Ice Hockey in the Desert

For those of you who happen to be up in northern Israel later this week, we’d love to see you at the second (almost) annual International AK Hockey Tournament, Jan 30-31 at the Canada Center (or should I say “Centre”?) in Metula. Thanks mainly to the tireless efforts of Danny Spodek and my brother Ernest, we’ve brought about 25 hockey players here from North America to play against some of Israel’s best. As anyone from Israel’s north will tell you, it has been a long but successful road to recovery from the damage inflicted in the summer of 2006. So come on up and support us and our friends in the north, enjoy some great schwarma, and see some great ice hockey.

Nothing Stands Still Here

Well, it has been all of (almost) 24 hours since we published our annual report on Israel hi-tech and VC (see www.leapcap.com/IsraelTechVCReview.html), and we're already somewhat out of date. In the first week of 2008, already two more Israeli tech companies (XIV and Onaro, both in data storage) have been acquired (by IBM and NetApp) for more than a combined $420M. What's more interesting than the amounts these companies have brought to their investors is the amount of money that went in to create that $420M -- less than $10M total was invested in either company. Once again, Israeli managers have shown that you don't need to bring your burn rate up to millions-per-month to create a real company with real technology and real clients and real partners............. I wonder what Week 2 will bring.