Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Adam Feldman, CEO and co-founder at Crispify, and an innovative automotive air quality management system that works to revolutionize the end cabin user experience. We're gonna dive into what that means, but Adam, thank you so much for joining the show.

I'm really excited to learn more about your background, your experience, how you're disrupting the automotive industry in a very unique way. Before we get into all that, what were you doing before you started, Crispify?  

Adam: So Julian, thanks you for having me. So yeah, so just just before Crispify I was in the automotive industry.

I was the VP of business development and was in charge of innovation and strategy for a pretty big tier one company. So I was there for three years, so I'm coming from the same industry as, as as my startup. Yeah. And before that I was. I was a lawyer an m and a lawyer for for almost five years.

Julian: Wow. What is, what is it like going from, you m and a merger and acquisition, I'm assuming and what, what, what's the transition like from going to that to then the automotive industry and then now it's building a startup? It seems like an interesting you know, movement, lateral movement in your career.

What was the inspiration to, to go. You know, automotive, and then to then build your own startup?  

Adam: So, yeah, basically I think I was an entrepreneur from the elder days. Starting up when I was a student, I started a local you could call the beverage company, but basically we, we imported the beer and other alcohol drinks from many from New Zealand.

So I was like a local. Small business entrepreneur when I was a student. And after that I, I studied law and business in the university or in in Israel. So I gone through the path of, you know, been a, a lawyer for few years and I really like it, but I still wanted to go maybe into other ventures, more on the business.

So I done my MBA in also in the university, finished the mba, and when I finished MBA, I moved to business and mm-hmm by chance, I got into auto, the automotive industry. So the automotive industry is in Israel, is pretty small, where maybe I'm not talking about startup, talking about becoming maybe 10 companies and.

Found myself in one of them. So this is the way I got into the business and automotive, and then opened startup in the automotive industry. Yeah. Seems like a more reasonable transition.  

Julian: Yeah. What, what was the what was the chance, you know, what, what what was the, the, I don't know if it was luck, I don't know if it was just a serendipity kind of meeting someone in the industry. How, how was the automotive how did you branch into that form of business?  

Adam: Yeah, I, I, I was, you know, and Ed under just approached me and told me about this company that makes filters for, for CARSs, and I thought to myself, it sounds like a garage or something like that. Like what kind of business?

But yeah, she promised me it's a very interesting business and yeah. And when I met, I think, I think when I met the first like HR or stuff like that from the company, I then I realized how big. These businesses. And how big is the automotive business? So basically it's a 1500 people business with HQ in Israel, but the main business was in the US and Europe.

So, so I got into it very, very fast. You know, very, very interested in, and I always love cars. I never owned like a super exotic car, but I always found myself like the. You know, silly cool car when I was younger, so I love. And that's, that's why I, when I had the chance, I jump on it and and yeah.

And the automotive industry is really one of the more interesting and fun industry to be in. Even if you sell filters. Yeah. It feels very, very interested. And you meet so many people and it's a very global industry and you travel all around the world and you sell to very. And, you know, like huge customers, we, we that sell billions and so yeah. It's, it's a great business to be in.  

Julian: Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the automotive industry. I think from, from where mine, my mind went when, you know, you purchased a car, you think, you know, everything comes from that factory or from that, you know, you purchase a BMW or a Mercedes and it comes all kind of prepackaged from that facility.

But from what it sounds, You know, a lot of different parts of it kind of collaborate with other companies who are building smaller components of it, then they bring it together. Is that right? Is it kind of more of a collaboration between multiple companies to then have this whole product, which is, which is what you end up kind of con. Purchasing at the end of the day.  

Adam: Yeah, absolutely. So, yes, today, today the automotive industry is really it's, it's a pretty unique business model. You can see more and more industries are going in that direction. Basically the brand, the car brand that we know as consumers, like bmw, this fold or any other.

Basically they designed the car, they build the concept of the car. Yeah. And then they go to a lot of different vendors and buy all, basically all the components out of, of those vendors. They don't really manufacture a lot of the components, the modern car brand. Most of the time we manufacture the, maybe the, the power trend in the engine. Mm-hmm. , maybe transmission those kind of parts, which are really the, the, out of the vehicle. They will a lot of the big companies manufacture the platform or what we call the chassis. But that's basically it. And then they go out to vendors and, and big, you can see big companies like Bosch and you can see.

Like maybe Crispify, hopefully that they buy different technology, different components. It can be very small very small parts like the filters that we, I used to used to sell up to really every technology. Yeah. Savvy components like mobile life or autonomous driving or ada. So yeah, those, those types of technologies.

Julian: And so it's so fascinating. And, and does the innovation, is it pushed from the bigger companies down to smaller companies or, or whoever the vendors are or is it backwards? Is it. Vendors fighting for you know, I guess the, being a part of the best brands and, and working with the best car companies that are, you know, selling either luxury vehicles or vehicles that are high volume.

