First published on Ynet - 11.06.23
We are in “an existential fight for our existence and future”, repeat our leaders.
It’s a message which resonates strongly with the Israeli public. Individuals overnight have become acutely aware of our own mortality and that of our family. Collectively too, the country is on the same page finally.
The majority of our citizens have been mobilized for the war effort. Many to the defense forces and others to the paramedics and various essential volunteer roles. For some of us, mobilization means weaponizing our keyboard and Tiktok accounts and joining the info wars.
But for some Israeli’s, the founders, the innovators & business leaders, the strongest indication of enemy defeat is to achieve all-out and total business success. Victory, manifested by market scale and growth.
It’s easier said than done. It takes more than projecting a “Business as usual” front. During peace time, when things don’t go to plan, business issue statements of assurance to stakeholders and reassure their staff. The brave old ‘it’s business as usual’ is used to mask the difficulties.
But we are not in peace time, we are a country at war. And these are not regular business.
CEO’s of Nasdaq listed Israeli companies with a global presence and household brands, now shoulder a far higher responsibility. They have a far bigger set of stakeholders they under their responsibility, namely the citizens of their country. The same is true for Series A startups and Seeding ventures here in Israel.
For them, business is not as usual. Not even close.
They are dealing with significant percentages of their workforces absent from their desks, as employees’ dust off their old army uniforms and leave to leave to join the front line.
They are faced with traumatized employees directly impacted by the terror atrocities, some with friends and family among the victims and hostages.
They are also sensitive to the general anxiety shared around the office.
And yet, despite the palpable pain felt in the hallways and in shared elevator lifts, something remarkable is taking place inside the high-rise building cluttering the city centers of our startup nation.
Business may not be ‘as usual’, but it certainly isn’t displaying any handicap.
I have spoken with CEO’s this past week who tell of the unprecedented determination amongst their workforce to secure the future of the company that hires them. Hitech startup teams have always been very invested personally in the macro vision of their employers. But since the war started some three weeks ago, this is has 10X.
Motivated to keep scaling, they are picking up the pace and willingly undertake the extra workload. Adamant to maintain their delivery pipelines, it’s all hands are on deck to make sure that deadlines are being met. They are determined to keep the computers running on the desks of their work mates and maintain the security of their job in their absence.
They view their new positions of responsibility as a call of nationalistic duty. For them, ensuring the continued growth of the company they work for is a tactically offensive wartime manoeuvre. A critical vertical in a multi-pronged offensive, alongside (and no less important than) the military itself.
And for the most part, it’s paying off. Global partners and accounts are maintaining confidence in their business.
The hi-tech landscape is not only about stories of devoted commitment forging success under fire. There is different reality effecting some smaller startups.
Every day, much personal sacrifice is taking place from aspiring entrepreneurs, either putting their startups and dreams on hold or shutting them all together.
There are also stories of smaller start-ups, not yet mature enough to survive their founders being called away for active duty. Other stories of investor term sheets, months into negotiations being suddenly pulled.
I am starting to finally put the dots together.
Simply put, if Israeli companies continue to succeed, so does the wider economy. A strong economy is the number one determiner of our security (besides for God himself). A robust Hi-tech industry, Israel’s dominant export, is therefore a vital supply line to our defense forces. Conversely, without a strong economy, there is no defense force and no country (heaven forbid it). Prime minister Netanyahu has repeatedly stated this when interviewed in business forums throughout the years, that the roadmap to Israel’s security starts with the strength of its free market economy. Today this is now the reiterated theme of every press conference aired on TV and how I began my writing; we are in an existential war.
When the Israel came under attack three weeks ago by the inhumane and brutal terrorist group Hamas, they intentionally documented their atrocities with the intention of breaking down our will to stay and fight. They also calculated that Israel’s thriving workforce would take double the damage. First, they aimed to stall business operations by reducing the number active personnel working in our offices and then inflict psychological warfare those which remain. Collectively, they hoped to destroy any effective economic output.
Make no mistake, Hamas’ murderous assault had our economy in their sights.
But unlike the cowardly, ISIS-Nazi-playbook attack on unarmed women, children and elderly, when it came to breaking the moral of the Israeli workforce, they have failed spectacularly.
One of my favorite movies, directed by Curtis Hanson and based on Andrew Ross Sorkin's 2009 non-fiction book of the same name, documents the 2008 global financial crash from the harried and panicked perspective of the major US banks. The movie dramatizes the story through the eyes of the U.S. Treasury Secretary at the time, Henry Paulson. We all know how the story eventually ends with the FED bailing out the bigger banks and the full force of the economic crash. But what always strikes me most when I rewatching the film, besides for the greed and criminal activity of the banks, is the breathtaking carelessness in which the warning signs were ignored by the heads of the largest financial institutions in the world. Financial commentators have a consensus opinion which essentially accuses the banks of acting that way precisely because they knew the Federal Government Reserve would bail them out if it ever came to it.
The movie is called “Too Big To Fail”.
Jewish people have an inbuilt distrust of anyone else coming to ‘bail them out’. If our banks and financial institutions acted in the same irresponsible way and risked collapsing the economy, we would not be here tomorrow.
Today, it is not irresponsible business practices which are threatening our economy, war is. The high stakes remain the same.
I shared this analogy with a couple of Venture Capitalist investors who have large equity holdings in Israeli Hi-tech startups. I put to them the logic behind doubling down on their investment interests and seeking new opportunities in Israel, especially now. Now, so we won’t need a painful ‘bail out’ later. They got it!
In the next part of this series I have titled “Hi-Tech at War’, I will be sharing interviews with the CEOs of Israel’s biggest and best Hi-Tech companies. I will share their outlook, motivations & forecasts. I will relay what I have learned about the culture, and I will tell the story of their employees’ courage and resolve.
No terrorist can slaughter and butcher their way to stopping the force for good which is our Hi-Tech sector. Hamas don’t hold weaponry capable of that. Those weapons don’t exist.
As sure as light will always illuminate the dark, Israeli’s will always build companies to benefit good in the world.
To quote Michael Eisenberg’s tweet yesterday addressing the Israeli Hi-Tech sector “It can innovate in a way and pace that most people cannot, especially under stress. The individual and individualist wilts under stress. The collaborative and coherent collective becomes resilient.”
Unlike the FED on 2008, alone tasked with saving the US economy, every CEO in Israel is an acting Henry Paulson, operating under one undeniable truth; Israeli Hi-Tech is Too Big to Fail.
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