[Music] so greetings and a very warm welcome to another episode of global svm business talk and today we are pleased to have mr rahul stone with us as our guest speaker with over 22 years of experience in sales and management rahul has an in-depth knowledge of working in cross-functional domains like e-commerce logistics international trade banking payments and consulting he has held leadership position at global fortune 500 companies like fedex dhl and american express rahul is a partner at pollination ventures which is an israel-based venture advisory firm that focuses on scaling innovative israeli technology based startups in india south asia and middle east region so without any delay let's hear from the man himself rahul thank you for joining us and the floor is all yours hi parshu thank you so much for the introduction hi parshu thank you so much for the introduction um i hope uh you guys can hear me yes yeah so uh first of all to all uh you know to all the students in the room uh congratulations on taking up this course uh we live in a very very different time we live in a very very exciting time uh we live in a time where the the world is a small village and one of the uh you know the key tenants of my talk today is going to be about uh not limiting yourself because of your geography or because of where you live or what your background is or any of these things those shouldn't be limiters uh in terms of you know your mindset and keeping that in mind i'm going to uh quickly move to the presentation um and i'm just going to share my screen just give me a minute can you see my screen person ah it's loading okay yes okay so you know uh my entire talk is essentially going to be about building uh innovative startups with the israeli mindset and um i'll give you a small background um at the time of uh you know giving my introduction and how i know one of your co-founders who's karagendra and also powershow and then i will take it forward but as we speak right now is it uh can you can you add me uh from the other screen uh yes just give me a minute yes can you hear me now yes okay i'm sharing my screen uh do i have access to share my screen yes i do yes okay and now you guys are able to see my full stream right yes okay super so uh quick background about myself um like parachute mentioned uh you know i come with about uh 22 years of experience in sales mainly uh in india by doing a lot of cross-border sales um and in 2017 i was you know selected by the government of israel uh to do a fellowship program uh on the startup ecosystem uh in israel and that changed a lot of things in terms of the mindset that i had on innovation and that's also where i met one of your co-founders who's so we were in the same program together and we were also room and thereafter i became a partner at polynation ventures which drives trade and innovation between india and israel um so keeping that in mind uh you know i wanted to quickly do um uh you know uh an entire talk with us students which is the starter top on building uh innovative startups the israeli way and the next session that i do with you will be about value-based sales you know once you kind of get this understanding of this whole thing then it becomes interesting as to how do you do value sales etc so um a short introduction on on the whole israeli ecosystem if you can see my uh um you know the map israel is a really small country um uh tucked away right in the center of the earth like one corner of the middle east um but over the last few years on the startup side israel has been doing a lot of work and a lot of innovation and there's a lot of buzz around it uh it doesn't you know the category doesn't matter the the domain doesn't matter in technology um there's a lot of uh innovative startups that are coming out of israel in agriculture in defense you name it there are innovative startups coming but it's very interesting to see that as a country it's really small you know just got nine point you know just under 10 million people the size of israel is really really small you know it's it's much much much smaller than a country like nepal but it's being you know known to have about one startup for every thousand four hundred people that's a lot um and as i go through this program i will kind of tell you what and how makes the difference so quick facts um again uh tel aviv is the second largest and the second most innovative city after the valley it is not london it is not any other place uh israel has one of the highest number of nasdaq listed companies israel also has the most number of engineers and scientists in the workforce in the world per capita and it has the largest number of startup companies in the world so if you take you know i'm not taking data off today but i'm taking data about three or four years ago um israel has had you know on average about 10 billion dollars worth of exits every year um in um in 2017 they had one of the best exits with a company called mobileye which was acquired by intel for about 15 billion dollars and intel is planning to take mobileye global as well on the nasdaq as well so ipo so when you look at this particular slide you will notice one thing most of these these brands or these logos are not so well known to you so if you you would probably as users know the brand bible or you'd probably know baze which is you know the equivalent of google maps which was acquired by google but other than that there's a limited chance that you one would know most of the other brands that's because many of these brands are b2b brands or they sell in the b2b space and so in my next talk with you i will talk about the whole b2b and value-based sales in b2b and there's a clear reason why israel doesn't do a lot of b2c startups because of what i spoke earlier which is um that israel is a very small country it has 9.8 million people it's very difficult to have large b2c and highly valued b2b b2c startups there so here is the israeli ecosystem or the israeli startup ecosystem and this is something that i really kind of understood when i was in israel along with indra and some of my other police um in terms of how the the whole country gets together okay to drive innovation so at the core of it is the israeli mindset how is the mindset of young entrepreneurs like you and me uh who are have the hunger in the belly and are looking to do something extremely innovative to support them is a very strong infrastructure okay so to start with uh i would say there are about three or