Takeaways from Extantia’s trip to Israel — Part I
Israel is known for many things — great hummus, the Dead Sea, holy & majestic sites, beautiful landscapes, and of course, technology and innovation. Nicknamed “Startup Nation”, the country is one of the hottest technology hubs in the world, with a high concentration of startups per capita. Israel has around one startup per 1,400 people and Israelis have founded close to a hundred unicorns.
It’s no surprise that we decided to take our entire team to Israel for the PLANETech conference and spend a few more days on-site to increase our local understanding and deepen our relationship with key ecosystem players. With the help of our Israeli team members Eshel Lipman and Yair Reem, we planned an insightful journey to experience everything the country has to offer.
Traditionally, Israelis excelled in specific hi-tech industries, mostly software oriented. Now, we’re seeing the Israeli climate tech market gaining momentum and showing great potential. This recent trend change is accelerated thanks to the desire of bright entrepreneurs to make products which have an impact instead of other fintech or cyber solutions.
During our visit, we talked to many stakeholders that share our commitment to advancing decarbonisation. Moreover, we experienced the contagious entrepreneurial energy from climate tech founders that are ready to move this industry forward. Needless to say, we were very impressed with what we saw and would love to share some important takeaways from our time in Israel. Yalla!*
*’Let’s go’ in Hebrew. Pronounced ‘Ja-lla’.
TAKEAWAY 1: IT’S ALL ABOUT THE TEAM.
1.1. Where science meets entrepreneurship
If you are in the venture capital business, you have probably heard this a million times but here it goes again: team matters (duh!). Especially in climate tech. The most promising startups we visited in Israel (and frankly, also the ones we see in our deal flow) combine science and engineering with business acumen and experience. To put it simply, technical founders need to be able to market their solutions and raise money to scale. Without these skills, companies are not able to realise their full potential. And vice versa. A business-savvy team with a great track record and no technical knowledge is bound to fail at creating a significant impact.
The strong marriage between entrepreneurship and science is something Israelis succeed at. While on the hunt for climate tech companies with top-tier teams, we came across a few examples in Israel.
Our portfolio company H2Pro, enabling affordable green hydrogen production at scale, is a great example. On the technical side, they have Gideon Grader, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Technion, bringing over 30 years of experience in the synthesis of advanced ceramic materials and process engineering. On the business side, the company is led by Talmon Marco, a serial entrepreneur, who previously co-founded and exited companies Viber and Juno.
Grid4C has an impressive team and an even more impressive founder, Dr. Noa Ruschin-Rimini. They are a great example of an Israeli cutting-edge utility-tech company, which also established a highly accurate level of product-market fit (with the not-so-easy users to work with). Combining Dr. Rimini’s profound data scientist knowledge with a skilled team led by Eran Samuni and deep market research, the company is able to create valuable insights and new innovative ways of thinking about live consumers' behavioural patterns affecting macro electric grid operations.
Another promising Haifa-based team is Luminescent, developing a disruptive heat engine with unparalleled efficiency compared to any other heat-to-electricity technology. The team is led by Doron Tamir, an experienced leader and one of Israel’s largest developers of photovoltaics (PV), and the brilliant Prof. Carmel Rotschild, physicist and Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion. We had the pleasure to visit both teams, H2Pro & Luminescent, and see their notable progress towards commercial solutions first-hand.
These three teams show great promise. It is simply impossible to miss their technological expertise as well as their drive to execute their vision. We are very excited to see what’s next for all of them!
1.2. Why do you do what you do?
While having a complementary team is a must, carrying a strong sense of purpose may be just as important. For us, it’s crucial to understand what motivates founders. At Extantia, we always lead with “why” (read our own “why” here). As entrepreneurs and investors, we know building a company from the ground up, particularly in hardware and deep tech, can be challenging. And yet, this is why we are here. We want to know what drives founders and understand if they are in for the right reasons and in the long run.
In Israel, we heard many great personal stories. We were particularly moved by Erez Freibach, Co-Founder & CEO ZutaCore and Chairman at Carrar. Erez is a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience in finance and management, an MBA from Harvard, and multiple years of experience working in Silicon Valley. When choosing the R&D centre for ZutaCore, he could have gone to well-established tech hubs. Instead, driven by his personal beliefs, Erez went back to his roots, picking the city of Sderot (next to where he grew up as a child), the opposite of a bustling hi-tech hub, to be the new base for the company. His region is now home to ZutaCore’s state-of-art tech centre, aiming to attract top talent and develop this area in Israel that is usually not getting positive coverage during escalations with nearby neighbours.
Next time you will hear about a digital tech giant that was able to slush its cooling centres' energy bills, they may have done it with ZutaCore’s technology, developed in the northern Negev, the Israeli desert.
Now we want to know your thoughts. Have you ever been to Israel and experienced its entrepreneurial spirit? What’s your take on teams and must-haves to succeed in this industry? Can you relate to the idea of having a strong purpose to have success and longevity in what you do?
If you are curious to know the other takeaways from our trip, read the second part of the series.
