How many times can you rebuild your life? Andreas Foeldenyi has done it—again and again. From losing everything after 9/11 to teaching in obscure classrooms just to pay the bills, to becoming Co-CEO of one of Switzerland’s largest private education groups, Academia Group—his story is a masterclass in grit, reinvention, and the art of turning collapse into momentum.
Andreas’s career has spanned continents and contradictions: teacher turned entrepreneur, pianist turned CEO, Swiss executive turned NGO founder in Vietnam. He’s built companies, sold them, lost them, and built again. Now, as he transitions from CEO to multi-board investor and mentor, he reflects with raw honesty on the rollercoaster behind the résumé—and what it really costs to keep starting over.
In this conversation, Andreas and Haggai Klorman Eraqi go deep on:
It’s an unfiltered look at ambition, failure, and resilience—from someone who’s lived the full cycle, more than once.
Connect with Andreas
Connect with Haggai
Follow Aggaeus
Subscribe to the Podcast
Sponsors
Kardz.Biz – “A business card too good to give away”
Inquiries
Sponsorships/Business: talktous@aggaeus.com
Podcast: DM on Instagram
Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Some offers may no longer be available.
Before GO-OUT powered payments and operations for sports teams and music festivals across 14+ countries, it started with a 15-year-old kid in Jerusalem who hacked NBA 2K to play with his hometown team. That same mix of curiosity, grit, and obsession drove Yotam Cohen, now Founder & CEO of GO-OUT, to bootstrap a global company that unites ticketing, payments, and data for organizations that were never built to act like tech firms.
No VCs. No safety net. Just relentless execution and a belief that sports teams and festivals shouldn’t need ten different tools to run their day.
In this conversation, Yotam and Haggai Klorman Eraqi dig into:
• How GO-OUT grew from zero to 14 countries—bootstrapped and profitable.
• The “Halloween crash” that nearly killed the company (and how they rebuilt stronger).
• Why bootstrapping builds better founders.
• How to listen to customers and ship fast—sometimes in the same day.
• The emotional reality of founding: anxiety, failure, and learning to separate the company from yourself.
• The founder vs. CEO paradox: dreaming big vs. running the day-to-day.
• What’s next for GO-OUT—and why they’re now competing head-to-head with the giants they once chased.
It’s a story about turning chaos into clarity, building from instinct, and betting on execution over excuses.
Connect with Yotam:
Connect with Haggai:
Follow Aggaeus:
Subscribe to the Podcast:
Sponsors:
Kardz.Biz – “A business card too good to give away”
Inquiries:
Sponsorships/Business: talktous@aggaeus.com
Podcast: DM on Instagram
Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Some offers may no longer be available.
At Walmart, he turned a paper-napkin idea into a fintech product used by 18 million people.
At StubHub/eBay, he helped scale global marketplaces.
Now, as VP Product (Growth & Incubation) at GoFundMe, Hai Habot is reshaping the giving economy—proving generosity can be productized, operationalized, and scaled.
Hai and Haggai Klorman Eraqi unpack how to build like a startup inside very large companies—where budgets, politics, and legacy systems collide with urgency, ambition, and customer need. You’ll hear how GoFundMe mobilized hundreds of millions in disaster relief within days, why most “innovation labs” stall, and the exact ways intrapreneurs win support, funding, and ship.
In this episode
Connect with Hai
Connect with Haggai
Subscribe to Apple Podcast
Follow Aggaeus
Sponsors
Kardz.Biz – “A business card too good to give away”
Inquiries
💼 Sponsorships/Business: talktous@aggaeus.com
🎙 Podcast: DM on Instagram
Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Some offers may no longer be available.
A roof that gets colder under sunlight. A paint that cools a building without electricity. A startup that turned a laser-lab theory into a factory product sold to Amazon, Volkswagen, and AB InBev.
That’s not sci-fi—it’s SolCold, and it’s the kind of “impossible” physics that only becomes real when someone refuses to quit.
When Yaron Shenhav was a master’s student in electronic engineering, he couldn’t shake a paradox: why do we burn energy to create cold? That thought—plus an overheated apartment—sparked a decade-long obsession that became a new class of nanoparticle coatings. These materials absorb sunlight and emit higher-frequency light back out, releasing heat in the process. In other words, they cool themselves with sunlight.
Today, Yaron’s company has grown from a crazy idea to a $14M-funded deep-tech startup with 27 employees and global pilots. SolCold’s film-like coating has been tested on rooftops, containers, beer silos, and even car sunroofs—cutting temperatures, saving energy, and keeping systems online during heat waves.
