20VC: Israeli Resilience From Tech and Beyond with Michael Eisenberg and Adi Levanon

0:00Welcome back to 20VC with me Harry Stebings and this is likely the most important episode that we've ever done here on 20VC. The situation in Israel is nothing short of devastating and heartbreaking and we have to speak up. Power phrasing Martin Nemuller, they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. The time has come, we have to speak out against these atrocities. And joining me for this very important discussion, we have a dear friend of mine, Michael Eisenberg, co -founder of a left, and one of Israel's leading investors, and Addy Lavonon, founder and managing partner at Seller Ventures, a solo GP -founded Venture Fund, investing into AI -based solutions.

0:40And we're going to head right into the show's day. No intros, no fluff. Let's just jump right into the discussion. I am so grateful to you both for joining me today. I think this is probably one of the most important shows that I've ever done. So first, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks, Ra. I'm going to say how are you? Thank you so much. Now honestly I just love to start we said before we don't really have a structure to this I just want to start by asking both of you are your family safe and I just want to check in there first So you know my family is safe I have two sons who've been called up to reserve duty my son -in -law was called up yesterday actually my third son Who is down in the front line was called up also yesterday and I was son -in -law who was wounded in a previous Set of battles has gone to do was had guard duty down in the south of Israel Well, thank God, fine.

1:26Unfortunately, as you know, I lost a cousin of mine in battle on the first day when he went into protected town called Quarra -Azza, which is a border town where tens of people were massacred, and he was literally the first Jeep in, and he was unfortunately killed really in the first hour of battle. We had the funeral last night. I'm so sorry for that, Michael. Michael, of course, I'm my huge condolences to you and your family, and I'm glad everybody's safe. We are safe, thank God. It's it's I feel also a difficulty even answering that question because I live in Tel Aviv I don't I'm not anywhere near the south my family is fine We left Tel Aviv because honestly I have I have a student to be four -year -old and the idea of having her here The sirens was just too much, you know We've been trying to make a game out of it like most families like let's go downstairs and there's siren again And we try to explain but it's difficult so we left we're more north everybody's fine everybody's safe But I think the honest answer is we're safe, but we're not okay I'm gonna ask a series of questions which are probably quite basic, but I think there's a lot of things that people don't know and they look in.

2:30Where are we now? Because we see news and we see continued attacks on both sides. And I'm just looking going, I don't actually really know where we are now. Then we just lay the kind of groundwork of where are we today? Well, first, I don't like doing numbers, but I think it's important to understand the size of the magnitude of what's happening here. So at this point, the equivalent size of this massacre that's being done obviously is about, you know, over 25 ,000 Americans, which is eight times 9 -11, just to understand where we are at, what we've seen the numbers of casualties at this point.

3:05Yes, just proportional, not say 25 ,000 Israelis, I'm saying we're over 1100, I think more at this point. It's working 100, it was still 900 You know, you're missing, yeah. So those are just the numbers. Where we are at now, it's a continued, I mean, this is, you know, it was called a war, and it is a war. We are continuously appearing explosions and bombs. We continuously hear helicopters and fighter planes flying south, potentially also, you know, other side, north also to make sure that we're protected in all sides. It's very difficult. We basically have a country that is right now everybody's trying to help the forefront.

3:45Everybody's trying to help what's going on down south. So whether it's, you know, there's soldiers that are just in the army, but there's also now being a very large amount of reserves, people in reserves called. Everybody said by to probably somebody in their family that went to reserve. And I think it's just really important to understand what's happening from a social dance. really we're in a place right now where every Israeli knows somebody who has either been murdered, kidnapped or injured. And I think that's something that really needs to sink in. That's the size of Israel, that's the one degree of separation that is very unique to Israel.

4:22So there's like the numbers and there's the where we are like physically what we're doing in action, but I think also psychologically There's a lot that needs to be understood and how difficult this is. If I can just jump in Harry also, it's important to know that there's well over 100 Americans, Europeans, and Israelis in Hamas captivity. They were kidnapped from the music festival and they're still being held hostage by ISIS Hamas. You know, their families don't know where they are. I chair an organization here called Neville Network where immigrants to Israel who come from all over the world I've created a professional network to get ahead and tech.

5:01The woman who runs it with me and started with me, her name is Abby Own. She has a family who lived near the Gaza border, the Calderon family. All five members were taken captive and kidnapped by Hamas and are still there in Gaza. There's more weavers there, there's Germans there, there's Paris, there's Americans there, there's Starrange in 15 and 20 American citizens there at a minimum. There's a number of still missing and unidentified. Americans, your bans in many Israelis, of course, also. And the situation is very fluid. And to Aditi's point, the whole country basically is cold up on reserve duties.

