Most Promising Startups - 2024We are rebuilding ourselves - just like the country
Most Promising Startups - 2024
We are rebuilding ourselves - just like the country
Simply co-founder and CEO Yuval Kaminka, who is no stranger to loss, having lost a nephew on October 7 and one of his co-founders suddenly at the age of 44 in March, shares his personal thoughts on Israel’s 76th Independence Day and how we can cope with the help of music.
I founded Simply (formerly JoyTunes) in 2012 with my good friend Roey Izkovsky, who was my instructor in the army. We've been together ever since, along with my younger brother Yigal, a gifted musician. We added a team of amazing partners who see our work as a joint journey, and we even found extraordinary investors who poured into the company not only their capital but also their experience, trust, and support along the way.
When Roey and I completed our military service in Unit 8200, entering the cyber field was considered almost a default. This was the path most of our former unit members took, and investors explicitly expressed interest in it. We traveled, studied, worked, and quickly realized we wanted to use our abilities, strengths, connections, and most of our waking hours to build something different, something that touches people and helps make life better.
After October 7th, our unique corporate culture at Simply faced a huge challenge. Like most companies in Israel, many team members were drafted into the reserves, and we all faced great mental pressure. On that cursed Saturday morning, the Bibas family, relatives of Elon Keshet - one of the leaders in the field of music and content at Simply - was kidnapped. Later, Tomer Greenberg of the 13th Golani Brigade, the brother-in-law of Gila Bronfeld and Manny Welt, who both work for the company, was killed. My brother Yigal and I experienced an unbearable loss with the death of our nephew Yannai Kaminka, 20, a commander in the Home Front Command. Yanai was a young officer of new IDF recruits, who protected soldiers and civilians with his body at the Zikim base. Beyond that, he was a true leader who worked hard to see people truly and led with love and inspiration, not through authority.
The partnership at Simply allowed Yigal and me to disappear almost completely in the first weeks after Yannai's death to deal with our personal-family loss, and to return to a company that pushed forward despite everything. Our organizational structure, built of small and independent task teams that normally produce at record speed, is particularly sensitive to the occasional lack of team members. Despite this, with record mobilization, we not only continued to hold the reins but also formed new teams that worked to bring the healing touch of music to everyone possible in Israel.
We gave musical instruments and music lessons to displaced communities, trained teachers and music therapists, held community meetings, translated the piano app into Hebrew and added Israeli songs, and immediately opened all of our apps for free use in Israel, costing us millions of dollars so that every Israeli who wishes to draw comfort from music can do so easily. Today we continue with a variety of dedicated efforts to support the rehabilitation of the victims, and of course, we allow free access to our applications to anyone who needs it.
Then, after the ship seemed to have steadied, we were hit with a blow I never imagined would come, with the untimely death from cardiac arrest of my friend, co-founder, and fellow partner on this journey, Roey.
Push forward, despite everything
Roey always pushed to see in every challenge an opening to opportunity - a cliché indeed, but it is surprising how difficult it is to implement in the moment of truth and how many events that threatened society quickly turned into significant leaps forward, thanks to the concept that Roey pushed for. So no, I can't "find opportunity" in the death of loved ones. But it is important and possible to deeply understand the new reality, accept its sometimes terrible power, and work actively to shape its future as we would like to see it. "Seeing the Matrix," as we sometimes call it in the company - creating a spoon out of nothing, as fans of the genre say. The loss is a lesson for me, and it allows me to decide how I choose to shape my new self, how our team faces the difficulties and rebuilds itself, and this is, of course, true for us as a company and country.
Years ago, at the beginning of Simply, an investor asked me how I deal with "loneliness at the top." The question surprised me, although it actually makes a lot of sense. I am used to feeling the whole spectrum of emotions, sometimes on a daily basis, but feeling lonely is not one of them, I answered him. How naive I was then when I thought I felt the whole range of emotions. On October 7th, new colors were added to that rainbow with the death of my beloved nephew Yannai, and these colors sharpened and intensified with the burning absence of Roey. I also feel these new feelings daily, but the answer I gave then remains firm - I don't feel loneliness.
Lately, people have been asking me where the strength comes from not only to continue working but to push with all my might. I had no idea how relevant the principles that guided our journey are more than ever now in such difficult times, and they are the reason for strength and the constant sparkle in our eyes - to work on something you love and truly believe in, with people you love and believe in, and they believe in you. The figure of Roey, my friend, is by my side every day, as are thoughts about the choices he made and his position in the world, and they also give me and the company the compass for the rest of the way.
May we have leaders with responsibility
Our entrepreneurial journey at Simply has always been full of experiences. For starters, establishing a company in Israel that sells directly to consumers worldwide, and in the field of music (and now painting), is really going against the grain. Along the way, we changed target audiences and business models, shelved products, and faced many pressures - to go public, raise too quickly, and expand products too soon - we experienced disappointments and separations, and we saw many successes. We leveraged the ups and downs into strong growth, with partners and investors from the best in the world and above all millions of users, for whom the products we built for learning to play music do really well. Over the years, what started in the living room at home became an office building, and the name JoyTunes became Simply.
Today, Simply has five apps - for learning piano, guitar, singing, painting, and a guitar tuner - and another one is coming out soon. Millions of people in more than 180 countries learn to play, deepen their creative skills, and spend moments of happiness and meaning with their help. Every day we receive messages from people who can't believe how simple and fun it can be to fulfill the dream of playing their favorite song, or are excited to see their children read sheet music with ease. People say that the music alleviated their loneliness in moments of crisis and calmed their spirits after receiving difficult news. In many responses, users tell us that the app has given them back their passion for self-expression and has brought endless moments of satisfaction and pleasure to their homes.
We are not at the beginning of the road, we already have mileage, but we still have a long way to go. We have a lot of building, growth, and challenges ahead of us that we will certainly encounter, and that we still have no idea how we will get through, other than the knowledge that we will overcome them together. As Israel celebrates its 76th year of independence, I wish for all of us to work on things that are really important to us, with good people who are dear to us, and that we succeed in shaping reality so that it will be better. Like Yannai, my dear fallen nephew, I wish that we’ll all know how to truly see the other and that we will have leaders who really see the citizens. Leaders with ethics, wisdom, love for the country, and enough responsibility to shape a new reality for all of us.
Yuval Kaminka is the co-founder & CEO of Simply.
