Learnings from a whirlwind tour of the Start Up Nation
“The journey is the reward” as the Chinese would say.
My journey to Israel was a reward in so many ways. It was an emotional rollercoaster laden with ups, downs and revelations. So many new questions yet to be answered, and some answers to age-old questions.
The realization that Axel Springer is such a big ecosystem by itself, was the first revelation. Who knew that this ecosystem comprised of such a wide variety of industries, ranging from Forbes, to a startup that runs a Football App. With operations ranging from UK to Poland and even to the US, with colleagues sitting in Miami to Washington D.C. Maybe there is a stronger need to start tying the dots and bringing everyone together across the ecosystem.
For many of us, Israel is defined by their long-standing conflicts with Palestine. The lesser known fact is that Israel is also a central hub for startups, churning out more than 6,000 active startups, making it the world’s leader for startups per capita. Bright ideas appear to be sprouting by the day from young somethings, fresh out of serving in the military. The exposure to this unique land was an eyeopener in many ways, more so by reaffirming the need to think beyond our biases.
This whirlwind of a journey revolved around a number of intense sessions that focused on the tech ecosystem in Israel, with some strong existential and religious undercurrents.
While it’s not possible to outline every single learning from this journey, I have tried my best to describe a few below.
Think Local ; Act Global
From a local market street seller to the retired military brigadier of the Israeli Army, everyone seemed to embody this mantra in everything they do. They appeared to know exactly how to navigate their way around the difficult terrain or environmental challenges, or even unwire the difficult trappings of the ever volatile conflicts.
The companies seem to aim for global solutions whilst balancing and controlling local challenges. Many seemed to utilize the local inadequacies to fuel global market demand.
Netafim invests in growing 3 feet tall Jojoba trees in a desert, to ensure they are able to cater to a world of cosmetics. Israel’s ability to swiftly translate market demands into organizational action accounts for its consistently strong performance in the flexibility index and its global acceptance as an innovation capital.
How can this help AVIV? My personal observation so far has been that despite giving birth to AVIV as a conglomerate of many smaller brands (a new parent if you will), all strategies and implementations seem to focus on individual brands. Concept of big picture thinking is somehow lost in the race to deliver results. My recommendation — keeping the Israel story in mind, would be to “Think local, Act AVIV” — meaning, balance the need to capture requirements to support local needs, but build solutions that can be used as templates for AVIV as a whole.
Theory of Constraints : Practice it!
When I first read Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints years ago, I remember getting excited about how organisations are able to achieve their goals by identifying and leveraging a system’s constraints. Years later — I still strongly believe in that strategy.
In the story of Israel, this could not have been more true. Whether it was Yad2 , the leading classified publisher in Israel, or the retired military Brigadier General Nitzan Nuriel, who talked about having to work with helicopters that are 50 years old in battles. Everyone seemed to be focused on unpicking the terrain, constraints, and innovating solutions leveraging those very same constraints.
In Yad2, legacy tech led to financial bleeding. But rather than give up, they invested heavily in strategic yet cut-throat prioritisations of initiatives. By revamping the legacy tech structure, the COO was able to focus on building what is core to the product, while purchasing anything that was considered to be auxiliary, despite the cost cutting mandate. Their firm belief and the success achieved in being able to monetize Seeker, with their version of Seeker Premium and also tap into the owner market with their fantastic work with FSBO, instantly validated that we at AVIV are already on the right path.
It is all in the ‘definitions’
It’s funny how increasingly digital conversations are being restricted to a max of about 280 characters free of charge, but can be increased to about 4000, if one is willing to pay a little extra. But I am told, the devil is always in the details — the writing. As the Brigadier General Nitzan Nuriel stated, “what matters is the definitions, not the explanations or the counterarguments in articles”.
Swimm, a company that is trying to make documentation simple for coders, demonstrated how one can define what's written, and also document it in a way that benefits others.
Question is — Can investing in “definitions” help AVIV? Answer: a resounding yes. Exploring the use of Generative AI to decode legacy codes will be a great step forward.
If you do not deliver, the story does not exist
Simple as it may sound, but equally hard-hitting. How important is it to deliver results consistently and on time ?
From ZDF, Michael Bewerunge, is one of the leading war-zone reporting journalists. His firm belief is that there is no story until it’s published. There’s constant pressure to sell their story enough to be the leader on the “Priority-Story” board. The story of a child who lost her life in war is overtaken by the unexpected news of a lesser-known political party that raced to power!!
At AVIV, if we do not deliver, the story ceases to exist, and a promising product or feature could be lost forever — a missed opportunity even. Delivery is key, and on-time delivery is gold.
Looking beyond the obvious
Traditionally, most people search for images using text. One survey found that 18% of text-based Google searches deploy image blocks — forcing users to use Google Images instead. Visual search is coming, and Syte has embraced that wholly. This company delivers an AI model, with accuracy scores on the higher side, that dissects image components to provide targeted image search results, to some of the biggest retailers in the world. The possibilities they have created with visual search is enormous, pushing the boundaries for search-based innovations.
Retail e-commerce is inundated with this today, but will the real estate space embrace the change? What if our Seeker portals display results based on a certain feature or characteristic? What about an uploaded picture based search of properties?
Switching off — Digital Hiatus
Sounds cliché and obvious — almost preachy, doesn’t it? Well, the experience from spending Shabbat with a Jewish family made me realize it’s anything but!
Many may be great at switching off, but many others like me prefer to sneak in that one extra slack message while relaxing by the pool, you know, just in case? But to those who do manage to switch off digitally, I ask — for how long? Few mins? Couple of hours tops? What about a “switch-off” every Friday evening all the way to following Sunday, and simply enjoy some much-needed family time? I can sense virtual shudders running down some spines. The Jewish family celebrate that religiously every week. Shabbat has a special significance for most Jews. There’s prayers, great meals, cool conversations, play-time, story-time, all together — minus the digital parasites. Well worth practicing, don’t you think? And to those who believe their phones will be hacked if you are not constantly thumbing it, there is an Israeli startup producing phone cases that prevents any sort of hacking!!
These lessons don’t do justice to the depth I gleaned in Israel. Before my trip, there were 2 characteristics I picked up from the book Start Up Nation:
a) the chutzpah — Israeli’s love being questioned, and love questioning others even more. There appears to be this inherent brazenness which just makes them unique.
b) Consistent balance between rosh gadol (big head thinking) to rosh katan (thinking narrowly). They can easily zoom out in the midst of chaos, connect the dots to the solution, and then bring it all together as part of one big picture.
Characteristics we can all learn to imbibe maybe? I know I will!
Shalom !
