Career Notes 3.12.23
Ep 140 | 3.12.23

Bat El Azerad: Find your niche to bring to the table. [CEO]

Transcript

Bat El Azerad: Hello, my name is Bat El Azerad and I am the CEO of novoShield.

Bat El Azerad: I wanted to be an actress, I was always very uh, creative and trying to write plays, write scripts. I think I knew I'm gonna go towards the, the marketing direction, but at the beginning it was more of acting, screenplay, theater, things like that.

Bat El Azerad: So to be honest, uh, in terms of managerial skills, I think that the best university was, um, Israeli army. I served as an officer for three years and, you just find yourself when you're 18. I think it took me like one year to understand what, what responsibility is and what managing is, and to understand that, that I like, uh, complex challenges. After the Army, I, uh, went to Los Angeles. I went to Santa Monica College over there and while being a student, I started to work in a very small, uh, media agency back in 2001. We used to do some email marketing, and that was the first time I understood how the internet, uh, works and what is email marketing and the potential of, um, advertising and marketing, uh, a product online. 

Bat El Azerad: I went back to Israel and I just joined a very small startup and I just started there as customer support, but I was, uh, fascinated by how the female and how uh, male side are looking at the same site and then I started to write some product documents and, um, conversion suggestions and few models and, I was just doing my shift and support and the owner of the company came one day and like, who is Bat El? And then he sat with me, he spoke with me, and after like one week he decided that I'm gonna start, um, manage, um, a different conversion department. Uh, I stayed in this startup for six years and I learned about b2c, in terms of acquisition and media buying and SEO and, um, everything about product, and I think that was very meaningful for me because I was very lucky to experience all different channels in marketing and understood exactly what I do

Bat El Azerad: I worked in few, um, global companies, um, B2C and b2b. I was in the gaming industry, uh, FinTech, a little bit of, uh, software. I did lots of, uh, US market, lots of, uh, European market, I always join a company and start building up from scratch everything, the operational and, and the marketing. After eight years being a CMO in a very large company and the trading industry, I left and I took about four or five month of vacation, doing completely nothing, trying to think what, what I really wanna do right now. And I was always fascinated by cyber, uh, what is cybersecurity? And I was also fascinated by how to market, um, an app. It's very challenging, so luckily I heard about the opportunity in novoShield in the beginning of 2022. And they were looking for a CEO with an experience in marketing, such as I have. So it was a great match. It's still a great match and this is how I joined novoShield. 

Bat El Azerad: I only deal with, uh, very independent people and employees who knows how to perform, let's say, uh, three or four different professions. So my style of managing is taking, uh, very independent people who likes to be independent, who likes to do few things and not just like, one specific position and we both benefit from it. It's a huge personal growth to, to work this way, but this is how you bring people to have a vision of what they're doing and you will be amazed by most of the best suggestions and ideas that were from them and not from me. So this is my style of working always, not only in novoShield.

Bat El Azerad: It is very difficult to explain your cybersecurity product in a way that you will, uh, like in one sentence differentiate it from the competition that everybody else know. I would definitely recommend to focus on a niche because I think it's gonna be much easier to market, uh, much easier to, uh, present it, and most importantly, to make people understand what you are doing because not everyone understand what cybersecurity is. If even speaking about the individual, I'm turning to the individuals and, uh, when somebody is, is reading something about, about a new product, he wants to understand what exactly you are doing. The first thought that, that an individual or business will have, or an investor, oh, they're probably doing what X, Y, Z are doing. So you have to be very focused and to find the right niche to bring something to the table because the competition in this industry and the level of innovation, um, is, is great. I don't think there is any other industry, uh, with such advanced innovation and, and new products every day.

Bat El Azerad: The work I've done in novoShield, I would like people to, to remember my vision. We're bringing cybersecurity solution for micro businesses and individual. Until now they've been left to fend for themselves. I want people to remember that we brought very affordable and easy to install and professional solution to, to the individual and to micro-businesses. This is what I want people to remember of our mission in novoShield.