VCinJerusalem

Alan B. Slifka, Of Blessed Memory: One of the Greats (a true Lamadvavnik)

I have the pleasure of knowing many, many good people. I also have the incredible good fortune of knowing some really GREAT people. One of those, my dear friend Alan B. Slifka, passed from this world just before shabbat. 

In Jewish mythology, one of my favorites is the notion of the Lamadvavnik, the 36 Righteous people who keep the world world moving forward. Without a doubt Alan was one of those 36, one of those people who can see the whole and the details within, and work to bring harmony to our lives. 

Lamadvavnik is the Yiddishism of One of the 36. The idea of 36 is 18 (life in Jewish numerology) X 2, or life X2, or two lives. You see, a true lamadvavnik knows that alone we are nothing, not even really alive. Life as we know is only possible when we relate to the other, when there are two lives. Thus 36. 

Alan lived this concept with his every moment, it was the bedrock of his character. Alan lived to bring the lives together, around the globe. But he did it all with such a sense of joy, of love for life and his fellow person. It is no wonder that amongst the many many incredible projects Alan created is the Big Apple Circus, which is all about joy. I never had a meeting or even a moment with Alan without a joke, a broad smile, often laughing together. 

I first met Alan 12 years ago at a Jewish Funders Network conference. He had already accomplished more than than a minyan of his peers, both in for-profit business and philanthropy, but he connected to me on such a deep human level, and I was all of 30, very raw and inexperienced. One time I attended an event at his house in Easthampton, and he was such a gracious host, making each person feel completely at home. And then at the end of a long intensive day Alan's main concern was to find a way to get me as quickly as possible back to my family (he literally help up a plane for me, returned my rental car for me, gevalt what a mensch). 

Alan became one of my mentors, teachers, friends, and business partners. Alan was 81 when he was taken from us -- we needed him for another 81 years. I only hope Alan made sure someone took his place as one of the 36 Righteous -- now that I think for a moment, I am sure he did. He cared so much about us, at all times. May his memory be a blessing to us all. 

(below is the formal obituary as appeared in the NY Times. see request of family for donations)

 

 

 

ALAN B. SLIFKA 

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SLIFKA--Alan B., a prominent New York investment manager and philanthropist died on Friday, February 4, 2011 at home after a battle with cancer. Mr. Slifka is survived by his beloved wife Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka, his sister Barbara Slifka, his children, Michael, Randolph (Jan), and David (Michele) Slifka, his stepchildren Torrie, Skye and Max Ritvo and his grandchildren Grace Gill, Joshua Slifka and Braylan Ritvo. Born in New York City in 1929, Mr. Slifka graduated from the Fieldston School, received his B.S. from Yale in 1951, and his M.B.A. from Harvard in 1953. In 2003, he received an honorary Doctorate from Brandeis University and also in 2008 Mr. Slifka received an Honorary Doctorate in the field of Coexistence from Haifa University. Mr. Slifka was the founder and co-chairman of Halcyon Asset Management LLC. He was also the founding chairman of the Big Apple Circus which became an institution in New York. In 1989 he co-founded The Abraham Fund Initiatives, which is the first not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to further coexistence between Israel's Jewish and Arab citizens. At the time of his death, he was an honorary trustee of the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in NY. Mr. Slifka was instrumental in the development and expansion of the school. Additionally, he was a member of the boards of the Jewish Funders Network, the Tannenbaum Center, the Interfaith Center, and the American Jewish Congress. In 2001, Mr. Slifka established the Slifka Program on Intercommunal Coexistence at Brandeis University. Mr. Slifka was passionate about and committed to coexistence, Judaism, and Israel. He founded the Alan B. Slifka Foundation through which he could impact his love for Israel and his commitment to Jewish life and coexistence. We, the Slifka family, will deeply mourn Alan's loss. He was our strong and loving leader, always inspiring us to serve humanity, grow in our faith, and embrace and respect differences. We will continue his mission of Tikun Olam. The funeral service will be private. A memorial service will be held at B'nai Jeshurun synagogue on April 10th, 2011 at 11am. For more information please call 212-303-9442. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to The Abraham Fund Initiatives, The Big Apple Circus or the Abraham Joshua Heschel School.

 

I found my Kippa in Munich (at DLD 2011)

OK, so recently I have not been diligent about wearing a kippa (=skullcap, head covering). Started several years ago when I realized that in the "State of Tel Aviv" I was treated very differently (read better) when I came to meetings, parties, etc. sans kippa. I was one of the "them," not one of "them." So I started to show up to meetings without a kippa. And I heard things that I never, as a kippa wearing man, would have heard. And was treated quite differently -- I was much more accepted. I was not looked at some fundamental freak living in Jerusalem (where I lived then).  Everything was "easier." 

