Pixellot featured on Amazon Web Services Startup Stories. "These startups certainly aren’t afraid to tackle the status quo". Co-founder Gal Oz on how Pixellot is revolutionizing sports production through AI-based automation

1. i
TestBookStories
STARTUP STORIES
NOTES FROM FOUNDERS
THE DISRUPTORS
Issue 02 Volume 01

2. STARTUPSTORIESNotesfromFounders:TheDisruptors
02
Discover how one woman turned her
love of art into a profitable business
employing 100 staff members.
05
Find out how a business aimed at
teenagers got started with Amazon
Activate and went on to secure $5.8
million in capital seed funding.
These startups certainly aren’t afraid to tackle the status
quo. From shaking up the art-world to changing the face
of banking, they’re utilizing new technology to disrupt the
world as we know it.
01
Find out how a startup that was founded in
2017 has already grown into the largest
closer of funding rounds in the UK.
03
Learn how one man’s yearning to watch
his son’s games on the big screen led to
a business that now broadcasts sports
footage from 25 countries.
04
Read about a Danish app that’s
changing the face of banking in the
Nordics.
The DISRUPTORS

3. 10
STARTUPSTORIESNotesfromFounders:Pixellot
Seedlegals Juniqe lunar way yeaypixellot
Giving every
athlete their
fifteen minutes
of fame
‘It’s all about the fire that’s burning
inside of you’
I began my career in the Israeli intelligence
forces working as an engineer. My training
was in satellites, images and video links;
I learned how to take an idea and make
it work. The army gave me responsibility
from a very young age – at 25, I was
looking after important systems. That’s
a huge privilege for someone so young.
The Israeli army also welcomed ideas and I
launched a few projects while I was there.
‘I want to broadcast the important
people, rather than the famous ones’
Pixellot is about taking the thousands of
small sporting events that happen around
the globe every day, and making them big.
Television already broadcasts the famous
people, but not the important people. For
me, the important events are the matches
my son plays in, the ones my friends
are in, or the ones that take place in my
hometown. Those aren’t ever filmed by
professionals, so before Pixellot, you never
got the thrill of seeing them broadcast or
re-watching the highlights.
Sure, I love Lionel Messi as much as the
next guy does, but I love my son more.
So not seeing him play on screen was
something that was missing from my life.
I’m away a lot, so I can’t be there for all
his games. Wherever I am in the world, I
can watch the NBA; but before Pixellot,
I couldn’t watch my son. We’ve changed
the way people consume sport and
democratized it, so now every event can
be treated as high profile.
Pixellot’s tagline is ‘making millions of small events big’.
Launched in 2013 by Gal Oz and Dr. Miky Tamir, the startup
aims to democratize sport by making high-quality sports
coverage more affordable. Now broadcasting 17,000 hours of
footage a month from 25 countries, Pixellot is giving millions
of athletes the chance to have their moment in the spotlight.
Sports-lover Gal Oz missed being able
to watch his three sons’ games while he
was away on business. Pixellot was born
out of that frustration. The Tel Aviv-
based startup offers unmanned
cameras, automated production
solutions and live streaming to bring
amateur and professional sports
games to screens across the world.
Gal Oz
Founder of Pixellot

