Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tammuz Dubnov. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Tammuz, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Coming up with an idea for a business is not a trivial task and there are lots of ways to get there and lots of changes along the way. I am involved in multiple startups and coming up with the idea is always challenging. I have a creative background – I’m a dancer, a choreographer, a circus aerialist, and a visual artist – but I also have a very technical foundation. My undergraduate degree is from UC Berkeley in theoretical mathematics, computer science, and dance, and my master’s degree is in artificial intelligence (AI) from UC San Diego. Through many different projects, I built up expertise in different AI domains – machine vision, audio signal processing, natural language processing (NLP), and time series analysis. Over the years, I’ve founded a few startups on my own and some as a part of a larger team. As my business acumen grew with my experience, I’ve become more aware of the many possible paths to an idea and the value of a founder being a user. I generally try to use my strength (my strong technology/AI foundation and my strong creativity) to come up with an idea that has the highest possible value, often leading to novel solutions. Coming up with a creative idea is easier said than done, as Steve Jobs explained in Wired Magazine in February 1996, creativity is about connecting the dots. Connecting the dots requires that you accumulate as many dots as you can over your life/career so you can have dots to connect. For me, the dots come from my diverse background and unrelenting curiosity in many different fields.
In my work, I specifically try to connect dots from different fields. I often bring creative approaches from my diverse background and my strong AI/technology foundation to know what’s feasible. Sometimes it may be a novel idea and sometimes it may be a more normative idea but a novel approach. My first startup idea was to use AI and natural language processing to evaluate feature film screenplays to help improve the screenplay and automatically estimate their potential profitability. I thought the concept was rather clever and the technology we built to enable it was top-notch. I quickly had to become an expert on a niche that I sort of made up, quantitative/mathematical analysis for Hollywood screenplays. The seemingly good idea ended up having significant pushback from screenwriters (whose creative process is less open to quantitative approaches) and producers (who were hesitant of an AI overstepping their work). After a few years of determination, I ended up putting that project on hold but I did walk away with an important lesson – as a founder, thinking about technology first and users second can lead to a difficult road in gaining customer traction.
The startup I founded next was born from a technology I developed for my personal use. As a choreographer/dancer, I wanted to perform with visuals for my pieces. This is something that others were doing, they would create stunning graphics and rehearse so that the performer’s movements looked in sync with the visuals. I went about it differently, using AI and machine vision I recognized movements and had them generate graphics based on my movements in real-time. This means that rather than the person having to synchronize with the graphics, the graphics are now synchronizing with the person; this shift in approach opened it up to many more use-cases. This evolved to be a tool not only for choreographers but a tool in the audiovisual world for events, nightlife, advertising, experiential marketing, hospitality, and more. Effectively almost all use-cases of large-format displays (LED walls, projectors, etc.) benefit from the technology by turning viewers into active participants. A key difference in this company from the previous one was that the product we were developing was a product where I was a target user (or at least one of the target users). When you’re building a tool where you are the user, it’s much easier to validate your idea and validate the value of your product because you know for yourself if you would actually use it.
Other ventures and ideas came from unforeseeable places over the years. The idea for an Algo-trading fund I’m opening came from doing handstands at the patio of a bar where a guy came up to me asking about handstands. This led to a trade where I taught the guy handstands and he taught me about the stock market. This developed into nine months of research and development on different algorithms with my brother before we launched. The idea of Algo-trading (using algorithms to automatically buy and sell stocks in the stock market) is not novel (you can find many companies in the field) but using our unique AI/AutoML (automatic Machine Learning) approach inspired by my previous projects in unrelated fields is the novelty in our idea. Other startups I’m involved in came about in different ways. One team I’m involved in focused on finding the pain point we would like to solve, the challenge of onboarding new software developers. We brought together our experiences, both as those that have hired and managed developers and our experiences as developers, to come up with an idea for a devTool (development tool) that can address that pain point. Another initiative I’m involved in first brought together the team before having a clear focus, and there I was brought in for my deep understanding of AI. My role was to help shape the idea and articulate what is possible and what is not possible technologically. In the background, I have other projects where I’m personally funding and leading the research on various AI-based technologies I came up with. If the researched technology proves itself then it will become a full product/startup idea.
