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- [00:04]
Michal Ivram
You are listening to an art media podcast. So, Jonathan, what's your number this week?
- [00:12]
Jonathan Adiri
It's a big number. It's 2 million, 2 million square feet that Nvidia decided to invest in growth in Israel. That's basically doubling its size in Israel. It's about to become the biggest employer taking over Intel.
- [00:24]
Michal Ivram
My number I thought was big, but is going to seem really small in light of yours. It's 300 million. That's $300 million capital raised by quantum computing startups in Israel so far in 2025. That's total. And just for 2025, by the way, I noticed one very quirky and funny trend. Every single one of these startups has a Q in the name and it's not all quantum something, but they all have a Q. They're all going for the same kind of vibe here. So who wins?
- [00:54]
Jonathan Adiri
I'm with you on the Quantum. I'm with you on the Quantum. No, seriously. I think it's amazing to think that the small ecosystem like Israel continues to play you sized role here. And I think it's a great number and it makes me really optimistic. I think we're seeing growth in the industry and growth in the sector. It's becoming more science than fiction. So, yeah, I think your number wins.
- [01:14]
Michal Ivram
All right, maybe we both win this time because both are winners. Let's face it. Like, these are incredibly positive numbers. So onward. Welcome to what's yous Number from Ark Media. I'm Michal Ivram.
- [01:33]
Jonathan Adiri
I'm Jonathan adiri.
- [01:34]
Michal Ivram
Jonathan, it's 11:00am here in Palo Alto.
- [01:37]
Jonathan Adiri
9:00Pm here in Israel.
- [01:39]
Michal Ivram
On today's episode, we're going to answer all of your questions, your burning questions on the Windex, our very own index.
- [01:47]
Jonathan Adiri
Lots of DMs. Lots of DMs on that one.
- [01:49]
Michal Ivram
Lots of D. Yes. Jonathan's phone is blowing up. Everyone wants to know about the Windex. So answering popular demand here, we want to do our long play today, our deep dive into one issue on the Windex. We're going to talk about why we created it, some of the methodology, and you know, what we can uncover from some of the more general trends that we see on the Windex that are incredibly indicative of the Israeli market and economy overall.
- [02:17]
Jonathan Adiri
Yeah, a bit of what makes it unique and why even come up with it in the sense that Israel's overly overrepresented in the New York Stock Exchange and in nasdaq. There's a reason for it. And by building the index, we're going to kind of take a Look under the hood of why is it that it's happening and what makes Israel that unique.
- [02:34]
Michal Ivram
Lots of news to get to first. So stay with us onto our big shorts. Let's kick things off with this week's Windex. You're going to get so much Windex on this episode. So Jonathan, how is it looking? Give us just high level numbers and what you're watching right now.
- [02:53]
Jonathan Adiri
So overall, one of those weeks where all three are in the green, Nasdaq S&P 500 and the Windex all above 1%. Nasdaq at 118%, S&P at 139 and the Windex winning both of them at 178. Biggest mover on the green this week is again an equity we've been discussing in the last couple episodes at SolarEdge. Very, you know, very much fluctuating, volatile. Quite a rollercoaster there. This week it's 39.9% up in a single week.
- [03:22]
Michal Ivram
You know what, SolarEdge investors, I hope they're taking Xanax or something because these are insane swings.
- [03:29]
Jonathan Adiri
Yeah, lots of retail actually this time, some analytical capacity going into the stock. Predominantly it's the big beautiful bill that passed that in a way hurt some of the green incentives but prolonged the nature of the reduction in subsidies. So the stock performed well. I think the entire sector overall performed well. It was in SolarEdge kind of overperforming. Two more notable greens this week that are cool. We're going to talk about some of them as we deep dive into the Windex. One is similar web. One of my favorite companies in Israel growing 16.32 and one of Israel's only kind of pure industrial equity in the New York Stock Exchange. That is ICL. Israel Chemicals rising at 8.33%. A very important Israeli company for the local market and global. I think that's so much for the green Michal on the red. Not much actually. Quite a number of single hand countable stocks this week. The most important one is Zim Israeli shipping company declining by almost 4 and a half percent mainly due to a jittery market expecting its quarterly report. But overall Israeli stocks in New York performed really well this week, both because the tide was there, Nasdaq and S and P. But also it's been another great week for Israeli equities also here at home.
