So Long Israel

It's a bittersweet moment as today marks our last day in Israel.  On the one hand we're excited: we came here to build businesses and learn about the Startup Nation in person.  Just a few days ago we pitched our ventures in what was truly the culmination of this experience.  So as we leave Israel, we know that our departure signifies the accomplishment of the task that we set out to complete.  We can all look back on the last two months and know that we got so much from this experience.  We took an idea and turned it into a business, which is no small feat.  Throughout the process, we became master of the elevator pitch, market sizing gurus and all too well acquainted with PowerPoint's features.  

But our time here in Israel means so much more than the business skills, professional development and important people we met.  Two months ago, twelve MBA's from four different universities arrived in Israel, many of us as total strangers.  We spent nearly every moment over the course of the ensuing 8 weeks together, working, playing and living.  When we board our respective airplanes today at Ben Gurion Airport we will never again be strangers because we shared together the experience of a lifetime.  From waking up to this beautiful view out our window:

to sharing our professional and personal goals on long bus drives across the country to visit a company or attend an industry conference, to the amazing Masada sunrise:

we have all grown together in ways we never though imaginable.

At the beginning of the trip, Asher Epstein explained his philosophy on expectations: "set low expectations and over-deliver."  Well, Asher, over-deliver doesn't even begin to describe it.  This has truly been the experience of a lifetime.  Every single one of has has grown professionally and personally, we've seen and done some amazing things, and if nothing else we are walking away with a deep appreciation for this beautiful country.

So long Israel.  It's been wonderful, and I'm sure it won't be the last time.

We Did It

Eight weeks ago we arrived in Haifa, Israel with the goal of building businesses out of Technion-developed technology.  We've met with business leaders, incubator directors, venture capitalists and industry experts; we've pitched our ventures every week and received tough but important feedback; and we've had access to industry advisors and mentors whose experiences in entrepreneurship have helped us navigate the intricacies of our own industries.

Last night was the culmination of this process, as we pitched our ventures to venture capitalists from top firms such as Bessemer, Sequoia and Giza.  Simply the opportunity to pitch business plans to top VC's is great, but after eight weeks of immersing ourselves in our ventures it was nothing short of impressive.  All six of our international venture teams presented eloquently, expressing the problems our businesses solve, the markets they address and the the amount of funding required to make them profitable.  We fielded tough questions from the panel of VC's, but after two months of habituation we were perfectly accustomed to the Israeli style of questioning.

Looking back on what we've accomplished, I am very impressed by our collective progress.  Eight weeks ago we were presented with technologies in fields ranging from medical diagnostics to imaging and chemical analysis.  We've taken these scientific innovations and built real business ventures out of them.  The experience of building a business is truly priceless, and not something that many people can say they have done.  From solving the problems we've encountered along the way to understanding the motivations and thought processes of venture capitalists who fund our ventures, we now posses the tools and experiences of seasoned entrepreneurs.

The Dingman-Technion Entrepreneurship
teams after our final pitches

The New Silicon Valley

Back in May I posted about why we were coming to Israel and what we would be doing.  For those of you who have followed us these past two months, you've seen some of the great things we've done, companies we've met with, and an insight to the projects we're working on.  When we return home and complete our second year of business school, one question with which we will be regularly confronted is: Why Israel?

A recent Yahoo! News article highlights the answer to this question better than I could.  Titled "Israeli innovators build new 'Silicon Valley'", our work this summer has been focused on just that.  In a country where 500 new startups form every year, our group of twelve MBA's from Maryland, Harvard, Emory and Peking University have have worked to build six companies of our own.  We're not engineers or scientists - Israel has plenty of those (indeed Israel is home to more engineers per capita than any country in the world).  Rather, we are filling an important gap in the Israeli economy, taking innovations and building well-managed business around them.

This Thursday we will put our last seven weeks of preparation to the test, pitching our businesses to representatives from some of the world's top venture capital firms.  We will seek to raise funding for our own startups as we play a role in building the "New Silicon Valley" that is the Startup Nation.