Of course on shabbat at synagogue I still donned a kippa, and force/persuade my sons to wear a kippa. During the week, they in general do not wear kippot. And for years we have given up trying to get our daughters to wear some kind of head covering recognizing the absolute awe of the power that we call God. Our daughters just didn't want to be so different. And we had/have mercy on them. 

But then came Tu B'shvat, the new year of the trees (according to the Jewish calendar), when I traditionally don the kippa I received from Rhea Rubin, on of the greatest modern kippa creators (her clients include Bill Clinton). The kippa has an off-white background and a tree woven into it, really remarkable. So I put it on for Tu B'shvat, and then I flew to Munich for the DLD show. 

Nu, hevre, friends, in Germany I feel a responsibility to "davka" (means..."davka....") wear a kippa. How I could do otherwise? All Jews should wear a kippa in Germany, heck all people should. Gevalt, we are only 65 vears after...less than one generation. So I wear a kippa. 

And at DLD (http://www.dld-conference.com/) I am a mini-celebrity, amongst the dozens of Israelis (thanks to the mythic Yossi Vardi) I am one of two people wearing a kippa. And I am the only one wearing a tree! So I get stopped by super-models to pose with my kippa, get asked questions about my "little hat," and overall feel very proud. Here I am in 2011 in Munich wearing a kippa. Not bad for a Jewish kid from Long Island. 

 

Been Way Too Long....But A Comment on Social Media

For those who read this blog on a regular basis, probably wondering where I have been recently. Well, been busy with life. I have posted to Facebook here and there, because everyone has participated in that snowball effect, making it easier and easier to push things to your "friends." Now all I have to do is "like" something and everyone of my friends [theoretically] knows. Of course, given the Facebook black magic of the newsfeed, it's a real shot in the dark to post/like/something. If I want my real friends (and that is a real small number) to know about something I email them. And even then, usually follow up with a phone call. 

But back to out irregularly scheduled programming. I think the circle will be looping back around again, so that we will pull back from the onslaught of nonsense and come back to small[er] subset of feeds that we want to see/read/interact with. When I started writing this blog Facebook was just opening up to non-college students. I was bearish on Facebook, and still am. Of course, I was wrong on the ability of the Facebook people to start generating revenue. Facebook is proving the old adage "throw enough _____at the wall and some will stick."

The blog will endure. Blogs were (and very much still are) a democratizing element -- for those of us who sometimes have something to say, the blog gives us an unadulterated forum and format. And facebook/twitter have screened out from blogs the people who just want to tell what they had for lunch today -- that kind of social sharing may or may not endure, but will be like People magazine...enough people read it so that supermarkets put it right up front, but very few will admit to buying it. Popular blogs will gain the credibility that newspapers had -- repositories of relatively credible and useful information and analysis. 

I will be cutting back on facebook (never spent any time on Twitter) and attempting to return to blogging on a [more] regular basis. 

Does that make me less social? I don't think so, but perhaps the social interactions will be more meaningful. 

 

 

DejaVu All Over Again: Shame on David Pogue, Google Releases 11 Year Old Product

In general I respect David Pogue from the The New York Times, who has been writing a blog/column tackling technology subjects and making sense of new products and features for the common folk (which usually I consider myself). But two days ago Mr. Pogue took on a subject dear to my heart, and a significant part of my entrepreneurial career, that of internet telephony (as a founder of Delta Three I helped pioneer the field in the late 90s). 

According his recent post, entitled "Google Shakes It Up Again With Free Phone Calls", Pogue believe that there was something new and innovative in Google's announcement that one can now click on a contact in Gmail and call a "real" phone number, whether land line or cellular. According to Pogue, this revolutionary new service from Google, called "Voice Calls from Gmail" (wow, that's catchy....much better than what I coined, PC2Phone) allows you to, get this, make free phone calls from your computer. WOW! Except, well, that was news about 13 years ago, commercially available 12 years ago. And the free calls to phones in North America -- that was pioneered by a now defunct company called Dialpad about 11 years ago!! (And then copied by Delta Three, Net2phone, and all the other IP Telephony players in late 90s). 

The big difference -- we could only talk about making money from advertising, Google actually knows something about it. Google gives away Gmail and the basic storage because the incremental costs for them are low and they can monetize to some degree. But still way over 95% of their revenue comes from search. Would be nice to know what revenue Gmail actually generates (I mean even the accompanying ads). 

Oh, and by the way, Mr. Pogue, even if you couldn't be bothered to research the history of IP Telephony (or at least call my good friend Jeff Pulver who in 2 minutes could have given you the history, much of it he was responsible for...) you at least could have acknowledged that Skype's revenues are over 86% due to SkypeOut, but most of that not calling North America. SkypeOut makes most of their revenues from people calling places where tariffs are still relatively high. 

