← What's Your Number?
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Transcript64 lines
- [00:00]
Rakefet Rusak Aminoach
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Yael Wissner Levy
You are listening to an art media podcast.
- [00:09]
Yonatan Adiri
So, Yael, what's your number?
- [00:11]
Yael Wissner Levy
My number is 150 billion shekels. What? That is a big number. I know, but that is the estimated value of stock options currently held by Israeli tech employees. And the reason I'm bringing up this week is because that number is shifting. So after the boom years, tech valuations have cooled, companies are issuing now fewer options, and some of that paper wealth is also shrinking or becoming actually less certain. So this isn't just a big number, although it very much is. It's kind of a reality check on where we are in terms of tech compensation and tech compensation that's tied to a market that perhaps is no longer at its peak. Something of the past, if you will. Jonathan, what's your number?
- [00:50]
Yonatan Adiri
So mine is 97 billion shekels. In context, it is the Israeli education budget smaller than the option value of Israeli tech employees. One out of every seven shekels in the recent budget is invested in education. The budget almost doubled. Yeah, in a decade. But average student performance remains very low. This is outside ultra orthodox and ERA performance. The honest truth is that people's tendency to focus on them as the issue is not where the issue is. The, the mainstream is expensive and ineffective. And before you even ask who wins, your number wins big time. It is optimistic. It is reflective of the, you know, the sheer size and capacity of our industry. Last year, 2025, the stock options that were realized were at 50 billion shekels. And for our listeners just to understand, 150 billion shekels is like 7% of the GDP held in people's hands in a tax effective structure. Just imagine American tech at 7% of US GDP at share options value.
- [01:58]
Yael Wissner Levy
So maybe I'm shooting myself here in the leg because I do want to win this number, but it is a very select few. Like you're right at 7% of GDP, but within what percentage of the population, that's something to kind of go through. And that ties into your education number because you are right to keep on calling this out. I would say not only week after week, but really year after year you have been kind of saying that this system needs to be rebuilt from the infrastructure layer. As a mother of children in the system, I commend you for bringing this number up. And again, because it is something that must be fixed and that will lead to many more people getting part of those stock options. So I guess we can call it a tie, huh?
- [02:37]
Yonatan Adiri
All right, I'll take the tie. But really, 150 billion shekels. What a number. Wow. All right, let's go.
- [02:43]
Yael Wissner Levy
Let's start.
- [02:51]
Yonatan Adiri
Okay. It is 3pm here in Israel on a Tuesday. We're recording on a Tuesday. We have a great interview today for our listeners with Rekefet Rosak Aminoach. She is the first female CEO of an Israeli bank, the biggest bank at the time, who then transitioned into being one of Israel's leading investors in tech. Very excited for that.
- [03:11]
Yael Wissner Levy
And what's interesting also about Rekhefet is that there are not many people that kind of hold that highest, I would say, financial job in Israel and then kind of roll back in into startup world and start building from scratch. And so it'll be interesting to get her perspective both as someone who has been in corporate Israel as you, we can call it Bengalumi, but now is at the very kind of forefront of tech, especially during times of war. But first, as usual, we're going to take a quick look at some of the week's pressing news, our big shorts, and of course, the latest update on the Windex, the what's yous Number Index that tracks the performance of publicly traded Israeli based or founded companies. Okay, Yonatan, how's it looking this week?
- [03:50]
Yonatan Adiri
We're in the green again, 1.1% to be exact, beating S and P by almost half a percent and half percent below the nasdaq, which had a very strong performance last week. In general, seems like the market is awaiting a reduction of the fog of war in Iran. We're not getting any Trump bumps anymore. Also, reports are due of the Mag 7 this week. So I think the market's kind of like waiting. We are looking at Wednesday, Thursday, Friday for the big quarterlies. And those will kind of tell the story of where we are for the year. And I think the market will move on that. The biggest winners this week are Mobileye, 10% up, super strong Q1 earnings, and a raised outlook.
- [04:28]
Yael Wissner Levy
Wow.