Tel Aviv Company Visits

Much has been made of the laid back business culture of Israel.  Sandals and untucked shirts are as much the norm as neckties are uncommon.  But despite Israel’s casual approach to business our full slate of company visits last Monday was anything but laid back.  With an aggressive schedule that started in Tel Aviv suburb Herzeliya at 9:00 AM and ended 10 hours later in Ceasaria, we met the full spectrum of Israeli business.

Better Place

The morning began with one of the stars of Israeli innovation: Better Place.  Founded with the mission of ending oil dependence, this company has taken the vision of electric cars beyond just hybrid and plug-in electrics by envisioning an entire infrastructure of battery switch stations.  In addition to the network of battery switch stations, Better Place actually purchases and maintains the car battery for the consumer, removing an expensive barrier for many electric car customers.  Better Place has begun to roll out their network in Israel, Denmark and Australia but will need to expand into larger markets to repay the billion dollars of funding their founder Shai Agassi has raised.  With the world finally realizing that oil cannot be the answer in the long run, it’s safe to say they have a head start on the competition in an industry that can do nothing but grow.

Rainbow Medical

With so many of our teammates pitching ventures in the bio medical industry, meeting the management of a company that specializes in seeding and growing medical technologies provided some great insight for our own projects and upcoming venture capitalist pitches.  Of their portfolio technologies, Rainbow showed off the Nano Retina, an implantable chip that restores sight to people who have gone blind due to acute macular degeneration.  What felt like something taken from a science fiction movie is currently being tested in animals and is one year from human trials.

Benchmark Capital

Whenever an entrepreneur has a chance to network with top tier venture capitalists, he or she must capitalize on the opportunity.  At Benchmark, we did just that, talking to venture capitalists on the current state of their industry, both in Israel and the US.  Before concluding the meeting, we of course took the opportunity to pitch our own ventures and gain valuable feedback from an experienced business builder.

Aqwise

While not always the hottest industry, water treatment is not only of utmost importance to the desert dwelling Israelis, but will soon be a concern for the entire world.  At Aqwise, innovation has transformed a sewage treatment company into a cleantech leader, as this Israeli company now treats a quantity of water in 8 hours that used to take 10 days.  With the obvious benefits of their technological solution, Aqwise is now global, counting the likes of Walmart and Coca-Cola as customers.

Microsoft

Employing 600 people in their Herzeliya research and development facility, Microsoft has marked Israel as a key asset in their drive to innovate and constantly reinvent themselves.  In meeting the management of their Innovation Labs, we saw first-hand how they create value by improving on and redefining Microsoft’s existing current product line.  And more importantly, we saw some of the new management techniques that Microsoft is employing to encourage innovation and outside the box thinking as a part of its larger strategic goal of remaining relevant in a rapidly evolving marketplace.  Whether we go into the high tech industry or not, their innovative techniques such as Out of the Box Week are implementable anywhere.

Emefcy

On our way back to Haifa from Tel Aviv we made on last stop in Ceasarea to visit new water technology startup Emefcy.  This company has developed the technology to not only eliminate energy consumption used in waste water treatment but in some case leverage the treatment process to generate electricity.  The paradigm shift that results from their innovation has clearly caught the eye of industry, as they recently announced an investment from General Electric.

Final Stretch

After an inspiring talk from Bessemer Partner Adam Fisher, last night we presented our financial projections and sales models to venture capitalists.  This was our last preparatory presentation before making our full sales pitch to a panel of Israel's top venture capitalists next Thursday night.  In order to make a proper fundraising pitch, we've spent the past seven weeks building up to this point.  From week to week we've studied and pitched on all aspects of our venture, each pitch building on the lessons learned the week before.

Seven weeks ago we started with our technologies and thought outside the box to build commercial applications around them.  From there we developed an understanding of the potential market sizes that our businesses could address and how our business models fit into them.  After understanding our markets, we heard from guest lecturers and then made our own presentations on the intellectual property on which our business are built and how to best protect and leverage it in our ventures.  At this point, we began to drill down to specific business-level aspects of our ventures, ranging from research and development plans, our value chain location and how to address the needs of our potential customers and partners.

