How Start-ups are changing Israel
Managing partner of Aviv Venture Capital. Prior to Aviv, Mr. Chelouche served as President & CEO of Scitex corp. (NASDAQ: SCIX) a world leader in digital imaging and printing systems ($700M revenues, 4,000 employees). He is currently the Co-Chair of IATI-Israel Advanced Technology Industries. IATI is Israel’s largest umbrella organization for the high tech and life science industries.
Take-aways
- Israeli hi-tech companies are, on average, exiting too early (creating a drain on the Israeli economy)
- There is a significant and growing income gap in Israel, due in large part to the hi-tech community, that needs to be addressed
- Israelis view entrepreneurship differently than business people from other nations – much more likely to start their own company (due to many factors: lack of C-level positions in large firms in Israel; lack of risk aversion)
- There are opportunities to engage the Arab-Israeli and Orthodox-Israeli communities, more actively, in the hi-tech economy; organization have begun to do so
