#092 Spines | Focus on the Business, and Investors Will Chase You

Show Notes

The publishing industry is what most would consider old and outdated, not exactly an ideal setting for an up-and-coming tech startup. But don’t tell that to Spines founder Yehuda Niv. Already established in the publishing world, Yehuda is using AI to disrupt and revolutionize the publishing industry the same way AI has done in countless other industries. Spines is off to a fast start early in its history with Yehuda hoping to one day (soon) make it the biggest publishing company on the planet. Naturally, that gave Yehuda a lot to talk about on his recent appearance on the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast with Roland Siebelink.

• What makes Spines the ideal alternative to traditional publishing?

• How does Yehuda compare bootstrapping his first startup to working with VCs on Spines?

• The key to getting investors interested in your startup.

• Why it’s not the job of the CEO to solve the problems of team members?

• How does Yehuda prevent his employees from interrupting him with questions so that he can focus on growing the company?

Transcript

Yehuda Niv: I don't believe in building a product which is pure theory and you have zero users. Have the minimal value as possible and start selling. Start selling. Meet the market, see what the users say about the product!

Intro/Outro: Welcome to the Midstage Startup Momentum podcast. Each week, we interview up-and-coming founders of some of the fastest-growing mid-stage startups across the world. Your host is Roland Siebelink, who will share some of his own experience helping startups scale from 10 to 1000 people in a few years. Here is Roland.

Roland Siebelink: Hello and welcome to the MidStage Startup Momentum podcast. My name is Roland Siebelink and I am talking today with one of the most viral founders going in the new year 2025. Here is Yehuda Niv. He's the founder and CEO of Spines. Hello, Yehuda, thank you for joining.

Yehuda Niv: Thank you. Thank you for the introduction.

Roland Siebelink: Of course. I always like to have the ones that are having the most traction on the podcast first. 

Yehuda, let's talk about Spines. What do you guys do and what difference are you making in the world?

Yehuda Niv: What Spines is all about is we help authors who finished writing their manuscripts - they spent over a year writing their book, and now they’ve just figured out that traditional publishers probably wouldn't publish their work, and now they need to invest tens of thousands of dollars in getting their book published. 

What we do - we are not a publishing house. We are not a self-publishing service. We are a publishing platform. That's a new concept. Every author can upload his manuscript. Our platform suggests proofreading, formatting, cover design. Everything is AI-based. We'll list the books across 100 distribution channels worldwide. We manage the royalties. We manage the marketing - our platform takes care of everything for the author.

Yehuda Niv: And instead of the publishing process taking from six to 18 months, with our platform, it takes only two to three weeks. Instead of the process costing between $10,000 to $50,000, with our platforms, it costs somewhere between $1,200 to $500, depending on how much of our service the author would like the AI to do for him. And we've been growing very fast. We have a very strong product market fit. We are just enjoying helping authors realize their publishing dreams. We already published 2,500 authors to date and we are increasing month by month

Roland Siebelink: Wow. Okay. Let's talk about those authors, 2,500 you said. Are they all over the world? Are they all kinds of books? What are you publishing typically?

Yehuda Niv: We are focused on American authors at the moment, 98% of our users come from the States. But we are not specific-category oriented. We are general regarding the categories. We have so many different kinds of categories of books that we publish - fiction, nonfiction, poetry, self-help, you name it, we got it.

Roland Siebelink: Excellent. That's very good. How do you get your authors to hear about Spines? How do you find them?

Yehuda Niv: We are still building the brand of Spines. It will take a while. Now we focus on the highest intent, which is those who look on Google how to publish a book. Probably they will find Spines, they will do a little bit of research, they will realize that all the alternatives are terrible, and now you just have this one option, which is publishing a book with Spines.

Roland Siebelink: Excellent. Yehuda, the way you talk about that high intent and the go-to-market and comparable offering shows you're an experienced founder. They always say first-time founders focus on the product, second-time founders focus on the distribution. Tell us a little bit about your history. How did you land here and how did you come to found Spines?