- [04:46]
Michal Ivram
It seemed like a pretty good week all in all over here in the United States as well. I mean you shared of course the s and P500 and the NASDAQ numbers a really much more Positive than expected. June jobs report, which I think helped with some jitters over here. But as we mentioned before, lots of really, really critical earnings reports that are coming up over the next couple of weeks, especially from the tech giants. So I think all eyes continue to be on that.
- [05:15]
Jonathan Adiri
Yeah, July is going to be very hot. We saw Tesla declining today over the bash on the political side between Elon Musk and President Trump. What I'm going to focus on the quarterlies is was this a sort of dull quarter or did we see growth in the numbers? Because, you know, with the tariffs going on and the trade dynamics with China, which also unfold in July, it's going to be a meaningful July. The famous saying to sell off in May, I'm not sure. I think it's going to be quite an interesting market. Lots of opportunities, lots of risk.
- [05:46]
Michal Ivram
All right, let's move on to another big piece of news. You mentioned it at the top, but semiconductor giant Nvidia, the world's most valuable company by the way, with nearly $4 trillion market cap, like, who would have thought we'd be here? Remember when 1 trillion was a huge threshold? Right.
- [06:05]
Jonathan Adiri
As I was researching for this episode, I saw some of the total market size, total cap, cumulative of some countries. So the entire cumulative market cap of the Stock exchange of India is 4 trillion. Right. Just to give you a sense, a single company worth more than the entire market cap of companies in an economy the size of India or the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Also, total cumulative market cap of 4 trillion.
- [06:29]
Michal Ivram
It's mind blowing. It's hard to fathom this kind of market cap. By the way, every time I have seen Jensen Huang speak, CEO of Nvidia or interviewed him, he's been wearing a leather jacket that's kind of his signature look. So he can buy a lot of leather jackets at this point in his career. But anyways, as you mentioned, Nvidia is planning to build out a multi billion dollar tech campus in northern Israel. The scale, just the scale here is really enormous. This could double Nvidia's 5,000 workers that it already has in Israel. This is, as you said, also could be close to 2 million square feet. Nvidia has had a footprint in Israel for a while. In 2019, they acquired Mellanox, an Israeli semiconductor company and established an R and D footprint in the country, in the northern part of the, of the country, by the way, which is also significant. So Yonatan, what do we need to know here other than the numbers?
- [07:26]
Jonathan Adiri
Yeah, look, I think first of all a very important point Here you were mentioning north or south. The Israeli government is, once this became public, has entered into a discussion with Nvidia to kind of see how it can incentivize the company to establish its new center as far north as possible. Yoknam, its current center, is not really up north. It's sort of, I would say north center, near those who listen and sort of know where that is. Lots of government benefits and it's now in conversation like how high north would it go in the area of Tefin and so on. Warren Buffett famously said after buying Iscar from Carmiel, which is really up north of Israel, and literally within a number of weeks having the second Israeli Lebanese war, that he's really not worried and he's seeing output grow throughout war. So there is a consideration of leaving, I would say the Haifa to Beersheba to Jerusalem, kind of trapezoid. Obviously at the core is Tel Aviv. It's going to be meaningful if Nvidia decides to go really kind of north of Haifa. So I think that's an important point. The second piece here that goes back to our conversation about Saudi Arabia and the dynamic in the Middle East. We are seeing governments convincing Nvidia to come in in the form of investing in energy to build a supercomputer or a data center, and Nvidia in its own volition deciding to invest in Israel. And I think these are two completely different stories. This story from Nvidia really tells the story of the strength of the Israeli ecosystem. You can't just buy that with billions or hundreds of billions or even with trillions over time. Israel, the government, by the way, through a lot of arguments and diatribe after the 80s, decided to invest in kind of luring in The Intels, the IBM's, the Microsoft and so on and so forth. And there's a genuine unique, definitely in terms of density, right. Know how in the semiconductor industry, six or seven generations of intel processors were not just invented in Israel or kind of significant contributions to R and D, they were manufactured in Israel. So the know how is really enormous and that really builds a unique added value. There's a reason why some of the semiconductor architecture for Apple is done in Israel, some of the semiconductor architecture for Google and Samsung is done in Israel. So speaks highly speaks volumes in terms of the quality and the density of the Israeli ecosystem.
