The Startup Arena 2025: Between Dream and Business Reality
Sarit Lamarovich, founder and CEO of SAGE Marketing, was featured in TheMarker’s Expert Zone discussing how marketing has shifted from a late-stage activity, coming after planning and development, to one of the earliest steps in a startup’s lifecycle.
Lamarovich notes that while the market appears to be thriving with conferences, funding rounds, and innovation, the reality beneath the surface is a survival struggle. Startups face a saturated market, pressure to “invent a category,” and investors who no longer buy into vision alone but demand paying customers, real value, and proof.
She warns that the dream of “creating a new category” is a common but risky fantasy: doing so is expensive, isolating, and often unrealistic unless a company has a massive market and budget behind it. Instead, she advises founders to position themselves as the smarter, simpler evolution of something that already exists, rather than chasing category creation alone.
According to Lamarovich, 2025 investors are looking first for people they believe in and trust in their capabilities, followed by a working business model, a strong execution team, and the ability to tell a credible story grounded in facts, market evidence, real users, and revenue conversion, rather than an “exciting vision” alone.
For the complete article in Hebrew, see the original piece on TheMarker Expert Zone.
