On the Record with Moshe Hecht Hatch.AI Founder & CEO
Hometown: Pomona, NY
Hobbies: It’s been a minute, but triathlons! I’ve also done 2 half iron mans and a dozen half marathons. To sum it up: swim, bike, run!
A few words to describe you: Delusional, Passionate, and Driven (in that order)
Let’s start at the beginning: what were you like as a child and how do you think that shaped who you are today?
I was definitely a trouble maker… a BIG troublemaker. I spent a lot more time in the hallways at school than in the classroom. At the same time though, I was always extremely curious.
I think that's shaped me today as a bit of a renegade on all fronts and has allowed me to think about what's possible rather than what the status quo says should be possible. My mind is constantly thinking about solving big problems in innovative ways.
I'm working in one industry now, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking about different problems and solutions. Just yesterday I was flying coach, and thinking about all the innovative ways that you can make flying coach more comfortable.
My mind is always coming up with startup ideas, before I have to remind myself to simmer down, and focus on my own company.
What would you say has been your biggest or most unexpected challenge?
Understanding the dynamics of behavioral change in industries. Realizing that as good as your product or solution is, at the end of the day, what you’re really trying to accomplish is getting people to change their behavior.
Behavioral change is so dynamic and multi-dimensional. Underestimating what it takes for people to change their behavior, probably the biggest lesson that I'm continuing to learn day in and day out. But, therein lies the greatest opportunity.
What excites you most about the work you’re doing?
Did you know, right now in the United States alone, only half the people are actually giving to charity? The prospect of getting the other half of this country to give to charity and to make that a common habit, is inspiring to me. That's really why I'm in this industry.
Knowing that the pool of potential givers is huge, and we’re talking about hundreds of millions of people here that are still not giving to charity, it's exciting. If we could be the reason why someone starts to experience a life of giving, that's very exciting to me!
How do you think you’ve identified a leadership style?
I’m naturally a very aggressive, “bulldozer” type personality which has taught me a lot of lessons about leading with more empathy. I’d say I'm on the road to becoming a more empathetic leader. I strive to lead with empathy.
What does company culture mean to you?
I think a good company culture starts with everyone in the company, from top to bottom, believing that they have a voice in the future of the company.
To create a strong direction for the business, it's hard to really include everyone's voice into the trajectory. And this is especially true for early stage companies, where you have a lot of pirates and mavericks that join the team…
But ultimately, a good company culture is everyone in the business, from the intern to the CEO, knowing their voice is going to be heard. That on a continuous basis their voice is important. I think that's at least one foundation of a solid company culture.
Are there any books you ask your team to read?
I would say 2 types of books: the exciting startup focused books and the more boring nonprofit books
It’s pretty natural for startup employees to be drawn to read books on the bleeding edge of innovation. Some of my favorites I’ve had the employees of my last company read were Zero-to-One, The Lean Startup, and The Pumpkin Plan. The Pumpkin Plan being a particular favorite of mine. But, I think it’s easy to forget when you’re servicing an industry like the nonprofit world, there’s so much to be learned within the nomenclature and standards of practice of a stodgy industry like ours that have been tried, proven and tested.
If you're a salesperson and you can't speak the language of a 50 year old fundraiser who's been doing this for 20 to 30 years, then it's very hard for them to buy from you. So it's really important to read books on the boring nonprofit stuff, especially the academic stuff that your seasoned nonprofits would have read multiple times.
Okay, now that we’ve covered your background and Hatch, let’s learn more about Moshe as an individual. What do you think has been your biggest inspiration as an entrepreneur?
The biggest inspiration to me as an entrepreneur, I would say, is knowing how much room there is for radical innovation in this space. The nonprofit space is not popular, you don't get a lot of startups, or fresh, young talent trying to create solutions for this industry. It's very underserved in terms of innovation.
Ironically, what inspires me is the lack of vision in this space. I landed in this space by accident, which is another story altogether, but for whatever reason I feel like I've been given a certain insight into the opportunities that most people don't see.
The possibility of radical change, radical improvement across the board, you know, that's what inspires me most.
Why do you feel that the non-profit space needs more visionaries?
Why is it important in this space to have more visionaries? Because we're not even scratching the surface of solving all of the problems that nonprofits are trying to solve.
At some point in my career, I made a calculation. When you take all the problems that nonprofits are trying to solve. Consider, slavery, food deficiency, hunger, education... That’s a $5 trillion challenge every year. If we wanted to make sure that every hungry person is fed, gets an education, and is freed from modern slavery, it would cost $5 trillion every year.
