His 1st startup failed—but his 2nd one hit $100M ARR & a $1.6B valuation. Here's what he learned. | Liran Zvibel, Founder of WEKA

Liran quit a cozy job at IBM to launch Fusic, a TikTok-like app back in 2011. He raised over $10M, acquired tens of thousands of users, and failed.

So he went back to what he knew: deep tech and enterprise. He launched WEKA in 2013 to improve the efficiency of GPUs. He was operating on hard mode: building deep tech and selling to large enterprise customers. It took him 5 years to build a commercially-ready product. In that time, he raised over $35M from strategic investors, since VCs didn't get it. 

Once they launched, they more than doubled every year. And this year, they crossed $100M in ARR. 

Here's how Liran built WEKA and got it off the ground.

Why you should listen:

• Why deep tech is much harder than normal software startups and always takes much longer.
• How to get enterprise customers to commit well before your product is ready. 
• How to leverage strategic investors to get you through the early days when you have no revenue.
• How Liran was able to get customers to pay 6-figure deals when competitors offered 'similar' products for free.

Keywords
Weka, deep tech, large enterprises, GPUs, OS, product-market fit, funding, strategic investors, POCs, POVs, AI, GPU use case, performance, cost reduction, rapid growth


Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:12) Why my first startup failed
(00:08:35) Starting WEKA
(00:15:04) WEKA's First Customer
(00:17:43) The Operating System of CPUs
(00:21:19) The Issues with Deep Tech Companies
(00:26:19) Competing with a Free Product
(00:32:57) Reaching a Couple Million in ARR
(00:36:26) Fundraising
(00:43:19) Finding Product Market Fit
(00:44:08) One Piece of Advice

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