- [04:28]
Yonatan Adiri
Yeah, Raised an outlook. Solaredge, a bit of an embattled Israeli company, climbed almost 25% on the week due to what seems to be a product innovation that fits the clogged energy supply chain. It's a very interesting one. We don't talk about those a lot. And Israeli companies sometimes do hold that kind of piece in the supply chain. But with data centers where they are with the need to build for AI, there are no wind turbines. Like, if you want to buy a wind turbine right now, there are like six or seven big factories worldwide that make them and the lead time could be four years. Similarly, for Nuclear energy and others. And so solar energy is now becoming actually the fastest to deploy. So if you know how to do that and you have the tech innovation to create the connectivity to the grid which SolarEdge has, you're in vogue. And I think that's part of what's happening with SolarEdge this week and maybe the last one. Wix is up 5.4% this week, which is a good sign, I hope, as part of a recovery. Your thoughts on the greens.
- [05:23]
Yael Wissner Levy
Listen, SolarEdge, that is a company, as you said, people had almost written them off and suddenly it's back in the conversation. And it's interesting, as you said, to see the geopolitical reasoning perhaps for it to be so far back in the conversation. Similarly, Mobileye, 10% doesn't sound like any tactical move. 10% sounds like conviction. Yes, there was a buyback, but I think there's more in there than just the buyback. Anything in the red?
- [05:47]
Yonatan Adiri
Yeah, I would say no notable reds this week beyond some minor adjustments. I will say that we are now almost in May. Windex is up 9.97% on the year compared to 4.17 for the S&P and Nasdaq at 577. Not bad at all.
- [06:02]
Yael Wissner Levy
Not bad at all. All right, let's go to our big shorts. So for our first big short, Yonatan, I want to take you to Kazakhstan and it's a story that might have flown a bit under the radar. I know, not under your radar, but other, other people in the world's ra Love Gazan.
- [06:15]
Yonatan Adiri
I travel there a lot.
- [06:16]
Yael Wissner Levy
There you go. This is why I'm going to ask you the following because it is a pretty interesting story to me. The Israeli president Isaac Herzog was just there earlier this week and he was talking about tripling trade and launching direct flights. And on the surface of it all sounds just like another diplomatic visit. But if you zoom out and there are a few interesting points to note here because first of all, Kazakhstan is one of the largest oil and uranium producers in the world. So that's very timely and it sits right between Russia, China and obviously I just said uranium, Iran. And in the context of the current Iran war and the broader regional instability, Israel is seems to be quietly diversifying its economic and strategic partnerships eastward. We've spoken about India in the past, but here I'm adding Kazakhstan. And now to kind of add on to all of that, the fact that Kazakhstan is aligning itself, even if it's symbolically with the Abraham Accords ecosystem, is also pretty interesting because it suggests that normalization isn't just a Middle east thing anymore, it's also a Central Asia thing. But still, and this is where the cynic in me is curious for your thoughts. Kazakhstan is playing this kind of game of like everyone is our friend, a multi vector game. And it's we're in good relations, Kazakhstan with Israel, Iran, Russia, the US and kind of avoiding choosing sides. So from a cynical lens, I would say Herzog's visit isn't about Kazakhstan moving forward toward Israel. It's kind of a hedging move from Kazakhstan. But how important is this trip of Herzogs to Kazakhstan?
- [07:42]
Yonatan Adiri
So I think your hunch is definitely there and you're right. I think the bigger context is Central Asia. Right. So it's not so much the east, it's the north. You know, we spoke about that diamond approach for Israel, India on the east, Azerbaijan, Central Asia in the north, the Hellenic partnership, Greece and Cyprus in the west to contain Turkey and then the south Somaliland and Ethiopia. So this is kind of like a zoom in on Kazakhstan, but it is also zoom in on Central Asia. Massive energy hub undergoing really tremendous shift. I mean if we just spoken about this prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that other forces would have footing in East Asia in what used to be the Soviet Union backyard, right? That Azerbaijan would win a war, total victory by the way, in the Nagorno Karabakh against Armenia. That Turkey will not do anything about that. And that facilitator of that new reality would be the US and not Russia. That opens the door for export from Turkmenistan through the Caspian Sea. We spoke about that on the NBZ episode. Mohammed bin Zayed through the UAE strategy traveling natural gas from the Caspian into Europe. There's basically a gold rush if you will, or like a bounty rush in Central Asia. That being said, Israel and Kazakhstan have been friends for 30 years. It is important for Israel to double down on Central Asia. It has to do with containment of Turkey, it has to do with securing its energy supplies. And it also has a lot to do with what Israel can bring to the area via agriculture, via tech, via water. The fact that the American administration kind of drew this into the Abraham Accord, the American sort of containment of China. Because if you can get Turkmenistan, if you can get Kazakhstan to kind of go west as opposed to north towards Russia and get them kind of to escape the monopoly either by the ex Soviet Union or by China, that's a huge win. I'm very happy to see Israel leverage. But as you suspected, there's a Bit more of a framing here than there is, I would say, new substance.