Where's the innovation coming from? Or is it a seesaw, you know, is, is it from both sides?  

Adam: Oh, that's a, that's a great question. So this is basically was my first question as the VP of, of innovation, where's the, the innovations coming from? Okay. I, we have a, we have a vendor where we, the automotive industries, basically the carbons are called OEMs.

The, the manufacturers, or, mm-hmm. , they assemble the vehicles and they promote it and they sell to the consumers. Beneath them. There's the tier one, which is basically the big companies, Bosch, Magna Manal. We ator more American brands. But you, you have a lot of of different. Tier one supplier that supply directly to the car manufacturer, to the car brands.

And then you have the tier two, which is basically the, the, the guys that build the components and sell to the tier one. So I ask the same question, where's the innovations coming from? So if I look at my previous company we, we were like a till two or till one, depending on the deal. Okay. Maybe if tomorrow morning we will manufacture the best kind of filter, best kind of technology and what we, we build the technology and then we go to the car company and try to sell it.

Or, or should we talk with the car and understand from them where the market is going? Yeah. Where they are, they're outgoing, things like that. So basically, I think it's both. You have like a, a The the car rent. Always innovate. Mm-hmm. , there's innovation coming from, basically I can, I can say in general, it comes from two very strong streams.

One is regulation. So when you see regulation now, and when we talk about safety, it's a big, it's a very strong, innovative factor, and you can look. Pricing or, or, or brand power. So now the car industry, I think from my point of view, Tesla made the huge impact on the car industry in the way they look at user experience.

Yeah. Yeah. So Tesla user experience is very, very different, especially if we talk about when they launched Tesla a few years ago. It's completely different, the user experience. Other car brands. Yeah, so car, look at Tesla and now they're trying to build the same user experience. In order to do that, they going down the line to tier ones, to their supplier and asking for different kind of technologies in order to incorporate inside the vehicles.

Other things are really regarding pricing. They, maybe they try trying to get for the next feature that people will pay for. Yeah. Another thing is business model. So now Cal company is talking about subscription model. SAS is very successful in other areas in the world. Why not automotive? Okay, you buy a car now you pay for maybe for satellite radio.

Why not paying for other kind of services that you can have in the car? So those kind of things really drive innovation. And when, when you are a startup, basically a startup, you can't really build a technology and then try to sell it. You, you build like a, what we did Building like an, like a very crude mvp really started like a prototype.

Yeah. And then start talking with a lot of carbon and crowd companies and trying to figure out is this, is this something that you are interested in? This is something that you will pay for. So in that sense, it comes a lot from, from them. They, they only control in the end what? Consumers see and what the consumer buys.

Julian: Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind Crispify and, and what led you down that, that rabbit hole and, and how you're kind of increasing or affecting, you know, the in-car experience positively. And, and just as an anecdote, I think. The in-car experience is one of the things that frustrates me the most about a lot of cars.

You know, whether it's the sound, whether it's the, the air system, it really does change, you know, your experience if you're driving, you know, three hours somewhere versus six hours versus somewhere longer. That whole experience or on a hot day versus whether the challenges I've had, you know, terrible cars where it was, you know, my parents bought it for, I don't even know, $800, and then I've, you know, had had very nice.

That were older, but, you know, really kept up over time. But back to you, what led you to Crispify and how are you positively affecting the experience for all drivers? In the different cars you're, you're partnering with?  

Adam: Yeah, so Basically, I was in the automotive industry. I, part of my work was go to shows, exhibits, talk with customers, s and other tier one companies, talk about innovation, talk about what's going, what's the trends what's new.

And the thing that I saw then is that there are two very big trends. One is air quality. and it was before Covid. Now it's even bigger. But yeah, earth Party was started to be a very big thing in 2017, 2018. In 2019 it was, the World Earth Organization. Put it on, on the list of the biggest risk for humankind in the future.

So it was a very big thing and it started to to show in the automotive industry in forms of filters. Like I filters a filters filtration system. A lot, a lot of different components. All hardware that was invented in order to tackle the problem of air quality inside the cabin. So basically when you go, when you drove the car in the, on the highway, Whereas there's a eye pollution on the outside, this pollution is entering into the cabin of the car.

So you need some something in order to to get better quality inside the vehicle. So this is one trend that I saw, and the other trend was, The cabin experience. So basically if you look in the autonomous, autonomous vehicles of the future, they'll all look the same, like a box with four wheels. So there's not a lot ofs on the outside of the vehicle, and most of the.

but I still believe it. When, when you see, when we will see autonomous vehicles on the road, most of the, if you want the spot, the difference between those kind of car makers, you will see mostly on the inside. So the in cabin environment trend and plus the L quality, this is the thing that really inspire Cruc.

