#13 Stevie: Choosing the right advisors for your startup | IoT | Games | Tech

Yael Givon. Founder, CEO

Yael co-founded Steveie with her husband Gil Ramon. They met at an internet camp for founders and entrepreneurs. They both have backgrounds in creative fields. Yeal has a background in fine art and Gil is screen writer and programmer.

Stevie was created when they saw the potential to find great TV that was hiding in their social media feeds. During Arab Spring, they were watching Youtube, tracking Twitter and Facebook to get a complete picture of what was happening.

Stevie makes it possible for anyone to have a personal channel with friend's feeds or for their own brand without any extra work. It also provides more opportunities for publishers to ad more to the video they are already releasing. Some examples could be bloopers, behind the scenes interviews and insights from the latest episode of a show.

Also on the podcast:

Yael defines what "smart money" is. Taking money from people who are in your industry with experience who can offer advice, more connections and a bigger network. Not all money is equal.

Xue Mei and Yael discuss what advisors should be given stake in your company. It should be people who can offer real advice.

They talk about the reality of the close relationship you will have with your investors.
Yael talks about how as entrepreneurs, our comfort zone in the product. The business end of things is less fun, but it is an area everyone has to grow into. The challenge is to grow your business mind while not sacrificing your creative energy.

Yael advises startups to be careful about spending money for special advisors, like marketing advisors, because some stuff you should learn on your own. Many startups who succeeded, didn't have tons of marketing knowledge, but they found a gap in the market to fill.

Yeal and Xue Mei talk about confronting the startup life bubble and finding the balance between making cool stuff for hipsters and being relevant to the world. Meaningful solutions in industries like health and sustainability take much longer to see a return than an entertaining app. There's often less hype to lure investors, but good investors understand they need to diversify risks and not only invest in new stuff from the cool kids.

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