify | iTunes
Disclaimer: The following is an unedited transcript of the conversation.
00:00:00] Ephraim: Hey everyone. I'm super, super excited to have with us a very, very special guest today on the Founder of Stories podcast. Today we have the absolute honor to host a dear friend, a rockstar, a legend. His name is Amita Ra, and as you can see the number behind him, number 23, Amita represents that number, number 23, he is the Michael Jordan of cybersecurity.
So I am very excited to have him here with us. He's the CEO of an incredible company called Pantera. He's also the father to a beautiful family and a husband to a great wife, and will ask his wife afterwards to confirm that. But I am very excited to have him here with us, to share with us his journey of how he got to where he is today, the lessons he learned along the way, and what we are able to take for ourselves.
So Amita, thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:00:45] Amitai: Thank you very much for hosting me. Obviously you've exaggerated your compliments, but I'll take it as you know, as is
[00:00:51] Ephraim: Well, you're welcome so I have to ask you, know, if you take a step back from. Five years ago. Five years ago, your VP of sales at a few different startups, you've taken startups from zero to wherever they've gone.
And five years later, you're the c e o of an incredible company that's growing tremendously. You have unicorn status, you have 350 employees, 800 plus customers. As you reflect on the journey of that, how do you think and what do you see you have changed professionally and personally in your life?
[00:01:16] Amitai: Well, that's a great question. I have to admit, starting with like where I'm today, with experiences like the one I'm going through at Panera, it definitely feels like more than five plus years. You know, this is like dog years. So it feel like every year as a c e O of a company
that's like ever growing. So every year that goes by it's like I'm applying for a new job. 'cause managing a company with 10, 15 people, like bunch of guys is one thing. 50 people. Then you have your A round investors and then your B round going through some experiences, COVID and others, and then kind of the whole journey feels like a few different jobs, to be honest.
But if I go back to where I was, uh, you are right. I mean, I didn't really see myself, clearly as a c e o 6, 7, 8 years ago. The max I could see, not because I didn't think that I could do that, just because my passion was always about enterprise sales. And my icons, if you want, were like iconic VP global sales figure that I've met, during my career in previous years, like Russell Levi at super derivatives and people like that I thought, you know, that when I grow up, I'll be one of them.
So the max I could see was me running. Global sales in some cool B two B SaaS company. Um, at some point, I think it was 2017, my father passed away. Kind of, by surprise it caught us all the family by surprise. It was May, 2017. And I went through kind of a situation as part of which I told myself, life on planet earth is rather short.
And you never know when this journey, the grand journey is gonna be over. It might be, a 90 year journey or a 40 or 60. You never know. So I kind of told myself, Hey, you need to, max every second that's left and This is your prime. You need to just shine at your prime and not be afraid to really explicitly to tell yourself what you wanna do.
And, I also realized that there is no right time to become a C E O. So I kind of, was preparing myself and I was talking to some people that I knew about potential openings as a C E O. I just didn't have like a prescription of how exactly do I move from being a VP of sales at a, FinTech company to being a C E O at any tech company.
cause there is no prescription. 'cause usually in the Israeli scenery, you see bunch of friends going out of 8200 or some technology army unit. One of them becomes the C E O, the other is the C T O and they're all coming from like the same d n a same heritage. I wasn't part of that. So for me to be a C E O at a tech company, since I'm not a technologist, although I'm working in tech for a long time, uh, I had to really team up with someone who is that strong.
Technology powerhouse and I also needed that person to say, although I'm a founder and a technologist of this amazing company, I don't want to be a c e O and actually want you Amita to be the c e o at the company I founded. Which is a rare combination, right? To the extent of like, not existent. So I did start entertaining this idea with some VCs I knew and some people.
And then I was lucky enough to be approached by Eric Libon and Eric Feingold, the two co-founders of Panera back in two 17. And they kind of, came to me when I came to this realization that I wanna do big things in my life moving forward, that would leave an impact and that this is my prime.
And I've met with them. And then I remember the conversation that went like, we look for a C E O and we got your name from Kellogg, where you've done your executive M B A. And I said, great, thank you for approaching me. But I'm not from cybersecurity. And they both said, great. And we're not from the go-to market business.
We're not in the business of taking companies from nothing to big something. And then it was, I think, match made in heaven. I'll give the credit to Eric Feingold and Oz Ventures for. Kind of bringing me to the table to start talking and then all the rest of the creator would give to Eric Berzon, , C t o and co-founder that became my partner in crime and partner in life to some extent.
Were now kind of, I look at us as partners in crime on this Penter journey. And yeah, it all started then. And I realized when I took on this job that you're never ready to be a C E O, but at some point you just need to jump into the deep water and kind of believe that you can do it because no one was born ready.
If you're in to manage the r and d function and the HR function, the marketing function and the legal function and raised tons of money in lots of rounds, no one learns that anywhere. So at some point I came to this realization that I would never be ready ' cause no school teaches that. No one teaches that anywhere.
So if you get a chance, you can learn on the fly. And that's what happened to Panera. I got a chance, and I joined at probably page 10. 'cause some people have put the foundations for me to come in. But when I joined, it was a company of a few folks, no price list, no customers, no brochures, nothing, just technology that was beta at the time.
Two and a half million dollars worth of funding money raised and big expectations of the future. So that was the situation that I started at back in January 20.
Wow.
[00:05:34] Ephraim: So first of all, I'm very sorry about your father. And I'm sure he is very, very proud right now looking down and seeing what you've accomplished. But there's so, so many questions and so many avenues to go from here. Like you mentioned in the beginning, and I guess this is something we'll touch upon, but I want to go back to the, the mindset phase of you thinking that you can never be a C E O.
That you'll be staying in VP of sales, eventually you'll become a C R O or something like that. And at some point you had to create a pivot within your own personal mind, and it came about through an unfortunate circumstances. But I wanna talk about changing that mindset and the work you did to overcome that hurdle within yourself.
That said, you know what, maybe I could actually be a C E O.
[00:06:09] Amitai: So to me it goes with humility and curiosity. I knew from the very beginning that I'm not gonna be the Mr No all type of c e o, the one that walks in the corridors and tell everyone what to do.
And the one that have answers for everything, like playing the very smart guy across every corner in the company. At, the very beginning, I knew I'm not gonna be this guy because no one is this guy. No one is this guy. Because early on we're shaping your personality based on some decisions we make.
One is a technologist and they're very good in tech and in their prime years they've built big products and did lots of tech or research. So in those years, they were not enterprise salespeople and those that chose to be enterprise salespeople or grand marketeers did not choose the other avenues.