5:36That's all the able -bodied men and even women. I have one of my best friends, and childhood. He has four sons and one daughter. And he has all four boys were cold up. And one of his sons, wife, who is in the Israeli Air Force was cold up too. That's what you're looking at here. It can't be yourself. When you say, cool up. Or does, what has been cooled up and being in reserve mean? Does it mean literally kind of radium wasting to go at home? Does it mean they have to leave home? And can you talk about your son? I have a sick care for me to ask you. You mentioned your son before we started. So on Saturday morning in Jerusalem, and eat something, the air raid sirens went off, we all went back and turned our phones because as a Sabbath observer, I actually didn't keep my phone on on the Sabbath.

6:19But we went home and turned our phones and our boys, one who's in a standing military service, and in other words, in reserve duty, got immediate messages, I want to be on standby, and want to get his gear together and come. And so we drove my, the younger one, that morning to meet his unit and to meet the buses, and he was taken to the border. Actually, he was first taken north to get his gear, and then taken to the border to go there, all his fighting gear. And then my second son, another son, was called up later in the day. He drove from here to his home because he doesn't live at home. He say goodbye to his pregnant wife Give a hug then went to his base to meet his unit And they've been getting older gear together and that's that's what it means to go to reserve duty And I was I was down south the yesterday for a bunch of hours And I saw people actually haven't seen what's generally see a lot.

7:13I haven't seen a long time And we're all giving each other big smelly hugs. I get the shower because I'm at home But these guys have been on the front lines for days and when I was down there just to understand There was another infiltration in the south from Hamas and it's the reserve soldiers who were guarding the border at that time who took out the terrorist nearby where I was. Kranow's micro, I sit here listening to you honestly, it's a 27 year old who you know would be called up to any form of reserve and I'd be terrified if I'm honest. And I'm kind of got goosebumps listening to you. How is your son feeling?

7:51And, you know, I know it was my disrated resilience, but this is something that is so alien to me listening. How is he and how are his friends responding? It's not easy. And it's not easy for them. It's really not easy for their wives and loved ones. I mentioned Abacusin was killed. We're a tight family. We're a large family that are very tight family. And, you know, that's affected everyone. How is it for them? I think, you know, they're concerned. They're concerned about the safety of the country. And at the same time, as a country, we took a gut punch, a really, really severe gut punch punch to the face.

8:30We're wounded, but not down. And I think when I ran it to the soldiers at the funeral in a night, some of which are also relatives, they said, we're going to get these guys and we have to be determined to get them. And they're fighting like lions against these terrorists. There were 1500 plus terrorists that infiltrated Israel, heavily armed, and just to give you an example of what happened. After shooting up the cars of the people at the music festival, they threw a grenade into each of the cars to blow the people up and burn the bodies. I know it's hard to hear this and it's very graphic, but it needs to be said.

9:03And when our kids look at this and unfortunately they've seen it because we have social media today, they are horrified but really, really, really determined and resilient to be back evil. I think an important thing to say about the idea of working the tech industry here. And you and I, we're always talking about tech and all the amazing things that technology does. And I think that's part of the story by the way, which is that Israel and Israelis use tech and social media to improve humanity, to improve the world. Hamas is using social media to spread fear and destruction, calling people or showing people as slaughtered animals.

9:40It's not okay and our kids do answer your question. Our kids get that. No one wants to go to war. Nobody wants to go to war. None of them do. I think my son wanted to say goodbye to his pregnant wife. No one does. But you gotta do what you gotta do and in this world we gotta do what we gotta do. There's no choice. It comes first. They came, like you said before, before we got on the air and then they came for me. That's these guys and they'll do it and London. The thing that I'm struck with when I listen to is And again, I said I would ask a lot of the question. So what happens from here? We see flights of incredibly brave Israeli men going back to fight for Israel.

10:18Here, your son being called up. What happens from there? You know, to the point you made right now, like, where in the world, what in war breaks out, can you not get a seat on a plane to go back to the country at war? Because all the reservists want to come home. It's incredible. I see. The C .A .M. the scenes of like cheering crowds welcoming home is ready. You have to understand what's going on in the back end. The work that's being done actually by far by the tech community, to be honest, is just unbelievable. The amount of people that are working on the back end to make sure that flights are coming out from New York, from LA, from all these different locations.

