Hilit Vainberger, Frenn - The secret to growing company culture

Hilit is someone who I value very much. She started Frenn to solve a problem that so many companies are facing today! How to not only retain your employees but give them that added value and understand how to grow company culture. I believe Hilit brings a unique perspective to the business problem as she is solving it based on the experiences she has had and understands the value of doing things right.

As part of the Female Founders’ program we have been running at StageOne, which has led us to meet over 90+ founders in the past two years, we've decided to introduce you to some of the founders we met from both Israel and the U.S. They operate in different industries and their startups' are at different stages, but they have all impressed us with their company, leadership, and drive. This program gives us the opportunity to keep in touch and maintain ongoing relationships with many of these founders. We can hear about their companies’ growth, connect to relevant investors, assist when we can, and have follow-up meetings to go over their progress.

Hilit Vainberger of Frenn. Photo: PR

For this series, we spoke to 5 female founders and asked them what inspired them to start their ventures. We also discussed the challenges they faced as female founders, and of course, their secrets to success. 

Meet Hilit Vainberger, co-founder of Frenn.

Frenn was founded in 2021 by Hilit Vainberger and Guy Asherov who met through a mutual friend. The company is located in Tel Aviv.

Can you tell us a bit about Frenn?

“Frenn is a Talent Relationship Management Platform (TRMP) for ‘people-obsessed’ companies. Frenn discovers high potential talents and supports managers in developing high-performing teams and strong leadership. Frennn provides talent health checks and increases talent density to stay ahead of today’s workforce challenges.”

What inspired you to develop your idea?

“Surprisingly (or not), Frenn started as a diversity advocacy mentoring program, following my experience as the ‘only’ female leader in my previous roles at high-tech companies. I became obsessed with helping women achieve their potential, get to the top and throughout their careers. I still am. Learning about the challenges, I understood that I was looking at a much more widespread problem, and the ‘new normal’ has affected companies struggling to keep their employees from job-hopping and much more.”

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced (if you have), regarding building a company as a female founder?

“Personally, I don’t feel that I face many challenges as a female founder. On the contrary, I have met and talked to so many phenomenal female founders, each one more inspiring and eager to help than the next. Unfortunately, statistics tell a different story, where established female leaders and founders in high-tech companies (at least in Israel) make up less than 5% of the total founder/executive leadership population. I am still trying to figure out how this really checks out.”

What are the secrets to your success?

“One of the main secrets — not a big secret at all — is to create a win-win situation with every person I work with: team members, peers, partners, and investors. I genuinely believe this is the only ‘secret’ to success.”

What do you want to achieve next?

“I want to be the Salesforce of talent management. I believe this is the next big thing after Sales and product-centric companies. Now, it’s time to focus on the people factor: talents.”

What are the qualities of a good entrepreneur?

“The ability to listen and be agile. I can’t even count how many times we’ve changed our product, target audience, strategy, and GTM. I’ve even circled back to investors and prospects more than once, asking to re-do our pitch. This is mainly because I am constantly talking to our prospects, peers, investors, advisors, learning about their opinions, and finding the best market fit to solve our prospects’ most critical pains and problems.”

Yael Eckstein of Stage One Ventures. Phto: Dudi Moskovitz

Yael Eckstein, Marketing Director at StageOne, started the Female Founders Office Hours program, in which StageOne Ventures is continuously looking to invest time and resources so that innovations get the support, networking, and know-how they need to receive funding. The program involves a one-on-one meeting in our offices with the fund managing partners and team, so we can connect, hear the company’s pitch, and obtain concrete advice, consult, and network.