So I realized early on that you cannot be everything to everyone and you cannot understand in all domains. And the very first thing I did when I took over as c e o was kind of talking to Eric about the team the fact that the team needs to be very much diverse. In terms of, what each person knows and, I owe it to Eric that he hired, ran Amir, just a second before I joined.
Ran is the chief product officer at Pentera, Eric CTO. And I brought a coin to be the CMO. So the four of us, if you think about it, have mutually exclusive DNAs. I look at us as the co-founders of the Panera business as opposed to the, Panera idea or the actual romantic incorporation.
Pentera, the business from zero revenue to where we are now. That business as a business has four co-founders, Alexon, myself, ran Tamir and IV Coin and all of us, you know, we're very diverse. No one wants to be the other, so I don't wanna be Eric, I cannot. Eric doesn't want to be me, although I think he can be a great c e o.
Avivi is a CMO and he wants to be amazing in marketing. He's amazing. Ran Tamir is this industry veteran ex Palo Alto, R Ss a checkpoint. He wants to be the chief product guy and that's great 'cause we're all very passionate about different things. And early on when this was just like a very early company, we said very clearly, Amit is the sales guy.
Eric is like the technologist. Ron is the pre-sales guy. Aviv is the marketing guy. We didn't care about title. We said, that's the four of us and let's just like, you know, be honest with ourselves. If we wouldn't get customers to join this journey, you know, I would never really be like a big CEO. ' cause what does a CEO do at the beginning?
It's probably, that's a tip to all young CEOs that get this job. Either because they opened their companies or because someone hired them and gave them a chance. Many people get confused ' cause they have those c e o images from movies and from their past and from whatever. And they think maybe the c e o need to talk to investors all the time and need to, work with like, , consulting firms and talk strategy, which I think is big BS for the beginning.
At the beginning, if you ask me, c e o has one job assuming that the product has been figured out and that there is the product and that's to sell. That's it. No one cares about anything else at the very beginning because if you wouldn't get logo number 1, 2 3, 4, 5 6 2 30, you would never scale the business area and you would never have a VP of sales that would then take over and move on with the sales domain.
So whether you're a C E O that loves sales or not, who caress the industry expects CEOs at young tech companies to sell, sell, and sell. Customers expect to see CEOs and co-founders in front of them. When you go to the US for the first tour, customers don't wanna see salespeople when you're a 15 employee company.
They say, who's the c E O? Why aren't they showing their faces here sending like this first sales guide? So the first kind of decision we've made that I think, made a difference was this diverse d n a. The second decision we've made was to be very clear about our vision. And that vision didn't change.
The vision of being the world authority in security validation, which is the end and the means to an end, was through the power of automated penetration testing, automated red teaming, you know, red teaming in a box, whatever you wanna call it. That was the means to end, but the end was always, the vision was clear from the beginning.
We want to be the global authority for everything, security validation, and I'm happy to say that five years and a half later, We are the biggest company on planet Earth when it comes to security validation. By all measurements, how much money we've raised, who investors are, how much we sell, the revenue, the trajectory to a hundred million next year.
The pre i p o situation we're at right now. How many customers? So across all metrics we're the market leader and that's really a dream coming true. We didn't really see that thing happening in five and a half years.
[00:10:19] Ephraim: So when you were hired to become a C E O and you're there day one, what did you actually do?
What'd you do? What did you implement besides this incredible team and how did you get your first a hundred k,
[00:10:28] Amitai: So think about it. I'm joining and I just get my laptop first day I come to the office first day, first week, first few weeks. I'll give it to Eric Feal.
That was some sort of a mentor to me at the beginning. 'cause here end big businesses and we used to go to the drawing board and kind of together what this company could become and how sales could progress. I had my own ideas. Eric has his own ideas, me and Alec Libson talking about what this could become and how are we going to do a P O V, how are we gonna do a P O C?
Are we gonna charge for the p o c? Are we not going to? But quite at the beginning I've realized that, you know, those smart engineers and researchers, they do their job. They need to just beat the product. And there is no value in me being in the room with them asking, so how is this code going?
We had money 'cause the guy just raised two and a half million dollars without me. I realized that my job at this point is just to start evangelizing and reaching out to anyone I know in a survival mode as if, I don't succeed, that's it. So I looked at everything I did when I woke up in the morning and I'll give that to my wife.
That allowed me to just beat this guy because it's crazy sacrifice people that look for work-life balance. Unfortunately this work is not for them. I wish I could have better news saying to young entrepreneurs and founders, CEOs, Hey guys, it's all about work-life balance. We time no. No, not this job, maybe other jobs.
So I fanatically reached out to anyone I knew and tried to get meetings. 'cause what I knew back then is that I need to put Libbers on the diamond in the raf, which is like c t o founder with all the brain and ran mill and me in front of the first prospects to start getting some POCs people to test what we have to say if it's good, yes or no.
And I would, say that, um, this kind of fanatic approach of like recy going after customers and going after all my personal connections, that was what I did at the beginning. I called friends, someone who was a friend of a friend that was in the management of Sch Cell, someone who is like a professor at one of the universities that became customers.
And I said, Hey, do you have a CSO in this company? Uh, I'm a c e O of this new cyber company. Can you get a meeting with them? So like surviving as if it's my family business, knowing that if I don't survive, I might not be able to feed my kids, which wasn't true. Of course I could have fed my kids, but when I'm talking to young sales guy that joined the company, young World doesn't matter.
I tell them that they need to train their brain to be in a survival mode. 'cause if you feel that you're doing well anyway, you close the first deal or not, or save this customer from churning yes or no, you might not succeed. So I've trained my brain to always be in this hunger mode of, you're in the zone.
When I'm in a customer interaction, try to get a meeting, it's as if this is the one and last attempt I'll get in my life to get that interaction happening. So I think it's that drive that I carried from the very beginning that helped me like, get to the first 30 K, 60 k, a hundred k.
[00:13:07] Ephraim: This drive that you're talking about, this innate drive, this is something that you always had. As a child? Were you always competitive as teenagers and everything?
[00:13:13] Amitai: Yeah. I'm a bit sick like that. I grew up wanting to always like get like a plus in everything I do and it didn't matter whether it's, you know, I play basketball. Soccer, or it was like a Bible kind of class or, history class.