- [09:46]
Yael Wissner Levy
Substance, right.
- [09:48]
Yonatan Adiri
But, you know, at the end of the day, an Israeli president being accepted in Central Asia with such publicity and, you know, positivity is not something to be taken for granted.
- [09:56]
Yael Wissner Levy
Yeah, we'll take it. In these times, what is your big short that you're bringing us today?
- [10:00]
Yonatan Adiri
This may feel like it has nothing to do with Israel, but the US Administration realizing across the board what maybe some of our listeners have read in the book called Strategy of Denial by Eldridge Colby today. Number two in the Pentagon basically saying America cannot get to a point where it's competing with China because competing means possibly losing. It needs to deny China of certain assets. Right. This has a lot to do with Israel. It has a lot to do with the way Israel and America are fighting together in the war with Iran. But this may have kind of flown under the radar. The US Agreed and signed a pact that was in the making for a very long time with Indonesia to the effect that now America has almost American airspace above the Straits of Malacca. Some of our listeners may have heard enough of Hormuz. I'm bringing another straight into the mix. This.
- [10:50]
Yael Wissner Levy
Another straight for.
- [10:51]
Yonatan Adiri
Yeah, and this straight is actually even more important. This is a choke point that has to do with the Asian continent, has to do with exports out of China. It has to do with imports into China. The Straits drew after the issue with Hormuz, quite an issue where there has been a kind of rumor that given Iran's actions, maybe Indonesia or Malaysia would start tolling. The foreign minister of Singapore, who was worried about that, that Singapore is very much dependent on freedom of travel in this area, made it clear that they will not abide by that. And then this pact, which joins sort of the eastern flank, an American eastern flank from Japan, through Indonesia, through Malacca, that is now closing the east dimension for China. It's a big deal. It impacts Israel greatly. And I think, to our listeners, pay attention to what's happening in Malacca. It is now formally under greater American influence. It's a big deal happening with massive ramifications in the future geopolitically.
- [11:50]
Yael Wissner Levy
If Washington is stretching also across Hormuz and Malacca, that tells you kind of how seriously they view this as an economic threat or a part of an economic conflict.
- [12:00]
Yonatan Adiri
In essence, the international arrangements as we have known them are expired. And it just takes a couple of bold moves to make us understand it's Malacca, it's Hormuz. It is a step that was just taken 15 minutes ago by the UAE to withdraw from OPEC, from the oil cartel. Basically saying no would work since the 70s, doesn't work anymore. We're out. Right. With no prior notice. This is a big deal. Amjadaha, one of the UAE thinkers on social media, predominantly on X yesterday kind of hinted the guy has 650,000 followers saying tomorrow is going to be a big day. There was a lot of speculation. This is step number one in UAE charting its own path. These are things that would have happened across 20, 30 years. Right. And they're happening with weeks of intervals between them or even days.
- [12:48]
Yael Wissner Levy
Accelerated change. Yeah, interesting. We'll definitely, probably be speaking about this. This just happened, as you say, 15 minutes ago. So we definitely will be diving deeper into this next week as well. Let's go to our long play to Rekefetti. Okay, so today we have a very special guest. We're honored to be joined by Rakefet Rusak Amina, a managing partner at Team8. It's a venture fund with 1.5 billion under assets, under management. Rekhef it. You are a partner there and you build and invest in the fintech companies. Previously, Rekhef it served as president and CEO of Bank Lumi, Israel's largest bank, between 2012 and 2019. She serves on several boards for Non profits and on bn. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [13:36]
Rakefet Rusak Aminoach
Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.
