From Homeless to Tech?Founder

Life is an interesting experience that no one can prepare you?for.

Lets start from beginning… It was spring of 1998, and I had graduated from two schools; Technical College and a private Fine Arts School, earning an Associates Degree in Graphic Design and my graduation diploma from the private school. And so, super skinny 18 year old me, decided to sell my PC that I had proudly completed games such as Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Quake and Phantasmagoria, to buy a ticket to New York from Israel.

I was about to start my military service that year, but before I did, I wanted to go somewhere. Since I had an aunt in New York, that’s where I could go.

I spent a few months in New York and fell in love with the city. When I got back home to Israel a few weeks prior to my military service due date, on the way home from the airport I told my parents, “One day, I’ll live in New York!”.

Fast forward post my military service, some life hardships, and a quick 6.5 years detour to Toronto, Canada, I found myself in New York in the winter of 2006.

The only relatives I had in the city were my aunt, her controlling husband, and their son, my cousin. Prior to coming to New York, I had confirmed with them that I could stay for a few months, until I started generating some income and could figure out my own living arrangements.

But, my aunt's husband decided to change his mind without notifying anyone about it, as usual. A few weeks after my arrival, I came home from a long day of networking events, and found all my stuff in that little space between the entry door and a buzzer locked door at the lobby of their building.

I buzzed a few times, and finally her husband answered. I tried to ask what had happened… to which I got a very short reply; “Our apartment is too small for you to stay here. It’s time you found your own place.” And just like that, I found myself wandering in Washington Heights, somewhere on Broadway, on a very cold midnight in November, unprepared. I had no gloves, no hat, and a fairly thin autumn coat, walking aimlessly with my laptop case on my shoulder and a suitcase, with just $500 in my pocket.

It was only my second time in New York, having no idea where to go, where to stay, or how to navigate the subway system.

It was freezing outside, and only got colder as it grew deeper into the night. I had to find shelter as soon as possible so I could rest, evaluate my situation, and figure out what to do next.

I had no idea which areas of New York were more or less expensive, where any hotels or other accommodations were, and was trying to avoid spending too much money on a cab, but since I literally didn’t know where to go, I got a cab, and my first words were, “Take me to the nearest hotel please.” I don’t remember the name of the hotel, but what I do remember is it was $300 a night. While it wasn’t my best decision, it was 2am, I was cold, exhausted and really needed a safe space to rest and think, so I took the room.

To my surprise, being in a limbo state, not knowing what tomorrow would bring, no one to call, and nowhere to go, after a hot shower, I simply fell asleep, and had a pretty good night of sleep.?

I left the hotel the next morning around 10 am, walked across the street to a diner I spotted, and grabbed a typical American breakfast; eggs, sausage, toast, fried potatoes, and coffee. Little did I know… that was my last proper meal for months to come.

While I was sipping on my coffee at the bar, the reality started to sink in. I had $500 the night before, and now, after a $20 cab ride, $300 hotel, and $15 breakfast, I was left with $165. That’s it. My bank cards wouldn’t work in the states and the only people I could call were my parents, but coming from a poor immigrant family, and they themselves were going through some hard times trying to become permanent residents in Canada, earning minimum wage and spending thousands on immigration lawyers, they had no money to send me, and I did not want to worry them even more.?

I stayed at the diner until lunch time, trying to think through the situation, but I was so mentally exhausted… all I could process at the time is that I was in Chelsea area in Manhattan… oh, and, I had to leave the diner because the woman behind the bar kept asking if I wanted anything else, but while I was hungry, I did not have the luxury to spend another $15 or $20 on lunch there, so I grabbed my stuff and left.

While I was wandering aimlessly around the streets of Chelsea on a cold November day, my head was spinning. I had no idea what to do… I didn’t even have a local cell phone. I had an Israeli cell phone, but, the line wasn’t open for international calls, so I simply kept it for emergencies. Meanwhile, I was getting really hungry…

Wandering the streets in the radius of about 10–15 blocks, I discovered a hotdog stand that still charged $1.50 for a basic small hotdog and that became my lunch place for the next several months. Then, I discovered a local Starbucks where I could get a large green tea for $1.25 and an endless supply of free honey and tap water. Most importantly though, I could stay there the entire day if I needed to. For dinner I found a pizzeria that had a dinner special that was a $1.75 for a plain slice and a cup of coke. The next morning, breakfast was a tiny pack of saltines from a local bodega for 50 cents, and a street cart coffee for another 50 cents with lots of sugar; breakfast of champions!

This is how I learned to live on about $5.50 a day in New?York…?

