Traveling Geeks

A Chat with JVP's Erel Margalit

JVP’s Managing Director Erel Margalit talks to our blogging group this week about start-ups and innovation in Israel.

Their Jerusalem outskirts office is not unlike a Silicon Valley-based VC office except that the printers and fax machines might be a tad older and like every other Israeli company kitchen, they’re well stocked with Nescafe instant coffee. The latter is an integral part of the culture here in the same way it was 20′ish years ago.

We learn about their DreamWorks-like initiative Animation Lab, which extends beyond a typical technology play. “The line is blurred between where technology ends and content begins,” noted Margalit. As the former head of MSN Israel, he has a background and perspective on digital rich content.

Erel and his team ‘get’ social media. We were introduced to three stealth mode companies and saw ‘on-screen’ demos. I can’t talk about them just yet, except to say that they’re dabbling in virtual worlds, interactive games, social networks and online video.

When asked about entrepreneurship and why there’s so much innovation coming out of Israel, Erel says, “Israelis don’t think about what they can lose but about what they can gain. Unlike Europe, they don’t have a plate on their door in a town where their family and history was rooted for 1,000 years. Israel is new and full of immigrants from all over the world. So its much easier for us to take risks.”

JVP is currently the king VC in Israel, having launched between 20 and 40 companies, with most of their exits in the communications and media space. “We’re on our 5th fund,” he added. English to Armenian “The key is to make a few home runs in each fund.”

We got the impression that they’re on track and that the climate was ripe with opportunities. Eran continued to rave about the opportunities that Israel has over Europe and the states…..and why. “Silicon Valley is very engineering driven versus the rest of the world. Not having that as a major driving force gives us an opportunity.”

He sees other opportunities in Asia where they’re developing a lot of interactive content. During his last trip to China, he observed that 500,000 were playing online warfare games. In LA, it was all about broadcasting entertainment. In Europe, mobile continues to take a leadership role.

I captured the tail end of his interview on video – see below (also uploaded to Flixwagon.com). Click play to tune in.

Jerusalem Venture Partners

Israeli Women in Tech

At Israel’s Marker conference this week, I was pleasantly surprised how many women were in attendance. Some women I spoke to complained that they make up a very small percentage, maybe 10%, but my sense was that it was much higher.

Compared to technology conferences in the states, Israeli women seem to be leading the way. Even if they’re not all CEOs or VCs, they showed up. As for the male/female speaker ratio, its pretty small and probably comparable to the U.S.

I chatted with several women, but not enough to get a sense of what the breakdown was between clerical, large corporate management and entrepreneurs. I did talk to a number of content producers, graphic designers, marketing execs and journalists however and all of them were interesting, driven, well traveled and spoke English fluently. Many have lived abroad.

The other thing I noticed was the strong presence of feminine energy – from clothing, shoes, make-up and bags to their walk, hair styles and smile. It was all there – purses rather than logoed backpacks, vibrantly designed cell phone holders, European barrettes, wild boots and multi-colored glasses.

Below is a fair representation of the female faces of technology in the greater Tel Aviv area. I probably took another 200 or so shots, so you tell me where there is a higher number of women in technology?

Fashion blogger Daria Shualy

Maayan Cohen, New Media Reporter at the Marker

Hagit Katzenelson

Orli Yakuel

Maayan Cohen, New Media Reporter at the Marker

From Old City Inspiration to New Ventures: A day in Jerusalem

The last 24 hours have been somewhat strange for me. There’s been a sizable amount of meshugass on this trip – misfired communications, sardine-like conditions of our “bus” (which was actually a late model Ford van that the Israeli Consulate very graciously replaced today with a proper tour bus… YAY!), and the TG gang consensus that our goals for the trip and the itinerary were a bit off kilter.

Fellow TravelingGeek, Sarah Lacy, wrote a bit about our rebellion on Monday – an act that set into motion quite a few interesting activities and experiences.

As a result I have several half-finished posts sitting in my draft folder that I’ve just not been able to complete. (Confession: I’m a relatively newly minted blogger in terms of style. My writing has always tended to be a bit more in-depth analytical second day story type of stuff, so this whole rapid-fire writing thing is a new challenge).

In any case, that mini-backlog of items is going to have to wait a bit longer because after today’s adventures I’m focused on something deeply important to me.

Faith.

More specifically the way in which faith inspires.

It’s funny to think that on my first trip to Jerusalem in the summer of 1995, I found myself nearly paralyzed at my first approach to the Western Wall.. While I’ve only returned to the spot twice since that time, I’ve had exactly the opposite experience on each return. English to Armenian . Rather than feeling repelled by the energy that comes off of this majestic edifice, it’s as though a tractor beam grabs me, pulling me in.

But I’m getting ahead of myself… the story begins when we began the most enjoyable forced march you can imagine.

Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre

It has been more than two decades since I last walked through Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre (black and white shot is of the church in 1885).