four very very key elements which i will take as we speak as we continue down speaking uh but the first most innovative or the most important thing is that the government of israel for a long time has been invested in the startup ecosystem and in the innovation ecosystem before most other governments around the world started to think about startups the government of israel was already spending close to about five percent of its gdp on innovation and in the startup ecosystem that then kind of helps the venture ecosystem also to kind of chip in and spend a lot of time and effort on developing the ecosystem and the government along with venture capital has worked with the industry which is in israel you will find a lot of corporate incubators you'll find an intel incubator you'll find a microsoft incubator you'll find the google incubator you'll find a lot of corporate incubators who are working very closely with both the government and the vc ecosystem to develop that but this won't be possible if you didn't have the talent if you didn't have the mindset okay and i'll come back to the whole mindset and the culture in a bit because that's the core of the entire conversation or the entire talk that we're going to have so to add to this is the whole competitive structure um the israeli ecosystem unlike large markets like let's say india or or the u.s etc is a very very small market okay if you start a startup in israel you've got to be selling in the west ideally most israeli startups start by selling in either america or in europe and because you are a small startup in a small country uh trying to sell in these two countries you need to be extremely good and innovative in your product or your solution or in the value that you're proposing and that's how you will start to win in that ecosystem you can't win slowly or because you have friends and neighbors etc the product has to be extremely good again i'll talk about it as we go through so the competitiveness structure is very important um the israeli ecosystem has very very strong connection with the u.s market and so they're able to do a lot of work but if you don't have a solid product it doesn't work and that's why innovation comes at the core of this so the points about military and the culture of empowerment are the two points which are the most important points of this this entire slide on which i'm actually going to take the rest of the slides back so here's the dna of an israeli entrepreneur again if i go back to this slide here okay till very recently israel had almost no friendly neighbors it is in the last one or two years that you know after the abraham accord israel now is working starting to open up or other neighboring countries are starting to open up to israel countries like saudi arabia i mean countries like uh uae etc are starting to open up to israel some of the middle east countries but earlier if you looked at a very very limited friendly neighbor so the country had to kind of your closest customer was probably about 750 to 1000 kilometers away so in order to kind of build that dna or that mindset uh you have to have a very different mindset so here's the dna of an israeli entrepreneur okay i would say a young israeli itself has this kind of a dna um when you meet a young israeli on the road or in a classroom like yours they would challenge everything and they would challenge it you know in a positive way so that curiosity and that you know drive to challenge everything is always there the second thing is most young israelis have or young entrepreneurs there have a strong drive and a must-win attitude okay now because they have a very very limited market within their country they do everything to make their products successful so they they're using this drive they knock on every door okay then this build really innovative products which are solution driven and which are solving real problems around the world especially in the b2b ecosystem so if you look at a a a brand like mobile i mobilize solve the problem of autonomous driving at a basic level so at a basic level they understood that the challenge was when people were driving on highways for long distances they could get tired and they the car would veer off the lake okay and when you're driving at probably you know about 120 or 140 miles if you go off the lane into the next lane and there's somebody who's driving even faster they're very high chances of having an accident so mobileye would ensure that they the car was automatically brought back into that lake so that is you know a solution-driven approach to real problems in the world given the fact that it's a small country uh and you know they don't have endless resources they always build products in a cost effectively and the country goes the the entrepreneurs go global from the beginning they don't have a home market they learn from their mistakes quickly they fail fast and they learn fast that's something else that i will talk about and they have a short history israel was formed in the late 1940s around 1947 so the past is not their constraint they don't have any legacy so everything is young for them everything is the startup this country itself is a startup country any questions here for sure do we take questions now or do we take questions at the end uh we will take questions at the end sure so how does this all happen okay uh as a country israel actually turned challenges into opportunity these are the challenges that the country has it's in a conflict zone and they have no trade way like i mentioned very limited trade till recently only now it's starting to trade with some of the middle east countries no natural resources no water they do a lot of desalination of the water but if you take the natural water very limited water they didn't exist as a nation 75 years ago they had to build their own military capability and they had to be completely self-reliant so in order to address all of these challenges they have to be extremely innovative so if you look at every one of the challenges that's what makes them an innovative nation in every state look at water when you talk about water anywhere people talk about israeli innovation in the whole water ecosystem when you talk about completely self-reliant that's when people talk about you know the self-reliance in the agriculture space where the productivity per acre or the productivity per you know a space of ground in israel is much much higher than anywhere in the world um they didn't have any military backing