- [09:52]
Michal Ivram
So agree with you that you can't quickly buy your way into this kind of investment in any particular technology. Right? But, but when you have a lot of money and when you have time and you're thinking about this kind of build out across generations, which I do think Saudi is doing. It can happen. You know, hopefully it happens in conjunction and partnership with Israeli companies.
- [10:16]
Jonathan Adiri
Yeah, I don't, I don't belittle the odds that it can happen. I'm just saying that at present it was important for us to understand there are certain ecosystems that grow when there's already an evolved, I would say ground the roots. And it takes a lot of time to build those roots. I think the last point here, which is also very important, we spoke about that in the last couple episodes. We're starting to see some research and some data showing that we are nearing, if you will, a flattening of a curve around AI. If that is indeed true, then we're going to see the Nvidia's, the OpenAI's, the METAs of the world investing a lot of money in the humans that get them to go the last 5% of AI. And we saw that sort of IC what Nvidia decided to do in Israel, very much tied to what Meta did last week when it hired, I think, you know, better. The number was like 13 people for $100 million a year in salary. It raised my eyebrow in the beginning, but then you're like, Steph Curry's making 60, 70 million dollars a year. If you make Meta cross the kind of chasm of the last 5%, which is super hard to do, then you're worth $100 million in salary.
- [11:24]
Michal Ivram
Yeah, I think the sports analogy is very apt. And I saw a lot of funny memes that nerds have been waiting for. The day that you trade AI researchers, AI scientists, like you trade a messi or someone you know, it's a open trading period.
- [11:39]
Jonathan Adiri
But in AI, the epitome of revenge of the nerds, this is the kind of. Yeah, the epitome of revenge of the nerds. But listen, Michal, I think also this is going to be a march. In hindsight, it all looks exponential, but it's made out of multiple S curves.
- [11:52]
Michal Ivram
So, moving along, another big item today. Israel's central bank has chosen to hold interest rates. We are recording on a Monday. This is hot off the press. Just a few hours before this recording, the bank of Israel announced that it's decided to leave interest rates at the current rate of 4.5%. And here is a quick statement from the central bank explaining that decision. Economic activity continues to recover at a moderate pace against the background of high domestic and global uncertainty. Following Operation Rising Lion, Israel's risk premium declined significantly, but it remains higher than it was before the October 7, 2023 massacre. And speaking of that global uncertainty, Yonatan again recording on a Monday. So we don't know yet the outcome of Bibi's visit with Trump, but we do know that over here in the United States there's also been a kind of wait and see approach by the Fed. It's come under fire, particularly by Trump for not continuing to lower interest rates. So what are you looking at most closely here?
- [12:53]
Jonathan Adiri
So the chairman, Yaron, I think captures it really well. We're going from the lifting of a significant piece of the fog of war. That's what you're seeing also in the risk premium. We went from 150 basis points to the kind of low 80s, which is significant. It's almost half compared to the beginning of the war, by the way, the peak was somewhere in July 2024 when it was unclear whether or not Hezbollah is going to step up into the war. And then things started unfolding. I think from that perspective, the pricing of the fog of war was very well done by the international investors. And that's why in the last, I would say four or five weeks, we're seeing the Israeli stock exchange outperform and we're seeing access to global debt kind of increasing. And that's what Professor Yaron was saying. At the same time the fog of war decreased, the fog of the day after hasn't decreased yet. And I think that by the time maybe that some of our listeners are listening to this right now or in the next couple of weeks, there is going to be a significant decrease of the fog of the day after. And that's going to determine the trajectory of the Israeli economy to a great extent. Therefore, the chairman held off on any decision as it relates to the interest. I'll just give our listeners, I would say three things, three forces that are kind of countering his thought process. One shekel is in one of the strongest territories ever compared to the dollar. This is maybe good for Israelis who are abroad. It is not good for exports. It is not good for the tech industry. You're raising capital in dollars. Your Israeli salaries are high and getting higher because cost of living is actually getting higher. So if I'm being paid 40,000 shekels, which a year ago was $10,000, and I'm going to ask for a raise and I'm going to be at 45 and the dollar is 3.3, now I'm at 33,000 shekels on my $10,000 raised. So I need to raise 20, 30% more capital to keep that. That is an important piece. The second piece is what on earth is he going to do with $200 and almost $30 billion that the bank of Israel amassed as a CA reserve. Right. That's actually being eaten up if it needs to be spent in shekels. And you can buy more dollars with less shekels. So that's the second consideration. The third, which I think is critical, is Israel has a lot, I would say, dependent on real estate and housing. That's also part of the recovery of the war. Very expensive housing, which is four and a half percent interest rates. Right. Is not good for the Israeli consumer, not good for the Israeli economy, and not good for, I would say, the Israeli society as well. We've seen people go to the streets for not being able to buy an apartment. We're seeing that now play out Also in the New York mayoral election. Access to housing is a big deal. 4.5% is very high. So he pushed, kind of kicked the can down the road one month, hoping there will be significant less fog on the day after the war. I think it's a clever thing to do, but I think it's untenable beyond August.
