My way to where i am

At 21, I was broke, with only a few dollars to my name.

Now at 42, I've had an exit and on to my next startup. Here's my story...

I grew up in a small town in Israel. And like many entrepreneurs, I was obsessed with many side hustles rather than school, which I almost didn't finish.

I eventually did graduate high school and decided to travel to "Find myself" with little to no luck.

At 21, after backpacking through Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina, I landed in San Jose. No plan and no money.

I worked as a mover, helping families get their belongings from point A to point B.

I felt like a failure.

And I knew it because I still remember calling anyone who might lend me enough cash to get to LA so I could crash on couches.

But that didn't work out. So I called my mother, and she brought me back to Israel.

It was pretty embarrassing.

Back home, I finished a degree in economics and management and took a job as an affiliate manager.

We did finance, dating, and gaming offers.

Gaming is a nice way to say online casinos.

And not to toot my own horn, but I was pretty damn good at driving traffic for them.

But in 2017, that company closed. So I knew it was time to do my own thing.

I already knew the affiliates and the advertisers, so I opened my own network with two partners.

So we we're cashflowing from the get-go.

At the peak, we were doing around 5,000 leads a day.

But I was caught in an ethical crossroads.

It was never fun being the "Online Casino Guy" at family functions. I knew I shouldn't be in this industry.

I told my business partner early on I couldn't do this for too long.

But it was hard to leave.

When you're good at something (and it's making good money), it's very hard to pull away from it.

So we brought in a CEO so I could step away from the operations.

Then, in 2021, I sold my share to my partners.

I felt rich for a minute but decided to burn cash on angel investing. I don't recommend it lol.

I was bad at picking, and I hated having zero impact on the companies I put money into.

I missed being an operator.

But then ChatGPT changed everything. I knew it was time to build again.

I wanted to solve a problem for GTM teams that I understood so well from my time as an affiliate marketer: finding high-intent buyers online.

I realized that LLMs would enable me to scan through 10's of thousands of posts online to find high-intent buyers who are looking for your exact solution.

So I started building Conversee.

So far, we've run pilots with a handful of 8 & 9 figure software companies, even while we are fully bootstrapped.

And when I'm not building Conversee, I'm hanging with my wife and little ones.

If you want to follow the journey, make sure to shoot me a connection request Yair Eyal