"You have to be very close with your customers."

I started in the 8200 (the elite cyber security unit of the IDF). I didn't realize that it was going to be as influential as it was for me. I wasn't particularly techie, or I didn't realize that I was techie before I joined. When we got there, I got two of the most surprising elements of army service. One would be that I found lifelong friends, including Itzik Levy, who founded vcita. Also, it was a high-performing, positively competitive, very introspective environment. Seven years ago, I joined back with Itzik to start vcita.

What is the pain point that vcita is trying to solve?

I think it changed over the years. We're looking at micro businesses, businesses with one to 10 or 20 employees that are battling it out against the bigger businesses that are taking over the high street. They were taking over the customer experience that, for example, a gym chain could create, but a single gym owner or studio owner did not have the tools for. That's where we started: helping them manage their client interactions, their engagement, the loyalty program, the payments, their day-to-day, and their staff. Today, it would be common to say we are a CRM. But we are a CRM that was built from the bottom-up for micro businesses. Through the last couple of years through COVID, this concept of small businesses who had to take themselves to the digital space became far more acutely recognized, which is not necessarily how it was at the time. This ball was really rolling as fast as it possibly could have through the last two years.

Adi Engel, chief marketing officer of vcita. Photo: Nimrod Kapeluto

Can you teach me more about micro businesses? What are some of their challenges?

First of all, there's the fact that mostly as a business owner, you are the business. These are people who are living their business 24/7. Entrepreneurship: it's not a state of doing, it's a state of being. If I am one with my business environment, I have far greater pressures from my day to day, and many aren't able to take time off. We hear a lot about the pressures of time management.

We've created an environment that takes a lot of their administrative tasks and automates them as much as possible. For example, we've heard of people sitting up in the middle of the night texting all of the people who have classes the next day to make sure they're coming. Just by automating the reminders for everyone who signed up, we've saved an hour of their time.

You're not just saving an hour from an employee's daily work; you're actually saving an hour of the business life cycle. You're potentially saving quite a big percentage of their workforce.

Small business owners spend 81 days a year doing administrative tasks. That’s three months of work days before they actually did any work. If we can take those 81 days and just make them 64 days or 48 days—we're definitely not going to take it to zero—that is massive for these people. It also means that we have a huge responsibility because we are asking them to spend 81 days with us. We need to make sure that the app is super simple and super friendly and be respectful of the time that they spend with us.

You're talking about a comprehensive tool set. How do you figure out which tools to actually do?

That is a huge challenge. Small businesses are a huge and very diverse vertical. I think people don't realize that they actually constitute 90% of businesses in the world. How do we create a single app for a legal advisor, a dog walker, a fitness studio owner, and a catering business owner? We had to boil it down to what's the basis of what they need.

We're looking at the client relationship. If you don't have clients, you don't have a business. Then the other side of it is the payments. Then you build on top of that: how do I manage my client and their payments? On top of that: how do I manage my time most efficiently? On top of that: how do I stay in touch with those clients over time? And then at the top: how do I get new clients? A lot of small business owners don't have space for new clients.

The other side of it is that you have to be very close with your customers. We have the most amazing and inspiring community of users. They definitely let us know what they think about us. We are a B2B business, selling to businesses. But we are a B2C channel in the sense that we are communicating with individuals.

Your role as chief marketing officer, tell me about that.

I have the best team. First and foremost, my role is to facilitate my team's work. My team will have direct channel growth experts who will be finding those individuals and bringing them to us. We have a very extensive channel business where we're partnering with other organizations who serve the same audience. I have a product marketing team that is figuring out how to put our messaging out there and also be very educational in our approach. We're asking them to take a leap of faith with us and change a lot of the processes of their business.

To me, I'm a service provider of the team. I will have opinions about everything if I'm asked. But mostly, it's about facilitating their work, getting the right resources, and getting the right people to talk to them. I'm not historically a CMO. I'm a product manager by training. I think I'm being a product-led growth thinker. We just make sure that we put the product at the center of how we think of things. Is this bringing value? If so, how? Let's make sure that we represent that in the best way to the potential customer.

Can you give me an example of an instance where you're asking yourself this critical question of value creation?

First of all, we talk to customers a lot. This is how we make sure that they are happy with what we're doing. I'm not saying that you have to make every single product decision through a committee, but I think once you start talking to your customers, that's very powerful.

I think sometimes we over-engineer things. We had a coupons tool to send a coupon to your clients. But it wasn't 100% automated in the redemption process. The engineering and product team didn't want to put it out there. But our customers told us, "Right now, what's most important for me is to create a financial buffer. I want my clients to buy 10 training sessions ahead of time. I'll just send them a coupon. I don't care if it's automated or not." You have to be conscious of when you're over-engineering things. All products have faults. We just have to understand that you have to play with the 80-20 rule.

What fascinated you as a kid?

I was very nerdy about history and psychology. These were my two high school majors. It still fascinates me to read a lot of nonfiction. I’m working a lot around sports psychology as a way of building high-performing teams. I think we have a lot to learn from that space.

What are three words that you would use to describe yourself?

Curious. Ambitious, for myself and for my team. I’m very much an introvert.

Michael Matias. Photo: Courtesy

Michael Matias, Forbes 30 Under 30, is the author of Age is Only an Int: Lessons I Learned as a Young Entrepreneur. He studies Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University, while working as a software engineer at Hippo Insurance and as a Senior Associate at J-Ventures. Matias previously served as an officer in the 8200 unit. 20MinuteLeaders is a tech entrepreneurship interview series featuring one-on-one interviews with fascinating founders, innovators and thought leaders sharing their journeys and experiences.

Contributing editors: Michael Matias, Megan Ryan