Tech Leaders: Alon Werber, CEO, Pixellot

Welcome to my Tech Leaders Interview Series, where I interview impactful leaders and ask them to share tips and techniques that have benefited them, both in their personal and professional lives. 

This interview is with Alon Werber, CEO of Pixellot 

About Alon: 

Alon has been the CEO of Pixellot since 2015 and led the company from its early days to become the world’s largest automatic sports production platform. Prior to joining Pixellot, Alon served as CEO and Vice President at various companies in Israel and in the US, including Exigen Group, Gate42, Pontis, and others. Alon also provided business development services to leading companies, including Cisco and Priority software. Before that, Alon served as a partner and Co-CEO at POC, at the time Israel’s leading Management Consulting firm. Alon holds an MBA and B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from Tel Aviv University.

What are your main productivity tips? 

Finish tasks! When reviewing/thinking over a task and pushing it “for later”, one eventually invests more time on each task and keeps his/her mind occupied with too many unfinished threads…

Allocate some time to reflect and “do nothing.” This gets you out of “automatic pilot” mode and allows you to innovate, think out of the box, and be smarter about your rime allocation.

Delegate – trust your employees and managers. BUT be approachable for consultation, keep being engaged periodically so you can help clear obstacles, and assure deliverables are “on track.”

What is your favorite drink? 

My favorite drink changes between occasions…mornings – Black Coffee is mandatory.

Meals – sparkling water, and when appropriate wine.

Fun – beer, chasers, vodka.

How do you deal with stress and anxiety?

Do sports. Watch sports. Watch deep and shallow movies. Music. Books. 

Your tips for aspiring entrepreneurs?

Obviously, address a real and large need. Not a feature that will likely become yet another feature in an existing solution. Not necessarily something the market is complaining about or demanding (no one complained of not having a Facebook-like solution…), but something that can address a real need (can also be an emotional need).

In the dilemma between going out to the market with your solution too early (when the product/solution is still not mature enough…) or too late, I tend to recommend going out early. But be ready to get strong pushbacks and rejects without losing faith. This feedbacks will help you fine-tune your story and solution more than many internal brainstorms.

Listen to the feedback but don’t feel compelled to adjust your core beliefs with every rejection. The customer isn’t ALWAYS right. Make any possible effort to retain strong sales growth. Clearly, startups are very different from each other on practically every aspect. To that end, for some of them, providing a working and tested technology is already a huge win. But most would be judged by actual sales and growth.

Who in the Tech industry would you like to meet for lunch? 

Bill Gates, Masayoshi Son – Softbank founder and CEO Reed Hastings – Netflix Co-founder and former CEO.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be? 

Israel.

What is your favorite book recommendation? 

“A Tale of Love and Darkness” by Amos Oz

Why are you in Tech? 

Exciting, dynamic, visionary, endless opportunities at practically any aspect of life. And also, upside opportunities.

About Pixellot:

Pixellot offers automated sports production and data extraction solutions that provide affordable alternatives to traditional video capture, production, and distribution for professional and semi-professional sports events. Founded in 2013, Pixellot’s AI technology solution streamlines production workflow by creating a stitched panoramic image of the entire playing surface. Advanced algorithms enable automated coverage of the flow of play and generate highlights. Pixellot systems are deployed by broadcasters, production companies, clubs, federations, universities, high schools, sports portals, and coaching solution providers around the globe.

Pixellot broadcasts over 80,000 games per month of over 140 leagues and tournaments, from 17,000 sports fields, from 57 countries around the world.