And then when we fought about specifically and crucifying the solution, we fought about a, a data driven, software driven solution instead of the hardware component solution. So instead of a very big, bulky, pricey, Solution to get better quality inside the cabin. We thought about, Hey, what, what will happen if you take the data on the Inca environment and the outside environment?

And then we, we will use the AC system, which is a huge system with very powerful. With, with the room for, for eye efficiency filters and everything, which is pretty cheap. And we will use the windows. We will use other diffusers, maybe ionizer that you already have in the car, and we just manipulate the system in a way where we get an optimal quality throughout the ride.

So this was the first idea and this is how we started.  

Amazing. So, yeah,  

Julian: it's amazing. And, and I'm, I'm, I'm curious. Now that you've kind of created a, a hyper intelligent system that uses the different components of the car to, you know, create a, a better airflow experience and a healthier one, which is exciting to hear, are, are you now, or is, is the, the hope that companies are creating more of a structured kind of system beyond that in, in terms of like better hardware that can cooperate?

How is it kind of evolving right now?  

Adam: Today what what we are doing is we are working with, on that system, we are working with car companies directly and, and building or incorporating our system inside their system. And every car company is different. Every car company has a different idea how it should work.

So we have one very big car brand. That, that look at our system and see it as part of the future. Of the, of the Future platform. What is, what is in the future? The, the the future? The platform is basically a, a, a full, fully connected vehicle, so we incorporate our system on the cloud. We manipulate and control the AC system, window system from the cloud.

We basically, we are not, we, we don't need zero to latency. So we are not like a an data system or, or an autonomous driving system so we can be on the cloud. So this is one idea that we are working on with, with one of the carbons. Other carbons look at it and. , can we do a quick win? Like can we incorporate it?

In the next model, which will come out to the market in three years from now. So maybe we will try to do it as simple as we can. Can you do it on premise? Can you put all the algorithms on premise? Yeah. And, and the vehicle itself. So it's, it will drive the system. Ev. So every time we do it with the cock is a different kind of process, it different kind of experiments, different kind of pilots.

But this is, this is the way we are, we are working today and the way it works. So basically once you get a car company board and you have like a design win, most of the time they will. That they will send you to, to a big tier one company that will work on doing the actual incorporation and be part of the cloud design.

Julian: Incredible. And, Just to, you know, kind of talk a little bit more about, you know, the relationship with the companies. How do you go about building, you know, with different, you know, stakeholders where one wants kind of one component or, or one wants your technology to integrate differently with their system versus another wants it to integrate in, in, not, not a similar way, but in more of a short term solution way.

How do you balance out development in those two different areas? When, when they have different. .  

Adam: So the key here is really to, to walk really methodology way. Build, building the right proof of concept. Mm-hmm. , building the right power, building the right process really to understand exactly what's the end goal of you need to ask question that I'll maybe for five years from now.

So if you talk of the platform of the. future How does it look like in general? You need to really to understand and drill down. The details and then to offer the solution that you think it is, is best for, for their needs. Yeah, so in the end it's you don't want to be a service company in the terms that you will do whatever they ask for from you.

But you want to offer the best kind of solution based on your existing technology. So we always try to mitigate this, this issue see what we have what is the basis of our technology and what kind of different kind of improvement or changes Yeah, we can do to, to minimize the work, but also, Give the proper solution for the, for the client.

Julian: Yeah. What are some of the biggest challenges that Crispify five faces today?  

Adam: I think the biggest challenge in the, when, when you are an automotive startup is Time, yeah. Is the, is the runway Okay. What we call runway in startup. So basically, yeah, it's runway because the, the biggest. The hurdle and the biggest chance for all startups in this industry is, is the runway, is the amount of time it takes to close proof of concept, and then the amount of time it takes to work with r and b.

And then to have a design wing. And then to have a contract, and then to have a sale. It takes years. It's not, it's not like any. Maybe there are a couple of other industries that are similar, but this is one of the, the most challenges. Yeah. But on the other, on the other, every challenges, this is benefit.

And the benefit is when you win, you win big. Yeah. New contracts, it's millions of units. It's very, it's it's very lucrative and, and also in the automotive industry you mo mostly see monopolies or do, so you see what one or two companies are taking the industry so, If tomorrow morning your, your new technology or your new feature is, is a standard you can really win big in this industry.

Julian: Yeah. Incredible. And if everything goes well, what's the long term vision for Crispify?  

Adam: So the long term vision is basically to be the the number one company for in cabin environment in terms of air. Yeah. This, this is where we see ourself. I think. We really think that. This will be like a standard feature in the future of, of the mobility industry especially when we look at more and more shared mobility.

