Welcome to the EVP Talent blog! This blog series exists to demystify common startup roles, create clearer pathways and tell the stories of exceptional operators within the EVP Portfolio.
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Michael Bezman is the Co-founder and CTO of BlendAI, a product that helps e-commerce stores maintain profitable growth by simplifying and centralising online advertising.
We had the pleasure of (virtually) sitting down with Michael to learn more about his experience and what he does as the Co-founder and CTO at BlendAI.
How do you explain what you do?
The way I try to explain what I do to my four and seven year old is that It’s like building something out of Lego pieces without instructions, but the pieces we build need to be useful.
Broadly speaking, can you give us a sense of what activities you’re accountable or responsible for?
Being a CTO in an early stage startup is slightly different to being a CTO in a larger organisation. In the beginning, I wrote code and tried to create something that people need. Today my role is shifting as we scale, with less involvement in active development and more time spent creating the foundation for the team and transferring skills to our more junior developers.
As a Co-Founder I wear many hats beyond technology. Doing administrative tasks, hiring people and speaking to name a few.
What could a day, week or month look like for you as CTO Co-Founder?
My kids usually wake me up around 5:30am. I then have a few minutes to catch up with the team in Poland and see if anything is urgent. Once the day officially begins we have a standup meeting to make sure everyone is in sync. I then spend some time speaking to customers. By about 4:30pm my team in Poland joins us, and we continue until about 8:00pm. It’s a long day, but when you have great people in your team you really enjoy the time.
Tell us about your past experience and journey to founding BlendAI.
For the last 20 years I've been working in startups. For many years I was developing software for different customers across Israel, the US and Australia.
BlendAI first started as a pain point for one of our customers who had difficulties spending their advertising budget. We created a solution for them, but believed it might be useful for other businesses too. Unfortunately none of our clients were willing to pay for it. We almost forgot about it until I met someone in Australia who asked me why we didn't do it for e-commerce. At the time I didn’t know much about the space, but when we started speaking to people, we understood that there was an opportunity.
We quickly pivoted and built a new business around eCommerce. We quickly built an MVP to prove to ourselves that it actually can work and that people are willing to pay for it. By mid 2020, we had a working prototype and we started speaking to prospective customers.
What prior experience set you up to succeed as the Co-Founder and CTO at BlendAI?
Pretty much everything in tech changes every four years. So one of the skills you need to master is in how you manage.
The hardest person to manage when you are founding a startup is yourself. It boils down to two things. First, knowing how to make mistakes and acknowledge them, and second is staying focused on the problem you're solving and not the solution you're building.
Was there anything that you needed to upskill in or unlearn from your prior experience that was no longer serving you?
I'm always trying to push myself out of my comfort zone. And while my comfort zone was building technology, I had never worked with small stores, made sales calls and provided customer support. It was a pretty big challenge for me, but I learned a lot about the importance of speaking with the customer and truly listening. I believe all software developers, especially in startups, need to listen to sales and customer success calls.
Who do you work most closely with?
I work most closely with my business partner and Co-Founder Dean and my team of developers. But with five people here in Sydney, we all sit in the same room and work closely together. It’s an amazing time where everyone is in sync, on top of all the activities happening and everyone can shape the product and have a huge impact. These days I interact more with the team here in Sydney, but I wish it was easier to fly to Poland every couple of months.
What is hard about being a Co-Founder and CTO?
When the startup is growing, the challenge, especially for the tech team, is that often we assume that the same pattern that got us here will continue to work. But it's not that easy. One of my roles as CTO is to make sure that everyone understands what they need to be doing and creating the environment for people to adapt and grow.
What misconceptions do people have about your role as a Co-Founder CTO?
The CTO role is pretty straightforward in that you are in charge of technology. But what you might not expect is that in the early stages, it’s likely you’ll wear the product hat as well. As you grow, the role of CTO changes and you need to choose whether you become an R&D Manager or you stay on the ‘hacker’ path. The R&D Manager is someone who thinks through all of the processes of the development teams and helps them deliver their products. Whereas the ‘hacker’ stays on the more agile path of trying to solve deep technical problems.
What does good look like as a Co-Founder CTO? Who are your role models?
When you are trying to build a team, often you try to mimic things that work well at other companies. The problem is you are managing people and they shape the kind of CTO that you need to be. I was lucky enough to be surrounded with amazing people who all taught me, and continue to teach me so much about the role. Whether it's my colleagues, people from other companies or even the junior developers who are very creative and bring a lot of energy.
I think you always need to push yourself forward in any role. It doesn’t matter whether you learn from online sources, your peers or your friends. But learn somewhere. I'm trying to make sure 20% of my time is spent learning so that I’m staying ahead of my changing role.
Do you have a moment, day, team or piece of work that you’re immensely proud of since founding BlendAI?
I think one of the moments you always remember as a startup founder is when you get your first paying customer. It makes you feel so proud because it reaffirms your belief in the product. And that others are not only willing to believe in it and use it, but also pay for it. When we signed our first customer their online store didn’t have any sales. But now their main source of revenue is online. They have gone from zero to millions of dollars in business. That’s what makes me really happy, when we see our customers growing their businesses.
What advice would you give yourself or a friend starting as CTO?
As tech people, we tend to love the things we create. One of the most important things for a CTO or Founder is to be in love with the problem you are trying to solve, not the solution. The tech will always change, but the core problem will remain.
On the personal side, I think one of the biggest challenges in founding a startup is balancing your working life. It can be hard to create boundaries of where work starts and ends. I don't have a solution for it, but it’s something you have to be aware of.
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Interested in technical roles? Check out Talent_OS to see opportunities across the EVP Portfolio, or reach out to Fred or Charmaine from EVP's Talent Team!