11:01We've become necessary equipment, making sure that all those seats that Michael mentioned are filled. Whoever wants to come back, whoever can come back, whoever can be in reserves and should be in reserves, I mean, the work is being done on all fronts. It's men and definitely women too. There's many women in reserves, many women called up. I personally don't know if we know the answer yet to what now because we're still so in it, to the point where we all have portfolio companies here. A lot of US funds have portfolio companies here within what might be known, I'm a new fund, relatively new fund, although I've been investing for years, but I have four portfolio companies, my newest portfolio company, the co -founder, was called to reserves when he recognized that there's not enough equipment for him and his team.

11:45The whole company now that I invested in, now they have 50 people there, and the CEO who I admire completely, beyond what he's done in life, but what he's doing now, he is on the phone making a constantly buying equipment, getting, you know, talking to the people that are buying purchasing, I know Michael's involved in this too. There's, I mean, it's endless and I've been talking to him, talking to people in the units that need the equipment, figuring out exactly what they need, getting things to the families, making, and text. I mean, it's hard to explain what's going on behind the scenes. And that to me is, you know, I don't know if that's the what's next, but the what now is so incredibly admirable.

12:26And that the, when we say, you know, Israeli founders have resilience and tenacity, it's just the Israeli people. The DNA here is like nothing I have ever seen. You know, I'm American born. My parents is really, my parents met in the army. My dad was a pilot and two of his brothers or pilots, what's going on though on the ground is beyond. And it's some. Yeah, I'll tell you a couple of things, Harry, on that front. So I gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal yesterday. I got a note for, I didn't see it come out, then one of my LPs sent it to me. But what I said there was that in unstable times, you want to invent in the most resilient people.

13:05And what these really tech community's showing now is just how resilient they are. You know, companies like Monday .com and Wix. One of my founders, Ami Daniel, I kid you not as soon as this happened on Saturday morning, he set up a forward command center in which he literally directed the rescuers Literally directed them to where the people were They've already you know systematized this using tech. They've had coders working non stops in Saturday to get this put together And it's now been integrated in the whole homefront command of the country How we rescue people and he rescued hundreds and hundreds of people using the tech community and the resources.

13:39What do we gonna create a full -length action movie out of what these tech community people have done? You know, Josh Coppeman wrote yesterday on Twitter, your morals matter more than your metrics. You know, Josh Coppeman refers around, we all know and admire him for 25 plus years. I think we're the same age. We're both old. We're playing a... Yeah. And, you know, your morals matter more than your metrics, for sure. And what we choose to prioritize at different times is what matters most and you know employees I think customers and investors see this and That's why if you ask what comes next on the on the battlefield.

14:15I don't know If you ask me what comes next in the next chapter in the state of Israel I think I do know and the Israeli tech community and that is much more investment is gonna flow here because people want to invest in Resilient societies in the 21st century as it's more unsure because people want to invest in the most creative fast -moving people on the planet and this was taking another notch. It was already there but this was taking up another notch internally. And two founders of teams in Israel and both of them said a third of our team from the R &D team has now been called up and then another said many of our sales reps have been called up.

14:53I said cool, what happens then? And so when you suddenly have 25 % or 33 % of your team called up to reserve. Just practically speaking, and I don't mean it can't necessarily in any way. But what happens to companies in those situations? I can tell you what's happening right now. There is a list going on, active list of 400 plus volunteers that want to work that would be helpful to startups, whatever they need, whatever is possible. And this is something that's going on behind again, Israeli resilience, how we're coming together. Upper Poet, you know what Michael said, you know, we're the tech tech, I think we're going to be even more united as we always are when there are things like this.

15:33Even though this massacre is, I mean, this is, this is far worse than I think we've ever seen, but we're just getting more united and helping each other. And like I said, it's ongoing. So from what I've seen from my, you know, portfolio companies, one female CEO, she has three kids, her husband is in reserves, but she's the CEO of the company and she's still working. Her co -founder, he just had a baby recently, they're working through all this madness too with having kids at home. I mean, it's, you know, being called to reserves, it sounds just like soldiers and that there's like the other side of things Or it's like there's there's a whole group of female VCs in Israel It's a whole WhatsApp group.