- [15:43]
Michal Ivram
So you're saying Israel needs Mamdani.
- [15:45]
Jonathan Adiri
You know, first of all, we had our Mamdani in the past. We were a Mamdani state in a way, from a socialist perspective. And that didn't end well. Right. 1985, 400% inflation. We spoke about that before. Four weeks away out of default on the debt and the Israeli economy completely collapsing. That's the tail end that awaits adoption of Marxism into a modern economy. So that being said, social unrest is definitely tied to lack of access to housing. Israel's been going through that in the last three to four years with high interest. It's untenable.
- [16:17]
Michal Ivram
Yeah. And I do think that domestic uncertainty coupled with on a more global macro level is really key. Again, as the statement put it very succinctly. And there are so many different economic indicators that seem to be kind of at odds with each other here in the United States. So, you know, next few weeks will be very telling. Okay, let's dive into our long play, our weekly deep dive. And today, as we said, we're taking a closer look at the Windex. Just as a reminder, a refresher for anybody who hasn't heard us mention the Windex 20 times already in this episode. This is our own index that we created. I should say that Yonatan created I'll give you the credit here. And it's looking at 51 companies either founded in Israel and or founded by Israeli founders. They trade on different exchanges, which we will get to. But I think, for starters, Yonatan, let's just kind of talk through why we created this and then we'll get to how.
- [17:19]
Jonathan Adiri
So I think this had to do a lot with the process of our conversation of looking at the Israeli economy from a global lens. That's how we got to the notion of what's your number? Right. Having a number kind of driven outlook into what's going through the news cycle as it relates to the Israeli economy. So numbers lead the way, the big short, the long. And then we thought of a set of numbers that kind of captures the story of Israel that we can follow week on week beyond the currencies that you can get on CNBC or wherever, given that we record and we have a 24 hour kind of gap. And this is not made to be, you know, an investment podcast, but rather a perspective. Then we thought of actually building a numeric value that reflects the uniqueness of the Israeli economy. And in building the Windex, basically we kind of COVID three important areas of how Israel is unique. It's a tiny market, 10 million people. It has an enormous amount of new companies being built. And throughout the 80s and 90s, the Israeli economy was an exit driven economy. Right. So that's number two. So small country, highly technological, in need of capital, but not a lot, because in the kind of 90s, we sold the companies too early. And I think what we're seeing in the last 20 to 25 years is sort of a disproportional representation of Israeli companies in the American Stock Exchange, the highest disproportion in the world. Because when you want to get real growth capital to build really big companies, you go to New York. So tiny country, highly overrepresented in Wall street because companies think big, think global, they have no local market to serve. And you actually have a very strong protection against currency risks. And what we're living through right now, which is risk of war and national.
- [19:05]
Michal Ivram
Security volatility, we should mention, I mean, all of these really unique attributes that you're listing out there isn't really a comp out there. Another market of Israel's tiny size and disproportionate output. But just to give some, some more sort of comparisons here, size wise, the NASDAQ and the NYSE combined is at around $55 trillion. Tel Aviv stock Exchange just, you know, for Kicks here is at $350 billion.