- [13:38]
Yael Wissner Levy
So we're still in this kind of limbo zone of Israel at war. We constantly speak on this podcast of kind of the tech scene continuing to evolve almost in a vacuum, kind of in a different world. Parallel to Israel at war, the tech ecosystem keeps on building, raising, delivering. When you look at Israel tech right now, what do you think explains this resilience?
- [14:00]
Rakefet Rusak Aminoach
Okay, so we'll talk about resilience in a minute, but just make sure, let's understand what is the situation we are living in. We have soldiers who are risking their lives on a daily basis. We have employees who are on reserve duty for months, sometimes for hundreds of days in a row. We have companies like the startups that are understaffed constantly and also us on the home front. We have to maintain a sense of routine which is not really normal. So this is very challenging. Having said that, as you said, the ecosystem is, we can say, thriving. We still have exits, we still raise money, we still deliver. And my answer to your question is, first of all, it's sad to say, but we are used to it. We are used to deal with challenges. We are used to be in a state of war. We are used to uncertainties. This is part of our life. And I think that that explains part of the resilience. This is part of the story. We have to think about these Israeli entrepreneurs that start their career when they join the army at the age of 18, and they have to deal with complex situations, with challenges when they're very, very young. This makes them much more resilient than in other places. And what we get, we get Israeli founders that are wired for pressure. What I see when I look at the tech ecosystem, this is an ecosystem that doesn't panic. It pivots, it changes what they have to change. It rebuilds, but it doesn't panic. This is very unique to Israel and it relates to the war, it relates to the army, it relates to our situation. Then you get another skill which is very important, which is the technical skill. Many of them finish the army, get out and come with a lot of technology, digital capabilities that you don't see in other places. And on top of all this, we have to mention our mindset. This is what we call the chutzpah. We don't get no for an answer. We don't take things the way they are. We check everything. We want to change everything. We are Israelis, and the whole story brings us to be a country with an amount of startups per capita, which is fantastic. And maybe the core of the story is that even when you look at a normal course of business for a startup, you have challenges on a daily basis. Sometimes great challenges, sometimes you have to deal with very complex situations and you are very young and you don't have a lot of people to go to and get help. And this is why the resilience they have from the army is so important.
- [16:45]
Yonatan Adiri
Is it fair to say, given your unique vantage point as a leader in the. In the banking sector and then now as an investor, that these dynamics are also reflected in the investment scene in Israel. The Israeli investors are not classic investors. Some of them have been in a teammate. You have quite a number of them on the investor side who have built companies themselves. I think it's also a unique piece in how our infrastructure is built.
- [17:09]
Rakefet Rusak Aminoach
First of all, I agree, and it's especially very relevant these days. For example, just a strange thing, probably for people who don't live here, when our startups are understaffed, we bring our people and we help them, we work with them, which is not very common in a regular ecosystem. The startup ecosystem, it's very specific for Israel. So the investors are also a bit different. You're right.
- [17:34]
Yonatan Adiri
So, Kef, let's get a bit more personal. As again, as we said, you have a very unique vantage point, you've led a unique career, and you led the biggest bank in Israel through an interesting transformation in and of itself. Can you share a bit with our audience about that journey?
