"Actually, we're on vacation..."

We had 3 good meetings today (two venture capital firms and one established software company). Some themes are emerging....

Israel is getting/staying strong in
-respecting Intellectual Property
-semi-conductors
-optical networks
-understanding the US market
-Internet technologies
-gaming (casino) technologies

Israel does not have strengths in:
-sales execution
-enterprise software (there's no money in it and Microsoft/Oracle/Symantec can't be toppled)
-communication skills (particularly listening).

The best example we got of this was: "In the US, when someone realizes that a listener doesn't understand him, he says "hmmm, I need to rephrase it.' In Israel, he says, 'this guy doesn't understand me, i'm smarter than he is and he's an idiot."

Tonight, we happened to find out about a networking event for people in the gaming industry, designed to bring together venture capitalists and start-ups. We crashed the event and started working the crowd. We would get people to talk about their business, ask them questions, and figured out what made them tick. They would ask us who we were.

Our answer, "I'm here on vacation."

No one of course believed us, but it's the truth. Best evidence I can think of that we're passionate about what we do. When we're (Asher and I) on vacation, we go and talk business and technology with start-ups and financiers.