- [19:37]
Jonathan Adiri
It'S the size of the Windex. By the way, the entire Windex is the size of the entire Israeli stock exchange. Exchange.
- [19:43]
Michal Ivram
That's pretty wild. But yeah, there wasn't really one sort of window that would give us a glimpse. Tel Aviv Stock exchange is obviously indicative of all sorts of trends and, and the health of the local economy. But it's not a good enough window because as you said so many Israeli founders turn to the Nasdaq in particular when they go public. Let's kind of deep dive on just the makeup of the Windex. What do we need to know? How many companies and let's talk some sectors specifically.
- [20:12]
Jonathan Adiri
We actually have 51 companies and I think the most important thing to say is that the cumulative market cap of the 51 companies is. And that's as of last week, so I'm reading it from the paper. $353 billion, like I said, the size of the entirety of the Israeli stock exchange. I think the first and most important thing that comes out is seven companies in the index are cyber companies and they account for 2/3 of the total market cap. The big animal is Palo Alto Networks. Nir Zuk, an Israeli born founder, as the name says, Palo Alto and Israel. This is, if you will, one of the daughter companies that spun out of Checkpoint Mihaly. You actually know Nir. I think men have engaged with him before on substantive matters. A really unique, never boring, never boring. Exactly. Unique figure that is 136 billion of the 353. Right. So the Windex is heavily, I would say dependent on the performance of Palo Alto Networks. Some other companies are CyberArk, Sentinel One and they compose, as I said, 66% of the total market cap. Cumulatively that's 236 billion of the 353. The second category which covers nine companies is basically digital consumer goods. Right. These are the Wixes, the Mondays, the Global Ease, the Etoro are the youngest member of the Windex. That's 50 billion in cumulative value Monday.com being the biggest at 16 billion. Market cap. Again, exciting to see the industry going from, you know, the Tevas, we're going to talk about that in a minute to the cyberspace. And I think the third incarnation of the Israeli tech industry is consumer Internet. That's lemonade, that's Wix, that's eToro, and so on and so forth. These are tens of millions of customers worldwide engaging within Israeli technology. Not when it's kind of intel inside, literally actually pun unintended but not intel inside. It's Israel at the front, not Israel kind of incorporated in your Apple camera or in your intel processor. And I think this is, to me, it's a very exciting category.
- [22:20]
Michal Ivram
Yeah, I agree. I think we should note that it's still, relatively speaking, a smaller one. And their market caps are not huge, lemonade included, and have struggled a bit. But we are seeing a subtle shift there for sure.
- [22:32]
Jonathan Adiri
I think the shift is important again in terms of how far Israeli entrepreneurs dream. Right. So last week we spoke of Base. Base was bought by wix. Right. So when you have access to capital on Wall street, the appetite to build bigger, I think is important. I totally agree with you. There is a lot of room to grow. And I think what's nice about the Windex, as you can see, I mean, numbers don't lie, right? Like the fact that cyber is 66% of the total market cap tells you the whole story. But I would say 50 billion in seven companies and consumers that keep on coming. That's the etoros. It's the oddities. Il maquillage of the world. I think we're going to see more and more IPOs there. There's also need for capital when it comes to that one. And I think your hint is actually very important. In the next category, which is Life Sciences. That is where we are performing poorly. We were a lot better in this space. Teva, which used to be called Menayata Am in Hebrew, the equity of the country, because everyone had it in their portfolio. Every pension fund. It's now traded. I think it's a quarter of its peak. Generic drug giant, lot of M and a really a big. Basically the biggest player in the field for many, many years. So six companies, 23 billion in cumulative value. Teva being the big dog. 20 billion out of the 23.
- [23:45]
Michal Ivram
We need a Novo Nordisk is what we need. We missed out on the zempic gravy train. But what's what's going on here? Because this used to be a real strength for the country.
