Why I’m Leaving My Dream Job
Tomorrow I’ll be starting a new job as Director of Design for Eved. This was a tough decision. It’s so much easier to walk away from something and run off to something else when things aren’t going well. But everything has been fantastic working as Designer in Residence with Jumpspeed Ventures in Jerusalem, helping portfolio companies and area startups empathize with their users and designing awesome products. It’s been extremely rewarding working in the heart of the ancient capital of Israel with Ben Wiener, watching his young entrepreneurs hustling and helping them kick butt.
But something unexpected happened.
As a consultant, before I started with Ben and the team, I helped startups get off the ground, create consistent and scale-able experiences, and with their more mature look, garner traction and venture funding. Leaving me with my paycheck, but watching their success from afar. It was gratifying knowing my design work played a big role in their success (clients often wrote me back later and thanked me). But I sometimes wished I could go along for the ride.
Eved is one of those companies. One of my first consulting clients from more than 3 years ago, I was there when Eved crossed $1 million in revenue for the first time in a 1 year period. I worked on their user experience, making sure their platform was easier to use and helped their customers and users do their jobs better, faster, and more pleasantly.
So when Eved asked me to join them after a new round of funding, and help build out their design team, I was intrigued. Here was the opportunity to take this company from a small startup to a more mature organization. I was finally invited along for the ride.
But enterprise isn’t sexy!
Lots of designers may not think working in the enterprise space is “sexy.” I think the world has seen enough “whatsapps for ubers” and “airbnbs for Norwegian circus mice.” There’s cool stuff happening in the consumer space, but too many people are trying too hard to get into the party. The idea of hording millions of users in the hope of some day “monetizing” them just doesn’t interest me the same way.
There’s so much disruption waiting to happen in the enterprise world. Old technology solutions are in sore need of upgrades. Aching for better user experiences. And enterprise users are still consumer users on their own time. I’d like to bring a consumer experience to these people’ jobs. I want to consumerize the enterprise.
Eved’s technology is competing with an archaic industry which uses doc files and excel spreadsheets, printing off reams of paper to get the job done. Sometimes they hook into clunky databases for reporting purposes. Eved revolutionizes the event procurement and payment process by creating complete end-to-end solution with full visibility into spend.
Ok, maybe that doesn’t sound sexy. But it makes people’s lives better, their jobs easier, and helps businesses run more efficiently.
And there’s still huge additional opportunity! This latest round of funding validates Eved’s whole mission. There are still hundreds of huge companies out there not on Eved, who run tens of millions of dollars of events per year, who’s poor team is stuck with clunky, difficult processes. I’d like to make their lives better. I’d like to make their jobs easier.
So while I’m sad to be leaving Jumpspeed Ventures, I’m excited to be joining Eved in this new chapter!
(And if you’re an Israeli designer — user experience, interaction, and user interface — looking to have a meaningful impact and help grow our design team, please send me your portfolio!)
