Startup Mourns Its Fallen Founder, and Moves On

Amir Mizroch: 0:00

So just a bit of housekeeping before we get into the story itself. This show is about taking tech executives through their messaging and narrative and the way they talk about their companies, stripping away a lot of jargon, marketing speak and all that kind of stuff and just trying to nail for a broad audience what the company does, how it works, why it's important. And I'm sorry to say this, but just because your founder died in battle in Gaza doesn't give you a free pass on that.

Maayan Padan: 0:29

We weren't planning on asking for one.

Amir Mizroch: 0:32

Hi, I'm Amir Mizrach, a communications advisor and former tech editor at the Wall Street Journal. I speak to tech founders and put them through the Dejargonizer, the Zero Jargon Zone podcast, Mayan and Itamar. I'm really happy that you're on the show and we can talk about the company. I'm looking at your website, sitebitcom. It says to me here that sitebit is an AI management platform for data powered water management and that brings up a lot of potential pictures in my mind, anything from taps and sinks. But you guys actually work in stopping drownings at sea, right?

Maayan Padan: 1:11

Yes, detecting the conditions in open water that bring people to drown, because drowning is the third leading cause of accidental death worldwide.

Amir Mizroch: 1:20

What are the other two?

Maayan Padan: 1:22

I'm not sure. I think car accidents. I can't remember that I should probably have that.

Amir Mizroch: 1:27

Okay, so it's. The third biggest reason of accidental death is drowning at sea right.

Maayan Padan: 1:31

Drowning in open water yes, at sea, and rivers.

Amir Mizroch: 1:34

How do you know that? Where do you get that data from?

Maayan Padan: 1:37

The World Health Organization publishes a report every year that gives you the amount of people who died from diseases and accidental death, etc. They treat drowning as an epidemic Meaning it's Something that catches everybody. It doesn't differentiate areas in the world or, you know, races or genders.

Amir Mizroch: 2:00

How many people are you drown in open water? According to the World Health Organization, it's 327,000 people annually 327,000 people every year drown in open water around the world. Wow.

Maayan Padan: 2:15

That's an insane number, right.

Amir Mizroch: 2:19

Do you know roughly where a lot of that happens, or is it just distributed everywhere? It doesn't matter. It could be on the beaches in Miami or in Southeast Asia, it doesn't matter.

Maayan Padan: 2:27

right there are more vulnerable populations, but, generally speaking, everybody's vulnerable. There are no more drownings in a specific area of the world and less drownings in another area. Okay, how does it work?

Amir Mizroch: 2:41

Do you have, I guess, a tower that you install a camera on and a lifeguard tower? How does the system work? How does the system work?

Itamar Gur: 3:11

So the system is basically a camera with an AI system attached. We took several technologies and put them together to create a solution that can actually identify people in dangerous situations. So we have a camera usually a webcam that is connected to a computer. This computer runs the algorithm that sends an alert to the lifeguard.

Amir Mizroch: 3:38

So the lifeguard I'm thinking Baywatch, these lifeguards they're using binoculars and walkie-talkies and they're always on the lookout.

Maayan Padan: 3:48

Imagine Baywatch brought into the 21st century, and instead of binoculars you have iPads, and instead of walkie-talkies you have automatic speakers spread around the beach. That's basically our vision. That's what we do.

Amir Mizroch: 4:01

It could be just an off-the-shelf camera, like a webcam, that is connected somehow to a computer inside the lifeguard tower or in the cloud or in the cloud, and you have a few of these deployed already around the world. Take us through a few of your deployments.

Maayan Padan: 4:17

So we have two deployments in Israel one in Tel Aviv, one in Ashdod. We have a POC in the UAE, which I'm not allowed to talk in more detail about, and we have another one in Brazil, in a city called Fortaleza.

Amir Mizroch: 4:31

Describe the Tel Aviv one or the Brazil one. Just a little bit more detail, a bit more context. You know, is it a popular beach? We have two type of installation.

Itamar Gur: 4:40

One is a populated beach and one is an unpopulated beach or a beach that is not any active lifeguards. The first installation where we have lifeguards, the beach is usually populated with several hundreds of people during the day, during the season, and the purpose of the system is to help the lifeguard to identify people with risks, so people that are in rip currents, people that are straying out of the swimming zone, people that are in distress in a way that they are not surfacing.

