When he was a student, Omer Perchik was in a constant race against time. "When I studied at Tel Aviv University," he says, "I remember one day I had to do all sorts of errands, for example, getting a visa. I thought how nice it would be if I could press a button and have all my errands done for me." In 2010, Perchik founded Any.do an application for management of time and tasks.
"I started thinking about how people use a lot of tools, and have an array of desires, and need some kind of platform that would be suitable for each one of them," he remembers.
Perchik, a veteran of the IDF Center of Computing and Information Systems, looked for partners with a technological background, and recruited Itay Kahana and Yoni Lindenfeld, veterans of the IDF Intelligence Corps (8200) knowledgeable in computer programming, to his founding team. "Yoni was enthusiastic from the beginning. He was Itay's commander in the army, which was a big help in recruiting him." Any.do made a little bit of history by choosing to launch its application on Google's Android operating system, and only later turning to users of Apple's IOS.
"We were the first company to start with Android," Perchik remembers. "We went in the opposite direction, because we saw that they were hungrier for this kind of thing. The ambition to put out something good on Android sounded like the right idea."
The three founders wasted no time, and raised money from a number of venture capital funds, including Genesis Partners, Blumberg Capital, Innovation Endeavors (Google chairman Eric Schmidt's fund), and private investors, such as Joe Lonsdale. The company has raised $7 million since it was founded.
Any.do has 14 employees in Tel Aviv, and is concentrating on development of an improved version, which will reach the market in the coming weeks. "Today, we have 10 million users," Perchik says proudly, "We did it by ourselves, without buying users. Many companies do that, but not us. All our growth was completely organic. We appeared on television, they talked about us, and it happened with no special effort."
The company's vision is "to help people organize things. There are a lot of things that can help us use time for things we love. It also contributes effectively to time management, and enables people to spend time on their family, children, and things that are really important.
"The tool we're about to launch will help people work together. A couple can share a groceries list, and a work team can combine forces in a project. Our second motif concerns the ability to understand what you want, and to help you. For example, if we write 'shopping list,' the button will arrange everything at the best price, and ask what you want at home. The idea is to delegate tasks and use external services, so that each user can take less time on routine things. Exercising, reading, and being with your children are better ways to spend time than shopping at the supermarket."
Perchik himself has been living in San Francisco for over a year; he went with his wife, who was assigned a job there. The time difference - time is a recurring motif - forces him to manage his time carefully.
"I wake up very early in the morning, and fly every month or two," he says. The technological future seeks to make things simple. Uber and GetTaxi are also making everything simple. Simplicity in life is the vision that guides us."
Any.do
Activity: Time management application
Founders: Omer Perchik, Itay Kahana, Yoni Lindenfeld
Founded: 2010
Employees: 14
Capital raised: $7 million.
Investors: Genesis Partners, Blumberg Capital, Innovation Endeavors
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 30, 2014
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2014