Thesis

Malls and retail spaces are flying blind when it comes to real-time visitor data. They set rent prices based on square meters but have no insight into how people actually move through their spaces. What if we could give them a live heatmap of foot traffic, helping them optimize tenant pricing, improve layouts, and boost conversion rates?
Our idea: Install plug-and-play sensors to collect anonymized foot traffic data and give mall owners a dashboard that translates visitors navigation through their space into actionable business analytics. This would enable better pricing strategies, smarter layouts, and increased sales.

Validation

We partnered with a company that already had a working sensor solution, so we wouldn’t need to build the hardware from scratch. We focused on the dashboard and analytics.

We met with major retail centers and supermarket chains in Israel.They all had the same reaction: “This is valuable. If this works, we’ll pay for it.”

We set a simple KPI: At least 100 logins to our dashboard per week. That’s how we’d measure engagement. The product had to become part of their daily workflow.

We met with tens of VCs.

We spent nearly two years testing and validating this concept. Early customer conversations confirmed the problem was real. Malls and retail chains were hungry to get better data in an easy way. As the validation progressed, we realized the key wasn’t just providing insights – it was making those insights a habit. If the mall manager wasn’t logging into our dashboard every morning, we would have already lost. That’s why we decided to focus more on actionable insights relevant to the customer experience, such as visitor movement and traffic, space events, and journey flow.

Why it didn’t progress 

Team’s skillset. We were missing a critical piece in our founding team – no software lead – and that killed us. We had business analytics. We had hardware expertise. We had marketing, and product leaders. But none of us could build the core capability of the product/PoC. At first, I thought it didn’t matter. I could drive the vision, manage the process, and raise the money. But after 10 investor meetings, I started getting the same feedback: “You don’t have a software lead. Without one, this isn’t investable.”

We spent months searching for a CTO. By the time we found the right person, it was too late. Energy was drained, momentum was lost, and we had already burned through too much time.

Towards the end, I also realized that I, the CEO, was not the right person at the right time: I could be the CPO, but CEOing is not for me.

Insights

1. You need more than a great idea: No matter how strong your team is, missing key functions at the founding stage could be a death sentence. You don’t need a full org chart from day one, but if your core product is software, someone on the founding team needs to write the first line of code. Quick and dirty PoC is not recommended, it’s a must. 

2. Fundraising strategies can change, and it is OK. Raising a smaller pre-seed, rather than a large seed round, would have been a smarter move. The fire that a smaller pre-seed round would’ve started under us, would’ve been super valuable and serve as a focusing agent to decisions. I insisted on raising a larger seed, but that was a mistake. Check the ego at the door, the goal is to start the motion. Don’t optimize things that are not there yet.  

3. At the validation stage, focus as much as possible on the Product and the pain you’re looking to solve. Make sure your day is filled with less “Fluff” and marketing your idea, and instead – be present at the validation stage. This is crucial and will help you not only hear the feedback, but also listen to it. A partly working system is a valuable teacher, both on the technical gaps and on the benefits for your future customers.

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