- [23:55]
Jonathan Adiri
Well, actually, you know, I've been in this space and I've seen it up close. Life Sciences is very, very hard. But it also is an opportunity to kind of think through why do Israeli companies have an ipo, Right. There's a lot of money locally. Last week we discussed 69% of the money invested in Q2 was foreign money. No shortage of private equity in Israel. But you raise private equity. And when you want to build really big companies, you got to go either to London or to New York to raise a lot of money. The Israeli stock exchange is small and the local market isn't here. You sell in dollars, you don't sell in shekels. Your entire business operation is run globally. That's also why Israel is so unique in terms of how many companies ipo. So kind of your North Star, if you want to really build a big company is. And it's always going to be Wall Street. The reason why it is hard to do that in life sciences. I think there are two. I'll share one sort of personal to me. And the second actually has to do with. With how much money you need in order to cross that chasm. Right. If you're in pure life sciences or in medical devices, there's Capex. You really need a lot of money to build production lines, et cetera. This part of the ecosystem doesn't exist in Israel. It's a small market. So you gotta not only kind of move some of your sales abroad, your main product development at some point needs to happen abroad. Clinical trials, all our clinical trials were done in the US because that's what the FDA requires. So your ultimate market is the US So unlike other ones that are really global markets, Life sciences is the US. The second piece is, and this is something I've learned the hard way, you can have a great product. Fantastic. You get to the market if UnitedHealthcare or the Blue Cross Blue Shield or any other Aetna or Blue, you know, don't kind of have a partnership with you and a vested interest in selling your product, good luck. If you don't have a molecule that's super hard to compete with, it's a dead end. Right. Or it's a near dead end. So it makes a lot of sense to begin with the IPO in nasdaq, which sort of how I explained it, you know, access to capital, local market and so on. And you want to build a big company in life sciences. This is like a thousand X, either from a pure strength of business and the size of the American market, or it's a defense mechanism. It's really hard. Some companies that have sold for 20 or 30 billion in net sales for their American acquirer were sold at 8,900 million dollars out of Israel and never made the IPO.
- [26:19]
Michal Ivram
Well, and taking another step back because I can sense that you still have some PTSD from dealing with the American health care system. But we talked about with some of the consumer Internet companies and how things have shifted a little bit, are shifting and we're seeing more and more of that Israel as a brand in and of itself, I guess that's also shifted too. And used to be that the common trajectory, I mean, this is, this is why the Windex is possible today and wasn't, you know, 20 years ago. Right. It used to be that Israeli startups, there was this trajectory where the founding CEO would be replaced by an American CEO where all, you know, sales and marketing, everything basically other than R and D was, you know, brought to the U.S. i mean, I remember and it wasn't that long ago where if you raised capital from one of the Sandhill road, Silicon Valley VCs out here, you absolutely had to make the move.
- [27:16]
Jonathan Adiri
Yeah. And I think it shifted both ways. Right. So I think the fact that Sequoia has an office here and you know, Tiger Global is here and a lot of the kind of global big growth funds are now local. There was, you know, the famous saying, I don't invest in someone who doesn't ride a bicycle to my office in, in back in Sand Hill Road. I think you can invest in somebody, you know, riding a bicycle to your office and be Sequoia in Tel Aviv or in Haifa.
- [27:40]
Michal Ivram
I do want to point out that the Windex, as we've said, it's dynamic, right. And so the newest member, the baby of the family is crypto player Etoro. On the other end of the spectrum, Variant Systems, it looks like, is undergoing strategic buyout by a private equity firm. And so that very likely, once they're taken private, will be off of the Windex. Speaking of private companies, this is sort of the, the weakness of the Windex, shall we say. There is a ton of value in the Israel, Israeli private sector that is not accounted for at all in the Windex. And as much as there has been this evolution of Israeli companies, you know, making bigger, bolder bets, staying the course for much longer than they used to previously, there are still a lot of companies that are selling at an earlier stage. And even with a company like Wiz, the biggest tech deal of all time for an Israeli founded or Israeli company, they're selling to Google for 32 billion. Nothing to laugh at for sure, but they're selling. They're not staying the course and going for an ipo, which they could have. And there are definitely people who are disappointed with that outcome.
