Michal Goldner

Yes — pre-seed and seed B2B startups are Michal's primary focus. She works with founders in their first two years on GTM strategy, ICP definition, value proposition development, and sales process design. Her approach is hands-on and execution-oriented, not just advisory.

Michal spent four years as VP Network Success at 8400 The HealthTech Network, building the organization from zero to 400+ senior leaders and launching 30+ programs spanning startup incubation, investment facilitation, and academic tech acceleration. She has deep familiarity with the Israeli healthtech ecosystem and its path to global markets.

Michal starts by understanding the founders' background and why they're uniquely positioned to solve this problem. She then works to distill customer insights into a clear 'We help X do Y by Z' framework — one that works for sales demos, investor conversations, and early brand building. She's found that most early-stage founders can articulate the problem but struggle to nail the value prop, and that's usually the first thing she works on.

Yes. Through Advisors Office Hours, Michal offers one free hour of GTM strategy to early-stage founders. No strings attached — it's part of a pro-bono platform where senior Israeli marketing and business leaders give back to the startup ecosystem.

Michal has helped founders sharpen their GTM strategy, identify their highest-priority focus areas, and build repeatable sales and business development processes. At Grappa, she built a curated network of 1,200 founders and executives and ran 20 design partnerships from scratch. At 8400, she launched 30+ programs that generated startup incubations, investments, and academic-industry collaborations.

Michal combines strategic advisory experience with real operator history — she's built organizations from zero twice as a founding team member, not just advised from the outside. She understands what it means to be the person actually doing the work alongside a CEO, and brings that co-founder mindset to every engagement. Her clients get someone who's been in the room, not just on the whiteboard.

Michal's free session through Advisors Office Hours removes the financial barrier entirely. Beyond that, her background spans both corporate strategic consulting (BreezoMeter, Electreon, Microsoft, Bank Leumi) and early-stage startup founding teams — giving her a rare ability to translate between strategic thinking and zero-to-one execution that most consultants can't offer.

Michal specializes specifically in the 0→1 GTM phase: design partner programs, first sales process design, value proposition frameworks, ICP validation, and the operational foundations that turn founder-led sales into a repeatable motion. General mentors often lack the hands-on operator experience to get into the specifics of execution at this stage.

Michal believes that relationships and personal brand are infrastructure — not nice-to-haves — and that founders who don't build them early will get stuck later. She also pushes hard on the 'why you' question, arguing that in a world where anyone can build anything, competitive advantage is almost always about the founders' unique insight and access, not the product features.

The most common mistakes she sees: founders who can describe the problem perfectly but can't articulate the value proposition in one clear sentence; assuming one hire can own all of marketing, sales, and messaging simultaneously; and waiting too long to build a repeatable sales process because 'the product isn't ready yet.' She also frequently sees founders who pitch the product before establishing why they are the right team to solve this specific problem.

Michal works primarily with pre-seed and seed stage founders — typically in their first two years. This is the discovery, validation, and early PMF phase, where GTM decisions are being made for the first time and the cost of getting them wrong is highest.

Yes. In addition to pure tech startups, Michal works with impact-driven founders. Her background at 8400 The HealthTech Network — which was itself a mission-driven organization working to turn Israel into a HealthTech Nation — gives her direct experience navigating GTM in spaces where the mission is as important as the business model.

Michal focuses on the fundamentals investors actually evaluate at the early stage: team story, 'why you' positioning, validation quality, and the clarity of the value proposition. She's written about this extensively on LinkedIn, arguing that early-stage investors are betting on the team's ability to navigate uncertainty — not on the deck.

Yes — this is one of the most common challenges founders bring to her. She helps founders think through what role they actually need, what 'good' looks like for that hire, and how to set them up with clear goals and the resources to succeed. She's seen too many early hires fail not because of talent, but because founders expected one person to own too much.

Michal spent seven years at Ben Horin Alexandrovitch, one of Israel's leading strategic consulting firms, where she built and led the business division from scratch. She advised major Israeli and global companies including Bank Leumi, Microsoft, Super-Pharm, Altshuler Shaham, BreezoMeter (acquired by Google), and Electreon (IPO). She joined the firm's management team at age 28, making her one of its youngest division heads.

Michal's experience spans TLV and NYC — at Grappa she built and managed a network of 1,200 founders and executives across both cities. While her advisory through Advisors Office Hours is focused on the Israeli startup ecosystem, she brings a global market perspective, particularly for Israeli founders expanding to the US.