Slow and Steady Wins the Race

“There’s no such thing as quick victories. The slower the better.” This is the advice that Lee Joffa, Co-Founder and CEO of Pitch Career, an interactive video headhunting platform, gives to aspiring startupists. It’s not the first thing you’d expect to hear from a veteran of the startup world, in which speed and the race to market are usually the prevailing sentiments. And yet Joffa, currently working on his third successful business venture, must be onto something.

Originally from South Africa, Joffa spent some of his early years in California, then moved back to South Africa, where he started two businesses before moving to Tel Aviv four and a half years ago. His current project, Pitch Career, was born of a passion for headhunting that he discovered at an early age. He was 16 when his father suffered a stroke, and the experience of watching his father struggle to find work because his skills were no longer suitable for his job in sales made Joffa want to get into the world of recruitment. The Pitch Career platform is the world's first 3D career marketplace blending in video audio and linguistics data. Pitch Career reclassifies the way that companies hire and aligns soft skills and culture to work.

Joffa has spent the last few years in Tel Aviv in “stealth mode,” as he puts it, growing his team, developing his product, applying for patents, and building a financial roadmap and business plan. He is finally ready to start talking seriously to investors and raising some real funds. “This is the part where the journey starts to get fun,” says Joffa. Perhaps it’s this ‘emergence’ that led Joffa to the FacultyXL Internship at the Bengis Center.

For the past two months, Pitch Career has been working with two student interns, one Israeli and one Chinese, from the Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management. According to Joffa, the experience has been phenomenal. Having somebody who can speak Mandarin and understand the Chinese market has boosted the confidence of the entire team to think globally and realize that the business is well-suited for international markets. Meanwhile, having an Israeli intern has allowed him to convert macro data into a micro format and develop his partnerships with networks, government agencies, and companies like Wix and Anyvision.

For our part, we’re excited to follow Pitch Career’s journey and see what exciting milestones lie ahead!