- [28:46]
Jonathan Adiri
I have no judgment and I think it's actually an unfair kind of from the press. When I was an entrepreneur and I did it twice, I would eat shit and I would actually talk shit back. Hit some reporters off record like this is the nightmare, like creating a company, man, it's like eight, nine, ten years. Investors, things change, Regulators, this, that, the other. I have total confidence. And I think in Israel we can look in hindsight and say those who exited in what the media might consider to be early exits. And by the way, there are some numbers there because the acquirers made a lot more money. Waze is a great example. A billion dollar acquisition, I think 12 years ago. Clearly Google from ads and whatever made a lot more money than what they bought there. Right. But I respect the fact that these people, Noam Baldin being one of them, go back to the core, build more companies.
- [29:34]
Michal Ivram
FOUNDER OF WAZE Right.
- [29:36]
Jonathan Adiri
So to me, kudos. I have no issue with companies being sold. 2,300 million, a billion, 10 billion. If everybody goes back or a significant chunk of people goes back to the core. And I think that more often than not, I'm part of a few of those groups in Israel. They do go back, they become angel investors. I've ceded, I think nine or 10 companies in the last 18 months during the war. So I think from that perspective, I think it's an unfair judgment. On the other hand, if you do want to build a big company and you got to be wiz and you actually do have a chance of being like the next Palo Alto and then maybe beyond, and you're a second timer already, so the money isn't an issue. Right. Most of those folks have made then that sort of begs the question, again, I would never judge these guys. I would never judge these guys. But you're right. On a macroeconomic perspective, there's sort of money left on the floor again, over the long term. As an Israeli, if things kind of, again, the fog of the day after the optimism that we feel right now ends up being justified. We're going to see foreign capital, we're going to see more IPOs, and we're going to see more entrepreneurs going back and rebuilding companies in Israel. I'm very confident in that. The ecosystem is very, very strong. Plus the weather is great.
- [30:48]
Michal Ivram
Yeah, there's that too. Listen, there are a lot of ways to liquidity and I think that the IPO road, obviously I haven't done it personally, but I've interviewed many people who have and clearly longer, tougher road. But I think that it is incredibly important for the continued diversification and resilience of the Israeli economy overall that this path continues to be taken. Right. And that we're able to add more and more companies. I do think that in the past, perhaps some of the roadblocks to getting there were, you know, I'm not saying they're imaginary, but there wasn't that as visionary as some of these companies were, there wasn't that long term visionary thinking of like, hey, I can build a brand that's going to sustain.
- [31:34]
Jonathan Adiri
You know, I do take issue with the idea that there's an easier road here. I mean, the idea of an IPO is whether or not you also share your management structure and decision making and go on a quarterly with the general public. The reason I decided not to our roadshow coincided with a big bubble in digital health. And when I realized what kind of projections we had to give because that sort of was the zeitgeist. Four companies that IPO'd with us those weeks when we decided to pull out are either bankrupt or delisted. And one of them is worth 120 million on a 4 billion IPO. Right. So I think timing is important. How do you build a big company afterwards? Possibly you build a bigger company at Google as opposed to building it competing with Google. So I think there's a lot of nuance when it comes to that. I feel, you know, there's no number there, but I feel the ecosystem is very, very vibrant. And the fact that people meet hundreds of millions of dollars and then they go back and invest in two, $3 million seeds run by six, seven, you know, investors that were entrepreneurs themselves, I think that's the strongest sign. Super strong economy with mentorship. And really, I can't tell you like, I think I know 110, 120 entrepreneurs who've done an exit or an IPO who are so committed to the people they've reinvested in. I think my biggest moment in my career when it comes to sort of investing was the ability to invest in an engineer that worked with me@healthyio and went on his own way, called me a year later, said, I'm starting a new company. Do you want to invest? And I had the privilege of investing in someone who was an Engineer@healthyio who built another company, by the way, was a major part of building the tech behind Windex Noam. So just kind of a side story. But it was a great feeling, full circle. It was a great feeling. To me, that's a hallmark of a super, super healthy ecosystem. And it has IPOs and it has to have a bit of everything so long as the fire of creation burns.
- [33:33]
Michal Ivram
Look, I did not mean to imply that you took an easy road. You are an entrepreneur. There is no easy road. I think we can be in agreement on that end. By the way, I've been married to two entrepreneurs.
- [33:46]
Jonathan Adiri
There you go.
- [33:46]
Michal Ivram
This is my last time.