- [17:50]
Rakefet Rusak Aminoach
Okay, so just about myself. I was raised and born in Israel in Tel Aviv. I live in Tel Aviv with my husband. Reem, who is a businessman, was the former financial advisor to the chief of staff of the Israeli army. I have two daughters. Dana is at Stanford at gsb. Gal, the younger one, studying computer science in the Hebrew University and communication design in Bezalel. So this is my family and this is the most important thing. Then we go to my career. My career started as an accountant. I was a partner and then the CEO of KPMG in Israel. But this was many, many, many years ago. So let it go. In 2004, I joined Bank Lumi. I was a head of corporate division and the chief credit of the group. I think this is one of the most formative year of that decade. It was very difficult professionally and emotionally to deal with all these huge customers. And in 2012, I became the CEO of the bank. Although the bank had great customer base and great brand and we were number two back then together. After Bangkok, we had lots of challenges because the bank was kind of traditional incumbent. Revenues were stable for many, many years and expenses were going up 7,8% a year. But because of regulation or IT or agreements with unions, et cetera. So it was very much at the beginning of my tenure that I realized that if I don't find a solution, the bank will start losing money under my leadership. A very bad way to end my career. So I was looking for an idea and I think it was a month or maybe six weeks into my tenure. I visited a branch in the north of the country and I got in and the line was very, very long. And I saw some young kids, age 20, probably sitting there with their iPhones, waiting online. And then I introduced myself to one of them and I said, can I ask you a question? I said, sure. So how long are you waiting? And then he said, you see, I have a check for my parents. I'm going to deposit it, I have to pay a certain bill, I don't remember. And then the rest of the money will be deposited to a saving account. I came back to the office and I said to my chief of staff, actually I had an aha moment. Either we are able today to do this online with these kids or if we are not able, we should be able tomorrow. And this was actually the beginning of a very aggressive digital transformation that was very early on compared to my peers in Israel and abroad.
- [20:37]
Yonatan Adiri
It wasn't even called fintech back then.
- [20:40]
Rakefet Rusak Aminoach
No, it was digital transformation. And I remember the days I was traveling to the IMF in Washington with my chairman, David Bourdette, and I was trying to ask the other CEOs there about digital digital transformation. And it was only three, four years later, 2015, 2016, that we came back and David Bourde told me, you know, this year was the first time that they wanted to discuss what you wanted to discuss, because before that I was trying to talk about digital, but I couldn't find real interest in it. So it was very early, but we did it very quickly. Made Lumi number one company in Israel via digital transformation. This is what made me fall in love with the power of technology, because I don't have a technology background. So this was like the first time I felt that technology is a kind of a miracle. And this was the end. And after that I decided when the bank became number one and I had happy shareholders and happy employees, I said, well, now it's time to go on and high tech is the thing. So this is how it all happened.
- [21:48]
Yael Wissner Levy
In hindsight, that sounds like a very natural next step, going into high tech and becoming an investor in venture building and the world of startups. But at the time, take me back to kind of like your. Was it that obvious to you that that would be your next step? I don't know many heads of bank in Israel that kind of went in and rolled their sleeves up again and went into the world of startups.
- [22:09]
Rakefet Rusak Aminoach
So first of all, the first thing that was not very simple is the decision to live, to go and say, well, enough is enough. Seven and a half years at the helm of Lumi, now I have to live. And when I try to explain why I decided to leave in 2019. So it's funny because my answer to this question that I was asked many, many, many times has evolved during the years. So the straightforward, basic answer was, I felt that I've done it and I did what I had to do. And now this is like my comfort zone and I want to continue and do more things. But I want to be fair with you and tell you the updated version that I realized a few years later with more perspective of age and years. And it started with my childhood when I was very young, in elementary school and I came back home, my father used to Ask me with a test with a grade like what did you get? And I would say 99. And then you would say, where is the missing point? And when I came with 100, you would ask me how many more 1- hundreds there were there. But I think that today I understand how much that impacted my life because I think that in 2019, when the bank was number one company in Israel, actually market cap wise, I felt that being in my comfort zone is the 100 that I don't want anymore. And I decided that I want to do something which is totally, totally outside my comfort zone. And I'll tell you the truth, it was difficult because I left the bank and I switched my life. We have to add that exactly when I left, which was the end of 2019, Covid started. So the whole thing was a mess. But I had to raise money to start working in English, to work with people who were the age of my daughters. It was so different from everything I had before. But I cannot be happier than what I am today because I feel today that I'm totally part of the high tech scene. I understand it. I know exactly how to help my founders. I learned a new world, I open to myself, a new world which is great for me.
- [24:21]
Yonatan Adiri
What made you transition into being an investor and your reputation personally, the fund's reputation is as of being hands on, founder friendly and kind of being there, as you said, for the founders as they grow.