I always aspired for like to get 95 out of a hundred. ' cause 94 was closer to 90 than to a hundred. So that bugged me as a kid. I also wanted to be 95 and above. And it's not because my parents told me, Amita, if you don't study something bad would happen, blah, blah, blah. Or in this family we believe in education.
Never, it was never push from home. It was always me and my demons in my brain telling me that I have to be the best at what I do. And not because I suffered from anything. I was always the confident kid. And I, I was always good came from good family. It's not that I kind of came from poverty and I said that if I don't study, I'm not gonna know.
It's not the case. I came from a great family, all great. But really, the picture behind me, I grew up in like the eighties, nineties in Jerusalem, in Israel, and my childhood icons were like Michael Jordan and, people like that. And Michael Jordan, you know, always said that, whenever he goes, any place in any stadium, people ask him, how come you're so competitive all the time?
I mean, okay, you're already a champion so many times you are topping the liggins scoring points. What else do you wanna achieve? And something Michael Jordann said, stayed with me and it's part of me, and I dunno if, because I heard it or because it, it was part of me all the time. He said, when I go and I play Death Stadium in San Antonio in a season that means nothing.
Game 25 out of 81, there is this kid there that never saw me playing and this kid dreamt to come and see me. So I play for that kid. To me, it's the same today when we hire new employees at Pantera. It doesn't matter that, you know, when I hire new sales guys abroad and I try to go and help them close deals all over the world, I don't care that we're a unicorn, more than a billion value.
I don't care for that trip. I'm nothing until I'm proving to that person that I can deliver lots of value. And if I don't deliver the value, who cares at once upon a time I was whatever, who cares? So to me this like drive and energy came from like childhood school basketball. I was very competitive in basketball.
When I was an amazing in basketball, I went like in the sun in July and threw like 300, three point shots until I got to the right percentage. Tons of free throw until I got it right. Tons of like left hand layups till I got it right. ' cause you know, it's part of like what I'm built off.
Probably a psychologist at one point would tell me why. And what am I trying to prove and to whom exactly. Still haven't figured it out, but it serves me really well today.
[00:15:30] Ephraim: It's funny, two points you mentioned based off that. I think the first thing that came to mind when you mentioned you being in the simmering heat in July in Jerusalem, which is terrible, and you shooting, three, four shots and, trying to practice a left-hand layup every single day.
That's a compounding positive mindset within your own mindset that actually builds you up to handle all the stuff that could come later on, all the negative things in life. You know, being there every day no matter what, not taking any type of excuses, heat, no heat, whatever it is.
Just showing up is already half the battle
[00:15:56] Amitai: and I would also say that if I look at some childhood experiences that made me probably like be that eager to, to succeed. For example, when I started playing basketball at a team, and not just with the kids in the streets, I was in my eighth grade.
And I was hardly admitted to the team. So the coach told me, you know, I'll accept you, but don't expect too many minutes in like your ninth grade because you just started and your left hand layup is not perfect and you're done that strong yet. And you know, you don't have the foundations 'cause these guys place in their first grade.
You just started at like eighth grade. And that forced me to be really good. 'cause at the beginning I hardly played. So I took two buses to play and I came back after playing three minutes and the parents are asking me, so how was it? And I had to tell them, well I played four minutes, I go to take a shower, go to my room.
And I hated it 'cause I said I had that same fire that you see right now. But you know, basketball to me was a great platform to like start from somewhere and then gradually improve and build my own brand as a basketball player. So I became starting lineup after a few years and I really built my game well.
I've never made it to like, you know, the pro level because probably I started too late. But I'm confident that had, I played from first grade. With the same d n a and the talent that I think I do have, probably I would've played pro this way or another, just because I see that, you know, talent is important, but hard work is maybe more important.
And I think another, uh, story that explains, you know, drive, when I was 18, I tried to be accepted to like the, the most elite combat unit in Israeli defense forces. It's called Al, it's like a world renowned unit. And I got to like, the last, last stages and I didn't pass like the final kind of thing.
It was like a five day training camp where they torture you. And I really got to the final, final finalists and I didn't get in. And I think that thing was really like a big. Setback for me. ' cause I said, how can it be? I tried so hard and I still wasn't admitted, but in retrospect, when I went to the Israeli Power Troopers and I've, you know, started again, and then I became an officer and a captain and everything.
I mean, that beat my personality in a way that, hey, I wasn't accepted to like the Israeli Navy Seals, but I still was in a great unit. But again, I never had like that prestige of the top of the top. So I always had like this monkey on my shoulder or like, you know, uh, skin in again, I had to prove that I'm better than what the system thinks I am.
[00:18:02] Ephraim: Having that monkey on the shoulder is such an important thing. But have you seen, like throughout your life, um, you know, similar cases like this where, pivotal experiences of setbacks have really changed your trajectory or changed your own personal growth, or also the growth for you in your career?
Like what other pivotal setbacks have you experienced and how did you overcome those?
[00:18:20] Amitai: So I think we can talk about Pentera. It started like any fairytale. So I'm joining, I'm the c e o. So to play c e o, you know, you need to fake it till you make it right. the beginning it was all great.
You know, the expectation from a very, very tiny mini startup were, you know, accordingly, not amazingly aggressive. So first year we were quite good. Second year we were very good. And then Covid hit it's 2020 where 50 people at Panera. Until that point in time, we grew really nicely. But then Covid hit and the board tells me, Amai, uh, why won't you show like really bad projections as one scenario so that we know to plan?
cause who knows, maybe Covid would bury the company with everyone who knows. We, no one knew anything. So I told myself, you know, why do I need that? I mean, who needs covid when things were going so well then Covid, right? So allegedly that could have been a traumatic situation. And by the way, to some extent for Pentera it was traumatic, but not from a business standpoint.
During Covid, unfortunately, uh, I've lost, literally lost my rep in the west coast. Ed Stacy, may he rest in Peace. He was a partner, a friend, one of the first a hundred people that passed away from Covid in North America. And, he was like also a top performer. And I stayed in touch with his wife, Jamie, in San Jose immediately after it happened.
It was quite shocking. And imagine you talk about issues that are happening along the way and challenges. Imagine a situation where, I need to go on a Zoom call with the whole company in March, 2020. And not only communicate what we'll do during Covid times and how we'll survive and how we'll adjust the business model, but also communicate the passing.
No one trains you for that. There is no prescription of how you should run those goals and how you should keep people optimistic and happy, albeit this craziness. That is happening around you. Right. So I think Panera came out very strong of Covid, very strong. I know that at Insight Partners, when they've invested in us in August, 2020, a few months after that event happened, and after we've shown that we can deliver Panera we kind of put Pener on the cloud and deliver that without being, physically on premise.