from large countries so they had to kind of innovate and build a lot of the military infrastructure in their infrastructure that's why israel as a country today is an exporting country of a lot of military equipment again in terms of natural resources etc they've had to kind of innovate in terms of energy innovate when it comes to anything and everything as a country they had to innovate so basically instead of saying we have a problem we have a problem we have a problem the dna of the country was how do we address this problem and how do we solve this problem and this is something that has kind of transcended generations and this generation today is really driving the change not in india but globally so how can we you know just you students or you young entrepreneurs folks who are you know many of you are already running your organizations many of you all already working uh but you're all aspirational and you'll all want to take yourselves and push yourselves to the next level so how can we apply the israeli mindset while building innovative startups here's the first thing okay i spoke again about um about israel as a country and about israel's landlord about israel's you know the way the place that is located it's always been located in a place which has not been uh uh you know which has always been volatile in terms of uh you know in terms of tensions around okay so as a country they have had to survive just to live you know today we talk about the war in ukraine and how young ukrainian you know young ukraine citizens or ukraine citizens as such are now standing up and fighting for themselves for their country this is something that a lot of israelis have had to because they built this country they had to defend their country completely so they had to survive that is something that many people across many youngsters across many other countries don't have a challenge i'll give you an example in india as young india we don't have a we don't see a challenge of survival in terms of survival of life you know poverty is is there uh but that survival is very different because when there is power poverty to survive you can become frugal and you can survive but when it's a matter of life and death for survival you need to be extremely the suddenly your survival instincts hitting which is your instincts of the stomach you know the instincts of how to survive kick in and once you do that once that happens the drive is very very different so i also when you look at it start thinking [Music] from a drive which is from fantastic my career to the next level etc so have that maniacal survival mindset now this is something that i have not talked about which i said i would talk about later which is the mandatory army service or the idf service in israel every youngster beta you know beat a guy or a girl once you turn 17 you have to go for mandatory service if you're a lady you have to go in for two years if you're a guy you have to go in for three years now this and then you'll kind of put on the borders or your kind of photon conflict zones etc so it's a real scenario it's a simulated scenario where you you know go in and just have really put on the front lines finally make uh a youngster almost you know completely mature and completely ready for the world okay because you're in situations where you need to make which are decisions of life and death and this is very serious business at the age of 17 and 18. at the age of 17 and
18 many millennials are you know all about tick tock and all about uh you know social media etc but if you look at the young israelis they are really seriously focused on their army and that mental uh you know mental training is starting very very early so when they come out they are all you know trained leaders now how do you stimulate such a situation as a youngster you know it's something that you have to see in different parts you can you can take different opportunities but look at it if you're a youngster what is it that you can do to start becoming focused because they have that mandatory army service they suddenly get a mindset with discipline with courage with purpose a mindset to survive and a mindset to win so as a youngster or even as a young startup or as a young entrepreneurship entrepreneur start developing these mindsets you know a mindset with discipline courage purpose to survive and to win because that will help you to focus on building the innovative startups in a really really strong and good way this is the next uh which is something called food spa it's very very interesting make note of it and go and google it when you google it you'll understand that the word or the term puts power is a quality of audacity which is positive you know in the beginning i talked about the whole thing about questioning everything that's the israeli mindset okay the question with audacity okay uh and it's a positive addocity so one of the things that you will see in israel is most organizations are very flat structured even if you're a youngster and if you don't agree with something you will debate it and you will question it with your boss or the founder etc so the culture of foot spa creates a certain risk-taking and a can-do attitude when israelis see an opportunity they tend to take the pledge that starts something quick and dirty to see if it works so hootspot is something that a lot of people have i suggest that all of you google this term and start you know there are lots of little little youtube videos on footspike have a look at it it's very interesting you know it's it's it's good and it's important to challenge things in a positive way uh because that's when it kind of builds again the different levels of mindset for you the next point is the global mindset again when when i started i talked about the location of israel and the limitations of trade in its own backyard or its own neighborhood so most israelis think global and act global so even all of you while you all build your startups while we all built your careers while you all take yourselves to the next level think global and act global very very very important don't restrict yourself geographically okay if you look at everything that you do and see and work on today everything that you see on your phone can be from anywhere okay so there is we are like i said in the beginning we are living in village okay your customer can be anywhere and think with that mindset think with a value driven mindset as you start building your products or as you start