"To build an Israeli Google, a lot has to change. There's a path we must take as a country to do this," Wix Ltd. CEO Avishai Abrahami said at the "Globes"-Ernst & Young Journey Conference in Tel Aviv.
Earlier this year, Wix, which has developed a do-it-yourself website creator, filed a prospectus for a Wall Street IPO at an valuation reported at $500 million. Abrahami said that a large part of his charge was directed at regulatory obstacles. "You can't see Google or Pandora here, because many things [such as electronic products - S.S.] arrive in Israel late, costing us opportunities."
Abrahami participated in the panel, "Leading Israeli Companies", with Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai, ironSource CEO Tomer Bar-Zeev, and Kenshoo CEO Yoav Izhar. All four companies have reached the point where they do not have to prove their success.
Galai, who is taking his company public at a valuation of $700-800 million, agreed with Abrahami, saying, "I don’t think that we can build a Google in Israel, but it's more complicated. We have more people in the US than outside the US, so the point is less and less clear."
The panel moderators were Ernst & Young Israel co-general manager Yoram Tietz and Carmel Ventures managing partner Shlomo Dovrat. "These companies are changing the way the industry is built, said Dovrat, an entrepreneur in the wave of high-tech companies in the 1980s. "It took me more than a decade to build a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars. These guys are doing it much faster. You can no longer do things the way we did."
Commenting on the entrepreneurs of the future, Izhar said, "The younger generation is always better than the one before it. It reminds of the army experience, where the young guys always know how to get along better, even though they make mistakes. What worries me is something I saw after three years in the US, where there were crises that toughened the market and winnowed the companies. There has been no real crisis here lately, and it's missing. I saw many companies that are built like a house of cards, and they know that they're not built properly. If we don’t stay committed to building something for the short term, and without denigrating the banks, there will be a risk.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 17, 2013
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