R and d did an amazing job. But when we overcame and, and business actually started growing, During those days at the inside they gave me this like, nickname, wartime, c e o. ' cause I've been through the war of the business, both the passing of, a dear friend and the cresident of, of the market.
And we've survived and came out very strong from that. We drowned being in 20, 20, 20 $5 million. That I think that point was like, you know, a, a pivotal point in the life of the company in a great way. From that point onwards, it just went upwards in a very steep way. Wow.
[00:20:45] Ephraim: Then I have to ask you, like, you're mentioning all these incredible things.
First of all, wartime, ceo I love that. Um, and I'm sure there's a lot we could probably go deeper into, but as you're talking about this process of one that there's no playbook to be a c e o, there is none and like, you know, things, unfortunately, like your teammate, um, I. There's no playbook for that either, and there's no playbook how to scale a company I mean, there are playbooks for that, but there's no playbook in general how to do stuff.
So then how did you level yourself up as you scaled from, 10 employees to 15, to 20 to 30 to 50 now to three 50. How did you grow into that role?
[00:21:16] Amitai: So, I have to say, and I'm not being cynical or just wanna repeat templates when I'm saying that, I would really say it's not just me. I was very lucky from the beginning to be surrounded by, once again by Arik, that when I grew the go-to market part of the business, A in parallel grew the r and d, what we call to the R D P Research Development and product Rx started bringing and hiring.
Top talent from IDF, from the top units, people who did cyber research. It was spot on what we needed. We hired P V R VP of Research and he VP customer operations, Omer Gaffney, uh, today VP applications, along cart, VP up, infra, all those folks, joined AIC back then, they weren't VPs then.
They were just individual contributors. And AQ built his own like cyber regime. I built the go-to market. Uh, we started building his number two, number three in marketing around built the product team. And gradually we've surrounded ourselves by experts from the different domains. So we kind of grew together.
I think it would be, unjust to say that, how did I do it? I didn't do it alone. No one can do this type of thing. If you ever hear a C E O that says, I did it and I did this, I did that. You don't do it alone. It takes a village, but a huge one and a very smart one to actually go from.
So it's kind of one step at a time. It's kind of, you get to a certain milestone, for example. There are some events in the life of a company that are in retrospect you say, well that was the moment Change of verdict. I can talk about one event that we usually don't talk about. A VC from the US came to see me without names.
And they wanted to see us, the team, 2019. ' cause we were looking for a round day investment. We thought we were looking for like about $10 million. That we see came with the approach of that's our valuation. That's what we want. And you need to actually thank us that we're even talking to you.
Um, many, many, uh, founders, you know, CEOs would've taken that and say, oh my God, these guys are talking to us. We're so little, they're so mighty, and they know everyone. Let's just go. Right? But we didn't feel comfortable ' cause we thought we were being lowballed and we said, no, we have something great in our hands.
We're not gonna sell ourselves too cheap. And because we've waited, Blackstone came in and said, we've been in the sidelines when you were negotiating with those other guy that we know. Can we be part of your round A now that we're a customer and we know that you're so good as a company, as a vendor.
So I think that thing of Blackstone coming in, I'll give that to Adam Fletcher, A great friend now sits on my board. Back then, he was a skeptical customer then and board observer, then board member. They gave us a chance and the ability to say, Blackstone is a customer back in 2019 and 2018. Was a game changing thing.
' cause Blackstone's not just the name, they've introduced us to their portfolio companies. And I felt that at that point we became a legit vendor in North America. Not anymore. Bunch of Israeli is trying to do their best with one or two hires in America, but a legit tier one in America says these guys, we know everything that goes on in the risk validation, breach, attack, simulation space.
But we vote on Panera and then when Inside Partners comes in, when we were just a few millions in ARR and say in August, 2020, like Sentinel One, like armies like monday.com, like those guys record the future. You guys are gonna be a category leader in what you do. And we're betting all of our chips on you guys.
That statement to me, Was amazing. And that was another, kind of step on the ladder of legitimacy in front of, the big, big customers, prospects, partners, that, that matter. So it's those little steps. Each one strengthens you. And if you ask me, so who are my mentors along the way?
Right? So I would say, if I'm gonna be very honest at the beginning, I worked quite tightly with a feal for the first few months year of developing the company and Ashkenazi from Oz Ventures helping me find my way around and develop my c e o figure. And then it was more or less from that point onwards, it was really my team members, Aviv, Eric Run, and then people like Savannah re now VP sales of almost all of Europe and others that, you know, that, joined us, that, you know, we kind of built it together.
And I would also give it to Thomas Crane from Inside Partners. And Sim Avari, the partner at Metar, our law firm that you know, represents us. He's a friend and our lawyer that have seen lots of situations of funding rounds and how they shape companies' futures. So those guys were great strategic friends on the way that helped me understand like what's ahead of me.
So Sim Avari was instrumental at Round B when he told me. I mean, how is things the round would shape out? Tom Crane was great from Inside Partners was great in telling me what is like the golden way to put the Panera train, the right track. But I don't know that I've had like another, like father figure that have been there, done that, that I used throughout the time.
There was nobody really that can really, and I don't care saying if there was someone, it was just like anecdotal tips here and there, but it's really the people I've mentioned. That helped me and my wife of course, that, in some junctions, in some corners, she was the only person that really knew what I'm going through.
That helped me a lot.
[00:25:57] Ephraim: I hope she doesn't regret the fact that you took the job, you know, because, it is very special to hear you mention all the people that you've mentioned and, um, you know, saying about the fact that, you can't do this alone. It's very special because you can meet CEOs and it's very easy and, from an outside perspective, you can see how the fame, the money, building up a big company could get to your head, could get to your head, and it could be filled with a lot of ego.
And to hear you mention everyone that has been involved in your journey and to be grateful for that is super special. Which really begs me to ask like, how do you keep that humility and you know? It's very easy to walk around saying, Hey, you know, we have a company that's about to a hundred million, you know, I did some secondary, so I might be rich.
Right now we have 350 employees, how do you make sure it doesn't hit you?
[00:26:38] Amitai: Yeah. So I think, um, a lot has to do with, how you grew up as a kid. Which family you were born into? I grew up into a family that was about hardworking, very strong values. I'll give that to my mother, uh, and my father of Vietnam, me rest in peace and the family are around me.