And moving from individuals riding their cars to walking back, using their car for two hours a day, to really more like an autonomous shell flowing mobility in small cities. So people will be more and more together or one after another in the same small compartment of a vehicle. And we think that air quality is a major issue.

We saw it in Covid, but c is just one kind of virus. Right. You don't want to get the flu also when you drive, share the vehicle. So basically it's the same thing. So air part is a, is a major issue, especially as, as long as you see internal combustion engine, you will see also very high pollution, like a general pollution in, in the on the road also.

So we really see ourself, we see the te. Is a, is a, a basic technology and we want to be the number one company for that type of feature of technology.  

Amazing.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. And just for, for the entrepreneurs out there who are, you know, looking to build companies and, you know, break into their industries you know, what advice would you give someone who, who's thinking about starting a company?

Because macroeconomic wise, it's, it's a little, you know, it's a little bleak for the short term, and I think long term will be okay. But, you know, at least in America and Europe and other locations, there's a little bit of tightness of funding and things like that. Accessibility to funding. What would be your advice for somebody who's looking to start a company.

Looking to innovate and build a product that they think is gonna be you know, change either the industry that they're affecting or something new that, that, you know, people will need.  

Adam: basically I, I think, I think that first of all those kind of times are really a good time to start a company.

Cause in the end the money is still out there. The, the dry part of what we call the money in the VCs are still, still there. You won't be in the market for the next two, you know, one, two years, something like that when you are a startup. So maybe it's not, it's not the worst time to start a company. I, I think that when, when they, when they look at the way that you started crucifying, the, in the, in the the challenges that, that we face, I think that there are maybe two.

I can say that is super important for entrepreneurs, first of all, is to understand the product that you want to sell. Really be sure that you fully understand the product. Understand the industry. Don't pitch a product that is out there for 10 years. I saw a lot of those, really do. Do the. And be sure that you are familiar with it.

And if you are coming from the same, from the industry, it's maybe it's easier, but a lot of times the best, the best innovation or the best, new, new companies in new product coming from people from outside of the industry. But if you're a farm outside of the. Make sure you, you know, the industry well.

And the second thing is really to think about distributions. Yeah. The, the distribution itself that saves the marketing sales of the product. So if you are going to a way, like, like Crucify, crucify is a very. Like a global one-to-one sales. So if you, if you want to start an automotive startup, you really need to travel all around the world, meet the people, meet the people, meet the right person, get to the right person in every type of company.

It's really, really hard and it's really personal, like sales. So think about it. Do you want to do those kind of sales and those kind of, and you want to suffer from the safe cycle? That takes a long time. Or do you want, or you prefer to do like an online sale, product growth, a lot of other type of sales and marketing, ways that.

It maybe better suitable for you. So, you know, if, if you sit in, in, in some kind of city that is far away from the industry you want to sell for, and you don't have the budget to travel, think about it. How, how you going to do it? So I, I think if you, if you got those two right, so it much, the, the the path forward is much easier.

Julian: I always like to ask this question for my founders to who join the show, one for selfish research, but also for my audience. What books of people, whether it was early in your career now, have influenced you the most?  

Adam: Okay. So yeah, so I, I be, I I will be little bit corny and, and say, Elon Musk, I don't think that.

Anybody in the automotive industry can't say that he was influenced by, you know, Musk. I think, this is a guy that come from the outside and really changed the industry. I think the book and Toyota was amazing. If you are in the industry, it's an amazing book. Great is an amazing book. And yeah. How, how to, how to keep the engine working.

I think that there's a lot, lot of different books that I read on the early stages, of startups. I can't remember all the names, but there are a lot of it I, I make sure to read all the time. So all the time I'm reading at least, at least one book about entrepreneurship. business. It's really, even if the book is not the best in the world, every time you read something, you, it's open your world a little bit more, and you pieces, you have a lot of different pieces that you can piece together.

And think about things that you do in your, your day to day, that you maybe should do a little bit different. Maybe there are some that you didn't think about. So I think it's, it's, it's really super important books and podcasts about entrepreneurship also. It's, it's really, it takes a lot, it takes a lot of time from your day, but it's really valuable.

Julian: Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Adam, for, for being on the show last little bit. I always like to give my founders time to give us their plugs. You know, let us know where we can support. Crispify, what are your websites, your LinkedIns, your Twitters? Where can we be a part of the mission and be excited about the, the new innovation that you're doing?

Adam: Sure. Yeah. you can visit crispify.io our website. on LinkedIn. You can find me Adam Feldman. they're happy to connect. Happy to know if anybody has any question, need any advice, need any, any, any push in any direction as the Epic 12.  

Julian: Yeah. Incredible well, I hope you enjoyed yourself, Adam, and, and thank you so much again for joining the podcast.

Adam: Great. Thank you very much. Thank you for letting me.  

Julian: Yep.