Michael Barg, CEO of Passparto, On The Importance Of Leveraging AI For Good

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

I was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel. After I completed my mandatory service in the army, I studied Accounting and Law at a university in Israel and Chinese at a college in Beijing, China. Before launching a startup, I owned and managed a restaurant.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

Passparto automates marketing campaigns by using AI to tailor designs to businesses and organizations. Our clients should invest more time into improving their product or service, while we do the marketing for them.

What is the origin story?

I had to hire graphic designers and social media managers to market the product/service in all my projects. When the cost became too high, I wondered why there wasn’t an app that could create full social media campaigns and post them for me. After that initial spark, I couldn’t stop thinking about my idea, and Passparto was born.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

I love the intimacy and diversity between our team members. Since we are a small team, business and personal life overlap and I can proudly say that we are all friends, if not family. Despite only having a handful of employees, we work with people from around the world and all age groups. This diversity provides the different perspectives and skills to succeed. We are one of the first companies to solve the problem because we think two steps ahead.

Many established small-to-middle-sized companies can hire expensive social media managers because they see the advantages of a social media presence. We combine the job of the graphic designer and social media manager and offer our service at a significantly lower price. This product can also target early and smaller businesses, which can profit more from social media presence than established companies.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

If I wouldn’t contribute to someone else’s startup and were skilled enough, I would be a doctor. Otherwise, I would be a local movie star.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

At the moment, I measure success by progress. Progress can be coming up with a new idea, implementing a new feature, improving an old feature, or having more people test our app. As long as we move forward, I see a bright future for our company.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

We recently launched our Alpha Version and published it on our website. Our platform generates custom designs that users can already post on their social media. Everyone can test it for free, and any feedback is encouraged and appreciated.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

I am most excited about the future of AI and machine learning, especially in Passparto’s software. Both technologies can solve minor issues (such as social media campaigns) and major issues (such as complicated surgical practices). However, “with great power comes great responsibility.”

In a world where we find ways to militarize technologies, I am worried about the future of international conflict and human rights. Since I am working with both technologies, I hope that my contributions do more good than evil.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

I love reading about different startups from around the world and how similar (or different) our ideas are. I would love to get Passparto to a larger audience and connect with other tech geeks.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Listen to your gut, and don’t listen to people who don’t believe in dreams.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

I learned that celebrating successes is just as important as learning from failure. Throughout my entire life, especially in the first year of Passparto, I had the mindset to work on my weaknesses and learn from my failures. This is a great way of thinking, but I forgot to take a step back from my work and cherish my achievements.

In a world where we praise “hustling” and 80-hour workweeks more than mental health, I am happy to have learned this skill the easy way. I also noticed increasing levels of productivity and creativity at work. I understand what strengths produced this success and can use them to my advantage in the future.