Tech Leaders: Toot Shani, Managing Partner, Sarona

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 Toot Shani, a Managing Partner at Sarona Partners Group. 

About Toot: 

Toot is a Managing Partner at Sarona Partners Group and a Member of Global Shapers at The World Economic Forum.

Her biggest passion is enabling action taking for business creation or, as people call it, “Entrepreneurship.” She sees entrepreneurship as the art of business and the most powerful tool to push our world forward. She believes in people and in our ability to generate the reality we strive for.

Q: What are your main productivity tips? 

• Recruit people smarter than you in their domain.
• Guide the strategy (What & Where), not their methodology (How).
• Take recreation time, as CEO thinking, raising your head, and taking inspiration are essential.
• Focus on tasks that only you can do; anything else delegates to a better-qualified resource.

Q: What is your favorite drink? 

• Water, at any temperature 

Q: How do you deal with stress and anxiety? 

• Try to avoid it, to begin with.
• Keep regular room for sport/ art/ feed your soul.
• Focus on the future.

Q: Your tips for aspiring entrepreneurs? 

• Keep aspiring even when it’s tough.
• Find your support system – and give up equity – a larger multilayer cake is better than a big piece of a chocolate-chip cookie.

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

• I prefer breakfast 😉 
• No one in particular, I would like to meet those who can help me achieve my goals and those I can help them achieve theirs.

Q: If you could live anywhere, where would it be? 

• No place like Tel-Aviv. Israel is our home.
• I would go for a trip anywhere with the sun, nature, and people who like to build stuff.

Q: What is your favorite book recommendation? 

• Built to Last – by Jim Collins.
• The 80/20 principle by Richard Koch.

Q: Why are you in Tech? 

• I am not in Tech; I am in the business of building businesses; it just happened to be powered by technology since it’s faster this way.

About Sarona Partners: 

Sarona Partners is a fast-growing international ecosystem aimed to help technology startup companies achieve global scale. The ecosystem consists of ‘preseed’ to ‘A Stage’ Venture Funds, a 5-location chain of Co-working Spaces, Business Scale-up Program (365x), Multiple Vertical Accelerators (SigmaLabs, GreenUp City), and Israel’s leading Tech-media platform, Geektime.