building your careers so think global and act global this is very important i will talk about this in my next session which is building mafia product this is the whole concept about value-based stuff okay so if you look at mafia based product and normally when we have an interactive session i talk about you know how many people use email so if we were in this group and if i can just have the folks in this group here just type out in the message what is the email that you use which email tool do you use if you can just type that out in the chat and open your chat and see so we just had one answer can the others also answer please can we have more answers quickly right so now when you open your chat window you will start to see that pretty much 90 percent of you use gmail okay gmail is a market product when you want to use email there's nowhere else that you can go to but gmail and nobody came there was no gmail sales person who came to you and said gmail you know all of you use whatsapp whatsapp is a mafia product facebook is a market product start thinking on really building products that are mafia and nature so when you when you talk about the word mafia right it may have a negative connotation of the italian you know uh gangs or the gangsters etc who put a gun on your head and took your money away okay but mafia product has a positive connotation it is the connotation is you build something that is so strong that people will have the fear of missing out and will definitely come and use the prop your product and once they start using your product because of the value that your product builds or your product gives to them they are not going to go anywhere if i ask most of you who are using gmail are you going to move or do you have any intention of moving out of gmail most of you are going to say no that's the kind of product that you have to build okay build mafia product a lot of the reason why israeli startups are so strong is they build products which are mafia products they don't build uh you will not see israeli products that come to solve every problem in the world they will solve one problem and they will solve it really really well and that automatically makes it a mafia product the next point i want to talk about is embrace failure very important to embrace failure you try you fail you try again you learn you fail and then eventually you succeed so try fast fail fast and sleep fast okay so in israel you have uh you know um uh a lot of a lot of activities that happen where young entrepreneurs come and talk about how they you know how they've made mistakes what's happened how they failed etc so you know it's a very interesting thing in an ecosystem like india uh you know when you go to a venture capital firm or when you approach vcs etc they look at your pedigree which is your education pedigree are you from an iit or are you from an iem etc uh but in the israeli ecosystem if you want a little money and you go to a vc your idea is very strong you know there's a high chance that the vc will tell you go to the government ecosystem and you'll get it from there because as i mentioned the government ecosystem itself funds like you know five hundred thousand dollars one million etc you can get it from government funds but if you want a lot of money that's if you you know you want 20 million 30 million 50 million etc and you go uh two vcs one of the big questions that the bc will ask you is have you failed earlier okay and if your answer is no to that there's a high chance that the vc is going to be reluctant in giving you the money you've not gone through that cycle of failure failure is embraced in itself and it's as the startup ecosystems grow around the world it has to be embraced everywhere else as well so learn to fail or fail to learn that's something which is very important to understand okay the final thing is you know the israeli ecosystem is extremely collaborative everybody gives back everybody works together you can be two competing companies but when you're in the ecosystem you'll collaborate and you'll work together so the ecosystem really really supports this and even in your ecosystem as young as young entrepreneurs i encourage you to do exactly the same thing collaborate don't work in silos mentor if if you've done something well even if you're young mentor mentor other young startups mentor other young organizations etc um so here's the process uh start accelerate start quickly you know if you're working on an innovative startup start weekly accelerate validate incubate and scale okay in in the uh in the normal um startups you have a startup that will start and then it will slowly incubate itself and then it'll go and get money uh then it'll look to accelerate but in the israeli ecosystem they start up and they look to accelerate to take it from 0 to 60 at the fastest possible time in the first six months to actually validate the idea to validate the product whether they have customers etc so they grow very very fast so in the israeli ecosystem you first have accelerators to take a company from an idea stage quickly where it's validated if it works then it gets incubated and then it goes into scaling so finally if you know here's a quote from warren buffett if you're going to the middle east to look for oil you can skip israel if you're going to look for brains look no further israel has shown that it has a disproportionate amount of brains and energy and i feel that this mindset can be replicated by anyone anywhere all of you living in countries different countries who are listening and you could be from india you because many of you are from nepal this mindset can be imbibed by you because once you start living this mindset then you start building startups so even if you're working in an organization and start thinking very very differently um and that really really helps so uh in summary you know uh the of a young israeli entrepreneur is the hunger to survive and excel because they joined the military earlier they have they built a mindset a military mindset they have food spa which has the audacity to question anything they build mafia products they're not afraid to fail they think global and act global they give back to the ecosystem they collaborate collectively and they compete fearless so thank you very much on that note uh we'll move to question and answers you know should you want to reach out to me my email is this and you can search me on linkedin as well so partial do we want to move to questions
2022-03-21