- [24:34]
Rakefet Rusak Aminoach
It was October 30, 2014. David Brodette, my chairman, had his 70th birthday, got an email, a ransom email, saying, we have data of your customers. If you don't pay $3 million, we will sell it in the darknet. This was the beginning of a 16 days event, very bad ones that ended with the gang going to jail for 14 years.
- [25:00]
Yael Wissner Levy
Wow.
- [25:01]
Rakefet Rusak Aminoach
But within this story, my husband Reim introduced me to Nadav Zafir. Nadav was back then, the former 8200 commander that had just left the army with two of his best people, Israel and Liran. And the three of them were at the beginning of building a company, building machine in cyber. This was the beginning, 2014, when I met them. I was with my cyber event. They came to the bank, they were amazing, they helped us, they found where it leaked from. And at the end, Nadav and me stayed very good friends. Fast forward five years and I'm telling Nadav, I'm going to Fintech. He said, hey, wait, wait, wait. Going to Fintech, we have cyber, why don't we join forces? You will duplicate our Model from cyber to fintech and eventually we will build a group that will be a great group with multiple domains. So this was the beginning. First of all, it was not that easy and it was not really copy paste because fintech is so different from cyber. It had a lot of obstacles and challenges on the way. But at the end today Teammate is an amazing unique venture group who builds companies in many domains. Cyber, fintech and infrastructure and data and digital health. And we don't only build, we also invest. Personally I'm much more passionate on the building thing, working with entrepreneurs, building the core team with them, ideating with them, building the go to market. This is the unique thing about teammates because we are much more active working very closely with entrepreneurs.
- [26:41]
Yonatan Adiri
Kefit, can you share a bit in terms of building companies? Are there specific stories, specific companies that you currently see at the portfolio or from before some of the successes, some of the things that didn't work as you planned, that sort of tell the story of the foundry, that show the model why it works well, these kind of stories that maybe otherwise these folks would not have become entrepreneurs if it hadn't been to teammate, if it hadn't been to this unique approach.
- [27:05]
Rakefet Rusak Aminoach
The way we work is we ideate ourselves. We are not waiting for founders to bring an idea to the table. We ideate, we think about challenges or big problems that we want to find a solution to and then we look for entrepreneurs to work on the idea also vice versa. So sometimes we look for entrepreneurs and we find entrepreneurs that will not work on the problem we found and we are joining them for something they built. So there is no one specific formula. And a great example that I would like to share is a company that is called April. April like the month and April is a company that think about embedded tax solution. So we all know Intuit you can file your taxes in the U.S. when you are 18, you have to do it. What April is doing is actually we build with with LLMs. Before we had ChatGPT. Back then it was wow. But we built an engine that can file your taxes automatically and the engine is embedded within fintechs and banks. So you get into Chime as an example, the largest, I think NeoBank in the US and very close partner of ours in April. And you have this April bottom and you file your taxes in a few minutes and the whole thing that is supposed to take a week for everyone. Before Epreal was created, you do it in a few minutes. This is an unbelievable story and the way it happened, we actually ideated and Built the idea for April with our core investor, our main investor when I left the bank. When I came, we met Euclidean, who are the family office of Jim Simons, the CEO of Euclidean. He was very passionate around wealth management and how to run your life as a US citizen. One of them is tax at the end of the day. Epreal was created out of those discussions. Nothing to do with founders. And today Epreal is one of the most successful companies in fintech. A teammate came from our very unique venture model.
- [29:23]
Yonatan Adiri
That's great. I totally agree. I think this journey is truly remarkable and what you guys did in the foundry model in making these companies be born out of understanding the need on the corporate side and then being able to build and bring the top Israeli talent to that. And I wish when I was an entrepreneur I had that capacity. In the first years I had an incredible investor who believed in me and believed in what we did. It was a high risk dynamic. He doubled down on us when we failed in a clinical trial. That's so rare. And having an institution like that, the way that you guys built it, really promises higher delivery. And it goes also back to the question of how does Israel continue to deliver? I would argue that it has to do with entrepreneurs, but it also has to do with the type of investors we have. And to me, the biggest vote of confidence in the industry is recurring entrepreneurs going back to building companies and going back to being angel investors and partnering with the likes of our big VCs.
