Interview with Dvir Ben-Aroya – Founder of Spike [2023]

My name is Dvir Ben-Aroya. I am the cofounder and CEO of Spike, a platform that combines emails, chats, calls, team collaboration, and tasks all in your inbox. I have over 20 years of executive experience leading technology and internet companies. As an entrepreneur, I am passionate about creating SaaS businesses and nurturing them throughout their entire lifecycle.

Spike brings your entire workspace into your inbox. converts your emails into chat-like multimedia messages, based on the people and groups that matter more to its users, while eliminating clutter and enhancing productivity. Spike allows you to seamlessly go from email and team chats, to voice messages and video meetings — all in 1 workflow

In the last 20 years, there hasn’t been any real invention for the most popular communication tool we all have – our email. Sure, some other apps offer new features, but no one has fully taken the powerful technology behind email and created something new. At Spike, we took the best of messaging and combined it with the power of email, to create a modern communication and collaboration solution – turning your inbox into a powerful digital workspace. You can do all of your work without leaving your Inbox.

One of my favorite features of Spike is Priority Inbox. Priority Inbox automatically sorts all your less important emails such as newsletters, social alerts, and random invites into another Inbox, called ‘Other’ that you can ignore when you’re busy and clean out later when you have time.

Email is still the most commonly used method of communication for INTERNAL and EXTERNAL data. We all have an email as our digital identifier. But, email still looks and behaves the same as a formal, written letter. It is about time to reinvent and modernizing email to adjust to today’s best practices and usage – more human, people focused, unified with other services, collaborative and fun!

Ultimately, the way we communicate has changed with remote and hybrid work. As challenges arose, companies continued adding new apps to solve problems without going back to the drawing board to ask that they needed out of their digital environments.

That’s why we created Spike – by turning communication into simple conversations, you can work and collaborate seamlessly with clients and team members – in a more natural way.

This is probably a predictable answer, but with Spike. Spike speeds up the time it takes to check in with our various departments whether it’s over video, audio, a voice message, or a Spike message. Before Spike, it took so many apps to accomplish all the things I needed to do. I’d lose focus each time I switch. I also make sure to fit in workouts a few times a week before starting to work. And I schedule in an “early day” where I leave work early enough to have quality time to be with my boys.

The biggest challenge was changing customers’ perception about what role email should play in their work and personal lives. We really don’t need 5+ messenger and team chat apps just to communicate every day.

As our community of customers grew, we learned that everyone has a different opinion on how to “best” use email. There’s no right way to stay on top of your essential communications. We created Spike to be a versatile solution that helps anyone get things done, customized to the way they prefer to work, without jumping between 5+ apps to work.

A startup is like surfing. There is never a guarantee which morning you will wake up to, what kind of wave you will catch, or if you will see someone along the way. All you can do is aim to be the best and have the best execution, never give up and timing is everything.

The technology world has moved away from using open protocols. Every new platform that starts today is a silo unto itself. One of the reasons we focus so much on email is its openness. IMAP and SMTP can be used by any company anywhere in the world. We need to see more companies prioritizing open protocols over closed systems.

Spike will offer individuals and teams all communication and collaboration tools to enhance their productivity in one app. There’s need to use anything else – no messenger apps, no team-chat, etc. Spike is the workspace for all your work.