A Disregard To The Limits - GRIT Ed. 8 | The Relentless Pursuit - Magazine - Page 15
A Disregard To The Limits
OPPORTUNITY
WITHOUT
Maayan Ziv, CEO & Founder of AccessNow (Next 36, 2016)
REGARD
was struggling to change - people’s understanding and
assumptions about what is valuable in what we build.
“We’ve seen that there’s an estimated $16 billion over the
next two years, shifting towards accessible technology.
That didn’t exist a few years ago. I can’t take credit for
that entirely, but I’d like to think that we had something to
do with that shift in thinking that we’re seeing across the
economy.”
REZA SATCHU IN CONVERSATION WITH
MAAYAN ZIV & ERAN HENIG
When Reza Satchu sat down for a conversation with Maayan Ziv and Eran Henig, he started
with his favorite definition of entrepreneurship - the relentless pursuit of opportunity without
regard to resources currently controlled - and asked Maayan and Ziv what it was about that
definition that resonated with them.
Maayan being a sole founder with no capital and no
team, had had to change the perspective - “Often
what I tell people is that Access Now was a marketing
company before it was a tech company because I
told the story of what I wanted it to be and allowed
people to believe that that was already true.” She
did not know how to build or write code. All she had
was a deep commitment to solve a problem that
existed and this made her relentless in her efforts to
find a way to do just that.
With Eran, it was a different story. When he first
attended Reza’s class in the University of Toronto,
he had only been in Canada for a year. Reminiscing
about that time, he said he had already been married
for two years then, struggling to find a job - any job,
trying to pay rent and trying to fulfill the unspoken
responsibilities that come with moving to a new
country. But there was one thing that pulled him
through - his unwavering belief in himself. He knew,
there would come a point where everything would
flip and work out in his favor. “There’s something
about self-esteem and believing in yourself as a
productive individual who can pick up whatever
needs to be picked up.” In a way, this was what
eventually led him to entrepreneurship.
But it wasn’t just financial reasons that pushed
Eran to become an entrepreneur. As Reza pointed
out, there are safer routes to earning money. In
fact, very few people in Eran’s situation might have
thought entrepreneurship was the way to go. What
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MARCH 2022 | NEXTCANADA.COM
“For me, the passion was
just focused on how to
get to a world that is more
accessible and I was not
attached to how I got there”
specific set of circumstances then led Eran down
the path? While trying to become financially secure,
Eran knew he needed something that would be
intellectually stimulating and he could only find it
when he was solving existing problems in the societal
infrastructure. This was the beginning of Platterz,
which would later be reimagined and rebranded as
Thriver, the successful multi-dimensional business
we see today.
For Maayan, it was the deep seated need to solve
a problem not many were looking at that birthed
Access Now. She had experienced, first hand, the
problems related to inequities for people with
disabilities. There was a need for a way to identify
accessibility issues for various places and Maayan
was certain she could provide a solution.
“I knew exactly the barriers that people were facing,”
she said. “For me, the passion was just focused on
how to get to a world that is more accessible and
I was not attached to how I got there. And that’s
what has helped me be flexible and resilient to figure
out things that weren’t working and find a better or
different way.”
She was on a mission to change the way people
thought about accessibility in the mainstream. She
wanted to bring about a shift of perception - in
no way a small undertaking. When she made her
first pitch in 2016, she was told her venture would
be better - as a charity. This was the thinking she
Of the many qualities that set entrepreneurs apart, perhaps
the most important is that of perseverance, when the odds
are against you. The journey oft times has an element of
ruthlessness to it. As they say, nothing worth anything,
ever comes easy. This is especially true in the world of
entrepreneurship, where the challenges are diverse and
unexpected and often relentless.
Reza steered the conversation to the times when things did
not go as planned for Maayan and Eran. In the chaotic world
of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs are often required to
pivot and significantly change the course they are on. Reza
was interested to know how they had used their resources
and made the necessary pivot to reach where they had.
For Maayan, there was one particular moment in time when
she thought she had reached the limit of exhaustion. She
had been pitching to different people, trying to engage
them with her vision in terms of volunteering and efforts,
and though she had been recognised in Canada, she
wanted more.
“I’d seen other people build similar companies and plateau
there. And I started seeing it happening to my company
and I was terrified that I was just going to be one more case
of a failed accessibility platform. And it wasn’t acceptable
to me. So I stepped back and reevaluated what was missing.
It sounds really simple now, but…I needed a stronger tech
team. I needed better capital to acquire that talent. And I
spent the next year on my own, doing only that.”
Hindsight is 20/20, but when you are in a complex situation,
finding a solution can be daunting. Maayan took a step back
and evaluated what she needed to do to achieve what she
had set out to achieve. For Eran, it was an entirely different
problem, needing an entirely different solution..
“We went from 6 million bucks a month to zero,” he
began, with Reza smiling and nodding, confirming it was
the exact moment he had in mind too. Eran’s venture was
growing incrementally and uncontrollably. When COVID
hit, everything suddenly got out of hand. With their cell
phones ringing constantly, their funds quickly depleted
and they had to consider the very real possibility of letting
go of their employees in masses.
“We took a week off. We went to the farm uptown and we
knew what we needed to combat was impulsiveness. We
made sure to think about it very clearly. We made a lot of
phone calls. That moment with Platterz was the toughest.”
The change from Platterz to Thrive also meant a change
from only being a corporate catering marketplace to a
full fledged procurement solution for companies - a place
where clients could find all the providers they needed to
support their corporate culture.
The metrics against which to measure the success of a
venture can be many and varied. Reza wanted to know
GRIT | THE RELENTLESS PURSUIT
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