- [33:48]
Jonathan Adiri
You also took the hard road, by the way. A whole different episode. But the philosophy behind building the management team at Healthy IO, the share of equity and so on, was designed to enable all of us, six or seven, really at the top kind of decision making process and accountability, to share the burden and live a life with our significant others. I've seen a number of folks get divorced on a 10 year journey. I'm super fortunate to have met not only the love of my life, but a friend who also encouraged me to undertake this crazy path where I was not a Shmone Matayan graduate. I was not a person who grew up in some military unit or came from wealth that gave me the safety net to do that. It has a lot to do with your spouse. I think it's a great point. And by the way, that can also be a decision. You've worked so hard for 10 years. You can exit at 3,400 million. You take away 30, 40 away, and you want to go back to your family and you want to have a couple of years and you want to be there as opposed to when you go for an ipo, it all resets. You now have to prove yourself again. And now it's quarterly and so on.
- [34:50]
Michal Ivram
So under public scrutiny. Sending more intense. Yeah, no, for sure. By the way, all this stuff doesn't get talked about nearly enough. Unfortunately, we do not have an index that in some way accounts for the, you know, emotional toll that, that this takes on you. But I hope that this gave listeners closer look at what we're doing here with the Windex. We are, as always, very open to your questions, your feedback, you know, anything that, that listeners want to share with us on the Windex going forward, we will absolutely take into consideration. It's a work in progress, not a done deal, right?
- [35:23]
Jonathan Adiri
It is. And I think, you know, it also afforded us with a conversation that is broader than the technicality of the window, which is really, you know, where you want to take this. So for everybody who's listening on Twitter, on the email that we're going to give you at the end of the episode, if you have questions or thoughts on kind of the broader issues, we're happy to get into that conversation as well.
- [35:47]
Michal Ivram
Well, we began our show with the numbers of the week and we're going to end with the words of the week and this time, again, the gift that keeps on giving. We have A quote from President Trump, who said this at an event in Iowa celebrating the passage of his one beautiful bill. Think of that. No death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases a fine banker, and in some cases, shylocks and bad people. Now, I bring this up for two reasons. One is that the big beautiful bill and its passing is big piece of news here has a ripple effect throughout, of course, the US and on a global level. But also this was controversial because of his use of the word shylock. You know what I have to point out, Joe Biden, when he was vice president, used the same term, got some heat for it. I don't know if they've read Merchant of Venice, either one of them recently, but my take is that I care a lot more and I'm a lot more troubled by some of what's going on in the world right now. Synagogues being burned in Melbourne and that kind of stuff that we're seeing. What do you think, Yonatan?
- [36:54]
Jonathan Adiri
Yeah, I think that the. If the rage and the conversation that they. This statement has kind of created in the U.S. if 100th of that, 1000th of that was created in Australia or elsewhere when real violence took place, then I think you're right. We'll be in a better place. This is not an easy time. As Dan Senor says, prominent and weak. That doesn't work anymore. The state of Israel's here. There are sovereign Jews wandering the face of earth. And we're going to stand up, Stand up when those, those statements are made and stand up when synagogues are burned unlike any other time in the previous, you know, 2,000 years.
- [37:32]
Michal Ivram
Amen.
- [37:32]
Jonathan Adiri
Amen.
- [37:33]
Michal Ivram
All right, that's it for today's show. Thank you for tuning in to ARC Media's what's your number? We hope you found it interesting. And if you did, please be sure to like, subscribe rate review. You know the drill. But most importantly, please share it with others who you think will find it interesting. And if you want to make suggestions or share your feedback, as we said earlier on the Windex or anything else.
- [37:54]
Jonathan Adiri
Yeah, introduce a new stock to the Windex.
- [37:57]
Michal Ivram
Yeah, absolutely. Or, you know, if you have an idea for a private sector kind of index weekend start, let us know, reach out to us at what's your number@arcmedia.org.
- [38:15]
Jonathan Adiri
What'S your number is produced by Ilan Benatar and edited by Michalev Ram. Sound and video editing by Martin Huergo. Our theme music is by Midnight Generation. I'm Yonatanadiri and I'm Michal Avram.
- [38:26]
Michal Ivram
See you back here next week.
- [38:28]
Jonathan Adiri
See you next week.
- [38:34]
Michal Ivram
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.