By: Natalie Johnson
Every Friday morning at Alitheon, the CEO makes the coffee.
Roei Ganzarski brews Arabic coffee over an open flame for his entire team, then opens the company’s all-hands meeting with a question most executives would never ask: who made a great mistake this week? And then shares his from the week.
“When I initially introduced this, there were mixed reactions. Who wants to tell the ceo what mistakes they made.” Ganzarski said. “Now, it’s the opposite. We bring it up. Here’s how I screwed up this week; here’s what I learned from it. Here’s how I make sure no one else makes the same mistake.”
The ritual is not a gimmick. It is the operating system of a leader who has spent three decades betting against conventional wisdom, from Boeing to software to electric aviation, where his work landed him a $75 million NASA contract to develop a 40-passenger electric aircraft and a spot on Business Insider’s list of 100 People Transforming Business.
Today he runs Alitheon, whose optical AI traces and authenticates physical objects the way fingerprints authenticate people.
Ask Ganzarski what connects the chapters of his career, and he gives you three principles he has carried since he was 16.
The first: always remember where you come from and where you’re going. “Think about what are the mistakes that we’ve made, and let’s learn from them as we go forward,” he said. The Friday meeting is that principle made routine.
The second: only dead fish go with the flow. “The fact that everyone does something doesn’t mean I have to do it, or say it,” he said. “I want to do what’s right for us, as opposed to, oh, everyone’s doing it, it must be good.”
The third: the light at the end of the tunnel could be a train. Every plan gets a plan B. Every customer promise gets treated as unproven until it closes.
“All three of them are tied directly to innovation and critical thinking,” Ganzarski said. “They make you think a few steps deeper – question your assumptions.”
That last word matters to him more than most. He is currently completing a doctorate in innovation and critical thinking, and he describes his approach to problems in terms that double as a leadership philosophy. “I don’t think outside of the box,” he said. “I just don’t see a box.”
The philosophy is now entering its biggest test. Alitheon recently closed a funding round backed by eBay Ventures and Emerald, and Ganzarski is steering the company from proving its technology to scaling it. First-ever conference appearances. New sales hires. A deliberate push into industries where authenticity is a matter of safety and security, not status.
Growth phases break cultures. Ganzarski is betting his rituals will hold his team together.
“We don’t hide anything. There’s nothing to hide,” he said. “If you hide it, it can only get worse. Maybe one time you can fix it and no one will know, but the next time it’ll be even worse. You might as well tell everyone, so that we all make sure to learn from it.”
The goal was never zero mistakes. It was never the same one twice.
“We’re always going to have mistakes,” he said. “Just not the same ones over and over again.”