In this episode, Yaron and Haggai dive into the science, the near-death startup moments, and the mindset required to push physics into production. They unpack how SolCold went from crowdfunding in Israel to cooling Amazon warehouses, Volkswagen vehicles, and global breweries—and why lowering the world’s temperature might start with a thin sheet of film.
⸻
In this episode
Connect with Yaron
Connect with Haggai
Follow Aggaeus
Sponsors
Kardz.Biz – “A business card too good to give away”
Inquiries
Sponsorships/Business: talktous@aggaeus.com
Podcast: DM on Instagram
Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Some offers may no longer be available.
Walk into a chicken hatchery that hums like a data center. Engineers aren’t checking feed—they’re tuning frequencies that tilt hatch rates toward hens and save billions in waste. A few kilometers away, a stadium tech lets people with hearing loss sit anywhere and hear perfectly through their own phones. In a care home, adaptive music calms dementia patients enough to reduce medication.
That’s not sci-fi. It’s the world David Fridman is helping build.
David grew up in Chile, moved to Israel, helped launch the country’s first carrier-backed ISP, and co-founded a cyber-intelligence company that later IPO’d in London. After a post-COVID reset, he returned to a first love—music—but treated it like infrastructure. He began teaching musicians to ship products, not just songs, then co-founded MusicTech Innovation Lab to connect artists, researchers, and builders.
Fast-forward: he’s mapping 300+ Israeli music-tech startups, ran MusicTech Tel Aviv with 500+ operators and investors in the room, and his accelerator’s nominees won at Music Ally’s global awards. The thesis is simple and powerful: sound isn’t just entertainment—it’s a toolbox for health, accessibility, education, safety, and new kinds of creativity.
In this episode:
* Why “music tech” now means health, safety, accessibility, and education—not just streaming
* Inside Israel’s surge: 300+ startups, an accelerator, and global recognition
* The discovery crisis: how to find (and fund) artists when 100,000+ tracks drop daily
* AI, ownership, and ethics—and how founders can build useful, defensible products
* Operator tactics: selling to venues, hospitals, and brands; what investors actually back
Connect with David
Connect with Haggai
Follow Aggaeus
Sponsors
Kardz.Biz – “A business card too good to give away”
Inquiries
💼 Sponsorships/Business: talktous@aggaeus.com
🎙 Podcast: DM on Instagram
*Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Some offers may no longer be available.*
Before ARYA, Offer Yehudai had already built and sold two adtech companies ($86M, then $650M). With co-founder Tomer Magid, he launched a premium couples-wellness concierge—part human, part AI—that tens of thousands of U.S. couples now pay for monthly. They charged from day one and, using a no-code MVP (Typeform/Airtable/SMS), hit $1M ARR before writing a line of code. That traction grew into double-digit millions in ARR—all while staying premium-only.
Then came the wall: 197 investors said no. Taboo category. Commerce. “Paid from day one.” Offer kept going—refining onboarding and ads, tightening CAC payback, and building a “Costco-style” limited-SKU supply chain. The right yes finally landed, and ARYA accelerated.
What you’ll hear
• The dinner that sparked ARYA—and why routine (not romance) is the real enemy
• How a scrappy no-code concierge reached $1M ARR fast
• Why they refused freemium—and how that improved retention and payback
• Scaling intimacy: concierge + AI that times, tones, and personalizes guidance
• Commerce without “becoming a store” (few SKUs, direct brands, better margins)
• Fundraising in a taboo: 197 rejections—and what finally flipped the room
Connect with Offer:
Connect with Haggai:
Follow Aggaeus:
Sponsors:
Kardz.Biz – “A business card too good to give away”
Inquiries:
💼 Sponsorships/Business: talktous@aggaeus.com
🎙 Podcast: DM on Instagram
Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Some offers may no longer be available.
When Dan Comyns ran product & growth at Nexar, he helped turn “try-before-you-buy” from a risky idea into a repeatable system—and learned a simple truth: conversations beat campaigns. A scrappy experiment calling shoppers who’d abandoned checkout crushed every benchmark. That insight became Sellence: an AI sales OS that lets B2C brands talk 1:1 with every interested buyer (SMS/WhatsApp), follow up like your best rep, and escalate to humans when it matters. Even though Dan just started the company, he’s already working with brands across insurance, finance, real estate, and high-consideration e-commerce.
