Eldad Maniv

I added the new Israeli Proptech startup landscape by TLV Partners to my 2025 collection on VC Cafe. There are over 200+ Israeli startups operating in the proptech sector (including a number of unicorns). The new crop of AI-first startups are penetrating every layer of the tech stack - from elevating the tenant experience and enabling predictive maintenance, to construction site monitoring and delivering AI-driven infrastructure insights. Link to the CTech by Calcalist article with the commentary below.

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Operations vs Strategy - which is more important? My answer has always been operations. Strategy is simply a smart operational process to figure out the right strategy. When we started the Israel Tech Mission nearly 1.5 years ago our focus was on action, operations and impact. And see impact to date: https://lnkd.in/e95Z92wZ

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Marketing SHOULD be fun ✨ Aviv Canaani went from VP of Marketing to CRO at Datarails over four years. During that time, the company grew 10X and flipped from 95% outbound to 95% inbound. All while having fun with their audience So... How do you balance brand vs performance? Aviv's POV for you: Most B2B companies treat brand and performance as competing budget items. Aviv unified them under one revenue leader. When you own both marketing spend and sales outcomes, the incentives align. They saw THIS shift happen after the 2022 market crash. Outbound meetings held steady but close rates dropped. Inbound leads converted at much higher rates because those prospects already knew the brand and came in with intent. Brand building makes performance channels work better. But... Aviv's brand building looks nothing like traditional B2B Datarails runs ads featuring Kim Kardashian memes to sell FP&A software to CFOs. They create content with creators from Fiverr. They post jokes on LinkedIn. The head of growth came from mobile gaming, not enterprise software. The thesis is simple: You're selling to humans, not corporations CFOs scroll IG and watch funny videos just like everyone else. Playing it safe is the biggest risk because safe content gets ignored. The key is balance. Datarails pairs scroll stopping content with deep thought leadership. They run a podcast called FP&A Today with over 500,000 downloads. They share data driven insights and interview finance leaders. They give their audience BOTH entertainment and substance. Just like Tiesto. Aviv's team includes people from B2C backgrounds for that exact reason. They produce high volumes of video content, test what works, and feed the algorithms. His prediction for the next phase is that marketing becomes even more human. He's already seeing more sponsored posts from people rather than company pages. Customers talking about products. CEOs and CMOs building personal brands. AKA... Be more human. Have fun with your audience This is the way ✌️ P.S. Make sure you give Aviv a follow!

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The 2024 results are in - and OurCrowd is once again crowned as Israel's most active VC investor with 34 first-time deals. See the full report from IVC Data and Insights, Gornitzky GNY, KPMG Israel

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Interview on Channel 10 – The Economy Channel with Danny Roup. Boosting productivity in the Israeli economy starts with inclusive participation in the labor market. It’s not just an economic necessity – it’s a moral one.

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“𝘏𝘪𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘨𝘢-𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳, 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 Wiz’s $32 𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘤𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵 $7 𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘰𝘯 Armis 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘭, 𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘧𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘢𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴, 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘴𝘳𝘢𝘦𝘭𝘪 𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮.” Following a year marked by global economic uncertainty, optimism among investors in Israel’s tech sector has rebounded sharply, with 20 percent rating the industry as excellent compared with only 1 percent previously. Was a pleasure to speak with Israel Hayom ישראל היום along with other industry leaders about what lies ahead for innovation and growth in Israel in 2026 and beyond. Read the full piece here 👉 https://lnkd.in/ds7VxgmP Reut Yehuda Golan Lia Cromwell Yaniv Golan Chaim Schiff Talor Sax

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Our posts about ivrit.ai are usually (surprise surprise) written in Hebrew. Today, we're making an exception to accomodate our global viewers as we share our experience with the ElevenLabs' scribe-v1 Speech-to-Text model. As most of you know, we maintain a Hebrew Transcription leaderboard on Huggingface (link in first comment). This was needed as fleurs and common-voice are low-quality datasets with regards to Hebrew. When ElevenLabs launched scribe_v1, we were eager to try it out. The initial results were a mixed bag: some benchmarks where scribe_v1 provides best-in-class results, others where it fumbles significantly. Our analysis mostly hints at issues with long-form transcriptions, where it simply "drops" large parts of the text after 1-2 minutes. We had a quick discussion about this with ElevenLabs support, but the end result is still subpar performance on Hebrew transcription, and we suspect this may be true for other low-resource languages. We think scribe_v1's technology is best-in-class, and are hoping to work together with the ElevenLabs team to fix this. So, if anyone at EL wants to chime in and make this happen (Mati Staniszewski Piotr Dabkowski :)), please reach out to us. We believe this might make scribe_v1 much better at not just Hebrew, so it might be worth your time. Our benchmarks are open, we're a non-profit, and in the last few weeks we open-sourced >5000 hours of speech with high-quality transcriptions. If anyone here has friends at EL and wants to help, please tag them! Kinneret Misgav, PhD Yoad Snapir Yanir Marmor

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What should marketers expect in 2026? A clear divide. Marketing teams that adopt positionless ways of working will move and execute faster. Teams that do not will feel the drag. As Pini Yakuel, CEO of Optimove, puts it: “A Positionless Marketer is not a generalist that does one thing well. It is about being more versatile and willing to build multiple skill sets. You need to understand data, creativity, and analytics.” With AI making data more accessible, enabling faster analysis without deep technical expertise, and supporting continuous optimization across content, offers, and channels, teams built on rigid roles and constant handoffs will struggle to keep up. The gap will not be about ambition. It will be about execution.

