Spotlights

Etty Yairi

"Today, I am a partner in AfterDox – a group of investors that locate promising start-ups for investment in their most preliminary pre-seed stage. I entered the high-tech field in the 1960s and have been there ever since, from its very beginning for over 40 years. The first product I developed was a bookkeeping program called “Nihulit”, for service offices. For a period of 20 years, I worked at Amdocs, in the fields of business development and marketing. I developed systems that were, at the time, very innovative in the market, among them systems for the first laptops and six unique systems in the field of Partner Webbing & Management. Over the years I was relocated four times to the US, for work purposes and in order to study. I worked in Silicon Valley before it was called Silicon Valley; after that I spent some time at Sitel, before Bill Gates arrived. It was an exhilarating time. Among other things, during one of my relocations in the 1980s, I developed a complex logistic system for the US Marines.

Because I am always looking for fields where I can contribute, I volunteered for the Recanati’s Mentoring Program and took part in the “Young Entrepreneurs” program, helping high school pupils from Netanya take their first steps into the world of business. It was an interesting and exciting year."

Life Motto: "Stick with what you believe in. This tenacity helps us to accept the things we want to achieve in life."

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Ohad Zuckerman

 

"For 20 years, I worked for the “Zeraim Gedera” seed company, a family business of which my father was one of the founders. The company was later sold to the Markstone Capital Partners Group, and then on to the huge Swiss agro-technology company, Syngenta. I managed the company from 2000-2008, after which I left and established UniVerve Biofuel.

UniVerve is a cleantech company that develops microalgae-to-oil formulas for various climatic conditions. I chose to focus on this field for two main reasons. One, it combines the three fields that really interest me: energy, water, and food. Energy, food and water are the most important issues facing mankind today, and I get a great deal of satisfaction from the ability to contribute to changing and developing them. The second reason is an ideological one. In a country like Israel, poor in natural resources, we need green substitutes for the country’s strategic resources. Likewise, I am very attracted by the possibility of contributing to the quality of the environment by reducing the level of greenhouse gas emissions. My partner and I have been managing UniVerve for almost three years now. We began by establishing our pilot plant at the development site of the “Rotem” Industrial Park, and we intend to set up our first farm in Israel in 2014."

 

Life Motto: "I am driven by two things: creativity and fun. Doing good things for the country and the environment and not only for self-gain. Nevertheless, I always remember that every ideology has to be backed up by a certain financial logic. And finally, as with everything in life, one needs luck – “mazal”. In Hebrew, the initials for the word luck stand for place (makom), time (zman) and action (la’asot)."

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