# Moti Karmona

> GM | CPTO | AI Native. Passionately curious about people, technology, product, strategy, growth, and social impact.

## About

Moti is a [Versatilist](https://www.linkedin.com/in/karmona/) -- breadth across disciplines, depth in each. He has set product vision for organizations of hundreds and also built systems himself. His career sits at the intersection of strategy and engineering; he values leaders who [master both the macro and the micro](https://medium.com/karmona/strategy-games-f37e5adbc720).

He has consistently been early to technology shifts: social search ([Delver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delver_(Social_Search)), 2007), social commerce ([Sears/ShopYourWay](https://www.shopyourway.com/), 2009), location-based services (Platinet, 2000), and now climate intelligence and AI ([Tomorrow.io](https://www.tomorrow.io/)). Two of his startups were acquired. He has held roles as Co-Founder & CTO, VP R&D, Product Engineering Director, Chief Product & Engineering Officer, and GM.

He actively builds with AI, integrates it into product and engineering workflows, and applies it to rethink what teams can ship.

He approaches most things analytically (a.k.a. he will quantify, track, and hack almost anything -- including [his own migraines](https://medium.com/karmona/my-migraine-story-6cbc94bdbe2f)). He has played strategy games for 35+ years (Chess, Go, Risk, StarCraft) and draws heavily from [military strategy, cognitive science, and behavioral economics](https://medium.com/karmona/strategy-games-f37e5adbc720) in how he thinks about leadership and product.

Impact is a recurring thread: co-founding a social cause startup (eMana, 1999), seven years on the board of [Appleseeds Academy](https://www.appleseeds.org.il/) promoting digital equality in Israel, and currently at a company focused on helping the world manage climate risk.

He is part of the Israeli tech ecosystem and has [written about](https://medium.com/karmona/technology-chutzpah-and-innovation-in-israel-f17aa6e0952b) how Israeli chutzpah, military-forged leadership, and a culture of challenging authority shape how Israeli technologists build and lead.

## Current Role

- [Tomorrow.io -- Chief Product & Engineering Officer | GM Israel](https://www.tomorrow.io/) (Oct 2022--Present): Leading product, engineering, and the Israel site. Tomorrow.io is a weather and climate security platform powering actionable weather insights for countries, businesses, and individuals.

## Career

- **Tomorrow.io** (2022--Present) -- Chief Product & Engineering Officer | GM Israel. Climate intelligence and AI-powered weather decisioning.
- **Natural Intelligence** (2017--2022) -- Chief Product & Technology Officer, then General Manager of Top10.com. Global online comparison marketplace.
- **Sears Israel / ShopYourWay** (2009--2017) -- GM & VP Social Commerce; previously VP Product Engineering. Digital Transformation Center-of-Excellence. VP Social Commerce at ShopYourWay.com (Sears Holdings).
- **Delver** (2007--2009) -- VP R&D. Built the first large-scale social search engine. Acquired by Sears Holdings.
- **HP / Mercury Interactive** (2002--2007) -- Product Engineering Director, Performance Center. Product, operations, and technical delivery. Previously led Mercury's Platform, Infrastructure and Data R&D.
- **Platinet Communications** (2000--2002) -- R&D Team Leader. Location-based transportation services, nearly a decade before the space went mainstream.
- **eMana** (1999--2000) -- Co-Founder & CTO. Social impact startup matching brands and consumers through social causes. Acquired by Platinet.
- **Mercado** (1997--1999) -- Search Engineer. Acquired by Adobe.
- **Trionet** (1996--1998) -- Co-Founder & Chief Hacker.

## Education

- The Academic College of Tel-Aviv, Yaffo -- BS, Computer Science (1996--1999)
- Swinburne University of Technology -- MEI, Entrepreneurship and Innovation (2001--2003)
- Reichman University -- FORE Executive Education, Directors and Officers Program (2017)

## Leadership Philosophy

Moti's thinking on leadership and strategy is captured across his [blog posts](https://medium.com/karmona). Key themes:

**What makes leaders effective.** In [#7 Leadership Superpowers](https://medium.com/karmona/7-leadership-superpowers-b886cb7a4a5f), he identifies seven traits: Passionate, Inconceivable Tenacity, Hyper Strategist, Inspiring, Craftsmanship, Authentic, and Scale Masters. Leaders are craftsmen who create value by combining wisdom, science, and art. They are hyper-vigilant in understanding and confronting reality. And they have the rare recursion skill to grow other leaders toward the same vision.

**Courage with strategy -- not just courage alone.** In [You Yong Wu Mou](https://medium.com/karmona/you-yong-wu-mou-having-courage-but-no-strategies-90f24feedd05), he tells the story of General Xiang Yu -- a commander with immense courage who ultimately lost because he lacked political vision and strategic patience. The Chinese idiom "You Yong Wu Mou" -- "Having Courage but No Strategies" -- captures a recurring theme: tactical brilliance without strategic direction is self-defeating.

**Product managers as polymaths.** In [Five Elements a Product Manager should Master](https://medium.com/karmona/five-elements-a-product-manager-should-master-2f70180c9f2c), he argues PMs must master leadership, shipping, customer obsession, storytelling, and passion. They are the most important leaders in a product-driven organization. They zoom out (market, positioning, strategy) and drill down (edge cases, design trade-offs, engineering dependencies) unlike others.

