Founders empowering Founders

Welcome to The Startup Nation Review, a curated newsletter where I will share insights from thought leaders, news, and opportunities around Israel, the Startup Nation. Every week you’ll receive timely analysis from off-the-beaten-path, an aggregation of this week's top headlines, and selected opportunities to further engage with the Startup Nation.

“Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.”

-Baruch Spinoza

In today's issue we're going to kick off a series of interviews with thought leaders in the Israeli/American tech community. As the above Spinoza quotes states, doing excellent or difficult things is rare, for the fact that they're just that, hard to do. As Yaron Samid, a serial entrepreneur and ecosystem influencer will reveal, building world-class companies (and the community needed to support founders) is not easy. His motto is "founders helping founders", and during these days community is so key as no one knows, forget coming months, what the coming weeks will hold.

Yaron Samid is an Israeli American technology entrepreneur, CEO, board director, investor, and startup community organizer. Yaron runs TechAviv, the global Israeli startup founders club, which he founded in 2007. TechAviv's 3,000-member global network of top Israeli founder CEOs, CTOs and investors gather on and offline to learn from and help each other. Over a span of two decades as an operator, Yaron helped build five technology companies as a founding CEO and Board Director. Most recently, Yaron was the founder and CEO of BillGuard, one of the fastest-growing personal finance apps in history before its acquisition by Prosper in Oct 2015.

• What are you working on these days?

I’m focused on my family, friends, and helping TechAviv startups on the front lines of the Covid-19 battle right now. We are also working on a new founders’ fund at TechAviv, powered by some of the most successful founders, executives, and investors in the world.

• How is COVID-19 factoring into what you're working on? And if so, how? 

It has fundamentally changed my focus and state of mind. I am looking to be as helpful as possible to friends and founders on the front lines. As my sister would say "when everything is uncertain, everything that is important becomes clear." 

• What is a short synopsis of how you see the tech sector in the US and in Israel in the next 6-12 months?

I see both tech sectors going through healthy corrections in values and valuations. As with previous corrections, we’ll see a shakeout of those chasing money and fame, and the rightful rise of humble builders tackling the world’s biggest problems.

• What is something you've learned about yourself (or your initiative) during the pandemic?

Founder networks are empowering in good times and vital in bad times.

• What is something that you believe that most people in the (Israeli) tech space would disagree with you on?

We can build large-scale, enduring, IPO-caliber B2C companies out of Israel.

• A face-recognition tech that works even for masked faces: This tech can recognize you from only seeing half your face... it's a bit concerning. 

• Amid Covid-19 Crisis, Israel to Establish Digital Health Tech Innovation Lab: The Startup Nation tends to thrive during chaos.

• Hush-hush IDF intel unit takes on Covid-19: We have to ask ourselves if we really want to know what global intelligence organizations know about us... if we go down this rabbit hole there is no going back.

• New method of testing for coronavirus in under a minute, by Israeli tech: The amount of testing, and speed in which we can identify those who are COVID-19 positive are key in re-opening our economies. 

• US grants Israeli prof a patent for tech that could lead to virus vaccine: This has been a positive and effective relationship for quite some time. 

Featured Webinar: ICONYC Special Webinar: Company Building in The Age of COVID-19: Join them on for a special webinar bringing together some of NYC’s top tech founders and VCs, as they share their take on how to adjust to the new reality of COVID-19 from a company building and investing perspective. April 30th at 12:00PM EST. Register here.

• Who's hiring: A list of all the companies that are currently hiring in Israel and abroad, with details regarding their open positions built by Pitango Venture Capital for the Israeli tech community. Help them support the tech community and build a database of companies that are hiring during these challenging times by submitting companies that are hiring via this form. Link to see who is hiring here.

• Covid19 Grant Program: Differential Ventures is announcing a grant program to support early-stage start-ups in the fields of data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning who are able to use their technology to aid in the global search for a resolution to COVID-19. Submissions are due April 30, 2020. Apply here.

• Call for Israeli and Global Startups: Security Accelerator’s 8th Batch with Ref to COVID-19: iHLS Security Accelerator invites startups from Israel and the world to join its 8th batch, specially adapted to COVID-19 conditions. In addition to dual-use technologies (civilian and military) – this is for new technologies coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. Application deadline May 18th. Apply here.

• Practical Israeli technology for the day after COVID-19: They invite you to join them on for a very exciting webinar led by Gabriele Milani, director of Fto - Federazione Turismo Organizzato, Avital Kotzer Adari, Director, Israel Government Tourism Office in Italy, Itai Green, Founder and CEO of Innovate-Israel, and 14 amazing Israeli startups with great solutions for the day after COVID-19. Apr 23, 9:00 AM EST. Register here.

• US Israel Business Initiative- COVID-19's Impact on the U.S. Economy and Prospects for U.S.-Israel Commerce Webinar: They want to invite you to a webinar they're holding on the economic landscape and impact on U.S.-Israel business relations. They'll be hosting Curtis Dubay, Chief Economist, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Yifat Alon-Perel, Head of Economic Trade Mission, Embassy of Israel. Thursday April 23rd, 9:00 AM EST. Register here.

• Cyber Deep Dive Incident response in times of remote working: The Israel Trade Missions and the Israel Cyber Alliance are hosting an insightful webinar on incident response and a few vital implications for businesses' readiness, in the light of the new global routine of remote working. Apr 23, 10:00 AM EST. Register here.

• Does COVID19 really affect Corporate Investments: Join them for a unique opportunity to learn what corporate investors think about the effect of COVID19 on their strategies with: Eran Tagor, Partner, Newport LLC Matthew Garratt, Salesforce Ventures, VP Salesforce Amit Sridharan, Director of US venture investments & partnerships, Mahindra Partners Ventures Anil Achyuta, Investment Director, TDK. Thursday, April 23, 2020 from 8:30 AM PDT. Register here.

• Pitch Meeting for Startups Fighting Coronavirus: Please join them at a pitch event featuring Israeli life Science startup companies working to combat Covid-19, with opening greetings from Mayor Moshe Leon. The Arizona-Israel Trade and Investment Office is proud to partner with Jerusalem Bio-City and Bio Jerusalem on this event and looks forward to continuing their relationship to assist Jerusalem-based life science, pharmaceutical and digital health companies to find partners, investors, support and a welcome home in Arizona. Thursday, April 23rd, 13:30 EST. Register here.

• Coronavirus vs. Data Science: Machine Learning for fighting the virus: In this lecture they will discuss how cutting-edge data science is being used in the global fight against the coronavirus pandemic. You will see examples of machine learning applied to this challenge, including ongoing challenges for tasks such as predicting the spread of covid-19. Sun, April 26, 7:00 PM IDT. Register here.

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