And I grew up in Jerusalem, this is not like Beverly Hills 92 and Oh, right. I think that when you grow up in a certain way and then you get to that craziness at the age, like when you're 40 and above, I don't think it can change your core d n a that much. Probably if I would've gone through this when I was 21, maybe it would change me completely.
And you would've been speaking to someone else right now. But I mean, the fact it happened to me when I already had family, three kids, you know, you go home, You change diapers, you're dealing with day-to-day things and you don't like this kid with like huge ego.
And so I don't let that get to my head, even if I'm attending like very big, events and lots of people tell me things that allegedly could make me feel like amazing about myself. Actually I think that the more I climb, the more humble I become and the more grounded I become.
A, I know it could all end in a second. I literally know that. And I live by that. And I never forget that I'm the leader of this company, but it's only because of all those amazing leaders around me, like all the leaders in marketing in r and d, in product, in hr, in finance, in legal, without them.
I'm just nothing. And it's not just a cliche. Anyone that knows anything about my business would agree. Some people might not talk about it, but I just don't know why it's a bad thing to, I just think that everyone should, be thankful for everyone that, surrounds them because, I wouldn't have been able to be what I am without so many people being so passionate about what they do.
Let's take the art team at Panera, we have an amazing art director and you know, we just, wrote a book lately, a kid's book about, cyber warfare, like a, a bedtime book for kids that their father's mother sees or read to them about their jobs.
So those guys came with that idea, right? If you think about the amazing brains in r and d and all the years of experience they have, they brought that I didn't, I. Teach them to be those amazing cyber researchers or developers. So how can I take credit for all this talent around me? I mean, it's just stupid.
I think. So, I think the right thing is to appreciate everything around you and really to be the integrator and be the glue that connects between everyone. And always give people a reason to wake up in the morning to continue working for you. 'cause all the guys we have at Panera, they could do everything they want.
Everyone wants to hire Paneras today. I'll give that to our HR and the culture. We're 96% employee retention rate. People don't leave this company. So when I wake up in the morning, I'm only thinking about that. How do I keep this amazing pool of talent to continue working, , in a very, dedicated way.
What do we do for them so that we keep this glue? So I think that's really my job today. One of my biggest tasks is to keep the culture going.
[00:29:23] Ephraim: how do you do that practically?
[00:29:24] Amitai: So first of all, I say it a few times in some occasions, so if someone already heard me saying that, I apologize.
You know how it is when you go to like a Shabbat dinner, we're talking, we're both Jewish, right? And we have this Shabbat dinner in, in Judaism where you go to the grandmother or like the parents and you come with little kids and aunts and nieces and like cousins. And then you see that some, the little kids, they always go and hug the same auntie or the same uncle, but the other uncles that are nice, you know, they don't go to them because kids don't lie when they send that someone loves them and they would go to hug that aunt or that cousin and that's it.
And it does matter to them that the other guys are saying, Hey, come to me. But they don't. Same for employees. If you really care about your employees and you just don't, just say, Pantera is family and then you do something else. If it's really family, and you wanna create certain values, you need to live by those values and employees.
The fact 95% of them stay, to me, that's like the little kid hugging their favorite uncle because they say, we don't wanna live that. 'cause our leaders at Panera, they lead by example. When they say we need to travel, they travel the most. Our leaders at Panera hardly see their homes. Not because they don't care about, they're all family people, but they're just so passionate about being in the field.
So it's being about, if you expect someone to do something, do it yourself. Do it yourself. Right? So I think it's focusing on those values that are really important to us being accountable. One team we're obsessed with customers or customer centricity. If as a C E O, I wouldn't talk to. Tens of customers every year.
And I wouldn't attend to customer calls, which are not always great because sometimes, you know, there are problems. If I'm gonna run away from that and tell the field to resolve everything and I'm just gonna watch them doing that, what they're gonna think about me that I'm this like c e o that sits in this tower that gives orders.
Where am I if a customer is about to churn, where's the c e o? What's my job? are people auditioning when they're working for me? No. So my style, if I'm in the field and it's not, I'm just talking mommy 'cause I'm talking to you, but all of my executives, when we're in the field, the field could be in an R d P talk when Ari talks to his r and d or when I'm in the field in Chicago or when Aviv is in the field in Singapore or when Ron is in the field at the Gartner Conference in the us when we're in the field, we lead by example and people see that and they say, oh my God, we need to follow that.
As opposed to just being the executive that sit in like some tower that send orders. So culture is crazy. It's huge. We're fanatic about our culture. It's very, very important.
[00:31:42] Ephraim: You're a global company, right? So you have offices in Israel, offices in us, two different types of personalities, two different types of cultures and everything.
Literally way different than apples and oranges. And a lot of founders, specifically Israeli founders that have those two types of offices, global offices struggle to keep the culture intact, that everyone has a feeling like you mentioned.
[00:32:02] Amitai: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a great, it's a great point you're mentioning now, and I'll tell you how we manage it, but before I, I address it, I would just say that Panera today lives and exists in 20 countries. And unlike other young startups, that kind of follow Silicon Valley tips of the United States of America is the world, everything else is everything else.
We don't live by this paradigm. We think that the world is the world. United States yes, it is the biggest market. It is not the world, which means that if we have, employees in Singapore, Sweden, Dubai, Spain, Italy, we treat them and they're as important to us as our US employees, as our Israeli employees.
For example, we've lately done like an HR big campaign that, that Golan our chief people officer of lead, that's called Panera Do Good. The typical Israeli HR would say, okay, let's have the Israeli guys go paint some homes of people that you know, can't afford it, and that's it. And we said, no, it's not for the Israeli Panera.
It's for Pentera. So Pentera did good in 20 countries. So people volunteered in Italy and Spain and Singapore and Boston because Pentera is one thing. It's not like Israeli Pentera, us Pentera, right? So if let's say we do a fun day in Israel, there's a fun day in Singapore, there's a fun day in Dubai, or there is no fun day for nobody because we look at people, when we say family, it's not a joke.
I'm always thinking like, if I have three, four kids, would I celebrate big birthday for one? And the other ones would say, what about us? No. So why should we do differently with the company? So that's the mindset when we give school bags to little kids, to the, kids of the employees when September comes.
So we would do it all over the world. So Pentera would send like school equipment, school bags to kids in 20 countries. And we get those pictures of young kids first, second grade go with like Panera bags to their respective schools. And that, you know, that's amazing. That's also patriotism.
It goes with Zionism. It's like spreading this goodness from Israel to the world.
[00:33:49] Ephraim: Absolutely. Love that. I really, really do. It's very special.