A deeply spiritual and moving place, a Greek orthodox woman prayed to my left, a Polish catholic priest led a group to my right and every religious variation in between stood among me. Within its walls, you can either pray or quietly reflect with every other walk of life from around the world and be at peace.

I took a few short video clips while inside which are captured below. Click play.

As I took these earlier today, they were streaming live on Flixwagon.com, a real-time video solution by an Israeli start-up. More on them later.

peta dunia satelit .

if you’re wondering…

…why all the blogs all the sudden, there are two reasons.

1. we got a new bus. THANK YOU ISRAELI GOV’T! we are not actually sitting on top of one another in sweltering heat. (although craig is still sitting in scoble’s lap….we’re not quite sure why*) most of us are just clacking away happily on keyboards.

[* may not be true. may be just inserted to see if valleywag has discovered my blog]

2. we are going to Jerusalem today!

i think that’s pretty much a dream for anyone of muslim, christian or
jewish faith whether they consciously realize it or not. i can’t wait
to see what affect it’ll have on me. in silicon valley, you almost
never hear anyone talking about religion. it really might be the only
taboo subject. it’s such a macho-intellectual culture and i think for
many entrepreneurs and techies admitting a belief in a higher mystical
power is almost a sign of weakness, naivety or even stupidity. (don’t
yell at me, i’m just telling you what i hear)

i’m not sure if i’ve made it a point not to talk about religion myself or i’ve just never been asked. either way it’s fair to say i don’t wear it on my sleeve, wave it like a banner or whatever other cliche you want to use. we’ll see if today changes that. true test: if i BLOG about it.

religious freedom hits home…

i feel horrendous again today. turns out walking around in the heat for 12 hours then capping off the evening with champagne and immense laughter isn’t a great cure for the flu, or whatever plague this is. ALL i wanted was a bagel this morning. an american christian girl like me wouldn’t have expected that’d be impossible in israel. peta dunia satelit English to Armenian . apparently, at passover time it is. looking back on the time in elementary school i thought it was “awesome” that my jewish friends got to eat matzah with whole new eyes….

Israel: a country too far from Mike Arrington’s house

This headline is only a little in jest. But as I’ve gotten around to various tech companies here in Israel I’ve started noticing a trend: that the further away a tech area is from Silicon Valley the less respect that area will get. The headline is also a bit unfair to TechCrunch/Mike because he’s actually been to Israel and has a couple of writers covering the tech scene here, but if you’re a blogger and let the facts get in the way of a good headline you’ll never go anywhere.

I’ve noticed this when I visited MySpace: they were so excited when I visited because they say that tech bloggers never visit. I was thinking back to my own experiences. Yes, that’s true. Facebook employees regularly meet up with us at parties and dinners and conferences. We run into MySpace employees far less often. These personal connections turn into stories on blogs.

Same when I visited San Antonio. These were companies I never hear about in conversations in the valley. We don’t have personal connections to their employees. Ask yourself, have you ever heard of PerfTech? Kulabyte? Rackspace? Newtech?

Anyway, I’ve been all over to the world. Shanghai. Tokyo. Frankfurt. London. New York. Cork. Dublin. Hamburg. Geneva.

I’ve never seen the entrepreneurial spirit outside of Silicon Valley like I’ve seen here in Tel Aviv. The companies here are doing technology that’s deep, varied, and highly profitable.

Anyway, I’ll write more about this topic over the weekend, because right now we’re about to leave to see Jeruselem and meet with some Venture Capitalists to further understand what’s going on here in Israel.

In the meantime, go to TechCrunch and check out Fring’s new iPhone app. (Fring is headquartered here in Israel, and shows another trend that I’ve noticed here that Israel is WAY ahead of the United States in use of Mobile apps — another thing that’s surprising is how many iPhones you see here, even though there isn’t a single Apple store).

One other thing, Twitter has been where we’ve been having interesting conversations. It was amazing. The other day we were in a van between Haifa and Tel Aviv. Talking with Arrington back in California. Christineleu in China. GiaGia in London. All at the same time.

The advent of Twitter is one thing that’s bringing far away lands into the PR machinery that exists only in Silicon Valley.

I wish I had a month to spend here, so many startups want to get my attention, but I just can’t see them all. But there still is nothing better than meeting face-to-face over a beer to find out interesting stories about people, companies, countries.

For instance, last night several people begged me to write about the proposed Israel Censorship Law. Global Voices Online has already done that, but if it weren’t for being here I wouldn’t have known about the issues that they really care about.

Anyway, off to Jeruselem, stay in touch with us on my Twitter account.

Do you agree or disagree that people, companies, countries can get the respect and/or tech industry PR they deserve if they are far away from Silicon Valley?

T.G.: Bloggers, entrepreneurs, women

On Tuesday, had a chance to talk with a broader range of Israeli women bloggers and tech VCs and entrepreneurs. Some pictures in advance of real words.
Brasov . peta dunia satelit

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