For several weeks I was simply existing. Becoming homeless was a shock, a shock that I struggled to shake off for some time. I’d already gone through some hardships in life like being a hated minority growing up in Soviet Union, then immigrating to Israel, struggling to adapt to a new place and learn a new language, being disliked for being a “filthy, stinking Russian,” and growing up poor.?

Even after going through all of these things, the lowest point in my life was not the fact that I became homeless and sometimes needed to beg for water to drink, or had to wash my body with the same washcloth over and over again, brush my teeth and shave in public bathrooms… I had an addiction, I was a smoker, and felt that I hit the lowest point in my life, as I have never felt more humiliated in my life than when I had to pick up cigarette buds from the floor, sometimes with only a few puffs left.

I would lurk around public ashtrays and wait for people to lite a smoke, take a few puffs, and watch them rush away on their day, knowing that was my chance I could have more than a couple puffs. It felt like the lowest I have ever been. I thought nothing would improve, and I would be stuck in this cycle for the rest of my life.?

As much as I thought I had experienced my own struggles and hardships growing up and as a young adult, nothing prepares you for a moment in life when you have nowhere to rest your head at night, or a place of safety, even if it’s just a tiny room, but one you can call your home.

I spent weeks sleeping on benches of the 23rd Street C & E Subway station in Chelsea area. If I didn’t get a chance to get onto the platform, I would spend the entire night wandering the streets, periodically sitting down on building steps, or street benches to just rest for a bit, but it was cold, so I had to keep moving. During the nights when I didn’t get to sleep on the bench in the station, I would nap at Starbucks on the table during the day.

Some weeks in, I discovered a 24 hour McDonalds, where sometimes I’d splurge and get myself a?.75 cents cup of tea, put it on a table, and simply nap right next to the cup at night. Luckily, the people working there didn’t mind as long as you didn’t cause any trouble.

One of those days, already in December, wandering the streets, I encountered some bootlegged DVD sellers, and as someone who loves movies, and often used the medium to escape reality, find inspiration, or learn something new, I felt that I needed something that would help me forget, help me not feel what I felt in that moment, or feel like I had reached the end of the line in life…

I picked up a DVD with a sharpie scribbled name on it, “The Pursuit of Happyness,” staring Will Smith, who is one of my favorite actors. The title felt like something I needed at that moment. My faithful HP Laptop at the time had a DVD player. Yes, this was a thing back then. While it was painful to reach into my pocket and pull out $5 for the DVD, I was excited because watching a movie felt like being back to normal life, and back to life that I remembered and missed dearly.

If you haven't watched this movie, I highly recommend it, to everyone! It is based on a true story of perseverance, overcoming unimaginable life hardships, and the highest level of dedication to get better in life, no matter how hard life gets!

That same night, I found a fairly quiet corner at the Starbucks I was a regular at by that time, still had my cup of almost empty tea, and since I had it, I could stay there and no one would kick me out. I popped the DVD into my computer, and hit play… the quality was terrible. Clearly someone snuck a camcorder into a movie theatre and was recording through a coat or jacket or something, as from time to time the lens gets covered partially, maybe hiding it from theatre employees when they were around.

While watching the movie, there were moments I had tears in my eyes, moments of profound admiration for the character, moments of inspiration, and moments of laughter. The one thing that this movie did for me was fill my heart with hope, hope that felt uplifting, warm, and energizing, which made me feel that my situation is not the end, but rather just a beginning.?

I like to say, “Will Smith saved my life!” The movie was inspirational, impactful, and reminded me of who I am… I am Jewish, I am an immigrant, a former IDF soldier and a former Soviet… we are built tough! Hardship is part of our culture, and resilience is part of our DNA!

I walked out of Starbucks that night with a promise to myself; “This, will NOT break me!”.

From that moment on, everything was different.

I discovered I could get a pre-paid plan from T-Mobile, and it didn’t cost anything for people to call me, so I got myself a very old BlackBerry 7230 on CraigsList on a barter. I designed a brochure for the person, and he paid with his old blackberry, which lead to an Aha moment…

I could design for quick cash, and so I spent most of my time on CraigsList finding and picking up fairly quick cash jobs such as designing business cards, invites, posters, brochures, landing pages, Facebook headers, etc. $50, $20, $100 projects. I would sit all day at Starbucks with a single large cup of tea, and simply grab jobs to execute and get paid. Most of the time I would meet people at that Starbucks, turning it into my own office for the time being.

That Starbucks became my everything really… I used to shave in the bathroom, and use a washcloth to wash up a bit as I did not have a shower available to me. The last time I showered was at the $300 a night hotel I stayed at on my first day of being homeless. From the moment, I got into a battle mode and started picking up projects. Every single dollar that was not part of my daily $5.50 for food went into my savings pocket, and it took me a month to save about $1,000. That’s when I allowed myself to have one night of a proper bed, and so I spent about $70 for one night for a private room at the Chelsea Hostel, and use the shared showers.