- [30:19]
Yael Wissner Levy
Okay, Rakefat, I'm hearing all of your stories and you've really seen the industry almost from every angle. What do you think is the biggest threat now to the tech ecosystem we have on the cyber front? Things like Mythos coming out. Cryptocurrency is a very strong shekel. There's a lot of things happening. What do you think from your end now as an investor and a builder of tech is the biggest threat to fintech companies?
- [30:42]
Rakefet Rusak Aminoach
I would say that for me, AI is the bigger threat for the financial world as a whole. I can relate to bny. They take it as an amazing opportunity. And it's very clear that AI is changing the world upside down. And if you look at it pace wise, magnitude wise, this is nothing like we saw in the past. So when we look at it from the startup's perspective, we are trying to come with an answer, to come with solutions to the problems that the incumbents face. When I led digital transformation at Lumi, it was very difficult because at the end you are trying to change a mindset of an organization, and it's always difficult. But today I understand it was nothing compared to what's ahead of us now because we knew we are moving from brick and mortar to digital. We knew how the roadmap looks like, we knew where we are heading and we were going there. And yes, there was an internal resistance, a major one, and we dealt with it. But today, the magnitude and the pace is unbelievable. And one of the things I learned from the transformation I made is that people need time in order to internalize because you are asking them to change their habits to working habits, to unlearn what they knew before. You're trying to rally them around a vision that they hardly understand. So it takes time. And the problem is that with AI, there is no time and you don't know where you're going. So I believe that the only ones that will survive are the incumbents that have great leaders with agile mindset. And I am privileged to be a board member at BNY, where the CEO, who is a new CEO, is leading a fantastic transformation with AI that is changing a bank, which is 2,42-year-old bank, unbelievably old, changing it upside down, all with AI. But it's very rare. Most of the CEOs I talk with will tell you in a conversation that is not recorded, like this one, I put money in AI. I don't see the returns. I don't know how I'm going to see the returns. It's not easy. And what we are trying to do at Teammate, we're trying to build companies that will be able to join forces with this financial system and help them do it. Sometimes it's partnering, sometimes it's building for them. Sometimes we build companies and they buy them. But the idea is that the world of innovation, this is a place that can give a lot to the old financial system. This is something that we didn't have 15 years ago with the digital transformation because as Jonathan said, there was not a word like fintech.
- [33:42]
Yael Wissner Levy
Are you worried that AI will mean a lot of job losses? What does that mean for society also here in Israel?
- [33:48]
Rakefet Rusak Aminoach
I don't want to say that I'm worried because I've been there with digital. I started my tenure at Lumi with 14,000 people. I ended it seven and a half years later with 9,000, which is a big drop. And today with Hanan moving forward very aggressively, as Hanan likes and knows, there are, I think, less than 7,000. So the trend of reducing headcount was there. It's much faster as everything in AI. But the thing is that people start doing other things. They are not disappearing. So I'm looking at AI as a great opportunity for change. People will lose their jobs, but I believe they will do other things. And at the end, I see it bny very clearly. We have already digital employees, but what do they do? They do the simple stuff that people didn't like to do anyway. And the humans, they do the work, which involves discretion, creativity. So I think at the end of the day, it can upgrade us, all of us. But it's a process and it will take time and some people will pay price in the middle, that's for sure. That's always true.
- [35:01]
Yonatan Adiri
Thank you very much for spending time with us for, you know, helping our audience understand what creates an investor in Israel, what kind of a journey and how that looks in times of war and in peace and what drives you. And really grateful for the time and for the unique contribution to the conversation.
- [35:17]
Rakefet Rusak Aminoach
Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, Yair. Thank you for having me very much.
- [35:21]
Yael Wissner Levy
Thank you so much,
- [35:28]
Yonatan Adiri
Yale. That was great, listening to Rakefet's vantage point. Unique experience.