Currently, we're contributing $500 billion, in other words only 10% of that cost. And as much as $500 billion sounds like a big amount, we're only scratching the surface of solving these problems. I believe that it's incumbent upon human beings to solve these world problems. God created this imperfect world, and we're meant to come in and create a partnership to solve these problems with new and creative solutions.
Some innovators help to solve these problems while working in nonprofits, and that is good and important. But equally important are the entrepreneurs helping nonprofits, in other words the people helping the people who are helping people.
Our innovators are visionaries in creating new solutions that can help people at scale. I mean, that's why I think it's important that there are more people in this industry that are doing that. Nonprofits are limited in their resources and their abilities and their capabilities to do things. They're not driven by economics of scale. They're not driven by profit. They're driven by goodwill and to empower the people.
Helping people, I think, is where the shift is going to happen at scale. Nonprofit leaders need to keep doing what they're doing, and we need more people helping them in that mission.
If you were to talk to the other 50% of Americans who are not giving to them, what would you say to them?
I wouldn’t speak to them, it’s not my job to speak to them. It’s my job to speak to the stewards of those people; nonprofit professionals.
I believe that every single person on this planet is given the gift of wanting to give. We are all natural born givers. It’s the emotional structure of our soul. No one ever felt bad after giving to charity, it’s something that improves our lives.
As wonderful and beautiful a dimension as giving adds to our lives, the challenge that some individuals face is not being given that opportunity. And that’s what we’re trying to build for. The solution we’re trying to create is helping non-profits learn about the individual and what moves them. Right? Because people are naturally passionate about things… If you’re a parent, that's children, if you’re an educator it's about education, and so on. Everybody is naturally passionate about something.
Our idea here is to help fundraisers align their passions with opportunities for giving.
You may think people don’t have the money or will to give, but actually, the data shows the poorer you are the higher the percentage of your net worth you donate. Consider a person earning $30,000 a year donating $20. This is a higher percentage of one’s income than that same $20 to someone in the 1%. The percentage of giving goes down as income goes up. The reason why the 1% do not give more money is not because they’re saving money to take care of themselves, but rather charitable actions have not yet been tailored to their lifestyle and passions.
Are there any life lessons you live by?
Yes, there’s a lesson from ethics from the Ethics of our Fathers that goes “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it”
It's the idea that, as ambitious people, as entrepreneurs, we often feel if we can't solve the entire problem, then what's the use of trying at all. You may even feel it's not your place to solve the entire problem, or it's not your responsibility to solve the entire problem. For example, who do I think I am to get the other half of America or even the world to give? Who do I think I am to get the $500 billion of giving to become a trillion? When you think of it in that way, most people don’t even attempt to solve big problems, they just feel hopeless…
But as a life lesson, even if you can't solve the whole problem as an individual you cannot free yourself of not trying to be part of the solution. It’s a good balancing act. When you're ambitious, trying to solve big problems, it’s important to realize that even though you can't solve all things, you must at least try to do your part. Once you know the problem and once that problem resonates with you, you can't escape it. You have to at least do some part in trying to solve the problem.
Lastly, if you achieve the things you want to, how do you want to be remembered?
I want to be remembered as a charitable person, but more than that someone who moved the world to become more charitable.
At the end of the day they’re not going to remember how ambitious you were on a tombstone, but they can remember how charitable they were.
Such a great question. You know, just last week, I was in Poland. I took a trip to Auschwitz to learn about Jewish life before the war. We went to all the old synagogues in Poland. You know, there were millions of Jewish people living in Poland. And today there are only a few thousand Jews living in the entire country. The once thriving Jewish population of Poland was essentially erased.
One of the things that we did was go to the old Jewish cemeteries. As I was reading the things that were written on the tombstone, I found many of them to be repetitive. They all had the same kind of words, like “a simple, straight man”, “a simple, stand up man”. And one more of these things that were continuously written was “a man of charity”, or “A charitable person”: Baal Tzedakah.
I want to be remembered as a charitable person. But more than that, someone who moved the needle of charity in the world. I want to be remembered as someone who got more people to give, who made the world just a little bit more charitable.
Moshe Hecht is an award-winning philanthropic futurist and innovator, reshaping the world of giving through technology and data solutions. Over eight years, he transformed Charidy.com into a leading platform, assisting over 8,000 organizations in raising more than $3 billion. Observing the challenges nonprofits face in leveraging donor data, Moshe launched Hatch in 2021. This revolutionary customer data platform (CDP) empowers nonprofits to harness their donor data, offering high-quality, cost-effective data enrichment and automation tools. Hatch enables fundraisers to secure more donations, marketers to optimize campaigns, and researchers to cut research time by up to 80%