For the first time in a month, I slept in a bed, inside, for a full night… not on the subway bench, not in a park, not on the McDonalds table… for a month I did not have a full night of sleep, as I would wake up every so often to make sure I was safe, there was no danger around, and the noise of the police cars, the subway, or other people walking around would disturb or scare me.?

I wish I could find the words to describe how it felt, to have a bed, 4 walls around me, a door with a lock, a tiny sink, and a clean?toilet.

When you have nothing, like really nothing, you learn to appreciate the smallest things in life.

It took me about another month or so to save another $2,500. And so, armed with almost $3,500, I began hunting for some sort of more permanent living situation. It took me several weeks of seeing about a dozen different places that I could afford with my limited budget of $700 a month.

It took some time, but I found a tiny basement studio in the depth of Brooklyn on Kings Highway & East 32nd Street. I had to pull all my cards to try and convince the landlord to rent it to someone with no credit history, no permanent status in the country, and no job. Luckily, the landlord was a Hasidic Jew, and when he found out that I am also Jewish, from Israel and born in Uman, Ukraine, which is one of the holiest places on earth for Hasidic Jews, that was enough of a credibility for him to rent the place to me. (The founding father of the Hasidic movement, Rabbi Nachman, is buried in Uman, Ukraine.)

And that’s how East 32nd Street & Kings Highway became my home. I moved in the next day after we shook hands, I gave them most of my money as first month and last month rent, and security deposit.?

Several months on the streets of New York in the depth of winter, and finally, a place I could call home, at least for the time being, but,?home.?

For the next several months, I slept on the floor, using my cloths in a plastic bag as a pillow and my long coat as a cover.?

While sleeping on the floor, I picked up a long term project, becoming a Lead Designer at a startup that was competing with Seamless Webb, and by mid 2007, Peter Waichman Alonso LLP (Now Peter | Waichman LLP), one of the top national law firms, was signed as my client!?

Living with a fear of being homeless again, I continued living very modestly. I bought an inflatable bed, got a donation of a table and two chairs, and that remained to be all the furniture I ever owned until I moved back to New York in?2014.

Late 2007 I moved back to Israel, accepting a job as an Art Director at an Agency, and went on working with such giants as VW, Microsoft, BlackBerry, and most of the largest national brands in Israel.

While living though some difficult times in my life, I still remained a committed designer, working on hundreds of projects, gaining experience and building a pretty successful career in the design industry.

I spent the next several years flying between Israel and New York, working with small and large companies, and was in the running to take over designing a website for I??Y brand in 2008.

While living in Israel between 2009 and 2014, I continued working as a designer and design leader, was a mentor at Startupbootcamp accelerator program, started and lead a non-profit organization, and was a freelance photographer.

In 2014, I moved back to New York, this time, to build my life here, and became a founding designer at 4 different startups. Within these startups I accomplished things such as; leading a successful campaign reaching over $600k in pre-sales, reinventing a Special Education Software experience that lead to an acquisition, designing a delightful passwordless authentication experience that helped solidify the company as a leader in passwordless authentication, and so much more.

Along the way, I helped aspiring designers grow in their careers, started a free drink initiative in collaboration with a local Starbucks for homeless people, and later, helped aspiring immigrant designers through my philanthropic project in which I sponsored their education. ?

Today, looking back, I feel that my life journey, from the USSR exodus, to growing up poor as immigrant in Israel, IDF, living immigrant life in Canada, being homeless, living immigrant life in the US, while building a pretty successful global design career, led me to this moment in time… being mentor, coach, design advocate, and now, a Founder.

Everything that happened to me in life, made me who I am today; resilience, grit, never stop learning, and never stop moving forward, from my homeless days, are still my motivating factors to keep going, keep building, keep creating, innovating, and solving problems.

And so this next chapter of my life, is a natural one. As Frank Sinatra once said, “If I can make it there (New York), i’ll make it anywhere!”

All of it converges to this moment in my life, all of the experiences, wisdom, knowledge, expertise, and drive, to build a generational company that does things differently, solves one of the biggest problems in the tech industry, and helps companies of tomorrow build better products that will delight people and cultivate a brighter future of humanity.

Why am I sharing this story now? I have made many life altering decisions in my life, but making a decision to leave the comfort and security of a steady, and pretty good paycheck by someone who have gone through lack of security, and homelessness at some point of their life, taking such risk is not an easy decision…?

My story can tell you that I did not make this decision lightly, and the reason why I made this decision, is because I feel in my core that I am building some important, something big, and something that will change the course of our industry history forever!

To learn about my company: https://www.nsightapp.com/

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