In the last two weeks we've focused on the final steps of commercialization: the go to market strategy, marketing activities and our sales plan.  These specific actions allowed us to finally put financial numbers and projections behind our pitches and demonstrate not only how much money we stand to gain, but also how much funding we need to raise to get there.  With one more week to synthesize everything we've done and build a fundraising pitch to real investors, we have our work cut out for us.

Galilee

As I mentioned in a previous post, we recently had the opportunity to visit the northern part of Israel to meet with some of the more interesting companies in the country.  What I didn't mentioned in that post is that between all of the work, we found some time to take in the beautiful sights and scenery of the Galilee region.

Our first stop along this journey was the city of Safed.  At nearly 3,000 feet of above sea level, this city provides views over the countryside below filled with vineyards and dotted by pine trees.  Dating as far back as its biblical references, Safed serves as one of Judaism's four holy cities, which is noticeable from first arrival.  Walking the shop-lined cobbled streets of the old city, one feels as though he were transported back in time.

The team exploring Safed

After Safed, our next stop along the journey into the North was a rafting trip along the Jordan River.  Relaxing on inflatable rafts and kayaks, we paddled (or in some cases just floated) down the shady and tree-lined Jordan River which feeds the Sea of Galilee.

Once we completed our trip down the Jordan, we headed towards our hotel at Kibutz Ha'on. Nestled on the eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee, our accommodations faced west across the Sea towards Tiberias, making for an unforgettable sunset.

Galilee sunset

The next morning we were up early to tour a few of the countless holy sites surrounding the Sea of Galilee.  From churches:

The Church of the Beatitudes

to ancient ruins:

we took in the best sites that the Galilee has to offer.  We capped off our Galilee experience with some excellent hiking with great views of the entire region:

and an offroad jeep tour of the surrounding countryside:

After this weekend, we all came away with a deep appreciation of the history and natural beauty of the Galilee Region.  Warm and sunny by day, cool and quiet by night, and home to some of Israel's most hospitable people, I believe we are all eager to one day return.

Biotechnology and Food Engineering

As a part of our work at the Technion we from time to time have the opportunity to visit some of the cutting edge laboratories here to meet with Technion faculty and researchers.  Today, we visited the brand new facilities of the Biotechnology and Food Engineering Faculty housed in the Carol B. Epstein Building at the Technion.  There, we met with two brilliant professors, Esther Meyron Holtz and Uri Lesmes, who gave us an overview of their research.

Dr. Holtz prefaced her presentation to us by disclaiming the fact that she is first and foremost a researcher and that her work is therefore intended to further academic understanding and not to produce commercially viable products. With a room full of MBA students currently engaged in technology transfer, this provided us an opportunity to listen to her research through the lens of tech transfer professionals and provide feedback on potential commercial applications for the breakthroughs coming from her laboratory.

Focusing primarily on the role of iron in the body, Dr. Holtz's work has produced considerable insights into the understanding of free radicals in the body and the resulting oxidative stress that causes the human body to age.  With continued research on this topic, it is possible that her work could result in treatments for Chrohn's Disease, osteoperosis, cancer, neurodegeneration, insulin resistance and coronary heart disease.  As MBA students, we expressed to Dr. Holtz the enormous market potential of her work and encouraged her to seek intellectual property protection around which people like us could one day build businesses.

Then we heard from Dr. Uri Lesmes whose work involves the development of new techniques to produce healthier foods on an industrial scale.  With obesity reaching pandemic proportions there is a dire need to develop health foods that are not only appealing to the consumer but also affordable and commercially viable.  Much of Dr. Lesmes' work involves investigation into emulsion digestion whereby altering the chemistry of specific foods greatly affects the lipid digestion in humans.  The goal of such research is to develop emulsified foods that taste the same but result in less caloric absorption by the body.  In other word, Dr. Lesmes, asked, "Who wouldn't want to eat an ice cream that tastes the same but has half the calories?" We immediately understood that the social value and commercial value of such a breakthrough would be enormous, not to mention delicious.

At the Biotechnology and Food Engineering Faculty