Yehuda Niv: Amazing question because about 12 years ago throughout my Master’s degree in electronic engineering - I was an engineer - I published a book. It was a fiction book. And I realized that the publishing process is completely broken. That was in 2013. And I decided to boost up my own publishing company. I wasn't that clever about the name. I named it Niv Publishing after my last name. It started in my dorm room. But it grew to become the largest publishing house in Israel. More than 400 team members. More than 1,200 titles published annually. 

Just for reference, our next competition in Israel can publish about 300 titles a year, so we are four times larger than them. And about five years ago, I finished structuring the management team in Niv Publishing. Finally, I got my life back. I could rest a little bit, travel the world. and I started to do some M&As. I acquired competitors’ publishing houses, integrated them into what has become Niv Group. And I started to do potential angel investing in startup companies. And I realized what those tech founders are working on. That was two years prior to Chat GPT. And I realized AI will disrupt everything. 

And I have two different choices. Either I will become irrelevant by it or I'll be the one bringing this opportunity into the world. I decided to be the one who will lead this change. And that's how Spines was born. I started with my own capital. Soon I realized my own capital would not be enough. First thing, I raised from Angel Investors; it was $1.3 million pre-seed round. On December 23, we finalized the seed round with Olive led by Michael Eisenberg. It was $6.5 million seed round. And recently, we raised our Series A led by Oren Zeev - $60 million Series A. 

Building a bootstrap company and then building a VC-backed company, which are two different approaches, I realized that my journey with Niv Publishing could have been so much easier if I had access to capital back in the day. It’s a very different approach. 

Roland Siebelink: Of course, you haven't experienced the full story of working with VCs yet, but we'll see how that goes.

Yehuda Niv: I'm so lucky that my investors are Oren Zev and Michael Eisenberg. 

It's very funny how things eventually happen because when I first met Michael I already had a term sheet from a different VC. And then I realized that it would be a much better opportunity to raise from him than the VC I currently have. Luckily, he gave me a term sheet very fast and I ended up raising from Olive and not from another VC I already had a term sheet from. And then we grew about 1,000% in 2024 - so fast on revenues. 

I didn't even plan on having the Series A. I got so many inbounds from top-tier VCs. At first, Michael told me, “Tell everyone that you are not raising,” so that's what I did.

Roland Siebelink: Play coy, right? That's always the best advice.

Yehuda Niv: It only made them more interested in what we're doing. I ended up meeting with about 12 VCs eventually. We minimized that to the four most relevant ones. And then I met with Oren to get his advice because about two years ago I met him in a conference in New York. He gave me his email and gave me his phone number, and I was getting advice from him. When I realized he's in Israel, I asked him to meet for a coffee and I told him about the four VCs I'm communicating with for the Series A and the growth of the company. And once he realized the pace that we are growing, he told me something very very nice. He told me: “Two years ago, you told me what you are planning on creating. Two years after, we actually did it.”

He offered to lead this round. Of course, I was very very happy, and we ended up signing the term sheet a few days after. It’s funny that when I worked on the seed round, it was very, very, very hard to get the first VC to give me the term sheet. But once I had one, I had more. 

And the same thing with the Series A. I didn't even plan on having this series. What I realized regarding fundraising is if you need to fundraise, you will have a very, very hard time fundraising. And when you don’t need to fundraise, it will be much easier because investors for some reason want to invest in those who are not actually doing that.

Roland Siebelink: It's a little bit like with dating in that the partners who are not actively marketing themselves seem a lot more attractive to us.

Yehuda Niv: It's counterintuitive. After the announcement with Oren, a lot of other VCs reached out to me and I'm not raising. But I'm building relationships for future stages. And it's very, very nice to be on the side of the startups of those that are actually getting the interest of the VCs. I remember when I just started three years ago, they didn't want to meet me at all because they told them it was a publishing startup.