Amir Mizroch: 5:08

Can I just pause on that for a second. So a lifeguard, a human lifeguard, will be looking at the sea. He'll be seeing swimmers, Swimmers. They won't be able to notice if someone's just gone down, just taken a dive and then they're not coming up after a certain amount of time.

Itamar Gur: 5:30

This is the power of machine. In contrast to humans, the machine system can hold up memory for a long time that the system itself can track hundreds of individual objects, because it's a machine, it's not a human. A human has to use his memory and have to use some kind of intuition. And stay concentrated the machine is always concentrated.

Itamar Gur: 5:51

This is the major advantage of the system and this is, by the way, this is the reason the system came to life. This is the thing that Adam thought about and noticed is that humans in the current age are not as concentrated as they were. He observed it in one of the beaches when he was.

Amir Mizroch: 6:10

I'm sorry to pause. So you're talking about Adam Bismuth, the founder and former CEO of Sidebit, who fell in battle, who died in battle in Gaza, I guess.

Maayan Padan: 6:21

On the 22nd of January.

Amir Mizroch: 6:24

We'll go into the story a little bit more as we get deeper in. I just want to try and nail. The previous question was a swimmer disappears underwater for longer than usual. A lifeguard in the tower. I didn't notice that, but I get an alert on my iPad.

Itamar Gur: 6:48

So you have the live stream from the camera, you'll get an augmentation, you will see some kind of square that shows you the last known location of the person and it will show you a short clip side by side, like five seconds or 10 seconds before, and we'll give you the information you need to make a decision. It will alert you to the situation. Look, there is a serious situation here, there's a possible of danger here. You notice, and then the lifeguard will act in a certain way. One way is it will raise his binoculars. You can rewind in the system and try to see again where the person went. If the system is wrong, the lifeguard will input in the system Look, it's not correct. And the video will be tagged and then the system will learn from that.

Amir Mizroch: 7:42

A person could just be holding their breath right, At what point would an alert go out? How long does a computer think a person should stay underwater?

Itamar Gur: 7:52

A person can be underwater for no more than one and a half minutes or two minutes, unless he's a professional freediver and therefore the system will alert. So it's something that the beach management or the lifeguard itself can adjust, but more than one and a half minutes or two minutes the person is probably not going out.

Maayan Padan: 8:13

The system would start noticing it after 30 seconds or something like that, because you don't want to wait for the maximum time and only then get the lifeguard to notice that something is wrong. You want to get the lifeguard notified in advance. Most of what you see today on beaches as technological assistance is for the reaction time. You want to get the lifeguard as soon as possible to people in the water. Right, you get jet skis and you have everything. But the detection takes long as well, and the longer it takes to detect something, the longer it takes to get to the person in the stress. So you don't want to wait too long to see what's going on. And based on the experience, our experienced lifeguards, who were our advisors throughout the beginning of the development, they said we're always looking at the water, primarily at the water. The water tells us all that we need to know regarding the risks and dangers, and then, when only then we start looking at people Once we know what's with the water. So that's how our system works.

Itamar Gur: 9:16

How big is your market? The market essentially every municipality or every beach authority in the world. Most of the western world have lifeguards. On top of that, you have unmanned beaches where you still have the danger of drowning, and municipalities still want to have the ability to observe there to see if someone is drowning or in distress.

Maayan Padan: 9:35

I want to add to that when we say a beach municipality, it's not only one that faces an ocean or a sea, it's also municipalities or counties that have rivers and lakes, because you have territories, especially in the global north, where you don't necessarily use the beach of an ocean or a sea, but you definitely go swim in the lake or use the river that runs through the city and it's still risky.

Amir Mizroch: 10:05

I prefer it to the beach. Actually, I like those lakes. Let's talk about Adam. We'll come back to the company a little bit later. So Adam Bismuth, I noticed he's still on your site.

Maayan Padan: 10:16

We're not quick in saying goodbye it was a forced goodbye and we're not quick in getting him off the website or off the LinkedIn page Not something we wanted to.

Itamar Gur: 10:29

Yeah, tell about how I was the first in the company to heard of it. I was in army service, got the message through a three sister. She called me and told me that he had died and he was quite shocking, say the least, and then had to spread the word to the entire company.

Amir Mizroch: 10:52

I mean, how would? Can you take us into that term?