So how did he get here? Dan walked away from a safe PM track with no idea, stacked a graveyard of dead concepts, then followed the data: sell manually first, write the playbook with real conversations, and only then automate. He and his co-founder built multi-agent AI around that playbook (intent, negotiator, follow-up memory), added human guardrails where nuance matters, and kept shipping.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
• Turning abandoned intent into revenue: manual first, then automate
• Designing conversations, not campaigns—across SMS/WhatsApp/voice
• Quality that holds up: engagement signals, purchase attribution, human QA
• Where humans still win (nuance, culture, timing)—and how AI amplifies them
• Onboarding that works: consented phone numbers, simple hooks, clear playbooks
• Building in uncertainty: leaving the safe path, finding partners, fundraising as motion
Connect with Dan:
Connect with Haggai:
Follow Aggaeus:
Sponsors:
Kardz.Biz – “A business card too good to give away”
Inquiries:
💼 Sponsorships/Business: talktous@aggaeus.com
🎙 Podcast: DM on Instagram
Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Some offers may no longer be available.
When most founders talk “hard ops,” they don’t mean motorbikes, canoes, and villages without roads. Abigail Urey, Co-Owner of LIB Solar, does. Over the last six years, her team has become Liberia’s largest solar provider—operating in all 15 counties and serving 30K+ households and small businesses—by blending rigorous finance with on-the-ground ingenuity.
Abigail walks us through the real work: recruiting community agents, designing pay-as-you-go plans for low-income customers, building a collections network with mobile money, and packaging end-to-end systems (lights, radio, fan—and yes, TVs and solar refrigerators). The result isn’t charity; it’s a business that lets kids study at night, shops sell cold drinks, and micro-markets store meat—while staying cash-disciplined enough to turn down the wrong capital.
We get into modeling uncertainty when data is messy, acting fast when cash flow wobbles, catching fraud before it spreads, and the mindset that keeps you calm when every day brings a new surprise. It’s a masterclass in financing impact without half-measures.
Connect with Abigail:
Connect with Haggai:
Follow Aggaeus:
Sponsors:
Kardz.Biz – “A business card too good to give away”
Inquiries:
💼 Sponsorships/Business: talktous@aggaeus.com
🎙 Podcast: DM on Instagram
Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Some offers may no longer be available.
Before Zoog was an app, it was a bet: kids light up when Grandma’s the hero. Yoav Oren had the track record to try—opened China for Similarweb, closed landmark enterprise deals, produced Netflix’s Krav Maga episode, then got tiny Zoog onto Snap’s Camera Kit next to Disney. DreamWorks and Paramount followed. $1M+ ARR. 20,000+ five-star reviews. Two-minute, AR-powered stories that put family in the frame.
Then came the hits: a 17-hour deal that died at midnight. Investors ghosting after Oct 7. And on Oct 8, his wife’s cancer diagnosis. With sirens in the stairwell and two months of runway, Yoav kept shipping—monetizing early, using AI to speed scripting and animation, and doubling down on partnerships that actually moved the needle.
What you’ll hear
• Why 2-minute stories beat PDFs—and when AR is the product, not a gimmick
• Monetize early, learn faster: toward profitability without stalling growth
• Inside the Snap win + Hollywood IP (DreamWorks, Paramount)
• Scaling content with AI without tanking quality
• Fundraising in headwinds (and why he’d build a U.S. presence sooner)
• Operating under pressure: rituals, team design, mindset
Connect with Yoav:
Connect with Haggai:
Follow Aggaeus:
Sponsors:
Kardz.Biz – “A business card too good to give away”
Inquiries:
💼 Sponsorships/Business: talktous@aggaeus.com
🎙 Podcast: DM on Instagram
Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Some offers may no longer be available.
Bill Gallagher has spent years inside the rooms where companies either stall—or break through. As the founder of ScalingCoach.com, he’s coached CEOs and leadership teams to replace chaos with a repeatable rhythm, set priorities that stick, and build companies that scale without the founder carrying everything on their back.
In this episode, Bill sits down with Haggai to tell the story behind that system. We start with a familiar scene: a team stuck at 40–60 people, sprinting harder but moving slower. Hiring feels random. Meetings sprawl. Cash is tight. Everyone is “busy,” but the needle won’t move. Bill shows how to flip it—by installing a few simple, durable habits that compound:
What you’ll take away
If you’re leading a growing team and feel like more effort isn’t creating more progress, this conversation gives you a calm, concrete path forward.
Connect with Bill:
Connect with Haggai:
Follow Aggaeus:
Sponsors:
Kardz.Biz – “A business card too good to give away”
Inquiries:
💼 Sponsorships/Business: talktous@aggaeus.com
🎙 Podcast: DM on Instagram
Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Some offers may no longer be available.
Eyal Karban has operated at a scale most investors never see: 2,000+ residential deals across Las Vegas and Phoenix and roughly $1B in transactions—with a playbook built on discipline, data, and transparency.
