You Can Never Tell

Where can a vague LinkedIn ad and a 5:00 AM meeting in a plumbing shop lead you??

On a dark November morning at 5:00 AM in 2018 I pulled into an industrial park not too far from home. It felt a bit sketchy situation that I half-joked with my wife that if I don’t call by 6:30 am she should call the police. A few days earlier I stumbled on an ad on LinkedIn about a tech startup in the mechanical and water space that grabbed my attention. It was very brief, lacked any specific details, the post was by an anonymous user, and wasn’t even linked to a company page. I was intrigued so figured what the hell and sent a message. After a brief chat with a guy named John that could not even explain to me what this company is building, I agreed to meet in person. Since I had to be at my corporate job by 8:00 am, and the evenings had home duties I suggested meeting very early. I thought that a ridiculous suggestion to meet at 5:00 AM would blow the cover of this sketchy situation. To my surprise, the reply was let’s meet which led me to sit in the car in a dark parking space looking at 3 other cars pull in beside me and waiting to see other people going towards the door before getting out of the car and joining them into a dark plumbing shop.??

During my career in the corporate world, I often envied friends who worked and lived the tech start-up life. For a long time, I dreamt of one day getting the opportunity to join on such a journey. Coming back from that meeting and speaking to my wife, she could read the doubt on my face. I was excited to join this opportunity but there were many unknowns. It was a lot to consider, what would it mean to the household finances, job security, career advancement, and more. But Shir saw straight through me, she saw that I always wanted such an opportunity and said: “you know what, give it 6 months, and we will see how it goes”. To that, @Shir Rothman, I am so grateful to have you as a wife and such a supporting partner. Since then, every 6 months we extend the journey further, often hearing Shir telling me my face light up when talking about work and I seem happier and having fun.???

What started at that dark plumbing shop turned into a 3-year journey where we figured out what problem we are solving, what are we building, and who would even want to buy that. There is something liberating in a small tech startup with no corporate shackles that makes you dare more. “What is the worst that can happen” we kept asking ourselves when sending teasers at large global companies trying to get them to notice us or coming to established engineering firms and educating them, poking at the status quo, challenging how things are done and how it should be done. It is fun making a lot of noise and waves in the water (no pun intended) as a small team, just like a pufferfish.???

Today it was announced that we are joining forces with Eddy Solutions and reed (reedwater.io) is being acquired.

Personally, the last 3 years have been a rollercoaster ride. One day you’re on the top of the world and the next you feel like dropping everything and giving up. But I would do it again in a heartbeat, mainly because I was lucky to form a true friendship with Avi Yurman and Adam Bartman, the co-founders of reed. Avi and Adam are so different from each other that together they form the ultimate team. One is a drama queen that has to have a triple redundancy on every system while the other is super chill with a “trust me it’s all good” mentality. They are the most resourceful people I ever met. From building a professional TV studio in the back of a garage to hacking product assemblies to attract the attention of a Billion dollar market leader. My IDF sergeant used to say that “the eye eats” (sounds better in Hebrew), which means that a pleasing visual aspect can make you feel a certain way. On that, Adam made the look of reed like a world-class level system. As a plumber, we often joked that Adam could feel a leak in his veins which was true most of the time, with his deep understanding of the plumbing world I couldn’t ask for anyone else to learn from. I consider Avi Yurman as a technology visionary in the way he structured the reed technology to change the way plumbing systems are connected, and can’t wait to see what he can build next. So, thank you both for the opportunity to join you on the initial leg of our journey. I love learning from you every day.

So today has a bittersweet feeling. On the one hand, this is an occasion to recognize the reed team, specifically John Lancefield, a finance wiz that taught me so much during the countless hours in the fish tank, thank you for all the solid advice and productive conversations. To Josh Goldberg, a mechanical engineer that can write code, you hold the backbone of the company. I don’t think he even knows how rare his skill set is. On the other hand, I am excited to join the Eddy team and keep scaling up and delivering on the mission.?

We are only just getting started…:)