Itamar Gur: 10:55

I called my aunt first and she told her I broke the news and then I asked her to convene the entire team. It was shocking, it was hard. Adam was very central in the company, as you may imagine.

Maayan Padan: 11:14

I was teaching I teach at Ben-Glion University and I was on a break from one of the classes I teach. And I was just finishing my break and it came out cold and I answered the phone. I thought he wants something that has to do with work. So I just answered the phone and I said, sweetie, I'll call you back. I have to go back to class. And he said no way. And I knew that I heard it in his voice. It's something very much off. So I said, okay, what? And then he said Adam died last night and we have to get the team on a call. And I said, okay, can we wait until I get back home? Because I didn't want to start crying in front of my students and I knew that if we're gonna have the call that instant, then I will just stand in class and cry and won't be able to teach. So it waited a few hours for me to get back home and then we had everybody on board and we had to break the news.

Amir Mizroch: 12:15

How did Adam die? Did you get any information about what happened in the incident?

Itamar Gur: 12:19

It was during combat, 21 soldiers died in the same incident. I can tell you specifics, but again, it's still, yeah, we can leave that there.

Amir Mizroch: 12:30

So before we talk about how I don't know where to go here, maybe just need a minute so you're on the phone with the team. How big is the team? How big is the company? At the time, five people, very small team.

Maayan Padan: 12:44

So it's a very intimate team and we're all very close with each other. And Adam we were making fun of it the other day. I used to call Adam and Itamar Abba and Abba, dad and dad, dads. Are you coming on the call Dads? Are we gonna do this? And that it's for a good reason, because they're both our dads in so many ways.

Amir Mizroch: 13:07

What was the inspiration for founding Cypher?

Maayan Padan: 13:10

So Adam was with his wife, dan Fiancé, at the Dead Sea and everybody think that going to the Dead Sea you can't drown because you always float. But the thing is that 10 people a year die in the Dead Sea because they flip on their bellies and start swallowing salty water and they choke on it and die. And this exact incident happened when Adam and Isidán Fiancé today widow were at the Dead Sea. They were just standing there. It was a matter of seconds, and they saw a man dying and Lifelar and was preoccupied with other people in another location on the beach and some people were running to him asking for his help. He ran to that person but by the time he got to that person, that person was already dead.

Maayan Padan: 14:00

And Adam was profoundly shocked with this event. It's like the dictionary definition of unnecessary death. And then he started looking into it and he found out that we have a lot of solutions to get the reaction time as short as possible, but there are no solutions to get the detection time as short as possible. So he said, okay, we need to bring lifeguarding to the 21st century across the board, meaning the detection and the reaction. And that's how he got to the site beat. That's where the idea came from.

Amir Mizroch: 14:33

Okay, when we spoke earlier, you said there was a few things potentially happening in North America, south Africa, australia.

Maayan Padan: 14:39

Yes, so these are all POCs in the pipeline for lakes and rivers in Canada and for ocean beaches in the United States, and for both rivers and oceans in South Africa and, of course, the ocean in Australia five people, a small team.

Amir Mizroch: 14:57

You've got a bunch of POCs and things in the pipeline. You've also raised what is it? A seed round?

Maayan Padan: 15:02

Yes, we're in the midst of a seed round.

Amir Mizroch: 15:04

Okay, how does a company that loses its founder and CEO overnight and suddenly right? This is not a transition, this is not a long disease. A lot of Steve Jobs. This is one day he's there, the next day he's not. The calls, the meetings, the board. How does a company move on?

Itamar Gur: 15:22

We have a clear vision. We have a purpose. We don't build the next addictive game to teenagers. We build something that actually meant to save people's lives. It's very clear to us, it's very clear to the board, it's very clear to our investors that this tech is not just for making money. It's something that is going to have a profound impact on the world in the years to come, and it has very, very important mission.

Amir Mizroch: 15:51

There wasn't any question or talk about listen. Adam's gone. Let's close it up.

Itamar Gur: 15:56

No, absolutely not. This was clear to everyone since day one.

Maayan Padan: 16:01

He would have never forgiven us had he thought that this is something that we would dare to think to stop at this point. He would be so pissed. What would he say?

Itamar Gur: 16:12

He would say nothing, just slap his face.

Maayan Padan: 16:14

Right across our table, like once wrong.