This episode is the story of how that playbook was forged.
Eyal walked into the wreckage of 2008, learned auctions from the ground up, and then built the systems that make speed possible: an in-house GC (with a warehouse of standardized finishes), a proprietary CRM, weekly pricing updates, Gantt-driven rehab, and hard post-mortems on every project. His team averages ~5 months door-to-door, vets buyers like underwriters, and even pays to tidy the neighbor’s yard if it helps the sale. When a project caught fire weeks before completion, he bought the investor out the next day—because trust comes first.
What you’ll take away:
How pros de-risk flips (from sourcing to buyer vetting) so one mistake doesn’t wreck the year
The operations stack: CRM, standard SKUs, permit tactics, W-2 vs. subs, and why details decide margins
Pricing and speed in soft markets—why being slightly under comps beats sitting on inventory
Incentives that work: comp on successful exits, not just acquisitions
Radical transparency with investors (live P&Ls, photos, timelines)—and why it compounds trust
2025 outlook: why this will be a market for professionals, and how to prepare
If you want a clear, no-BS view of fix-and-flip at scale—and how to build a machine that survives hard markets—this one’s your operating manual.
Connect with Haggai:
Oasis BVS Fund:
Full disclosure — Haggai is a director at Oasis BVS Fund, a financing partner of Better Assets. This post is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any securities.
Follow Aggaeus:
Sponsors:
Kardz.Biz – “A business card too good to give away”
Inquiries:
💼 Sponsorships/Business: talktous@aggaeus.com
🎙 Podcast: DM on Instagram
Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Some offers may no longer be available.
If you’re a parent, you’ve probably heard of Nanit—the category leader that turned baby sleep into a measurable, improvable science. Co-founded and led by Assaf Glazer, Nanit became a unicorn and scaled to nine-figure annual sales, backed by Cornell, Technion, and dozens of peer-reviewed studies. Along the way, Assaf raised from top investors (including Upfront/Mark Suster), shipped brutally hard hardware, and built a brand parents still recommend.
Now he’s doing it again with Vinst, bringing AI to the most human place in the house: your kitchen.
Assaf and Haggai trace the arc from hustling soda cans in 5th grade to building a category-defining product, surviving hardware hell, stepping aside, and starting over—measuring everything, moving fast, and running into the storm.
What you’ll take away from this episode:
- How to decide what to measure so behavior actually changes (in teams and in life)
- Why early institutional money can create expensive mistakes—and how to avoid them
- Building brand the right way: purpose → vision → position (and the creative partners that matter)
- Hardware reality: backlogs, bad BOMs, missing sensors—and the day they removed the speaker to ship
- Fundraising truth: when everyone says “you’re a vitamin,” and you still have to win
- The AI era: hiring born athletes, designing for fast-moving tech, and keeping a small team that outperforms bigger ones
- Process control for everything: the same lens that works in semiconductors, the Air Force, textiles—and home cooking
- Why pros do the boring reps (weeklies, scorecards, post-mortems) and amateurs don’t
- The “buffalo rule”: when a storm is coming, run into it
This is a story about grit, judgment, and the quiet courage to start again—this time with better habits and a sharper map.
Connect with Assaf:
Connect with Haggai:
Resources Mentioned:
Sponsors:
Kardz.Biz – “A business card too good to give away”
Follow Aggaeus:
Inquiries:
💼 Sponsorships/Business: talktous@aggaeus.com
🎙 Podcast: DM on Instagram
*Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Some offers may no longer be available.
Esther Mendlowitz had done it all—built companies, led teams, poured everything into her work.
And yet…It always felt like a mess.
Smart, passionate people pulling in different directions.
Meetings that solved nothing.
Operations that broke every time the company grew.
Eventually, she had to ask herself:
“Is this just what entrepreneurship is supposed to feel like?”
The answer came when she discovered EOS.
In this honest, no-fluff conversation, Esther and Haggai unpack:
● The invisible toll of disorganized leadership
● Why people problems aren’t always about “bad people”
● The moment she realized EOS wasn’t a productivity tool—it was a lifeline
● The 6 components every company must strengthen to stop spinning its wheels
● What it really means to build a well-oiled machine—with people you love working with
This is a story about the quiet heartbreak of working so hard and still feeling like you’re failing—And what happens when you finally find a map that makes the work work.
Connect with Esther:
Connect with Haggai:
Resources Mentioned:
📘 Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business
Sponsors:
Kardz.Biz – “A business card too good to give away”
Follow Aggaeus:
Inquiries:
💼 Sponsorships/Business: talktous@aggaeus.com
🎙 Podcast: DM on Instagram
* Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Some offers may no longer be available.