**Strategy as a discipline learned from games.** In [Strategy Games](https://medium.com/karmona/strategy-games-f37e5adbc720), he distills lessons from 35+ years of playing Chess, Go, Risk, StarCraft, and others: plan ahead and map all candidate moves (Kotov); adapt quickly using OODA loops (Boyd); master strategic patience -- premature attacks backfire; know your enemy; the art of sacrifice; never mistake tactical success for strategic direction; master both macro and micro. Heavily influenced by Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Genghis Khan.

**Why we underestimate -- and why fighting overestimation makes it worse.** In [Underestimation is Underestimated](https://medium.com/karmona/underestimation-is-underestimated-50d89ec23509), he argues that managers who squeeze estimates to fight perceived padding actually *cause* underestimation. He calls this "The Parkinson's Squeeze." The consequences are cascading: destroyed plans, poor technical foundations, destructive late-project dynamics, and statistically reduced chance of on-time completion. His tip: never intentionally underestimate -- address overestimation concerns through control and mentoring, not through bias.

**Awareness of cognitive blind spots.** In [The Dunning-Kruger Effect](https://medium.com/karmona/the-dunning-kruger-effect-4302539f6856), he highlights that the least competent tend to overestimate their ability while top performers underestimate theirs. In [The Cone of Uncertainty in Pastel](https://medium.com/karmona/the-cone-of-uncertainty-in-pastel-3c30463cda52), he visualizes how estimation accuracy improves as projects progress -- at the start, estimates can be off by a factor of 4x in either direction.

**Reading list that shaped his thinking.** His [Top 10 Leadership Books](https://medium.com/karmona/top-10-leadership-books-ebc2edb7cd69) include: Extreme Ownership (Willink & Babin), The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Horowitz), Start with Why (Sinek), The Toyota Way (Liker), The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Lencioni), Good to Great (Collins), The 7 Habits (Covey), Only the Paranoid Survive (Grove), and Peopleware (DeMarco). Peopleware was the first leadership book he read -- it taught him that people come first, not software.

**Israeli tech culture.** In [Technology, Chutzpah and Innovation in Israel](https://medium.com/karmona/technology-chutzpah-and-innovation-in-israel-f17aa6e0952b), he describes how Israeli chutzpah -- the tendency to challenge authority, debate everything, and improvise with little data -- is both a competitive advantage and a management challenge. In [American-Israeli Cultural Misinterpretation](https://medium.com/karmona/american-israeli-cultural-misinterpretation-ce10873a467c), he explores the cultural gap: Israelis see themselves as creative, direct, and honest but are perceived as arrogant, stubborn, and pushy.

## All Blog Posts

- [Learning vs. Education](https://medium.com/karmona) (2021)
- [Top 10 Leadership Books](https://medium.com/karmona/top-10-leadership-books-ebc2edb7cd69) (2020)
- [My Migraine Story](https://medium.com/karmona/my-migraine-story-6cbc94bdbe2f) (2015)
- [Strategy Games](https://medium.com/karmona/strategy-games-f37e5adbc720) (2015)
- [Five Elements a Product Manager should Master](https://medium.com/karmona/five-elements-a-product-manager-should-master-2f70180c9f2c) (2014)
- [#7 Leadership Superpowers](https://medium.com/karmona/7-leadership-superpowers-b886cb7a4a5f) (2014)
- [Technology, Chutzpah and Innovation in Israel](https://medium.com/karmona/technology-chutzpah-and-innovation-in-israel-f17aa6e0952b) (2011)
- [You Yong Wu Mou ("Having Courage but No Strategies")](https://medium.com/karmona/you-yong-wu-mou-having-courage-but-no-strategies-90f24feedd05) (2010)
- [American-Israeli Cultural Misinterpretation](https://medium.com/karmona/american-israeli-cultural-misinterpretation-ce10873a467c) (2010)
- [Underestimation is Underestimated](https://medium.com/karmona/underestimation-is-underestimated-50d89ec23509) (2010)
- [The Cone of Uncertainty in Pastel](https://medium.com/karmona/the-cone-of-uncertainty-in-pastel-3c30463cda52) (2010)
- [The Dunning-Kruger Effect](https://medium.com/karmona/the-dunning-kruger-effect-4302539f6856) (2008)

## Impact

- [Appleseeds Academy -- Board Member](https://www.appleseeds.org.il/) (2016--2023): Nonprofit promoting digital equality in Israel -- technology, employment, and life skills programs for underserved communities.
- **eMana** (1999--2000): Co-founded a social impact startup connecting brands and consumers through social causes.

## Connect

- [karmona.com](https://karmona.com)
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/karmona/)
- [X / Twitter](https://x.com/karmona)
- [Medium](https://medium.com/karmona)

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*This llms.txt was generated on March 24, 2026 by Claude (Anthropic) based on publicly available sources: [LinkedIn profile](https://www.linkedin.com/in/karmona/), [Medium blog posts](https://medium.com/karmona), and [X/Twitter profile](https://x.com/karmona). Content may not reflect changes made after this date.*