My story
Mexico City to Tel Aviv, with a lot of detours.
Not a straight line. Sales, hospitality, marketing, product, code, and back again — usually because a real problem needed solving. Tap any chapter for the fuller story.
[ADD BIRTH YEAR]Born in Mexico City, raised in Israel
The family moved back to Israel when he was about six months old.
Yanir was born in Mexico City while his parents were living there, and the family returned to Israel when he was approximately six months old. He grew up in Israel, speaking Hebrew, English, and Brazilian Portuguese — an early hint of the international thread that runs through everything he built later, from a Latin American customer base to teams spread across countries.
Age ~6Piano, by accident
He wanted to learn violin. The music school suggested piano instead.
Piano became a lifelong interest almost by chance. Yanir plays primarily by ear and can often reproduce a song on piano or guitar after hearing it once — an ability he later folded into community singing events and, decades later, into an app called Manashir.
After serviceA decision-making rule that stuck
"Make the best decision with the information you have, set a deadline, and move."
After completing military service in Israel, Yanir has spoken about learning to avoid endless deliberation. That principle later shaped how he built products, launched experiments, and made hard calls as a founder — including a 24-hour MVP a decade later.
Early careerA bartending course and a robot
He built a robot that could pour drinks along a bar.
Before technology entrepreneurship, Yanir worked in face-to-face sales and hospitality, including a stint as an early operator behind a pub called Pabushka [ADD YEARS, ADD LOCATION]. The bar-pouring robot is an early, honest example of his pattern: combine a physical experience with technology, and build rather than just talk about it.
2009Employee #1 at Insightera
Marketing technology, before "MarTech" was a category.
Yanir joined Insightera, an Israeli marketing technology startup, as its first employee. He worked across product, customer success, marketing automation, personalization, and integrations — developing real technical skill through practical need rather than formal training.
2010–2013Sapir College, and three years near Gaza
B.A. in Technological Marketing, Magna Cum Laude — while living in Kfar Aza.
Yanir studied Technological Marketing at Sapir College, graduating Magna Cum Laude [VERIFY EXACT DEGREE TITLE]. During this period he lived for about three years in Kfar Aza, near the Gaza border — a place that would become personally significant years later.
2013Insightera acquired by Marketo
He ended up pitching his own startup to Marketo's CEO.
Insightera was acquired by Marketo in 2013, giving Yanir first-hand experience with the full arc from early-stage startup to acquisition and integration into a much larger organization.
2013–2016Marketo, and eventually a developer role at Aptrinsic
Enterprise scale, then back to writing code.
At Marketo, Yanir worked on real-time personalization, product, and enterprise customer implementation [VERIFY EXACT TITLES]. He later worked as a full-stack developer at Aptrinsic (acquired by Gainsight) [ADD EXACT DATES] — a reminder that he was never only managing, he was also building.
2016Founded Calisar Solutions — and ~15 small SaaS products
Lean, no-frills tools. Some had no interface at all.
After Marketo, Yanir founded Calisar Solutions, building focused tools for marketing and CRM teams — analytics, attribution, automation. By around 2020 he was operating roughly 15 small SaaS products, several open-sourced, built on a simple philosophy: solve one real problem, charge for the value, keep it lean. He also founded The CMO Confessions, a Tel Aviv community for senior marketers that grew to roughly 2,000 members.
2017–2019MBA at Reichman University (IDC Herzliya)
Big data, predictive AI, and a marketing lens on strategy.
Yanir pursued an MBA focused on big data and predictive AI with a marketing emphasis [VERIFY EXACT PROGRAM NAME], deepening the analytical and strategic side of work he was already doing in the field. Years later he returned to Reichman as a guest lecturer and startup judge.
2019A Friday night, and an MVP in 24 hours
Whatslly was born from watching salespeople lose customer context in WhatsApp.
Salespeople were closing deals over WhatsApp, but none of it reached the CRM. Yanir built the first version — Whatslly — in about 24 hours and had a paying customer within a week. No perfect conditions, no long plan. Just a real problem and a fast build.
2019–2021A one-man show, to $1M ARR
Product, sales, support, marketing, code — all Yanir, with a two-person team getting the company to $1M ARR.
Yanir built and ran Whatslly essentially solo in the early years — product, development, sales, and customer success all at once. By the time the team had grown to just two people, the company had reached $1M in annual recurring revenue, largely built on early traction in Latin America.
2021$11M seed round
Led by Zeev Ventures, with Base Partners and others.
The raise let the company move from a founder doing almost everything to a real organization — hiring, delegating, and building the structure needed to serve enterprise customers, including several of Brazil's largest banks.
2021–2024Whatslly becomes Tuvis
From a WhatsApp-CRM bridge to an enterprise compliance and security platform.
The renamed company grew into an international B2B SaaS platform for regulated enterprises — messaging, compliance, and CRM integration at a scale far beyond the original idea. Read the full story below.
2024Stepping down as CEO
After five years building it, a deliberate change of role.
After roughly five years as CEO, Yanir stepped down, remaining connected to Tuvis as a founder and shareholder. It was not framed as a failure or a perfectly clean handoff — just a necessary transition, and the start of a new chapter.
2024–nowAdvising, lecturing, and building again
New products in sport, music, AI, and diving — plus marathons in between.
Since then: advising founders, guest lecturing on entrepreneurship at Reichman University, and building new things — Races.co.il, Manashir, 4divers, and exploring EyeronAI — while training for marathons and triathlons.