16:09The other's the global women in VC group that Jessica Feltz founded with Soutien We have that here in Israel too. I have never seen that amount of back and forth movement What do you need? What do you need? How can I help? What are you doing? What I mean? It's just unbelievable and all these women have kids at home because there's no school There's no, there's and my daughter is a nursery her she has a teacher who's who's a male and he was called to reserves I have a CEO who wasn't called to reserve duty He took a couple of guys who were not gonna be called to reserve duty cuz they're older Someone went to New York they distributed them throughout the country also some of them for resilience I read them and see we have another company that has a couple of older kind of longtime engineers at the company We flew two of them to Athens actually to make sure that there was full business continuity there and it's all working.

16:59You want to keep most of the people here obviously because people's families need them and like like a decent earlier Nobody in this country doesn't know somebody who was affected by this massacre Everybody knows somebody and in many cases everyone has a family member Just an example of that by the way before coming back to the resilience part of what you do at a company Y 'all Waldman as you know I interviewed me on my podcast I think you were like number nine and in season one but the all -woldman, the founder and CEO of Melanox, was number 10. He was the last interview in the first season of my podcast.

17:33The all -woldman company Melanox was purchased by Nvidia, and that's really the backbone that enables Nvidia to scale for AI. Tragedyly, his daughter and her boyfriend were murdered by Hamas Isis. The funeral was actually in a couple hours. The all -wold was involved, that has been involved for 10, 15 years in employing Palestinians and giving them upskilling and better incomes and better lives. And he took the same tragedy that so many of them. We all know them. And the tech community is so tight here. We all know each other. You see, I'm going to three funerals of tech people in the next 24, I'm sorry, three condolence calls of tech people who've lost children in the next 24 hours.

18:12His harsh eye was partnered, Kaden partners, and then a minister in the government in a venture capitalist also lost the sun and they all all been now lost a daughter. We all know people here. It's a tight knit community. It's a family. And that's why yes before about the reserve day, you know, for why these prospective my kids are her kids. I'm putting words in her mouth, but I'm sure she'd say that. With everything you said there in terms of, I mean, just the unbelievably immense challenges and life altering moments that we're going through now is one word I'm sorry again for the base questions.

18:48Is one working? Like does one invest? It almost feels, it almost feels transactional to invest, do you know what I mean? We talked about it yesterday. We talked about it last night. I don't know when we were talking yesterday. Was it one A a Michael? I, you know, it's, so I have a far less experience than Michael. I, you know, I'm working, I'm functioning. I have a fund, but I have, I don't know if I'm allowed to say it, but I have not yet closed the fund, but we're almost there. 76 % of the fund committed done a few investments, but like I should be fundraising right now. I was supposed to be in San Francisco today's Thursday.

19:21I supposed to be in San Francisco already now and be there for two and a half weeks. I said goodbye to my, I stood into my daughter. I'm flying. I'm getting on a plane. My parents are coming to help out like this was supposed to be two and a half weeks road show fundraising money 2020 in Vegas. I can't I have not I'm doing my best and I've obviously spoken to my LPs and I've spoken to my portfolio companies. I got introduced to an LPS today. I can't even, I don't even know how to do that right now. It's not because I don't care about the funds, I care about it immensely, but right now as we said, it's family, this is family.

19:56I have been on my arm hurts because I've just been and I've been on the phone constantly messaging, connecting, moving. It's a lot of stress. So as much as I am still doing due diligence calls. I told them before we got on guys, I'm not okay. I'm sure you're not okay either. I think everybody's doing our best. But to work in this situation is just not, I don't think it's expected. I think next week might feel different. I'm praying and hoping it will be, but during these times we are all, it's incredible. Like we said, all hands on deck. There's no other way to express it. And I don't expect, you know, I reach out to my portfolio, what do you need?

20:39How can I help you? So, you know, you still need to keep an economy running. Before I come to tech, you know, there are enough workers to actually supply the supermarkets and stock the shelves, because some of the people are called up to reserve duty. My 17 year old nephew, as a WhatsApp group of 2016 and 17 year old, who are going to supermarkets to help stock shelves, going to warehouses to help out and distributing food to others. and other things. So like that's going on too, in addition to what I did describing the tech community, because you got to keep an economy going. Now over to tech, we actually did a partner's meeting yesterday.

21:12So you're saying we could. Ed and my partner wasn't there because he was working on scaling the technology for the rescue efforts. But we had everybody else in their own because we wanted to go on. Yeah. We wanted to put together shared resources for how our portfolio companies could operate over the coming weeks in the most effective way, which we did before I called the emergency down south. So I left in the middle of the meeting. But here's the really crazy part. Let me tell you what happened at the partners meeting area There's a vest with that I've been working on for a long time the closings tomorrow And we bet we're gonna issue a capital call The CEO is in reserves is one of the first people called up and I called them up and I called it is two co -founders I spoke to him after I spoke to you last night at the 1 a .m And I said the money's coming guys and They're working nonstop by the way by the way Well, I'm investing in actually is related to a lot of uncertainty certainty.