Change, gears for a second. I want to touch upon go to market right now, currently. You mentioned in the beginning that, the first few customers was literally just picking up the phone, knocking on doors, banging on doors and doors and doors, and getting all your friends to do your favor, saying, Hey, could you introduce me to the ciso?
But at what point did you guys actually implement the go-to-market strategy and as you're heading towards a hundred million right now? Which I'm sure is probably. A different strategy from, everything, you know, even to hit 50, um, what are certain things you could talk about?
[00:34:18] Amitai: Absolutely. So obviously today, thanks God, we don't have to call people and say, do me a favor, because that's not scalable. And to be honest, I don't miss those days. Sometime people ask me, don't you wanna do it all over again? And I say, no. Well, not now. I'm still on the journey and I don't miss those very, very hard days.
Although they did come with some like romantic jokes and some, you know, anecdotes that we all have to look back at. So today, uh, I can definitely say that Panera is a marketing sales machinery. It is like a robust machinery. It all starts with. I would say that at Pentera, it all starts with research.
So it starts with research that is at the core of this company, cyber research, that then finds it its way into the product, in the form of features and modules. And then all of that, you know, needs to be promoted to the world. So the factory that produces Panera is here in Israel, 150, very talented researchers, DevOps, qa, backend, front end, all of this good company of people.
That's what they produce from here. Now, how do you bring this goodness to the world? So planet Earth needs to be better, secure. Everyone in the world needs Pentera to basically challenge themselves like the attackers. It's not applicable just for the us, just for the uk, just for banks. It's for every company in the world with 500, 700 employees at least, or something like that, with some form of managed it.
Like the whole world is candidate. So how do you bring it to all these guys in a way that doesn't break you. Right. So we have, very smart digital and field marketing, campaign machineries as part of which we generate something like 2000 meetings a quarter, to the entire field.
So SDRs and lead generation campaigns and some special IP source, in how we do things. This machine brings people, To come to us. Then we are outreaching, we're approaching people, right? So marketing people and SDRs, they cook and they bring the demand.
And then we are channel friendly. , in some countries we're channel only. In some countries we're channel first. But this is a channel friendly business. And our channel is bringing leads to us as well. You know how it is with the channel. You bring them one, they bring you two or three. It depends where, so we're very intimate with our channels as well.
So we have a big channel organization all over the world Channel people in the US and in Dubai and in Spain and in the Nordics and in Singapore. So channel bring things to us. We bring things to them. So I'm repeating r and d marketing machine channel.
Then sales guys, you know, they get everything and they need to be, Very good hunters and very focused. And then when, we close the deal, then it goes to the post-sales team that then have to take care of those customers. So in Panera, we have the customer success guy that will look after you.
They will be your, one point, kind of one-stop shop for everything you need. But they would integrate solution architects and customer solutions, and they would bring the product again for roadmap sessions. So we try to give people technology with great cyber expertise and great relationship.
So they don't just come for the first product, they come for more afterwards. So we've scaled it in a few years to now be, a, a monstrous machine all over the world that is obsessed with what customers need, where all the parts of the machine collaborate really well with one another. But this wasn't built in one day.
That took us lots of time to build.
[00:37:31] Ephraim: You look at it as a flywheel, you have the r and d, you have the marketing component to making sure to be able to tell that story. And then from there goes into channel sales, sts, and obviously customer success.
And then you have the feedback loop, around that. It's actually very, very interesting it got me thinking about like how do you get feedback? Who provides you feedback in the company besides your board?
[00:37:48] Amitai: Yeah, great question. So first of all, it's a cliche, but it's a right one that CEOs are quite of like lonely creatures. So, there's also an other c e o that will listen to this podcast, probably would agree and smile at this point. When we wake up in the morning, you know, I kind of don't have a boss, right?
So I wake up in the morning and I go to my office. There is no prescription of what good looks like on a Monday morning, on a July for a c e o of a company like mine. So you need to, as a CEO, just like, you know, I go back to like army stories. You need to think where is like the most efficient place for you to be, where you could be most effective.
In making the business move forward. So my job is always about first of all, continuously understanding what's happening through my executives in many cases do skip levels. So I skip a level and I talk to people one level below the executive that sometimes give me a different picture with some spices.
I'm staying very close to the field. I travel a lot to the field to hear things firsthand. In many cases, I go back and I give my VPs of sales and VPs of customer success, lots of insights from people that are sometimes two levels behind them. So I try to be in shape, so be the coach, but sometimes the best player in the field, right?
But, more than everything. Once again, going back to what you do on a Monday morning as a CEO you need to really always think about like a few steps ahead of the company. So, Two, three quarters. what should this look like? And then think, I think I had risen back. So if that's the winning story that I portray in SS k O 2024, what should happen in Q four and then in Q three, so that picture becomes reality.
And if that, what should happen? What should I do now that other people cannot? Because if I'm gonna do things that other people can do as well, I'm adding no value as a ceo. So CEOs always need to think, what could they do that's mutually exclusive from the line managers that are responsible for the line job?
' cause if I'm just gonna be like a VP sales on steroids, I mean, there is some value in that. But, you know I'm really using the kind of my intuition to see where are like the kind of achilles seed of the company that change all the time when you are starting a business. We had no finance.
So I was the finance, I was hr, I was the legal, I was like head of sales, and Eric was partially c f o and he was the head of r and d and he was like head of other things. Right Now, when we have all these functions, it's great, but so when we had no finance, I had to, attend to that. Now we have great financing, great finance vp, we had no rev ops, we had no legal, we had no HR solid, right?
So the bottleneck continues moving and I need to continuously look for the next bottleneck, whether it's in my face and then it's too late probably if it's in my face, if it's screaming, whether it's about to become a bottleneck. So it's, it's about that. And once again, the fascinating thing, I mean, you don't know, and no one tells you how to look for those bottlenecks.
And each c e o does it in a different way. My way is to be very close with the people without thinking too much about hierarchy. Just put hierarchy, leave it at home level with people and hear genuine stories from them. To really understand where you live and what's happening.
[00:40:40] Ephraim: Yeah, that's exactly what I was about to ask you. Like how do you make sure that you're hearing what's going on on the SDR R level? Because there's so many levels between s d R and you where a lot of things, and most times you won't hear the actual real feedback of what's happening on by SS d r to know where the bottleneck is of the change.
Yeah.
[00:40:56] Amitai: Interesting. You talked about SDR. sdr is a team that's very close to my heart. Because in many companies I see SDR R as being treated as like the, the bottom of the pyramid. At Panera, they're not at Panera. They're amazing. Those guys are part of pods. So let's say the Spanish team would've their Spanish s d r friend, that's part of them.