- [35:32]
Yael Wissner Levy
Yeah. And the fact that, you know, we take it for granted that the tech ecosystem keeps on building and growing during this time. But, you know, she's seen other kind of digital transformations. As she said, AI is a very accelerated version of that. But that was a very good perspective. All right, let's go to the words of the week.
- [35:49]
Yonatan Adiri
Yeah. And so listen, this week, I think, was very easy. It was a lot to pick from. But last year, Alex Karp, the CEO, the founder of Palantir, published a book that I think is a quintessential and a critical book to read this in these years called the Tech Republic. It is a tech entrepreneur, albeit he has a PhD in the impact of language on violence, which he got from the Frankfurt, the Goethe University in Frankfurt. There is reason why he sort of pushes out a somewhat political idea, political framework that was published in a shortened version, redacted version. The 22 points of the Palantir manifest this week on social media. More than 30 million viewers in like, I think, 72 hours. And each point is a point in and of itself. The one that picked my sort of imagination is actually the first one. It has a lot to do with how Israel conducts itself. And here's what Alex Karp chooses to open his manifest with. Here are the words of the week. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the Defense of the nation. Now, the reason why I think this is fundamental. I mean, for an Israeli, that's a given, right? Like we go in the reserves, every go out. We're in the tech scene, we're in the defense scene. It's very clear that every Israeli, even if he's not in the tech scene, has to take part in the defense of the nation. That's part of the entire dynamic with the ultra orthodox who are not taking part in the defense of the nation in larger parts. Alex Karp had the moral fortitude already when you wrote the book to say, hey, there's something wrong if the most innovative part of our country thinks defense tech is uncool. There is something wrong if you don't feel, and I think the way he puts it here is a moral obligation, that you're the smartest people, the most privileged people in the country and you leave defense tech to the big old corporates, are going to do it slowly and have maybe lesser of a talent and move slower such that our enemies are becoming stronger. And so I think this is a very. While it made such a big noise globally for us Israelis, it's kind of straightforward. We have that responsibility as tech entrepreneurs or as sovereign Jews in the land of Israel. I just found the fact that he started the manifest with this insight to be very powerful.
- [38:13]
Yael Wissner Levy
I agree. I also think that kind of there used to be a dichotomy between Silicon Valley and Washington and that change in the past few years depending upon who was in the White House. So I'm not even going to go into the politics of it all, but depending on who was in the White House, we started seeing now more people kind of traveling to and fro Silicon Valley in Washington, which I think overall is a positive trend. Right. We, we don't want this dichotomy. You're right that in Israel we don't have it as much because of the military, but we still, we have this kind of like bubble of the tech ecosystem. Similarly, but different. I'm saying it's similar but different. And we do start seeing now more and more tech people going into government. Just today, I think Gadi Azinkot announced that Shaul Mary d', or, who started as a public servant and went into tech and now is back into politics. I applaud anyone who can see both sides of both, like business and government. You don't want to have it too cushy. But for sure, I don't want that dichotomy. And good on Alex Karp kind of to put it in front of all of our faces.
- [39:15]
Yonatan Adiri
Yeah, I guess that's it for today's show. Thank you for tuning into Ark Media's what's your number? We hope you found it interesting. And if you did, be sure to like, subscribe, rate, review. You know the drill. Most importantly, share it with others who you think will find it interesting. If you want to make suggestions or share your feedback, please reach out to us at what's your number? @arcmedia.org.
- [39:43]
Yael Wissner Levy
What's your number is an ARC Media podcast. Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin. Already production manager is Brittany Cohen. ARC's community manager is Ava Weiner. What's your numbers? Interim executive producer is Beth Perlman. Sound and video editing is by Liquid Audio. Our theme music is by Midnight Generation. I'm Yael Wissner Levy.
- [40:01]
Yonatan Adiri
I'm Yonatan Adiri.
- [40:03]
Yael Wissner Levy
See you back here next week.
- [40:04]
Yonatan Adiri
See you next week. Let's see what happens at this pace of change. Let's see what happens between now and when we meet again.
- [40:10]
Yael Wissner Levy
For sure.
- [40:14]
Yonatan Adiri
This podcast offers general business and economic information and is not a comprehensive summary for investment decisions. It does not recommend or solicit any investment strategy or security.