The Messy, Beautiful Startup Journey: From idea to acquisition

Yuval Gonczarowski is a founder, technologist, and entrepreneur whose career spans engineering, consulting, big tech, and venture-backed startups. He earned his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Technion in 2013 and his MBA from Harvard Business School in 2017. Yuval served as an officer in Unit 8200 before holding engineering roles at Intel and Apple, where he contributed to the first prototype of the Apple Watch. He then pivoted to strategy at McKinsey & Company, advising clients across the digital and TMT sectors, before joining Tomorrow.io (which has raised over $400M) as its Chief Technology Officer. In 2021, Yuval co-founded Akooda - an AI platform that contextualizes enterprise data to surface insights on workflows, performance bottlenecks, and decision points at scale. The company raised $11M from top-tier investors including NFX, Village Global, Founder Collective, and Atlassian Ventures. In October 2025, Akooda was acquired by Tulip Interfaces, a Boston-based global industrial software company. In this talk, Yuval will share the full arc of Akooda's journey - from the spark of an idea through fundraising to a successful acquisition - with honest, practical lessons for aspiring founders at every stage.   The talk will be delivered in Hebrew