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Israeli AI health benefits startup Healthee raises $50m https://lnkd.in/dwVdeY2B Guy Benjamin Ben Nagar Dr. Elad Ofir Comerica Bank Key1 Capital Finn Capital Glilot Capital Partners Group 11 TriNet Ofer Tal Dariusz (Derek) Mydlarz, MD, MPH Ron Zionpour Tamar Shenkar Michael Szymanski 🌎 Omer Maman Lior Litwak Yael Pelleg

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🚀 TL;DR: Key insights from VCs about GTM in 2025 🔥 What did I learn from top VC managing partners, Yael Alroy from Stardom Ventures, Nofar Amikam from Glilot Capital Partners, Yaniv Jacobi from Horizon Capital, Eran Westman from Planven, and moderated by Adir Zimerman from RAINMAKERS, about the challenges startups face in their GTM strategy today at a meetup by YozmaTech-Empowering Tech Entrepreneurs? 🎯 ✅ Proving viability before securing investment. Today, when it's much easier and faster to validate new products with AI, investors expect to see some level of Product Market Fit, with paying customers and revenue, before considering an investment. (Yaniv Jacobi) 🤖 Cutting through the noise to engage users. AI enables startups to implement personalized experiences from day one, delivering the right suggestions and tailored content to different user segments—driving growth and user engagement. (Yael Alroy) ❤️ And my favorite one > 🤝 Standing out in an era of content overload. Now more than ever, as AI generates endless content, people’s attention spans are shrinking. Building personal connections has become the key to capturing the attention of potential customers and investors, leading to real business growth. (Yael Alroy, Nofar Amikam) 💬 My two cents: Get involved in the ecosystem! Build genuine connections, attend events, collaborate with other players, start a podcast with industry leaders, publish an industry report, or create an advocacy program. Whatever suits your character and company stage. ⏳ Be patient—network building is a long-term game, but it's the key to unlocking valuable opportunities and sustainable business growth. 🌍 Are you actively engaging in your ecosystem? How has it helped you? If not, what’s holding you back? Let me know in the comments > 🚀 I also met some inspiring women entrepreneurs! Keep an eye on them 👏 vanesa kopiler Worod Haiadry Mindspace thank you for hosting! #GTM #Startups #VC #Growth #communitybuilding #ecosystembuilding #WomenInTech #Entrepreneurship #Networking

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“The system is broken.” We keep chasing $100B valuations like it’s the norm. Said it last week, but it’s worth repeating, because let’s be honest… most of its paper. It’s not ARR driving these numbers. It’s hyper-funding rounds, inflated expectations, and a complete lack of liquidity. You’ve got companies that once hit $20B, now worth $600M. Others get acquired for $700M and then shut down within a year. And when you get to those inflated valuations, you're trapped: You can't exit. You’re not growing. You’re not liquid. You’re just stuck. The irony? Some of the smartest teams today are not raising massive rounds: → They're lean. → They’re keeping equity. → And they’re building actual businesses. So how are we going to get to $100B valuations off tiny teams, no revenue, and broken exits? You can’t. VCs are under pressure. LPs want liquidity. But IPOs are rare, private equity isn’t always interested, and secondaries, well, let’s be real… not a real solution for everyone. The system is overdue for change. Until then, we need to stop worshipping empty valuations. What’s one thing you would change about how we fund and value startups today? (Shout out to Ophir Reshef, Partner at the ISF Israel Secondary Fund for this insightful op-ed in Calcalist כלכליסט CTech by Calcalist) https://lnkd.in/egNMd6nG

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𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝟱𝟬–𝟭𝟬𝟬 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁-𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝘁. 𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀? Last week I had the amazing opportunity to hear Marty Cagan live at Yotpo. They brought him to Israel for a week-long transformation workshop led by CEO Tomer Tagrin., and generously opened the sessions to leaders from other companies as well. Marty couldn’t understand why more companies don’t invest in 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆: fast, lightweight prototyping that’s now quicker than ever with AI tools. The process starts by validating prototypes with internal stakeholders - engineering, marketing, sales, and the CEO, and then moving on to customers, prospects, or design partners. This way, 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁, 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗹𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗲. Marty shared this 𝘀𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗵: Most startups need 50-100 iterations to reach product-market fit. If each iteration takes weeks, you’ll likely run out of money before you reach product-market fit. If you can do tens of prototypes a week, validate quickly, and adjust fast, your odds skyrocket. As Marty quoted Christian Idiodi: “Everyone does product discovery, only some companies do it after the release.” 🙃 Although Marty spoke mainly to product managers, I think this matters just as much for 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀. Here's what you can do: - Make it easy for your PMs to prototype fast - Join them in prototyping, focusing on implementation feasibility - Save the “proper” engineering effort for the stage when the solution is validated And yes, I had my fan moment - asked to be photographed with Marty. A little embarrassing, totally worth it.

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