As bombs fell over Israel, a fintech founder kept business moving

On February 28, following the start of the US-Israel war with Iran, Finnovest founder and CEO Tal Brockmann found himself navigating a serious stress test for himself and his company.

When sirens started sounding over Tel Aviv, Brockmann had a strict operational hierarchy: secure the water, secure the team, and let the cloud handle the rest.

Finnovest is a wealth tech company whose platform serves banks and brokerage firms with approximately $19 billion in assets under advisory. Its system allows financial advisors to send personalized investment recommendations to thousands of clients simultaneously.

Brockmann spoke with Founder Brew via Zoom on day 5 of the war to talk about the steps a founder takes when world events derail your plans.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In wartime, there are more important things than keeping the business running. The first thing I did was not check the platform. I’m a husband and a father before I’m a CEO, especially in these cases. We made sure the family was safe. Food, water, equipment, lights, a radio…After an hour or two, once we knew we were okay, I opened WhatsApp and sent a message to the whole team. No work. Just, “Is everyone safe? Does anyone need anything? If there is something we can do to help, tell us.”

One of our team members was stuck in Tel Aviv. She had been visiting friends for the holiday— there were big parties. It was a long weekend, and when the sirens started, she couldn’t drive home. It’s an hour, hour and a half. She just couldn’t go. So we stayed in contact until she could get back safely. That’s the kind of thing that, normally, a CEO isn’t thinking about. But in the end, it's my responsibility. It’s friendship. It’s people you care about. I told everyone to work from home before the official government guidance even came: “Take your time. Do whatever you need. We’ll speak again. That’s it.”

What the first days looked like from inside a shelter is something most founders in most places will never have to reckon with, and yet the adjustment, when it came, seems almost matter-of-fact. The first day, we were in the shelter most of the time. Second day, a bit less. By the time we spoke—day 4 or 5—it was two, three alarms a day. Everything is relative.

A missile landed about one kilometer from the home of one of my employees. Not far from our own office either. You check in. You make sure it’s okay. And then, if it is, you continue.

The kids were home. No school. Working with three kids at home is harder than the usual remote day. But we are, unfortunately, used to this. This is not the first time.

The platform never went down. Decisions made long before the crisis were the reason why. The platform kept running. Everything is cloud-based—nothing is on-prem, nothing is in the office. We had a new version go up during this period…The banks we work with flagged us as critical infrastructure, which means the platform had to stay live regardless. It did.

For those using the platform, the crisis was in one sense just another high-stakes day that required the same thing as any other day: getting the right information to the right people fast. Foreign investors step back when something like this happens. That’s true. Local investors keep working. And it slows things down, but it does not stop them. If you have a strong company with a real value proposition, this will not be the thing that stops you from raising.

There’s one operational lesson he would bring from this experience and tell other founders building in a volatile environment. Be cloud-based. Three Amazon data centers were reportedly hit in the region during this period. I wrote a post about this: if you’re in the cloud and your data center goes down, you recover fast. You run through a different server. If you’re on-prem and your location gets hit, the recovery is slow, incomplete, sometimes it doesn’t work. There is no argument for on-prem anymore after this.”

No one knows how long this war will last. How does a business leader plan for the unknown? Uncertainty is the day-to-day life of a founder. It doesn’t matter where your company is. And if you founded your company in Israel, this is twice the uncertainty, at least. We have two big projects running right now. They kept going. Nothing changed. If something really bad happens, then it happened, and we deal with it. And if it won’t happen—then let’s keep going.

If you build something solid, it’s solid. If you need very specific conditions for your company to survive—the right market, the right timing, no disruption—you will get wiped out at the first opportunity. You see the same thing with AI right now. A lot of companies had great products, and then Google shipped the same thing. If it’s not solid, it doesn’t matter what the external force is. It ends.