Alumni of Israeli Intelligence Unit Help Arab-Owned Businesses in Israel
Tel Aviv, Israel — Many of the soldiers in Israel’s elite intelligence unit 8200 spent their army careers eavesdropping on conversations in Arabic throughout the Middle East. Today, the alumni of this same unit are working to help Arab citizens of Israel get into the high-tech world.
“Some say that 8200 is seen as the part of Israeli intelligence that fights Arabs so why should we work with them?” Nir Lempert, the Chairman of the 8200 Alumni Association told The Media Line. “It’s a little bit like the NSA (National Security Agency) in the US helping Russians in the US during the Cold War.”
As soldiers, Lempert said, they strove to contribute to Israeli society by protecting it from outside enemies. Helping Arab Israeli entrepreneurs is another way to contribute to Israeli society, he says.
“Our vision is to take the brand of 8200, with our strong technical experience, and use it to encourage Arab society,” he said. “We talk about coexistence and eating hummus together but this is the real connection for the future.”
Lempert was speaking at an event at the Tel Aviv stock exchange celebrating the eight graduates of the first Hybrid Accelerator, a five-month program that promotes startups with one or more Arab, Druze or Bedouin founders. Hybrid offers business development, networking, and mentorship from established entrepreneurs. It is funded and supported by the Israeli Ministry of Economy. At the event, which was attended by representatives of some of Israel’s largest venture capital funds, the budding entrepreneurs made short pitches.
Photo: Yarin Taranos
“This is Pepita,” Mohammed Abed-Illhadi, the co-owner of Horse Mate and a long-time horse breeder said as he flashed a photo of a handsome white Arabian horse on a screen. “She won 94.75 points at a recent competition. The horse breeding market is a five billion dollar market.”
The idea for Horse Mate, which sounds like Match.com for horses, is based on Abed-Illhadi’s experience as a breeder in the village of Iksal in the Galilee. There is no single database that integrates all pedigree and competition results. Horse Mate developed an algorithm for pedigree matching based on a database of all Arabian horses worldwide. He says he is trying to raise $900,000 to get the company off the ground. He says the five-month Hybrid, which brought him to Tel Aviv once a week, was a success.
“It was great,” he told The Media Line enthusiastically. “We did a lot of networking with people who opened our eyes and helped us with business development and marketing.”
His partner in Horse Mate is David Alon, a serial Jewish Israeli entrepreneur and an amateur horse enthusiast.
“I was going to start another company about healthy aging in place (a company who wants to help aging seniors stay in their homes), but then I realized that there are dozens of start-ups in this field,” Alon, wearing a black T-shirt with two gold horses outlined in gold nuzzling each other, told The Media Line. “Horse breeding is a huge market. Everyone wants to make money by breeding horses, and there is a lot of energy here.”
Other companies at the event include Skillinn, a company to match employers and candidates, EveryView, which uses a robotic system to scan a brick and mortar store and upload it to an online ecommerce site, and CleverPark, a company which makes sensors to be embedded below ground to give real-time date from parking spots to help cities manage their parking spots.
Arab citizens of Israel make up twenty percent of the country’s population but contribute just eight percent of GDP. They are consistently under-represented at senior levels of management, especially in high-tech. Part of the problem is location. Most Arab citizens of Israel do not live in the center of Israel including Tel Aviv and its suburbs where most high-tech companies are located.
Even more important, Arab citizens of Israel, most of whom do not serve in the army, lack the connections that many young Jewish Israelis establish in the army. Alumni of Unit 8200 have been especially active in Israel’s “start-up nation,” with many young graduates of the unit establishing start-ups.
Hybrid wants to help Arab citizens of Israel overcome these issues, but many believe that Arab Israelis could help Israeli companies export to the Middle East.
“I am sure these startups can bridge the gap between the Israeli economy and the Middle East economy,” Fadi Swidan, an Arab Israeli entrepreneur and the Director of the Hybrid Accelerator. “We have connections all over the Middle East.”
His Israeli Jewish partner Eitan Sella says that two groups are underrepresented in the Israeli labor market – ultra-Orthodox and Arab citizens of Israel – and the Israeli economy will stagnate if these two groups do not become more involved.
“We’re not doing anyone a favor,” Sella told The Media Line. “We are doing a favor for the Israeli economy.”