Oren Yogev is the co-founder and CEO of Blink, an industry leading technology company developing a non-intrusive (passive), eye tracking technology that doesn’t require dedicated hardware. The AI-based software solution can be deployed with any camera technology on the market today.
Oren is also the founder of Replay Technologies, a developer of video 3D reconstruction technologies, which was acquired by Intel in 2016.
We asked Oren a few questions about his experience as a founder and advice he would give to the next generation of entrepreneurs.
What advice would you go back in time and give yourself when starting your first company?
I would advise myself to monitor my cash flow more closely and be less optimistic when determining the right timing for my next round of funding. In a few situations, while steering my first company, I was close to running out of capital. Luckily, I had great investors who backed me up and gave me the right amount of funds to sail through those hard times.
After the successful exit of your first startup Replay Technologies, what made you start Blink and what have you done differently this time around?
I had a few success stories before Replay Technologies, but I wanted to create a bigger win and start even a bigger company after its exit. After Replay was acquired, I worked for a very large corporation for a few months, but I realized that my entrepreneurial soul is stronger than my corporate soul. I decided that I needed to do what my instinct and brain were guiding me towards, which was creating another start up.
With Blink, I managed its funds differently than before and started with more financial cushion for the first two years, which allowed me to take more risks on the way to finding the right product-market fit.