A Theory of Saudi Fear of Egyptian Democracy

I was discussing with a friend recently why the Saudis are so worried about Mubarak's fall that they would offer to pay Egypt's aid if the US cuts it off.  I doubt they are worried about Saudis taking to the streets - Saudi Arabia is not only a kingdom, as opposed to a dictatorship pretending to be a democratic republic - the country is actually named after the ruling family, the House of Saud.

Why I Support the Egyptian People’s Revolution as an Israeli and a Jew - and Why You Should Too

The West, and Israelis and Jews in particular, seem to have come to the foregone conclusion that if Mubarak leaves power (probably better said as when Mubarak leaves), Egypt will be overrun by a barbaric horde of Jew-hating, warmongering  Islamists whose first action in power will be to rip up all peace agreements and send their entire military to conquer Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.  I understand their anxiety; Egypt has a powerful army and the idea of fighting an all-out war on the southern front - something we haven't had to do since 1973 - is scary.  I however am much more optimistic and support the Egyptian people unequivocally, as an American, an Israeli, and a Jew, despite my first concern always being for the welfare of Israel and the Jewish people.  I would suggest that other Israelis and Jews do the same thing, or at a minimum be supportive of the Egyptian people while watching carefully to see what kind of government emerges post-Mubarak.

Groupon's International Acquisition Strategy and Its Long Term Future

When it comes to acquisitions, Groupon has been most widely questioned for its rejection of Google's $6Bn offer (Facebook, which is five years older, has 2-3x the revenue, and is, well, Facebook, is probably the only VC-backed company to reject a larger offer, in absolute terms, since the dot-com bubble).

Tuesday they announced a trifecta of acquisitions enabling their entrance into India, South Africa, and Israel.  Clearly they wasted no time putting their $950M round to use (of which the firm probably only pocketed ~ $525M - but what's $425M among friends?).  What surprised me most though as someone who apparently was not following the fastest growing company in history closely enough, is that this was not even close to Groupon's first international acquisition and that in fact they've been on an international acquisition tear since last May, just after the last round of gargantuan fundraising.  In fact I'm not sure if Groupon has entered any international markets organically.

To me this raises some questions:

How Google Helped Israel Put Out the Fire

Is there anything Google doesn't touch today?  According to the Hebrew version of Ha'aretz, when Bibi Netanyahu decided to seek foreign aid in putting out the largest and deadliest fire in Israel's history, his military attaché "used Google" to find Evergreen, the private company which operates the Supertanker.

The English version of the same article omitted this detail.

On a personal note, the tragedy of this fire which claimed 42 lives and destroyed over 7% of Israel's forested land in mere days, weighed heavily on me during this Hanukah.  This year, instead of the holiday being about celebrating the light of the eternal flame that our ancestors lit after vanquishing the Greeks from our lands, it was about cheering as Greek - and other - fire-fighting planes helped us extinguish flames that had gone out of control.  It was hard to miss this tragic and bittersweet irony.

We've Already Created an Israeli Nokia

A couple of years ago Daniel Cohen at Gemini wrote a great piece in VentureBeat called "The quest to create an Israeli Nokia" in which he argued that the black-eye to Israel's high tech scene was that "there are no examples of great Israeli break out companies – no Israeli equivalent of Google, Microsoft or Nokia."  He went on to give a very insightful commentary into the reasons behind this, all of which are based on what I would call "micro" factors - impatience of investors, impatience of entrepreneurs, a think-small mentality, and lack of $1bn experience - which could be overcome by the right people.


In doing some research for a piece that I am planning on writing about what I believe are the structural reasons that Israel has not created a Nokia or a Microsoft, I discovered something very interesting: we have already created a Nokia.  Teva Pharceuticals, despite having sales of around 20% of Nokia, actually has a slightly higher  market cap as of the time of this writing.  Nokia has a slightly higher EV, but even being close is an accomplishment.


Sure, you could say that Teva is not high-tech in the sense of IT, but life sciences/biotech is a pretty big VC sector, and pretty high-tech in its own way.  You could also say that Teva is "Old" (as Danny puts it in his piece), tracing its history all the way back to 1901, but let's not forget that Nokia was founded in 1865!


I am still planning on writing my post about the structural challenges to Israeli entrepreneurs, but first I've got to brush up on my Michael Porter ...