The club are the Checkpoint
founders - Gil Shwed, Shlomo Kramer (we both went to the same elementary
school, he was one year ahead of me), The Chromatis guys, Mercurys Arie
Feingold (of Daisy fame) and Amnon Landan, Yossi Vardi and the ICQ
boys, and so many others. In my own family journey, after being part of a
less than stellar startup in educational software, I decide to start a
new company, and convince my dad to do the unthinkable - leave the
security of a technology giant to the uncharted water of a 1989 startup -
Quicksoft.
That company spawned 3 more startups we both shared, two of those jordan 7s for sale sold later to SAP, and one still runs to this day as Adobes distributor in Israel. That small startup we started in my parents basement, grew after many acquisitions and changes to be SAP lab in Israel which hosts almost 1,000 engineers who write software for companies around the world. Generation III was catalyzed by two actions taken by the Israeli government - in particular one person in the public Sector - Yigal Erlich - at first the chief scientist of Israel, who granted many startups, including Quicksoft the funds that made the difference between closing the doors and exporting software. Yigal then started "Yozma" a fund of funds - where he co-invested the state together with 7 international VC funds, and created the VC industry in Israel investing well over $2B a year in the state - making Israel the second most exciting region for high tech innovation jordan 7 raptors after the silicon valley, my adopted home for the last 12 years. As an observer in both worlds, with the luxury to travel back and forth (well, most of the years, I traveled without luxury in coach…) I can see how Israel. |