And Skype has a nice embedded community of users, years of experience. Google's weak attempt is not much of a threat. 

So what happened with Mr. Pogue? Well, either he was taken to a really nice dinner by a VERY nice Google PR person, or he simply just didn't know that that there is nothing new here. Same same. 

Seems to me that Google is running out of steam and innovation, and is reaching for low hanging fruit to convince people that they are still the Kings of the net. But I think they are looking a lot like MSFT. And by the way, Mr. Pogue, good old MSFT came out with a similar service in...2001. (see this story from CNET (remember them)

The Future of [internet/software] Venture Capital in Israel [see debate raging in US]

I don't keep up with too many blogs, and basically ignore Twitter (vainly hoping it will go away, proving to be a bad nightmare of SMS run amuck). And my own blogging has been slacking off of late. 

But I do try to read Brad Feld's blog who usually alerts me to anything interesting going on in the discussions swirling around VC/entrepreneurial economy of the web. Brad often points to Fred Wilson, partner at Union Square Ventures and also prolific blogger. I have tremendous respect for both Brad and Fred, even know I don't think I have ever met either of them in person (which says something already about our world). Brad and Fred have been commenting on the debate raging lately about the future of venture capital and start-ups in the US, and I am thinking about how this all applies to the Israeli venture economy. 

The current state of affairs was recently summed up by Dave McClure in a blog posting which I think we hear in Israel need to wrestle with. In short, Dave says (in his own "abstract"):

Abstract: VC funds are getting smaller (good), & angel investors are growing (also good), but both need to get smarter & innovate. Startup costs have come down dramatically in the last 5-10 years, and online distribution via Search, Social,Mobile platforms (aka Google, Facebook, Apple) have become mainstream consumer marketing channels. Meanwhile acquisitions are up, but deal sizes are down as mature companies buy startup companies ever earlier in their development cycle.

 A few weeks ago Michael Eisenberg started to discuss role of government via-a-vis the venture economy in his aptly titled "Humus Manifesto." 

I want to the conversation in a slightly different direction. Bottom line, we are thousands of miles away from the US, where the Twitter/Facebook/FourSquare paradigm is playing out. Yes, Facebook became a way of life in Israel (more so than Twitter), but there still is a feeling that we are in some sort of lag. I hear that from Jeff Pulver, but more importantly I see it in the reality of investments and start-ups. 

Our angel class of investors never reached the sophistication of Silicon Valley, New York, the US in general. One reason is we never got wide enough, which prevented us from going deep. Especially in web/internet related applications/services. Putting Yossi Vardi (and semi-Israeli Jeff Pulver) we do not have prolific well known angel investors. We do not have any serious professional [focused] angel/seed investors. I include myself in being outside the loop, because in hindsight we invested too much money in too few companies. Looking back over 4 years, we would have been better off deploying smaller amounts in more companies (starkly put: better to invest $50K in 10 companies than $500K in one company), and then cherry picked. But we still would have been challenged by the lack of Series A investors like Union Square Ventures. Our "traditional" VC funds were focus-less, just look at their web sites where they say "we are focused on bio-tech, pharma, enterprise software, mobile, internet, new media, etc etc." 

There are glimmers of hope in areas I know nothing about, like pharma and medical devices (see TEVA and Peregrine Ventures). 

But in the world I do claim to know, internet/web, we are falling behind. And I blame the investment community, or lack thereof. We cannot put entrepreneurs in fast-paced world through 6 months of due diligence. They will lose the market generating spreadsheets. We need to sa yes/no very quickly, and move on. And when we say yes, lets take a lead. Invest manageable chunks of cash, and stay very involved. And as active shareholder, need to role up sleeves and live the company product, ecosystem. The best angel investors/fund managers in the US are using the stuff they invest in...there is no other way.

I also blame the entrepreneurs, who have failed to adjust their own way of doing things. For example, salary levels -- yes, I know you can get more at Intel, but you chose not to work at Intel. So please, don't cost the company 40K NIS a month. Take as little as you can. Your equity is what counts. And get product out as quickly as possible. And be part of the global conversation, which for now is mainly taking place in English. If you speak/write Russian and/or Chinese, than be active in those worlds (which is a huge advantage over many of your US counterparts, who are largely cut off from anything outside of North America). 

Unlike Michael Eisenberg, I do not see the government playing a major role in the near term future. Long term, sure, we need great education, in the most well-rounded sense (i.e. not only engineers), but short term the government can only be a source of waste. The Office of Chief Scientist program should be shut down. In its place, if we have spare cash, the government should match any private investment of up to $100K. To make sure money is not being siphoned off by people of ill-repute, can have a screening committee of volunteers from the tech community. 