The northeast team would have an SDR that's like kicks ass. That's part of that. The Swedish team, the u a e team. So each team in the company has like the salespeople, sales engineers, solution architects, customer success. The SDR, the marketing correspondence. So yeah, they do have the line managers, but they really act as a pod.
So first of all, I hear from SDRs because I talk to them, I walk in the corridors and they feel free to come and tell me what's going on. When I visit the US office, I sit with all the SDRs and we talk about what they see, a practice that I've developed and the thing that they love. Whenever I go to the US office in Boston, in Burlington, I set an hour or two with the SDRs and I'm like, hack the expert.
I'm telling them I'm the S D R now. And you just shoot questions and shoot like things at me. I'm gonna show you how I survive without preparation. If people ask me A, B, C, or D, and I try to lead by example and show them how I get out of situations, what would I say As opposed to auditioning them and telling them, Hey, can you show me how you, you know, sort of like being the Simon Cavell, the audition kind of guy.
That is intimidating. I'll be the one that's being auditioned. So that's how I get feedback from them. And if I wanna get feedback from like salespeople in the field or Sams customer success guys, the best way is to be in the field and go to a meeting and do the demo sometimes. And when customers questions come, or prospect questions are coming, they're skeptical.
Be the guy answering the question before the sales guy could, so that they see my style, how I go out of situations and convince and then they say, wow, okay, that's Amis angle. I'm gonna take some of that with my own intuition and when Amit I goes home, I'll adopt that. Right? So my way to know is to be there not to hear from people about like, theoretically what is happening in the company.
[00:42:52] Ephraim: It makes total sense. So are there things outside of actual work and company that you do that help you show up to be the CEO that you be
[00:42:59] Amitai: So I'll go back and, and say, once again, I don't want this to come across as a cliche that my wife is, you know, potentially like an, an amazing you know, and like an amazing character in my life and my kids.
Because when you go home, you're no c e o and whenever I go, she's like, okay, here's the garbage. Here are the dishes. These are your kids. Welcome home, Mr. Your c e o take the c e o hat out. And now you're so, so basically this balancing act I have with the family is very important.
And to really be a vibrant person, optimistic, energetic, I have to do lots of sports. I'm sure as people, especially like I'm about to be 47. So at our age we don't wanna see any surprises. So I'm working out with an amazing personal trainer three times a week. Like just be in shape.
I try to play basketball at least once or twice a week. I'm still competitive. We have a Pantera team here in Israel. Last year we won the championship of the second division of the Israeli like league of like workplaces. This year we, we lost in the quarter finance of the major league, but next year we're gonna win the championship.
'cause I'm gonna make sure it's gonna happen. We're gonna hire good basketball players. Who cares what they know about cybersecurity? I'm joking. So it's really being like, you know doing lots of sports and being with my kids. Unfortunately, I don't have so much time to be with friends. I look at myself as a very friendly guy, and I used to have lots of friends we and my wife hang out with.
But just because of my lifestyle, that's the price I pay. I hardly see people that I used to call friends. So I really try to keep in touch with them and just in the moments I do have to see them. But that's probably one of the sacrifices that I'm not that happy about. But, you know, meeting with my you know brothers and my mother for like Shabbat dinners when I'm in Israel and the cousins and the nephews that energizes me and reminds me of like, you know, that it's eventually, it starts from that.
That's the core. And if that's strong, everything is possible.
[00:44:39] Ephraim: I love that. Everything is like the pillars, you know? So you have like you mentioned, your family, and your friends, let's say for example. And then underlying that as your mental health, which is your physical health and emotional health. And if that's strong, that enhances your family, which enhances your next thing, which is being a c e o of a company that able to grow.
[00:44:55] Amitai: Yeah. You know how it is something that probably people don't talk about as a C E O. I come to the office in the morning, people wouldn't admit that, but they look at my face and they say, okay, lait, I having a good or a bad day. It's enough that someone comes and try to tell me something and they, if I'm not in a great mood, they would say, what's happened?
What happened? Right? So I need to be very strong for people. People in Panera, you know, they go through life as well. Life happens for everyone in Panera, three 50 people. I don't need to tell you the statistics of something happening in mankind as you grow as a company, you know that statistics happens in Panera as well, good and bad.
So I always, and I tell my wife I wanna leave home in the morning, like very happy, energetic, without fighting about little things as we get the kids ready for school. I just wanna go outta home happy, energetic, because I know that I'll need this positive energy for the day because who knows what's gonna happen in a day.
So many things happen in one day. Good news, really bad news, personal things happen to people, and I really want to be this guy that give people energy and be strong for them because it's a lot besides cybersecurity or it's managing a big crew of people that go through life. And I always wanna be this guy for them that gives them energy and strengthens them as they go through some stuff beyond work.
[00:46:03] Ephraim: Life happens. Life happens in a company like people get divorced, people get married. There's, sad occasion people pass away and there's good occasions people are born. You have it all happening, but if you had to look at a young amai that's like 20 years old or 21 post Army, and he has essentially the whole rule in front of it.
And he could go to American College, try to , go to N C A A and try to become a basketball player. Or VP of sales or even just, surfing in Costa Rica for the rest of your life and becoming a beach, but, which sounds really good. What would you tell this young boy?
[00:46:28] Amitai: First of all, coming from where I am today, going backwards I'm 47 in a few months, or that just 27 years back probably I would've said, The following, first of all, that there are no shortcuts and that sometimes the long way is the right way. And I would've told the young Amai that at some points when I felt that I need to like be more vocal about how good I am and pay attention to me, I'm here.
Didn't you realize that? I mean, people see that you have, you don't have to be sometimes that vocal about, you know, if you're good in something, just be good and let others see that in you and, you know, observe that and do something about it as opposed to worrying that maybe people don't see what you do.
'cause when you're young, you're young and you're ambitious. And Megan says, I wanted to. Be seen as this guy and I was trying to extract compliments, before and not allowing them to just come naturally. Probably I would've told the younger Hai that picking Dafna as the wife was a great decision.
Go for Thena, you know, full steam ahead. I wouldn't change that. I would probably say that eventually things kind of settled down because you know how it is now, kind of, for me things God and thanks, you know, life things are going well, but things didn't always go well.
