Getty images; Tyler Le/BI By 2026-05-12T08:19:01.252Z Like a lot of guys of the era, Eli Cohen had a great idea for an app back in 2010. But unlike many of his peers, whose musings were confined to bar hangouts and bad dates, he actually invested about $20,000 of his own money to try to bring the project to life. Unfortunately, his gumption only got him so far. Back then, "building software was painfully hard," he says. He burned through his budget well before it got off the ground. What bugs him isn't that the endeavor failed, it's that a similar concept — the online education platform Udemy — launched that same year and went on to IPO at a $4 billion valuation in 2021. "I assume they had more resources, better developers, of course, luck,," Cohen says, emphasizing that he's not bitter about it. The main lesson he took from the experience is that sometimes the difference between success and failure is not the idea but the ability to execute. Cohen's entrepreneurial journey didn't end there.…