4. 11
STARTUPSTORIESNotesfromFounders:Pixellot
Seedlegals Juniqe lunar way yeaypixellot
‘We wanted to tap into the zeitgeist
of the moment’
In 2013, my business partner Dr. Miky
Tamir and I could see that there would
be a revolution in consumers’ cameras.
Smartphone cameras were improving
at breakneck speed and the way people
captured live action - particularly sport,
was changing. The idea we had was to
capture the sport as a whole, not in the
same way professional networks do. We
wanted to make a camera that films the
entire pitch and the scoreboard and then
create a virtual movement covering the
action of the game in real time, including
highlights.
‘Our initial product didn’t have
enough potential’
Our original aim was to build a
professional camera for major sporting
events. Raising the money wasn’t difficult
as we came on the back of a success
story and were already part of the Israeli
incubator system. We launched in April
2013 and by November, we were already
working with Formula One. But a year
later, we came to the very difficult decision
to throw away the entire product as it
simply didn’t have enough potential.
‘Changing our product was one of the
scariest decisions I’ve ever made’
One of the bravest things you can do in
a startup is recognize that your product
isn’t working. That’s why being self-
aware is essential; if people think they
know too much, they stop listening to the
market. A year in and our clients loved
the product, but not many people were
buying it as it was too big, too expensive
and we weren’t in the right market. So we
changed everything and shifted our focus
away from professional, high-end sports.
Throwing away a year’s worth of work and
money to start again was one of the most
difficult decisions we’ve ever had to make.
We had some very anxious and sleepless
nights, but we knew in our hearts it was
the right thing to do.
‘Egos can easily destroy a company’
The last decade has taught me how
dangerous the ego can be. I eventually
came to terms with the sort of person I
am – and now I have an ego about my area
of speciality, but I also know what I’m not
brilliant at. For a year, before we started
Pixellot, I was trying to think of ideas until
I realized my talent lay not in dreaming,
but in turning a concept into a viable
business. My business partner is an ideas
man, so we’re an ideal partnership.
Many startups fail when they scale up
because the founders can’t let go and
give away the keys. It’s very important to
recognize when another CEO might do a
better job than you and when the time is
right for you to step away from the day-
to-day running of your business to focus
on the product and technology.
‘Being a father helped me shape my
company’
As a parent, it’s wonderful to have
created a product that my kids can use
and that enriches their lives. I have three
boys, so our house is naturally rather
sports obsessed. Pixellot films their
matches, which means they can go over
their performance and work on it before
the next match. It also means that as a
father who travels a lot, I never miss an
important game.
It isn’t easy combining parenthood with
startups and I often describe Pixellot as
my fourth and most demanding child. It’s
inevitable that you’ll spend time away
from your family when you have a startup
and you need a partner who can make up
for your absences. My wife is wonderful
in that respect and is always there for the
boys when I’m travelling or stuck in the
office. But equally, it’s essential you never
lose sight of the people you love, because
if the company falls to pieces, then you
have nothing.

5. 12
STARTUPSTORIESNotesfromFounders:Pixellot
Seedlegals Juniqe lunar way yeaypixellot
‘Israel’s business culture helped our
company grow’
It’s no coincidence that Israel is a country
of startups. We’re trained to think outside
the box in this country and take challenges
and treat them as just that, rather than
as something un-doable. This is true in
all elements of our society - from the
smallest to the biggest business. In Israel,
if you have an idea for a new ice cream
flavor, you say you have a plan for a
startup; it’s part of our tradition and our
vocabulary. And I love the energy and can-
do attitude that we’ve fostered here; it’s
very inspiring. What people don’t realize
though, is that you can be an entrepreneur
anywhere. It’s more about the fire that’s
burning inside of you, than where you’re
working or your current life situation.
‘The second time around is
always easier’
Pixellot is actually my second startup. Dr.
Miky Tamir launched a company called
SportVU in 2005 and I joined just after.
We collected the statistics of athletes
during soccer and basketball matches and
we were deployed all over the Champions
League and the NBA – it was a very
successful company. We sold it in 2008
and I stayed on for four years afterwards
to run the development center in Israel.
It was only around 2012 when I’d been
relaxing for a while as a corporate
businessman that I realized the company
no longer needed me and that the fire in
my belly was back. Launching a startup
the second time around was certainly
easier – even if the initial concept was
really complex. Not only did we trust
ourselves more, but the market trusted us
and getting investment on the back of a
successful business is an entirely different
ball game from doing it as an unknown
entrepreneur.
‘I’m passionate about making sport
more democratic’
The Champions League and the NBA get
huge viewing figures from around the
globe. But what about women’s sporting
events? Or disability sports? Or even just
very good amateurs? With Pixellot, we’re
now in hundreds of high schools in the
US and in China, and we film the German
Fourth and Fifth League. We’re passionate
about democratizing this rather elitist
sporting world and promoting people
and sports that don’t always garner the
highest ratings.
When I moved from the army to the real
world, my academic education was in
biomedical engineering, so I thought I’d
just go into the medical world. But this
feels just as important. Pixellot is not just
about entertainment; it’s about shaping
social behavior – sports are such a positive
thing.
‘Our growth has been so rapid that
together with AWS, we’ve had to learn
to evolve’
We work with AWS a lot and are
very heavily dependent on the AWS
infrastructure. It works brilliantly, although
we’ve grown so rapidly that we’ve had to
evolve very quickly. In January 2017, we
broadcast 700 hours of footage a month.
By January 2018, we were broadcasting
17,000 hours a month. That growth is so
fast that we’ve had to learn our limitations
and how to overcome them. It was a
process for both us and AWS, but now
we’re working and growing together and
moving in an amazing direction.

