Israel

“You've got this country that's got, what, like, eight million people, and it's got more NASDAQ-listed companies than all of Europe, plus China, plus Japan combined.”

“We at Sapphire focus on early stage firms, US, Europe, and Israel, predominantly folks with series A exposure.”

“The whole venture industry just started. There were 10 people. I got hired by Apex. So I was one of the first 10 people maybe in venture in Israel.”

“Venture capital was decidedly a Silicon Valley and Israel, candidly, investment theme in the late nineties. You almost didn't see it anywhere else at the time. You know, New York wasn't a thing. London certainly wasn't a thing, and it wasn't China yet to the b…”

“It was 1994, and the whole venture industry literally started overnight, and the whole industry was 10 people, and I was lucky enough to be hired by, ah, to be hired by, ah, Apex, who wanted to open operations in Israel, one of two people.”

“It's amazing how little open source leadership comes out of Israel, despite the sort of the huge kind of wealth of technology creation that happens there.”

“From a tech perspective, Israel is really good at tech. It's not as good in product.”

“The biggest misconception, which I think is still not resonating, is that this is not a Israel problem, This is not an Israel-Palestinian conflict. This is a Jewish problem.”

“This is going to become a Garden of Eden for technology and humanity and civic resilience, and how the world becomes a much better place. A Garden of Eden. That's what it's going to become, and it's going to be hard before it's better. I just want to say that.…”

“If you ask me what comes next in the next chapter of the State of Israel, I think I do know, and the Israeli tech community, and that is much more investment is going to flow here because people want to invest in resilient societies in the 21st century, as it'…”

“There is a list going on, active list, of 400 plus volunteers. That want to work, that can be helpful to startups. Whatever they need, whatever's possible.”

“You can't look the other way from atrocities, and we need to take people at the word. When they say, when Iran says they're coming to destroy Israel, Take them at the word. When Hamas says we're coming to destroy the Jewish people, we need to take them at thei…”

“Really, we're in a place right now where every Israeli knows somebody who has either been murdered, kidnapped, or injured.”

“In the context of Israel and business, I think business has bottomed out and things are getting better for now.”

“The way it stands now is, is we're going to keep fighting. We're going to wipe out Hamas and hopefully we can work with others to have a government there. That's not, you know, does not allow terrorism.”

“I think basically what creates a generation of civilians that hate Israel is you have the schools in that area have been run by people who teach people that Jews are pigs and Jews are wrong and our religion hates Jews.”

“We didn't think there was a talent density in Israel specifically for foundation models. Because a lot of the Israeli technology comes out of the military and not academia.”

“We've raised an incredible amount of foreign money into our company since October seventh, an insane amount of money. It's wide open for business right now. Investors are on the ground every day.”

“And so when you look at kind of the key markets for AI development, where the US is first and China is second and Israel is third I think those are likely to be less regulated than most, and certainly than Europe, and so these, those will be advantaged economi…”

“Israel and anti-Semitism are we, we're the canary in the coal mine. We, we're the front line.”

“I really fear that very little has been learned from the seventh of October and the events leading to seventh of October.”

“And most of the a 120 members of parliament, members of the Knesset in Israel should go home.”

“There has to be a change. You know Israel has to have fixed borders because set and fixed borders enables you to operate legitimately in a, in, as a nation state, right?”

“I find that Israel civil society is broken today.”

“I think what we end up seeing is we end up seeing the, ah, ultimately kind of the near and total sort of conquering of Gaza,”

“I don't at all, no. Absolutely not. Personally stand with them, and we as a company do too.”

“The Wiz Acquisition, thirty two billion. That's like seven percent of Israel's GDP.”

“Maybe once or twice over the past eight years, but there are deals that I'm telling myself, okay, I should have done it.”