Mother, Mentor, Founder — Is there anything Marcelle Kaspi can’t do?
Medium height, her blonde haired curls and vivacious smile are the first things you notice about Marcelle Kaspi. Her freckles splatter across the bridge of her nose like a Pollock, and when she opens her mouth and begins to talk — you’re captivated. Besides being a mother, and a mentor at Siftech, Toolbox and HUStart, Marcelle is also the CEO and Founder of ProdUX Studio, a UX design studio founded in Jerusalem in 2013 with an aim towards designing B2B products. Marcelle is also the community leader for CreativeMornings, a monthly breakfast lecture series for the buzzing creative community here in Jerusalem.
Kids, Don’t Throw Peanuts At Tony
Let’s all just acknowledge the elephant in the room for a moment. It’s sitting right there in the corner, trying to blend in and hide by wrapping its large dumbo sized ears over it’s eyes. If it can’t see you, you’re not there. But we see him. He’s there, and he yells (in elephant language), “ What is this nice girl from Canada doing halfway across the world in Jerusalem?”
From Blizzards To Beaches
Marcelle’s Israel story begins later in life when she makes Aliyah at the age of 25. After spending seven years working for one of Canada’s biggest financial institutions, she decided she needed a break and spent her time in Tel Aviv. “I was living the Tel Aviv life. I would work four hours a day at a startup doing customer service, and then go out to the beach,” Marcelle says reminiscently. But she quickly became bored with the lifestyle, “One day I said, I need to start using my brain again.”
Psychics. Who knew?
That’s when Marcelle began working for startup Kasamba in Tel Aviv doing business development, “That was my first job in high-tech.” Back in 2006, Kasamba was a platform where users could easily find live expert advice on any topic. They had over 300 categories, but the most popular one by-far was the psychic category. “You have no idea how much people spent to talk to psychics online. No idea.” Then in 2008, LivePerson acquired Kasamba for $40 Million, and within 8 months closed down the entire marketing department along with Marcelle. They offered to move her to a new position in New York, but she turned down the offer, “I wanted to continue living in Israel. New York was too similar to the life I was moving away from in Toronto.”
From Palm Readings To Milk Cartons
Marcelle then made the switch from psychics to food and began working in Lod for startup mySupermarket as a marketing manager. mySupermarket is an online grocery comparison shopping platform who, at the time, didn’t have a proper product team. So when Marcelle had an idea for a marketing concept, she ended up doing a lot of the product work herself. “I had to spec it, wireframe it, and find suppliers to do the whole process.” That’s when Marcelle began to fall in love with product management. Marcelle’s switch from marketing to product led her to learn more about User Experience Design, which is an integral part of product work. She had found her calling.
Wait, But What The Hell Is UX Design?
User experience design (UX, UXD, UED or XD) is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the user and the product.
But since creatives tend to get tedious about the wording of defining their medium (art is not just a painting, it’s a feeling), read this awesome article where designers actually battle it out. Essentially what User Experience is though, is the totality of the experience of a user with a product from start to finish. Companies pour hundreds and thousands of dollars into researching their user’s interaction with their product, always seeking out ways to enhance their consumer’s relationship & associations. But forget that pile of money, enhancing the UX of your product could be done through something as simple as running a few iterations of usability testing on friends and family.
Hello, My Name Is Jerusalem
Around this time Marcelle met her husband, Yaniv Kaspi, a 3rd generation Jerusalemite who was then, a middle tier team leader at mySupermarket. “To me Israel was important, but I wasn’t attached to any particular city. Yaniv was very attached to Jerusalem, the way I am attached to the country.” Deciding she wanted to focus solely on product, she left mySupermarket in 2010. The couple made their first move together to Jerusalem, and after a short bit at Moshav Shoresh, they finally settled into the German Colony where Marcelle’s Jerusalem story really begins.
“There was very little work in Jerusalem back then, it was around 2010… You come to a place like Jerusalem 6 years ago, there was so little, and there isn’t the same opportunity that there is now.” Marcelle began working as product manager for AnyClip, a Jerusalem founded startup which offers a search engine that enables users to find, view, and share clips from films. Last year, AnyClip raised $21 Million in their funding round, and is among Israel’s 15 top-funded startups. “I loved doing product work. I loved waking up in the morning in the Moshava, and walking to work at the JVP media quarter.” There, she had the opportunity to explore UX design more, develop her skills, and begin designing great products.
It’s Not You, It’s Me
After giving birth to her son, Marcelle decided she needed a job with more flexibility. “High tech is often unfriendly to families with small kids, as the hours suit a young student; coming in late is the norm, but leaving early is a faux pas. I wanted to run my own show.” Marcelle founded ProdUX Studio in 2013, and 3 years later, manages a team of 4 with a majority of their clients Jerusalem-based companies. What makes ProdUX Studio unique is Marcelle’s experience, which doesn’t come from a traditional design background. This allows the design process to take on a new form, “That’s what was attracting my clients. We’re very methodical, analytical and the products we design focus on function.” Designing products geared toward B2B based business models is also a different process, as Marcelle explains, “The user experience of someone using a product to work is very different from that of someone using a product during leisure time.”
Hello, My Name Is Jerusalem 2.0
The Jerusalem Marcelle first encountered upon arriving to the city, is much different than what it has become today with the city’s explosive growth in tech, arts, and culture in its recent years. “It’s amazing seeing what has happened to the First Train Station over the years, and knowing that today there’s so many more opportunities than what I had then.” And Marcelle is right, just in the past 3 years, Jerusalem has seen an explosion in startups moving to the city; from 250 in 2003, to over 550 in 2015. “It’s kind of like being somewhere, where there is a plot of land and then all of a sudden there’s a whole city,” Says Marcelle. “There was so little here, and now there’s so much, and being able to be a part of it is amazing on so many levels.” And Marcelle isn’t the only one taking notice of the holy cities rapid growth, so are investors. In 2012 the amount of investments made in Jerusalem was a mere $55 Million USD, compared today, where the number has reached over $250 Million USD. “Now you appreciate Jerusalem so much more, because you know that there were a lot of people who worked really hard for this to exist and for these opportunities to be here for the next generation.”
Photo Credits
For more #UnderTheRadar stories profiling influencers and companies in the Jerusalem startup scene, follow the MadeInJerusalem Medium.