But since I'm well now, so why did I worry so much and had so many sleepless nights in so many occasions when I was young? If eventually it all worked out. So probably like inhale, exhaling many situations in life when we think it's the end of the world because we got some email from someone, it's bothering us and we can't sleep and it's with us and it stays probably like take things like less personally and just get it outta the system quicker.
I would also say something that I've heard others, but you know, I think it's just true. Surround yourself by people who are positive that make you feel great about yourself, that you know, that you really appreciate and just have this good energy around you. Life is too short to surround yourself by people that take you down.
And also as a manager, I would give some tips to Amit that was the younger manager, maybe older than 20, sometimes letting go of employees even executives. As hard as it might be. And it's really hard for me till today I'm really like not good at that. But with time I became, you know, sharper at that.
Sometimes letting go of people and knowing how to separate is a big relief for them as well you know, you want people to be happy about what they do and if you feel that you have a lamb duck on your team or someone that you're not happy about, sometimes letting them go is a big relief because they could shine elsewhere.
It might not have worked here. So I think my ability to let people go earlier in my career when I was a young manager, was not that good. ' cause I had those army values of we're not leaving the wounded behind and mistakenly. Some army values are great for corporate life, some are not because in corporate life, sometimes if people that are wounded that kind of, you know, that are dragged behind, if they're dragging you and they're not really wounded, right?
But they're not performing, sometimes you need to tell them, you know, thank you, we tried, it didn't work, we're moving on. So probably adjusting the army narrative to corporate life. I should have done it faster.
[00:49:25] Ephraim: You know, a famous saying things are not always as good as they seem and they're not always as bad as they seem. They always fall on the middle ground. And I love what you're saying that things eventually will always work out no matter what. So yes, when you're in that midst of it all going wrong and receiving that email or customer churn or something happens in life, you lose a friend or it seems like everything's terrible.
Everything but. You have to know that end of the day, it's all going to be okay. And I love that. It's such a positive, incredible message for life and in general and everything. I it is absolutely powerful. So what's next for Panera and what's next? Yeah, so
[00:49:58] Amitai: my wife will tell you that I mean, that doesn't separate Panera from himself.
I wish I could say that there is a HAI outside and then there is a Hai Panera, but that's bullshit at this point. It's all mixed. So I'm not even making the effort to be something else. I wanna think about myself as, you know, I'm the same with everyone and when I'm with my friends family, Panera, I try to be the same person.
However, if you think more seriously about weapon, Panera goes, so Ventera has emerged as the market leader, as the category leader in security validation. We go and we have great line of sight to the a hundred million dollars in a r r. Basically being a unicorn with a hundred million in a r r is a.
Big deal, and we think we're gonna be there by the end of next year. More than that, we have great line of sight to profitability in 2020. 2021. No one cared about profitability. Profitability is like a war that you know, you care about. If you're like nasda and some of the NASDAQ traded companies are not even profitable and they're traded at billions and billions.
However, 20 22, 20 23. You know we've woken up to a different reality and I think it's all for the best. So Panera has great line of side to profitability, and we are lucky to be surrounded by amazing investors like K one investment management kneel their founder, and c e o that's all about operational efficiency and building real businesses as opposed to building dreams and inside partners.
You know, once again, Tom Crane, fill in the crew there. Retail from Evolution, your on, from Oz Ventures Adam from Blackstone, my board, they're all directing us to continue kind of emerging and developing as a profitable business, not just committed cares about top line. And that's it. So if we're gonna continue executing like that and we're going to launch some surprising products without, I don't wanna name them right now.
They're gonna be a big bang in Q 1, 20 24. That's gonna change. The landscape and pen is gonna launch. We're working on something in the lab that is gonna be quite astonishing when we are gonna come up with that on our way to a hundred million in profitability. I think that going public is just a natural evolution for us.
Comes 20 25, 20 26. Who caress? I mean, let's see. No rush. I think that's the next big thing for us because we've realized that by now probably we're too big and maybe too expensive to be acquired by like a big company or a big, private equity. And we also wanna keep the culture of like independent, vibrant, unique culture.
And we know that sometimes when you're acquired. Some of that culture goes away and we wanna continue growing as an independent business with its independent d n a, and we would acquire others as opposed to others acquiring us. Why do we need to be acquired? We're building a category leader like Palo Alto, like Checkpoint, like Sentinel One, like armies, like Wiz.
Those guys don't wanna be acquired like Panera. We don't wanna be acquired. It's good. We wanna build independent businesses that are sustainable, that are gonna be here for the grandkids.
[00:52:41] Ephraim: That's absolutely amazing. Amit, I want to thank you. I have learned a tremendous amount from our conversation and our interactions so far. And I know God willingness to continue for a very, very, very long time. But I learned a tremendous amount. And if I had to, say what I personally learned is that, you know, for me, the conversation is not the actual words being said, but it's the underlying conversation.
And what I've been able to pick up from you is that, In innate drive and desire to overcome all hurdles and obstacles, no matter what, that there's nothing getting in the way. There's not even a wall. You're jumping over that wall to get things done. And obviously we're not talking about being a force of a, pushover like a bulldozer.
No, but like a, in a positive way. And I'm able to pick it up that desire, that innate thing. And like you said in the beginning, that you never saw yourself going in this direction, and you never thought you had the capabilities to do it. And yet here you are. And that's something I could really feel when you're talking about it.
And something that I really, if my own self, that to take that desire and to really, for me to contemplate and meditate the battle that really implement it into my own life is such a powerful thing. And there's no doubt that the thousands of listeners that are gonna listen to this are gonna benefit from hearing that message too and hearing.
Your story all about Pantera and your personal story, and they're gonna able to implement it into their life and for them to grow too. So thank you,
[00:53:52] Amitai: thank you, thank you, thank you. And I wanna thank you for the very unique type of conversation. We've done lots of podcasts. This probably was one of the most enjoyable ones, you know, and it was great to get to meet you on the way, and I'm sure that we'll meet each other in New York City sooner than later.
And for the people that are listening to me I, I wanna kind of, reemphasize, I'm not that unique as it might come across if I'm not. Probably each one has their own secret sauce and their own competitive edge. There is no one way to getting to where I am now or where others have gotten even, you know, more impressive kind of accolades than myself.
And there is no one way to get there. That's what I'm saying. You need to think about the competitive edge. So what, how do you, as a human being, how do you stand out in the grand scheme of noise and be very true to yourself about what is that secret sauce that you have? Not people like you, but you, and then build your career and potentially your life around that kind of unique differentiator.
And thank you. Thank you for the time. I love that. You're
[00:54:44] Ephraim: welcome.
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