This Immigrant Sold His Last Two Startups And Now Raised $600 Million To Reimagine The Home Building Process

Amit Haller has had startups acquired, taken them public, and is now onto his biggest venture so far. 

On the Dealmakers Show Haller talks about preparing for entrepreneurship, acquisitions and IPOs, what it really feels like to sell your company, and learning when to quit. Plus taking on and innovating in the most polluting industry in the world. 

Listen to the full podcast episode and review the transcript here.

Selling Your First Company

Amit Haller was born in ‘Startup Nation’, Israel. An experience he really enjoyed. Although he has relocated to the US, and headquartered his current company in America, he has always maintained teams and branches of his company back home. 

Many entrepreneurs credit a lot of their success to ‘luck’. Though we know that this is really the convergence of preparation and taking action on opportunities that arise. 

Growing up in Israel, Haller had to do his mandatory military service, just like everyone else. An experience which he certainly says helped prepare him for entrepreneurship. 

In the military he was put into a technical unit, which taught him a lot about technology. It taught him about mindset. How to do hard things. Like walking 16 hours a day, almost every day. It trained him to be mission driven, and work with a team to accomplish that mission. He also built friendships and relationships that have lasted through to this day.

Butterfly Communications

Together with some of those people from his same unit, he started his first tech company, Butterfly Communications. 

Wanting to take control of their lives, they set out to do something entrepreneurial of their own. First working on projects for other companies as they figured out the market. With one of their big challenges going from an unlimited budget in the military, to having to make something affordable for consumers, so that it could scale. 

They started off by simply tackling the idea of making wireless keyboards and mice for PCs. Then went on to raise $17M in funding. 

After approaching Texas Instruments as a fabricating partner for their chips at scale, they got an acquisition offer, and ended up selling the company for $50M. 

What many entrepreneurs don’t talk about is the emotional roller coaster of giving up their first baby. It is not unlike raising a child, and then letting them go off to college or move out and join the workforce. 

Your startup can be so much a part of you and your life, that many suffer a sense of loss, and have a hard time letting go. Even in spite of all the money they are paid for their companies. 

Amit says that he was no exception to this. As he matured and transitioned through that, and saw the benefit of the venture being in capable hands that could take it to an ever greater level, he was ready to go at it with a new venture from scratch again. 

IPOs & Short Retirements

Amit Haller’s next venture went further into exploring wireless connectivity. Including creating a bluetooth watch. 

Unfortunately the back end infrastructure just wasn’t there to support it all efficiently. The watch battery would only last about 10 minutes. Network bandwidth couldn’t support it all. Especially when pre-iPhone service providers still charged for data by the kilobyte. 

So, they transitioned to instant messaging, and an early smartphone, that capitalized on the communication trends of the time. They ended up doing very well. Especially in Europe. 

Then took the company public through a SPAC deal, before most people had even heard of them. Between private and public funding, they had raised $135M. With operations from Israel to Taiwan, China, Europe, and across the US. 

After the IPO Amit’s daughter turned two years old, and he wanted to get a better grip on balance in his life. He spent time reading again, and thinking about how money really works. 

That, along with finding new mentors took him into investing in real estate. Followed by a short attempt at retiring. It lasted all of two and a half months before he was ready to take another run at a startup again. 

Veev

Veev is Amit Haller’s most recent and current venture. One which has already raised $400M in capital, with a team of 270 between the US and Israel. 

Storytelling is everything which is something that Amit Haller was able to master. Being able to capture the essence of what you are doing in 15 to 20 slides is the key. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here), where the most critical slides are highlighted.

Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.

It is his venture into proptech and innovating in the construction industry. Specifically how to deliver enough housing to meet the growing demand of a growing population, with panelized building techniques. In a way that helps dramatically reduce all the waste and pollution involved in traditional construction. 

Amit says that they are able to “build with about 50% less of a carbon footprint of traditional construction. Which is the most polluting industry out there. 38% of carbon is coming from homes. In which we can now build it with 10x less waste than traditional construction.  Helping to tackle the fact that 50% of the landfill in the world is from construction.”

Listen in to the full podcast episode to find out more, including:

• How Veev is reinventing home building
• Knowing when to quit
• Putting off retirement forever
• Amit Haller’s top advice when launching a business

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