Making Something From Nothing: Dror Fixler Of ‘FirstPoint Mobile Guard’ On How To Go From Idea To Launch
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
… Know life’s going to be a roller coaster from now on — This is true for every high-tech startup. You’ll find yourself up one minute, down the next. Keeping everything in perspective is critical.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing,” I had the pleasure of interviewing Dror Fixler, CEO & Cofounder of FirstPoint Mobile Guard.
Dror Fixler is CEO and Co-founder of FirstPoint Mobile Guard — AND an Israeli physicist specializing in optics, director of the Bar-Ilan Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, and a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Nanophotonics at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. He is also an Israeli Orthodox rabbi and posek (arbiter of Jewish law). Additionally, he serves as a visiting professor at the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry in China. Fixler received the European Science Foundation’s Plasmon-Bionanosense Award in 2015 and the President’s International Fellowship Initiative Award of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2017.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I was actually a regular kid — nothing special. I went to school, joined youth groups, nothing out of the ordinary. Although I was born in Netanya, a beach town in Israel where my company is headquartered, I grew up in Tel Aviv and am a Tel Avivian at heart. I started each day with morning prayers, after which I would go to the sea and swim for 30 to 45 minutes (even in winter), except during exam days when I didn’t want to be late. The oldest in a family of four kids, I also worked as a volunteer at the Tel Aviv central library.
What is your favorite “life lesson quote” and how was that relevant to you in your life?
I really believe in teamwork. When I was in university, I met a very smart Dean who told me that every successful endeavor needs these two “ingredients”: the brilliance of an Einstein and the resources of a prince.
I had neither of those. I had a strong belief in teamwork, that the way to success is for every individual in the team to know exactly what to contribute to the effort to spark the fire of success.
At FirstPoint, I am fortunate enough to collaborate with our CTO Adam Weinberg, a team of experienced telecommunications, cybersecurity, and general technology experts, colleagues with business and finance expertise, and angel investors who not only provided me (a techie with minimal business experience) with initial funding, but also educated me in the art and science of business and management. I’m not Einstein nor a prince of England, but I have reached my goals with amazing help along the way.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Although I don’t have the time to read as much as I’d like, I keep rereading the books of Maimonides, a medieval Jewish philosopher as well as a preeminent astronomer and physician, which have inspired me greatly. One of the most important codifiers of Jewish law, he wrote the Mishneh Torah and The Guide for the Perplexed. I found that reading Maimonides has changed my way of looking at life not just philosophically but practically — including how to treat my spouse, children, fellow human beings, even the environment.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few tips from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
One word: mazal (or luck). Three letters:
M — makom (place) — You need to be in the right place.
Z — zman (time) — You need to do it at the right time.
L — ladat (to know) — You need to know it’s a good idea for the right time and place.
Many people have good ideas; the problem is that they aren’t successful because they just don’t have the “mazal” to have all three (and most important — the last L) at once.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it, saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
I meet with people all the time who come to me with their ideas and, unfortunately, I end up disappointing them and telling them that this or that idea has been done before. The truth is, in this day and age, most market segments have been filled, and it will be very rare indeed to come up with a totally new “slice” of the pie. One thing you can do is take a segment, say the cyber segment, and drill down into possible sub-segments — healthcare-digital healthcare -telemedicine-remote health data monitoring, etc. — and find ideas for a new technology. Or think of areas like bioconvergence, which brings together healthcare and technology. For example, combine life science biomedicine/math/algorithms/engineering, and perhaps bring about a new discipline or innovation. The field of Optogenetics — a biological technique that uses light to control the activity of neurons or other cell types — is an outcome of such thinking and has been used to restore a blind patient’s vision.
Many new technologies have resulted from innovators standing on the shoulders of giants from the past and seeing farther into the horizon.
When you’ve come up with an idea, the next key step — to avoid wasting time and resources — is to go to a trusted expert in the relevant field or area of knowledge and learn if the idea is worth pursuing.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
First thing is to make sure your technology is solid and dependable. Then, put on your business hat and find the right partners who will adopt your solution and can give you honest feedback. Where do you find them? Start with friends, neighbors, high school friends, friends of friends, military buddies, etc.
There are different approaches to dealing with patents. Personally, I believe that patents are critical. You need to do the legwork to ensure your idea isn’t already on the books.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?
- You’ll need to find the correct balance between your personal life and your business life. This is very difficult, and I’m not sure I’ve already achieved it. I wish someone had told me when to say “yes,” “no,” and to whom.
- Pay attention to your board of directors — and your investors as well. You are personally responsible for their money. They’ve looked you in the eyes, listened to you, believed you — and now you have to show them that their trust in you has been well placed.
- Know life’s going to be a roller coaster from now on — This is true for every high-tech startup. You’ll find yourself up one minute, down the next. Keeping everything in perspective is critical.
- There isn’t a better feeling than the feeling of success — Seeing your idea blossom into a feasible venture that delivers real value and benefits a wide range of people is just like seeing a baby being born, taking his first steps, or saying her first words. Suddenly, it’s no longer an idea on the drawing board but a living and growing phenomenon. I guess this is what every new pioneer feels.
- Invest in your chairman<->CEO relationship — it is so important to have a strong relationship with your chairman, and you need to work on that constantly.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
As discussed, consult with experts to make sure it is really a novel idea. Build a prototype and find people to try it who can give you realistic feedback. Integrate that feedback, and see whether your concept is still truly unique. Then patent it, and start making the rounds among friends and family to see if they are willing to act as your angels.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
It really depends on your resources — if you can afford an innovation development consultant, a second — or third or fourth — opinion is great.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
Bootstrapping is a great way to get started, but if you want to grow significantly, you’ll need VC funding to take your company to the next level. You need to select the right VCs, though. They are looking to exit, and you would prefer to grow the organization into a major player. You need to find the right fit.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I’d like to go back to Maimonides, and the prophets, who’ve said that in the future the sheep will live with the wolf and the lion with the lamb, and everyone will be happy together. Living in a country where the wolves would have gobbled us were it not for a competent, high-tech military, I’ve come to believe that technology has made all the difference and will continue to do so. Thanks to FirstPoint solutions- tracking and monitoring hidden attackers on your mobile networks — I am confident we are contributing to the safety and security of the world tremendously — and keeping the wolves far, far away from the sheep.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I’d like to see a world where the wolves and sheep work together to make it a better place.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
A private, quiet dinner with my wife would be great, as FirstPoint usually takes up much of my time.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Making Something From Nothing: Dror Fixler Of ‘FirstPoint Mobile Guard’ On How To Go From Idea To… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