Amir Mizroch: 16:17

So he was abusive.

Maayan Padan: 16:18

That's always good, no no, but he was very determined. This was his life goal, this was his life's mission. It's kind of like it's an unwritten will for a very young man, so he shouldn't have a will in this age. But it's very clear that this is his will, so there's no questions there.

Itamar Gur: 16:38

The first time that Isweta Ushai came to his mother house during the first day of the Sivva, the first thing she told me, after she had been told Adam, was that is, you know what he wanted you to do, which is continue with Saitabit, and it's absolutely clear. I don't think that anyone who knows him will ever think differently. We have to continue.

Amir Mizroch: 17:04

So who's going to run the shop?

Maayan Padan: 17:05

Our board is currently interviewing and looking into it. We're very lucky and very privileged to have a very, very talented board of people who loved Adam and knew him well, so they take this procedure very seriously. They look into the candidates as deep as possible to see not only are they talented business-wise or do they have the experience, but do they also have, you know, the Adam ingredients of fire, of commitments? Do they have the?

Itamar Gur: 17:37

Endless energy.

Maayan Padan: 17:39

Endless energy, the core values that made Adam the person he was, and if so, then they are eligible to try and get into his shoes.

Amir Mizroch: 17:50

It's about you're the CTO, mayan, your chief business officer. How have you picked up Adams day to day work? I mean, what does the CEO do anyway? Right, it kind of feels like I don't really do much, it's mostly on the phone and it's all the spaces in between.

Itamar Gur: 18:05

What do you mean Like? It's all the contact with all the stakeholders in the company, so the investors, the board, the workers, that the clients, the potential clients. And in startup it's all the technical stuff. It's like paychecks, all benefits, office space, it's everything for the running of the business, it's bills to pay, all the day-to-day stuff that every business owner have. So in a small startup, that the CEO I like a small business owner.

Maayan Padan: 18:50

And also there's the strategy aspect of it. What do you do now? What do you do next? Why do you do now what you do? How is it going to?

Amir Mizroch: 18:57

support next. How's that been Working now in his absence? How do you guys make decisions? How does it work when, when your founder and CEO dies?

Itamar Gur: 19:06

from the beginning. We try to be as team as it's possibly can so we get the decision as a team. The team knows our runway, teams know the burn rate, teams know all the leads, the teams know All the potential investors and everything.

Maayan Padan: 19:22

We each get to stay how we see things, how we would like to see them become better or bigger or anything, and we have discussions because we're friends, yeah, so it's easy.

Amir Mizroch: 19:34

It's only been two months and it's been crazy, but what are the lessons that both of you have learned from this right? Your founder and CEO, your friend, has died in battle and you are 100% sure, you're certain, that he would have wanted you to carry on. You want to carry on. You have to build this company. What could you ask him if, if he was still around?

Maayan Padan: 19:54

I think I would ask him not to go back and together strip. Yeah, that Monday, just you know, you said you were coming out.

Itamar Gur: 20:01

man, just stay out, there's a lot of, let's say, strategic decisions that I would love to have. His advice that's something I can share is his mind was very active and very strong. He was very opinionated man. In the context of how had them resolve problems. We had 11 differences, as startup usually have, and people have disagreements, and this is One point in his character that he always knew how to bridge the difference, how to take a bottle of wine, sit down and let's talk about the issue and let's get through it. Startup is a stressful Enterprise. The day-to-day is very stressful and very demanding. You get emotional during the day. There is a lot of turning points and crisis points. Talking about Adam, this is one was one is was one of his best qualities knew how to do that.

Amir Mizroch: 20:54

Let's look at where things are currently. There's POC's Building out all over the world Australia, south Africa for those few people who swim in the oceans in Canada Lakes, in North America, let's assume those are all built out. You're hiring, you're deploying, you're growing. What is the?

Itamar Gur: 21:11

future look like. We want to be in as much cities and as much beaches as we can. We know that to make a profound change on on the world, we have to be in almost any beach in the world. And, in terms of tech, improving our models, our way of actually analyzing image Sensorial data into something that is actually very useful, and lowering the bar of accessing AI capabilities by the by the user.

Amir Mizroch: 21:39

It's very a lot of technical jargon. Let's go back for a second. How does a camera let's say that's already on a beach in Cape Town, for instance, that's on a pole or a tower that's already looking for theft or criminal type of you know CCTV stuff? How would your soft when your product plug into that?