Welcome to the EVP Talent blog! This blog series exists to demystify common startup roles, create clearer pathways and tell the stories of exceptional operators within the EVP Portfolio.
****
Michael Bezman is the Co-founder and CTO of BlendAI, a product that helps e-commerce stores maintain profitable growth by simplifying and centralising online advertising.
We had the pleasure of (virtually) sitting down with Michael to learn more about his experience and what he does as the Co-founder and CTO at BlendAI.
How do you explain what you do?
The way I try to explain what I do to my four and seven year old is that It’s like building something out of Lego pieces without instructions, but the pieces we build need to be useful.
Broadly speaking, can you give us a sense of what activities you’re accountable or responsible for?
Being a CTO in an early stage startup is slightly different to being a CTO in a larger organisation. In the beginning, I wrote code and tried to create something that people need. Today my role is shifting as we scale, with less involvement in active development and more time spent creating the foundation for the team and transferring skills to our more junior developers.
As a Co-Founder I wear many hats beyond technology. Doing administrative tasks, hiring people and speaking to name a few.
What could a day, week or month look like for you as CTO Co-Founder?
My kids usually wake me up around 5:30am. I then have a few minutes to catch up with the team in Poland and see if anything is urgent. Once the day officially begins we have a standup meeting to make sure everyone is in sync. I then spend some time speaking to customers. By about 4:30pm my team in Poland joins us, and we continue until about 8:00pm. It’s a long day, but when you have great people in your team you really enjoy the time.
Tell us about your past experience and journey to founding BlendAI.
For the last 20 years I've been working in startups. For many years I was developing software for different customers across Israel, the US and Australia.
BlendAI first started as a pain point for one of our customers who had difficulties spending their advertising budget. We created a solution for them, but believed it might be useful for other businesses too. Unfortunately none of our clients were willing to pay for it. We almost forgot about it until I met someone in Australia who asked me why we didn't do it for e-commerce. At the time I didn’t know much about the space, but when we started speaking to people, we understood that there was an opportunity.
We quickly pivoted and built a new business around eCommerce. We quickly built an MVP to prove to ourselves that it actually can work and that people are willing to pay for it. By mid 2020, we had a working prototype and we started speaking to prospective customers.
What prior experience set you up to succeed as the Co-Founder and CTO at BlendAI?
Pretty much everything in tech changes every four years. So one of the skills you need to master is in how you manage.
The hardest person to manage when you are founding a startup is yourself. It boils down to two things. First, knowing how to make mistakes and acknowledge them, and second is staying focused on the problem you're solving and not the solution you're building.
Was there anything that you needed to upskill in or unlearn from your prior experience that was no longer serving you?
I'm always trying to push myself out of my comfort zone. And while my comfort zone was building technology, I had never worked with small stores, made sales calls and provided customer support. It was a pretty big challenge for me, but I learned a lot about the importance of speaking with the customer and truly listening. I believe all software developers, especially in startups, need to listen to sales and customer success calls.
Who do you work most closely with?
I work most closely with my business partner and Co-Founder Dean and my team of developers. But with five people here in Sydney, we all sit in the same room and work closely together. It’s an amazing time where everyone is in sync, on top of all the activities happening and everyone can shape the product and have a huge impact. These days I interact more with the team here in Sydney, but I wish it was easier to fly to Poland every couple of months.
What is hard about being a Co-Founder and CTO?
When the startup is growing, the challenge, especially for the tech team, is that often we assume that the same pattern that got us here will continue to work. But it's not that easy. One of my roles as CTO is to make sure that everyone understands what they need to be doing and creating the environment for people to adapt and grow.
What misconceptions do people have about your role as a Co-Founder CTO?
The CTO role is pretty straightforward in that you are in charge of technology. But what you might not expect is that in the early stages, it’s likely you’ll wear the product hat as well. As you grow, the role of CTO changes and you need to choose whether you become an R&D Manager or you stay on the ‘hacker’ path. The R&D Manager is someone who thinks through all of the processes of the development teams and helps them deliver their products. Whereas the ‘hacker’ stays on the more agile path of trying to solve deep technical problems.
What does good look like as a Co-Founder CTO? Who are your role models?
When you are trying to build a team, often you try to mimic things that work well at other companies. The problem is you are managing people and they shape the kind of CTO that you need to be. I was lucky enough to be surrounded with amazing people who all taught me, and continue to teach me so much about the role. Whether it's my colleagues, people from other companies or even the junior developers who are very creative and bring a lot of energy.
I think you always need to push yourself forward in any role. It doesn’t matter whether you learn from online sources, your peers or your friends. But learn somewhere. I'm trying to make sure 20% of my time is spent learning so that I’m staying ahead of my changing role.
Do you have a moment, day, team or piece of work that you’re immensely proud of since founding BlendAI?
I think one of the moments you always remember as a startup founder is when you get your first paying customer. It makes you feel so proud because it reaffirms your belief in the product. And that others are not only willing to believe in it and use it, but also pay for it. When we signed our first customer their online store didn’t have any sales. But now their main source of revenue is online. They have gone from zero to millions of dollars in business. That’s what makes me really happy, when we see our customers growing their businesses.
What advice would you give yourself or a friend starting as CTO?
As tech people, we tend to love the things we create. One of the most important things for a CTO or Founder is to be in love with the problem you are trying to solve, not the solution. The tech will always change, but the core problem will remain.
On the personal side, I think one of the biggest challenges in founding a startup is balancing your working life. It can be hard to create boundaries of where work starts and ends. I don't have a solution for it, but it’s something you have to be aware of.
****