Silicon Valley may have competition from Tel Aviv and New York today in terms of where a blue-and-white startup should base itself, but that hasn’t stopped the Israeli entrepreneurial community in California from growing.
“Now it’s easier to make it elsewhere but if you want to be where it’s at, that’s still Silicon Valley,” Moshik Raccah, cofounder of IEFF (Israeli Executives and Founders Forum), tells ISRAEL21c.
“This is where the future is happening. This is where all the big technology companies are, this is where your partners are and this is where the best talent in the world is. Like New York for the money people and Hollywood for the movie industry, this is Ground Zero for tech.”
Israel’s Consul General to the Pacific Northwest Andy David recently estimated that there are 10,000 to 15,000 Israelis working in Silicon Valley today.
ISRAEL21c is itself a product of Silicon Valley, founded in 2001 by Israeli-American entrepreneur Zvi Alon (founder of the California Israel Chamber of Commerce, NetManage, Netvision and other startups) and later joined by Eric Benhamou (3Com, Palm, Benhamou Global Ventures) to highlight Israel’s creativity and innovation at a time when no other website was focusing on broadening public understanding of Israel beyond typical portrayals in the mainstream media.
While many Israeli entrepreneurs start their own businesses, others such as Johny Srouji (senior VP-hardware technologies at Apple), Tomer Cohen (head of content, LinkedIn), Ran Makavy (VP-growth at Lyft) and Noam Bardin (chief Wazer at Google) hold key positions in American companies.
“Some of the best talent from Israel is coming here. They are starting wonderful companies in Silicon Valley and they’re collecting talent around them which is not just Israeli,” says Raccah, who relocated from Israel in 2001 while working for Amdocs.
Some Israelis arrive with company relocation programs as Raccah did; some attend US universities…