Yuval Kaminka, Founder & CEO of Simply, on Why Running Out of Money Was a Gift, Opening the Company's Bank Account to Every Employee, and Using Music and Art to Heal

Yuval Kaminka, co-founder and CEO of Simply (formerly JoyTunes), on nearly running out of money, losing his co-founder Roey Izkovsky, and taking on Duolingo with an app that teaches piano, guitar, singing, and drawing. On this episode of Invested, Michael Eisenberg talks with Yuval about the moment Simply ran out of money and even its own investors believed it wouldn't survive. They get into why that near-death experience shaped the company, how it fired a third of its staff and shared the bank account with every employee, and how Simply grew to millions of users. They also talk about the last few years: Yuval's nephew Yannai, a search-and-rescue officer killed at Zikim on October 7th, and the sudden death of Roey, his co-founder and best friend, at 44. Simply responded by building Harmony, a therapeutic music room at Sheba Medical Center's rehabilitation hospital, and by bringing Simply Draw into the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Yuval Kaminka is an entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Simply. He holds an MSc in computational neurobiology from the Weizmann Institute of Science and is a veteran of an elite technology unit. He co-founded JoyTunes (now Simply) with Roey Izkovsky and his brother, the musician Yigal Kaminka. He has built his career around a powerful idea: creating things that matter and elevate people's lives. **KEY TOPICS** 00:00 - Intro 01:58 - What Simply Actually Does 05:38 - Out of Money and Written Off 09:25 - Two Principles Born From Crisis 10:35 - Firing a Third of the Company 13:05 - Sharing the Bank Account With Everyone 15:40 - Why Simply Chose to Stall Growth 18:40 - COVID Swapped the Weights for Feathers 22:17 - Free Apps in Times of Crisis 23:23 - From Cyber and Neuroscience to Music 26:08 - Why 90% of Kids Quit Instruments 27:30 - October 7th and the Iran War 31:20 - Remembering Yanai 38:18 - Building the Music Room at Sheba 45:08 - The Music Room That Brought Back Her Voice 47:20 - Simply Draw at the Tel Aviv Museum 49:40 - Losing Co-Founder Roey Izkovsky 55:42 - The Pod Structure Meets AI 59:02 - Building a Company With Family 63:01 - Velocity and Work That Matters 64:45 - Competing With Duolingo #Invested #Simply #IsraeliTech #Entrepreneurship **RESOURCES** Follow Yuval on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuvalkaminka/ Follow Yuval on X - https://x.com/yuvalkaminka Learn more about Simply - https://www.hellosimply.com/ Subscribe to Invested here - https://content.aleph.vc/invested Learn more about Aleph - https://www.aleph.vc/ Sign up for Aleph's monthly email newsletter - https://newsletter.aleph.vc/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@aleph-vc/ Follow Michael on Twitter - https://twitter.com/mikeeisenberg Follow Michael on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mieisenberg/ Follow Aleph on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/aleph-vc/ Follow Aleph on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/aleph.vc/ **CREDITS** Executive Producer: Erica Marom Producer: Sofi Levak, Dalit Merenfeld Video and Editing: Nadav Elovic Music and Creative Direction: Uri Ar Content and Editorial: Jackie Goldberg Design: Nimrod Sapir