6. 13
STARTUPSTORIESNotesfromFounders:Pixellot
Seedlegals Juniqe lunar way yeaypixellot
‘Sports and music help me relax’
I’m a sports fan, of course. I wouldn’t have
done all this if I wasn’t! I’m a volleyball
player myself as a hobby – although
ironically, volleyball was the last sport we
covered. I’m also a music lover. A song that
inspires me is ‘Reverence’ by Faithless,
which has the genius line: ‘You don’t
need eyes to see; you need vision.’ To
get pumped, I’ll put on Queen and good
electronic music helps me concentrate.
‘We have big plans for Pixellot’
I definitely have room in me for another
startup – but with Pixellot, I’m not at the
end of the road just yet. I’m still climbing
the hill. Our aim is to be able to capture
every sporting event, so if you score an
amazing goal you’ll be able to share it with
your friends.
‘Since I was old enough to think, seeing
how things work has been my passion’
I was one of those kids who broke
everything apart, put it back together and
made it work. I needed to understand the
world around me. Since I was old enough
to think, seeing how things work has been
my passion – it’s my big adventure. And I
don’t think that will ever change.
Pixellot is Gal Oz’s second
startup with business partner
Dr. Miky Tamir.
They started Pixellot partly
because Gal wanted to watch
his son’s basketball matches.
Pixellot’s headquarters are in
Israel, and it also has offices in
the US, Spain and Japan.
Using Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud and S3
Pixellot is able to broadcast
several thousand hours of
sports footage a week.
www.pixellot.tv
At a glance
Spotify account & internet connection required
CONCENTRATE
Go
Moby
CHILL-OUT
Reverence
Faithless
Don’t Stop
Me Now
Queen
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FOUNDER STORIES
PLAYLIST
Founder Stories

7. STARTUPSTORIESNotesfromFounders:FollowtheDisruptors
KEN VILLUM
KLAUSENGAL OZ
LEA
LANGE
ANTHONYROSE
Melanie
Mohr
SEEDLEGALS
SeedLegals was co-founded
by Anthony Rose and Laurent
Laffy in 2017 and is already the
largest closer of funding rounds
in the UK. The platform slashed
the time needed to complete
a funding round from months
to days and cut costs by 80
percent. It was an ‘Innovator of
the Year’ finalist at the Amazon
Growing Business Awards 2017.
JUNIQE
Online art marketplace Juniqe
went live in 2014. The platform
offers works of art reproduced
onto a range of products,
including canvases, bedding and
clothing. Juniqe relies on AWS
Lambda for image rendering and
AWS Autoscaling to meet peaks
in demand. ‘Forbes’ magazine
named founder Lea Lange one
of the most successful under-
30-year-olds in Europe.
PIXELLOT
Gal Oz co-founded Pixellot
with Dr. Miky Tamir in 2013.
The startup makes high-quality
sports coverage more affordable
for schools, community
organizations and sports clubs.
It currently broadcasts 17,000
hours of footage a month from
25 countries using Amazon
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and
Amazon Simple Storage
Service (S3).
LUNAR WAY
Banking app Lunar Way has
been helping to change the
face of finance since its launch
in 2015. Founder Ken Villum
Klausen is not from a banking
background and no other cloud-
based Danish banking service
had previously been approved
by the regulator. AWS helped
the team put its case together.
YEAY
Aimed at Gen Z, YEAY enables
its teenage users to recommend
products to their peers through
photos and videos. Founded by
Melanie Mohr in 2016, YEAY
has become one of the fastest
growing startups in Berlin. YEAY
is a member of the AWS Activate
program and benefited from free
credits, training and support.
follow the DISRUPTORS