22:02It's I would call it right on mission, but this is a customer meetings have been canceled for the most part or move to zoom About 25 % of that cut was on reserve duty, but the round is closing. I have another funny story I had to do a meeting this week. You know just things you got to do a deal I did not long ago we put some of the money in but we were waiting for a tax ruling because of a strange tax issue from the government Now there's nobody working the government and anything having to do with tax rulings right now We couldn't get it So I called the former tax commissioner. I said I need your help to get this done because my entrepreneur is freaking out And he said you must be kidding.

22:34I said no, he's got salaries to pay. He's got a we got to figure this out because people need to get paid So we did and that's Israel right so the former tax commissioner called up the tax people and said you need to finish this because people salaries Need to get paid and so it's done by the way if it wasn't wartime that probably would take another three weeks But now that it's wartime it got done That's a lot more than Michael. Yeah, a lot more. He's not gonna keep working. We gotta keep, we gotta keep going. It's hard. It's brutal. And none of us are sleeping. I promise you. Nobody's sleeping.

23:06I'm exhausted. But invigorate. We're gonna beat this. I want to come back. And this is gonna become a garden of Eden for technology and humanity and civic resilience. And how the world becomes a much better place. A garden of Eden. That's what it's gonna become. And it's gonna be hard before it's better. I always want to say that. Unfortunately, I say this with tremendous pain. I think it's got to be worse before it gets better But I think that's important to know you know all of us are just links into chain That's the you know way the world works. Ecclesiastes said it best We're all links into chain and we all want to make the world better for my children and grandchildren my grandkids By the way, just start out by was a minute late for the podcast because my grandkids just turned up They want to play in the yard That's also part of this is that these little daughter and my grandkids and my kids by the way I have only women in my house except for my one younger son because all their husbands are called up I have my daughter's sister -in -law is it is living with us because her husband was called up And so that's fine.

24:04I'm all working my daughter's out of startup She's working from here while juggling her three kids because her husband's protecting a village down south We got to work. I have the response from the global community been what you expected Is there anything that you would like to see that you haven't seen light light we said I was Because again, I admitted this before and I don't know what it says, but obviously I'm a heartbroken better say it, but I just feel as someone in London who's never been to Israel and who's not Jewish and doesn't know how Palestinian it almost felt wrong for me to comment.

24:33And then as we've said about the Nemo -lo game, quotes, is the response what you thought and is there anything else that could be done? Yeah, so maybe I'm going to address this for a second. I think the response from the political leadership of the UK of France, of Germany, of Austria, of the United States in particular has been stunning. Incredible of the tech leadership of Sachi Nadella, of Sundar at Google, has been astounding and has been correct and forceful in condemning the animalistic barbarian behavior of Hamas and the terror that they brought. Incredible. Most of the citizens of the United States, I think have been there.

25:18There's been some big fouls out of Harvard and Stanford at a few other places. I'd say that the European community, the kind of progressive woke any Semitic left has taken over a lot of American universities and they don't like Jews and that's just the truth. And in Europe, I think the same as been true, which is for the most part it's been support. But I got a cold last night. It's about to go up on my Twitter feedesses were done here from a very senior political figure in Europe You call me right before I got out of the folder the last night since I hope it's not too late But I want to call you he said the enemies of good people which is the Iranians and The supporters of a Hamas ISIS and the supporters of his ball are working overtime in Europe to try to claim that the images of the beheaded babies are false They're working over in Europe to try to get the press to stop covering it At the turn the tide on the media you need to get to work here So what I'm saying is that any person who's decent and even if you're not Jewish never been in Israel you just Love liberty freedom good people technology and innovation.

26:24We cannot let our guard down There are still very evil people in this world very evil people We like to look the other way. We want to see our association 2023 can't be It can't be but it is there are people and so Harry you know, what can people do? They need to speak up. You can't say it's not me. You can't say I'm not involved because it's a global problem. I'm telling you, the Neemire quote is correct. Then they came for me. And so we need people particularly in Europe and in the UK to speak up. By the way, for what it's worth, there have been a number of anti -Semitic attacks in London over the last few days.