If you are not a cybersecurity company or a pure SaaS B2B company. Now people are realizing the opportunity with AI that you can actually go to old industries like publishing and reinvent the process and create a lot of value and actually create a disruption that will help more people realize their dream or save time and money and create more value. I think now it is understood the opportunities that AI has unlocked are not in the very well-determined verticals of startups, but in very new markets where there are not so many startups trying to solve problems, and publishing is one of them.

Roland Siebelink: When you would advise founders that are a few years behind you, younger, less experienced, how would you tell them to focus their time versus just chasing investors as opposed to just building the company and building traction?

Yehuda Niv: Focus on the business. It’s like dating. If you're chasing women, the women run away. But once you stop chasing, now they chase you. The same thing applies with investors. As you focus on them, they tend to not be interested. Focus on the business. Focus on building an amazing product, an amazing team. Work on your product market fit, and create traction.

I don't believe in building a product which is pure theory and you have zero users. Have the minimal value as possible and start selling. Start selling. Meet the market, see what the users say about the product, optimize it, optimize the numbers, optimize the marketing, optimize the funnel.

Prove to yourself first that you have a unit economics because I think one of the highest illnesses of startup companies is they focus on growth, they focus on investors, they don't focus on unit economics. That's the important thing. Make sure you are making a profit from each transaction. Maybe the company loses money because you have a lot of people on the payroll and you have to grow fast. Per transaction, was the transaction profitable? That's one of the important questions because now it's only a question of scale. Can you scale it? 

Focus on the unit economics. Once you prove you have even a little traction, but with working unit economics and you have a product-market fit, now fundraising becomes inevitable. Focus on the business, focus on the product-market fit, focus on the team, focus on unit economics, and everything else will fall in place. This is the best tip I can give founders who trying to create their startup.

Roland Siebelink: Thank you for being so clear. The other point you mentioned is even in your previous company, it took you five years to structure your management team and then you said, “And I finally got my life back.” Can we talk a little bit more about that? That is one of the struggles that - especially founders in growing companies face - how do you move from being in control of everything to actually having a team that you trust and that actually delivers things for you?

Yehuda Niv: I believe you as a human being can manage directly somewhere between five to eight people. You can’t manage more than that. If you have 20 people directly under you, that means those people are not being managed. You need to structure the org chart very, very smart. And you need to make sure that you give your team enough space to become leaders. 

You as a founder, you grow leaders. You need to find leaders. You need to give them space. You need to give them the opportunity to grow. And they will make mistakes. And you will be the one who is accountable for those mistakes. But that's the only way you could one day have a management team that actually allows you to focus on the vision, on the growth of the company while they take care of the day-to-day of the company. 

What I suggest is for you to have four to five people that are directly under you. And each one of them has their own team. And everyone reports to their manager. And eventually, no one manages more than five to eight people. And this is the best way to structure a company.

Don't solve their problems. They will come to you with problems because you are the CEO of the company. All of the problems come to you; you do not need to solve those problems. You need to allow them to come up with solutions. How to choose which solution is better. And eventually, you want them to make the decisions by themselves - just to update you: what happened, what they did, and you tell them that was good, that wasn't good. And eventually, you will have a team that works well together, giving you the space to think about how to take the company to the next stage and not focus on today. If you're managing the day-to-day, it's very, very hard to grow the company. 

Roland Siebelink: How do you pick the right talent to work with you on a team like that? And how quickly can you figure out who the right talent is?

Yehuda Niv: What I do is I want to see how they think. I always give them challenges that will let me understand, “can I trust their thinking?” And it's a process. I believe in building a team, the best way to do that is to fire fast.

Between two to three weeks, you already know if the person is good for a specific position or not. If you see that it's okay, you still need to give him tasks to see how he thinks.

You do not need to hire people who think like you. Because if everyone thinks the same it's counterintuitive. You need to find those who think differently, who can give you different approaches, and who can solve problems differently than you. You need a diversity of ideas. You need a diversity of approaches. 

You need to find people who think differently than you. And don't be afraid of different opinions. Don't be afraid of different approaches. That's the best way to solve problems because you only know what you know. You don't know what you don't know and you need your people to expand the abilities of the management.