But it is the private investment segment and the entrepreneurs themselves that can make a difference. 

I believe in our ability to adapt, but we need to start moving, otherwise we will need to wait 10-15 years until the next major cycle...

Family Affair / The Ner-Davids - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

Family Affair / The Ner-Davids - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Youtube Leanback...The MTV for this generation

Just read an article in the NYTimes (yup, they are still around) about new YouTube initiative called YouTube LeanBack. Basic point being to encourage viewers to stay with YouTube beyond the average 1-3 minutes for standard YouTube video. 

While obviously 1-3 minute videos will never (hopefully) replace long form content (fancy way of saying 30 minute episodes or hour+ movies), reminds me of twenty years ago seeing friends watch hours of MTV. Yeah, back when MTV consisting only of 3 minute or so music videos, before it morphed into...well, not really sure what MTV is today, but that's a different conversation. 

There definitely is a place for medleys  of short video pieces. But hopefully will be in moderation. MTV music videos worked because they accompanied an art form that has been around for thousands of years, the song, which typically runs for a few minutes. And listening to music for half hour, even an hour, straight, is nice. If we add video to it, even nicer. Enhances the experience -- but does not come in place of long form content, video which tells a story. Novels do not compete with short stories. They complement each other. 

Wow...I needed this to push me back on track!

Thanks to my friend Larry Tishkoff was alerted to this...very powerful. Sometimes the simplest of messages are the most hard hitting. 

A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward.  Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite..

This is only a 1 minute, 44 second video and it is brilliant.   Make sure you read as well as listen...forward and backward.

This is a video that was submitted in a contest by a 20-year old.   The contest was titled "u @ 50" by  AARP. This video won second place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause.  So simple and yet so brilliant. Take a minute and watch it. 


Click on the link below:

Lost Generation 

Red Herring hosted a conference....And no one came....Who is to blame?

In general I am against paying for conferences, whether for myself or for one of our portfolio companies. I think there is enough sponsorship money out there to cover costs plus a profit for organizers. Especially if they think creatively like my friend Jeff Pulver, the folks at TedxTelAviv, and the producers of DLD. 

But when the annual announcement came out calling for companies to apply for the "Red Herring 100" award, I encouraged AttracTV to apply. And lo and behold they were accepted...and were informed they had the right to showcase the company at the Red Herring conference in Paris being held today and tomorrow. And the catch...to claim that right need to pay 1500 euro. But still I encouraged to move forward, because the company needs exposure to more VCs, and I [mistakenly] thought would be a good venue. 

We arrived yesterday for the pre-event cocktail party and already there were bad vibes. A room set up for hundreds held many twenty people. OK, I said, most Europeans can simply come in the morning for the official conference. but this morning was no better. In a salon in a very fancy shmancy hotel in Paris, that could easily hold 500 people, there were maybe 50-75 people. In an opening speech, Alex Vieux, longtime producer of ETRE and RedHerring online magazine and conferences, spoke about the gloom and doom of venture ecosystem in Europe. He went on and on for 20 minutes about how terrible things are, how no deals are getting done, and everything is grinding to a halt. 

Now, Zeev Holtzman, founder of Giza Ventures in Israel, has recently said the same thing about the reality of the Israeli venture scene. But of course there are contrary opinions. 

My questions today are more for conference organizers...if you pressure start-ups to pay high fees to present, but then do not deliver a quality and quantity of audience, should you refund money? What responsibility should conference organizer bear? Is there not an implied contract?

I for one believe that Mr. Vieux should refund registration fees to all the start-ups who came. Not to compensate them for their travel, lodging, time, but at least what is directly in his control. After all, he told us several times this morning how wealthy he is...giving back 100K euro would not kill him. And he certainly does not deserve to profit from such a awful turn-out. Most of the start-ups today presented to other start-ups, which is always fun but does not have to take place in a five star hotel in Paris. 

Oh, and there wasn't even breakfast this morning!!!

A Response to Yom Hazikaron

A few hours ago we heard the first siren beginning Israel's Day of Remembrance to her fallen soldiers (both those in uniform and those not, but lost for their belief in a free and independent State of Israel). 

In thinking about all those lost on the battlefield, all those lost in the coffee shops, on the buses, and those just caught up in all of it, I so hope and pray that someday soon we enjoy peace. May their memory be a blessing to all of us, and may we make sure they did not die in vain...let's do what we can to bring peace closer, so that no more lives be lost.  And let Reb Shlomo help you dream of peace.