Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on April 18, 2022

Adam Singolda (40), founder and CEO of Taboola

Children raised during Covid-19 think that every parent works from home. My kids think that their dad works out of some room at home. When Taboola went public nine months ago, I did it all from home, from my kids lego room. I never even met a single investor in person. My young daughter, Elinor, who is a year and a half old, grew up with her father always home. Now, if I need to fly from Israel to New York for meetings, she gets mad, screams I dont love you. She doesnt understand whats going on.

Your wife, Victoria, is also used to having her spouse around. You wrote in a Facebook post that you like waking up before her, and watching her sleep.

I wake up, and before I even check my phone, or leave to go on a run, I say thanks that shes here, and look at her. She sleeps like an angel. I gaze at her and then I jump out of bed. My work is like a Disneyland for nerds, and I always enjoy creating something new. You also need to do that in a relationship, to do new things you havent ever done before.

You met your wife in New York.

Yes. Shes a New Yorker from a Polish family. We met in 2010 through friends, a year after I moved. She converted to Judaism for me, but also because she felt very connected to Israel and Judaism. We wanted to have a single-minded home, where we practice Judaism, and do kiddush on Friday night, fast on Yom Kippur, etc. She owns a florist shop that shes been running for years, and she works like crazy. Every morning, she runs to the farmers market to pick up the flowers. Shes the best at what she does.

She doesnt have to work.

I dont like that language. That's how rich people talk. We dont think or act like that. I think its amazing that shes been running this business for years.

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Adam Singolda.

(Photo: Edward Kaprov. The photo was taken using the wet plate collodion technique, an early photographic process invented in the 19th century.)

And you speak three languages at home.

Victoria and her mother speak to each other in Polish. The kids speak English during the day, and at night she reads them bedtime stories in Polish. I only talk to them in Hebrew. And she accepts the fact that she has no idea what I say to our kids. During dinnertime for example, my son Oz, whos four, will start telling us a story in English, then switch to Hebrew, and then back to English. He thinks its all the same. So Victoria is picking up a bit of Hebrew, and the kids are teaching her a bit.

Did you have to relocate to New York?

I knew I had to move, but I didnt know when until one of our first investors, Zvi Limon, said to me: There will never be a good time. Just get up and do it. I moved to New York two years after I founded Taboola, and I had to since I had employees dealing with websites and ads, and New York is the media capital. Its also a much more fun place to live than San Francisco, California, which I think is boring. And in New York everyone is an immigrant and has an accent, so immediately you feel at home and fit right in. Its also much closer to Israel. The time difference between the East and West Coast is small, but it is significant in regard to work hours and flight time.

How did the move affect your Israeli identity?

I feel at home everywhere I go. And I also put in a lot of effort to act like an Israeli in America and not the other way around. I dont just speak to my kids in Hebrew, I also read to them books in Hebrew, joke around with them in Hebrew, watch Israeli kids TV shows with them, and we listen to Israeli music at home. Its really us against the world. I don't think that Ill ever speak to my kids in English.

What did you take from your personal life as the son of renowned Israeli guitarist Avi Singolda?

Ill always feel like the son whose father was blessed by God. My dad is also an amazing father and grandfather. He never knew how much milk cost, but he always loved music, and I learned from him how to fall in love with something. When we would travel abroad and he wouldnt play, hed go into a guitar store and go crazy. I hope that the people I love and myself will be able to continue doing what we love. My mother, on the other hand, always knows what the price of milk is. Im a combination of both: I know how much things cost, but I also try to forget that sometimes and am somewhere on the spectrum between knowing whats going on and being completely out of the loop. I need to keep my dreams in mind, and believe that anything is possible.

While youre daydreaming, your stock has dropped by nearly 50% - its declined from $13 to just $5 per share.

Were focusing now on the business, and the positive momentum were seeing is exciting. Were only looking at the share price in the long term, and are trying to think like Yoda. The market perfectly keeps track of good companies, and thats why I care less about our share price and would rather not lose a customer. That really kills me, it makes me cry. Thats what were fighting: retaining our customers. Every day we fight as if its the companys last day. We check how long it takes us to respond to customers emails, how to cope with employees who have problems, and what is going on when you are not in the room. We want to create a corporate culture that will win over customers.

So where do the dreams come into play?

My life is like Disneyland for nerds. Every quarter I can create a new product without asking the world what it thinks. Thats how we entered the video sector: we developed a product for Samsung which competes with Apple News, because we thought it was interesting. Taboola is really a startup of many smaller startups. Its infinite.

So how do you let your brain rest?

I believe in treasuring the small moments. I dont believe in taking an annual two-week vacation, but lots of smaller vacations. Even everyday things, like bathing my kids, running a bit every day, having a glass of wine, playing with legos is enough. I think that everyday people should do things that make them happy and keep them sane.

Whats your deal with legos?

Its the idea of creating something, its building something with your hands, and it excites me. It lets me talk to my kids, not just about what were building but about anything - both good and bad, and about behavior. I told Oz that Yoda is a Jedi master since he studied Hebrew and numbers for 600 years, and now he wants to learn the entire Aleph-Bet so he can be like Yoda.

And this doesnt bore you?

Being bored is healthier than being constantly overstimulated. Its important that I give my kids that ability to get bored, just like we used to stay up after Friday night meals and just talk until midnight. Why is that so difficult these days? Thats one of the reasons why I love Taboola, because were building an alternative to Facebook that doesnt suck you into social media but only shows you the content youre interested in. I kind of feel like the Robin Hood of the internet, or like Yoda battling against the bad guys.

Read this article:

I live in a nerds Disneyland. Im the Robin Hood of the internet, a Yoda battling the bad guys - CTech

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