Itamar Gur: 22:03

We use existing cameras most of the time. So, assuming the camera is facing the scene we want to actually analyze, we live stream the camera to our cloud servers, you know, cloud servers running some AI models that are analyzing the image, extracting the I want to stop you before you go into that tunnel.

Amir Mizroch: 22:28

So the camera is recording a live feed of a beach. It's not a static image like at a warehouse where you know one palette or one box moves here, another box move. You have constant changes as waves. There's people moving in weird directions and they're going up and down like there's a lot to take in there, right? How does that work? How does the camera and the algorithm define and understand what it's seeing?

Itamar Gur: 22:55

So we use several computer vision techniques, using deep learning, to identify objects in the frame, or a frame mean single image and video series of images. Each video stream is actually a series of images and the analyze it to identify Stuff, like the ocean did, the variability of the, the waters and all sort of scenery variability of the waters.

Amir Mizroch: 23:21

You mean currents, currents, waves, rip currents. Could you spot shocks?

Maayan Padan: 23:26

We're working on it. It's not as simple as one would expect.

Amir Mizroch: 23:30

Maybe you should work on that sooner.

Itamar Gur: 23:32

I'll put it in the product pipeline. We are as of now, enhancement system to the lifeguard. We are not replacing the lifeguards. We're not planning on replacing the lifeguards or taking their job.

Maayan Padan: 23:46

So it also does not absolve the lifeguards from you know, doing their job right.

Amir Mizroch: 23:52

If we look at Ashdod in southern Israel I don't know what drowning statistics are for that every year, but I'm assuming a certain amount of drowning there. It's a big town. Are you able to talk about the engagement with them You're talking with?

Itamar Gur: 24:05

the lifeguards weekly, we get input, all sorts of stuff, to the system. This is our way to learn. This is a way to improve the system all the time. We we are truly committed to build something that the lifeguards loved. We don't want to build something that will be Thrown from the top as a technology innovation and we'll stay Aside and the lifeguard tower and not being used. We have to build something that will be used and will be loved by the. The people use that, otherwise we will not get to the goal of actually saving life.

Amir Mizroch: 24:36

Okay, it sounds like, despite the huge loss that you all felt personally, professionally, from Adam's death, business is as usual. Poc's are running, conversations are happening around the world, the board is looking for a new CEO. You're raising the seed round.

Itamar Gur: 24:56

I wouldn't say business as usual, but in terms of vectoring, we are still in the same.

Amir Mizroch: 25:02

During vector I don't know, I don't think I so vectoring. Help you, help him, my, help him help himself.

Maayan Padan: 25:09

Here, I'm here. If you think, if you think about it through movement vectors like, which direction are we going? We're still going in the same direction.

Itamar Gur: 25:18

This is art, it's usual.

Maayan Padan: 25:20

We're morning, all right, but we're doing our best out of commitment to Adam and love to Adam, and also out of commitment to our partners and customers and Commitment in love. I so the human race, which we don't want to see drowning.

Amir Mizroch: 25:45

Can you tell me a little bit about Adam? You know, where did he grow up, brothers and sisters, just a little bit more about him.

Itamar Gur: 25:53

So Adam grew up in central Israel. Adam had three brothers and one sister and he was full of life. He was someone who actually lived his full potential in terms of enjoying life, traveling a lot, meeting people, trying to use every second of the day to do something. He had a lot of energy. Adam never saw something as impossible and he never took no for an answer from anyone, never stopped a loved life and tried to enjoy every moment.

Amir Mizroch: 26:28

Yeah, I guess it reminds me of what you were saying earlier about the board CEO search. Whoever it is is not just going to have to build out this business, but it's going to have to share the mission. Really right? I mean, this is a huge global problem.

Maayan Padan: 26:42

Yes, but at the same time, this is a very, very welcoming, close and friendly team. We're not going to nitpick to find disadvantages in the new person. We're going to welcome that person with big hug and get them on board and get them energized and excited, as we are, and get them busy. It's a hell of a journey, you know. Honestly speaking, I wish we hadn't have to go through it, but since we have to, then I can say personally that these are the best people to go through such a journey with.

Amir Mizroch: 27:15

That's great. Thanks for listening to the Dejargonizer. For more episodes and ways to connect with me, please