In the end, what gets me most excited are ideas that I can see the value in as a user. Through my experience, I evolved from thinking of technology first and user second, to thinking of technology where I’m the user, to finally thinking of the user first and the technology second. Ideas where I have a clear understanding of the pain the target audience faces, and how we ease that pain, are the ideas that captivate me. Ideas where I know that my unique background and experiences helped create a distinctive perspective, help me validate that I’m the right person to bring this idea to the world. When coming up with a business, you need to have an “unfair advantage” to why you can succeed where others can’t. For me, my “unfair advantage” is my unique background and unique way of thinking which often leads me to different ideas from others.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Sure, I’m happy to share a bit more about my background. I’m the founder of Zuzor where we are pioneering innovative experiential-media software. We are building tools to empower designers and creatives to bring interactive motion-generated content to their work easily. I am recognized by the RedBull Magazine as one of the five entrepreneurs revolutionizing nightlife, recognized as one of 2020’s The Nine of the ProAv industry by the AVNetwork, recognized as a certified thought leader by MarketScale Magazine, and more. As one of the youngest thought leaders in the experiential field, with multiple patents pending, I’ve been flown around the US, Asia, and Europe to speak at conferences.
My technical foundation is from the University of California Berkeley where I graduated at the age of 18 with honors in Theoretical Mathematics, Computer Science and Dance. I also hold a master’s in Engineering Science with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence from the University of California, San Diego. During my early 20s I was an award-winning performer and sought-after choreographer in the Dance and Cirque space.
I started my entrepreneurial journey at the age of 20 when I applied my technical expertise with my passion for the visual and cinematic arts to create Scriptonomics. The company developed an artificial intelligence process that adds a data-driven approach to the creative elements of storytelling. Scriptonomics improved the studio side development process while also empowering filmmakers with a new technology tool to refine and enhance their creativity. Besides Zuzor, I’m continuing as a serial entrepreneur building AI-driven companies to bring value to the world.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
When I was twenty years old, I had to build my reputation in an industry I had never touched before. At that point, I was two years out of college and only had experience working on numerical simulations at a research lab, which wasn’t so applicable to screenwriting. I used my analytics background to analyze the field from a unique perspective, specifically a field where this sort of analytical thinking is uncommon. Building up your expertise and having something unique to say is important to establish yourself, but it is also important to bring yourself to the public eye – for example, through conferences. After I built up this expertise, I started speaking at conferences. After most presentations, I was able to connect more dots and deepen my expertise. By talking with attendees after my presentation and keeping close attention to the questions they asked, I learned about the next topic I needed to dive deeper into. After I spoke at enough conferences I built up a reputation and a certain amount of authority through my association with those conferences. Over time I learned that when speaking at conferences, it’s also very worthwhile to get to know the other speakers. Conversations with them can be very enlightening, and again can help you connect dots through their perspective and input. Speakers at conferences can, to a certain degree, be considered influencers in the market. By becoming a speaker, and getting to know other speakers, you can quickly gain a foothold in your market and learn about other conferences to continue to grow your reputation.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
Since COVID, managing a team and maintaining high morale has become critical to continuing to progress and succeed during these uncertain times. With our teams working remotely, we had to put a higher emphasis on our hiring process. Before hiring an individual, you need to make sure that they’re passionate about the field and ideally passionate about your product. Not seeing them on a daily basis, you also need to be extremely understanding of elements of their lives you are less exposed to because of the distance. They or their family can get sick at any given time and you need to communicate that health and safety trump any other consideration. For me, that has made all the difference during this period. We have workers that are very passionate about our products and keeping them motivated is relatively easy as their progress fuels their energy. That being said, being understanding of absences (a worker disappeared for 4 days as his mother was hospitalized and wasn’t able to give us any indication until he returned) is a must to always make it clear that you care and respect them as people first and foremost.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.zuzor.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tammuzd/
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/tammuzdubnov