Roland Siebelink: Exactly. And all teach each other. How do you then avoid - especially if you have optimized for people thinking all differently, which is great, I agree -  then how do you avoid that they start thinking in silos and only optimize for their own area? And how do you bring it all back together into one set of goals for the company?

Yehuda Niv: The CEO’s goal, his job is to think for everyone. That's a leadership challenge. You need to make sure everyone is happy. You need to make sure - everyone has their own goals in life; you make sure that everyone’s goals are synced together to one specific goal.

Roland Siebelink: Can you give an example - without divulging anything confidential, of course - whether from Niv Publishing or from Spines where you were really working hard to bring those accountabilities together and lead them all up to one goal rather than all the siloed goals?

Yehuda Niv: I'll give you the most common example in companies. You have the marketing team, you have the sales team. The marketing team tells themselves that they are doing an amazing job and the sales reps just don't know how to close deals. But the sales rep thinks we are doing an amazing job but the leads are not good enough.

Roland Siebelink: Exactly. It's the handovers that are always the problem.

Yehuda Niv: The solution is with very, very deep collaboration between both departments. To create that, you need to create accountability between both. I had this challenge twice. It happened to me in Niv Publishing and it happened to me in Spines. And both times I solved it the same way.

What I did is, marketing team, every day, you have to hear sales calls. You need to hear the traffic that you are bringing, Let's see what if the calls, the people that they are speaking with, that's the traffic that you want for the company.

The way to create such a solution is to give them a goal which is a together goal. We are in this together. Not you're doing a better job than him or vice versa. We all have the same goal. And let's see what has to be done for us to meet our goals. Once you do that, suddenly there is magic. Everyone works together and suddenly everything is orchestrated and you meet your goal.

Roland Siebelink: Is this something that you would just figure out in your head and you go to them and you say, “These are your goals. This is how I want you to work together.” Or is this more like a big meeting or a workshop setting where you actually hash this out together as a team? What is your experience there?

Yehuda Niv: We have a weekly meeting in which we give each other updates, we brainstorm, and we think about what we need to do next. This is a strategic and tactical call. And every C level has a weekly with its own team. Also, each manager has a weekly one-on-one with everyone. Every week, I meet the whole team and I meet every C-level separately. 

I think the worst thing that can happen is if people want to update you or want to ask you something, they do not have the time slot to do, so they keep interrupting you. But if you have on the calendar - if it's something that cannot wait, come and interrupt - but can it wait until the weekly? Or can it wait until the daily? I have a window every day which I'm available for everyone and everyone can ask me questions. 

What happened is that suddenly nothing is urgent. Everything can wait a few hours or a few days and you have time to think. As a founder, as a CEO, the most challenging thing is to find time to think because everyone wants your attention and you have to protect yourself from giving all your energy away because you have to build a company. That's an intensive task. You need time to think. You need time for yourself.

Roland Siebelink: Excellent, very good. It's 2025 now, Yehuda. What will Spines look like in 2035?

Yehuda Niv: I believe by then Spines will be the leading publishing platform on the planet. By then we will already be the leading publishing platform on Mars as well. In this year, in 2025, I'm planning on publishing somewhere between 6,000 to 8,000 new titles. That's my goal. And that's 4x the titles I published last year. I'm planning on keeping that growth. so by 2035, Spines will be able to publish over a million titles a year. That's my goal.

Publishing is a numbers game. As you publish more titles, you discover more best-selling authors. I believe the same thing will happen with Spines because as we publish the highest amount of authors on the planet, we will discover more successful authors than anyone else.

Roland Siebelink: Anything else, Yehuda, that you want to end this podcast with? This has been an amazing interview.

Yehuda Niv: Thank you very much, I had a lot of fun.

Roland Siebelink: Me too. Thank you for joining and really appreciate you being here. I'm looking forward to Spines becoming the biggest publishing platform in the world, hopefully much faster than 10 years from now.

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