Our guest on today’s podcast is Adar Hay, co-founder and CEO of Jiga, a company providing a web platform for manufacturing buyers and suppliers to communicate and establish new relationships. It’s ironic how in today’s world, in which we have so many channels to communicate and network, it’s still complicated to do those things well. Jiga’s mission is to simplify those processes.

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An Online Platform to Centralize Sourcing

Jiga provides a subscription based online platform for buyers and suppliers to work with each other. When multiple manufacturing companies work together on a project using Jiga, RFQs, drawings, files, and documents are all located in a central, automated, standardized platform. This eliminates the need for using confusing email chains to send project components piecemeal when coordinating jobs.

A Matchmaker for Buyers and Suppliers

Jiga provides an international network of vetted manufacturing suppliers for companies looking to source work. It has purposefully kept its supplier network relatively small and features automated filters so buyers can locate quality candidates for partnerships quickly. Sourced work on the platform ranges from one-off prototypes to runs of hundreds of thousands of pieces.

Mediation Service  

Jiga offers a service to be an intermediary for transactions between buyers and sellers, generally charging parties 4-6%. It provides assistance in negotiation, a support team to update buyers on job progress, oversight for quality control, and buyer protection.

Adar’s Advice for Buyers and Suppliers to Create Solid Partnerships

Adar says one of the biggest mistakes suppliers make when quoting jobs is taking too long to communicate with their prospective customers. He says even if suppliers are inundated with RFQs and don’t have time to quote a job right away, they should still give feedback to their potential buyers in the meantime, showing they value them as a potential customers.

Adar also advises suppliers to not be too quick to discount new buyers based on requests for small jobs. Sometimes small jobs turn into larger ones down the road. Buyers may be trying to evaluate suppliers with a small project before they jump into something requiring more commitment.

Entrepreneurship in Israel

Adar is 30 years old. Before co-founding Jiga he ran his own online B2B marketing company. 

He says Israel is a great place for entrepreneurship, which is evident by the small country’s huge number of startups and large venture capital investment. 

I asked him why the country produces so many interesting startup companies. He said Israel is a culture that encourages risk. He even went as far as saying that the country celebrates entrepreneurs who fail because it means they tried to do something difficult or something that has never been done before. 

I asked him if he thought Israeli culture’s comfort with risk and failure may stem from the country’s mandatory military service. I suggested that perhaps in the military people gain perspective that the pain caused by a failure in a business venture is insignificant in the full scheme of life. He said it was possible there was something this theory, but he had not analyzed it extensively.

Adar says what fuels his entrepreneurial pursuits is the view that when people look back on their lives they seldom regret what they tried, even if they failed. They are much more likely to regret what they decided not to try.

Question: What is a business venture you would like to try?

Adar is the host of the podcast, Design to Product.