Chemi Peres
Appearances
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
you
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And also the importance of the software versus the hardware. But I think what happened is that at that time, the government, the prime minister was Rabin. My father was minister of foreign affairs. My father actually led the coalition against the Libyan.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
No, we didn't talk about it. But, you know, he was the founder of the Israeli aerospace industries. And by nature, he was supposed to be the one who will drive those kind of projects with his vision and optimism. But he was also very realistic and he understood that it's not going to work. It's too costly. It's too expensive. controversial and not embraced.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And he thought that we need to take a hard decision. And so the government voted to stop the project. I think it was the majority of one. And obviously, when it happened, they had to shut down the project. It was devastating. And for the first time and the last time in my life, I experienced what it means to be fired from your job.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
I feel sorry for the executives that had to fire thousands of people. They were doing the hard job. But I can tell you from my own experience, when you are fired from a job, it doesn't matter how good you were, how well you were, or how much you were appreciated, or how important your work was, and it's not your fault.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Still, it's a very humiliating event, a situation which I cherished very deeply in my memory to always remember that if I need to fire people, I need to be very, very sensitive. And I knew what they feel. And also I promised myself that I'm not going to be in that position anymore. I will never accept another position or situation like that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
in my life, which means that I'm going to be the decision maker and the one who's responsible for his destiny. And that is a life-changing event. And with that, I moved on.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
So first of all, things happened very quickly. I did not have much time to be sorry. I had to rise up and focus on the future. I had other positions that I still kept, like being test pilot. I was also a translator of books from English to Hebrew. I was doing a lot of jobs just to keep up. But the following day of that event, I got a phone call from a CEO of a social company.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
that was very close to Israel Aerospace Industries. And the CEO learned about me from the chief marketing officer of the company, which recently passed away. His name was David Orr. I traveled with him to market some of the activities that we've done. in the US, both military government. And I think he was very impressed with the work that we did.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
So he told him, look, lots of people are leaving now IAI and there's this guy that I think you should hire him. So he called me and he said, look, I heard great things about you. I want to hire you to the company. So I have a problem with that. I'm not going to work for you. I said, why? I said, because I just experienced this humiliating scene, I'm not going to repeat it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
He said, will you meet me for coffee? I said, sure, of course. So we met for coffee. And he said, look, I'd like you to come and work with me. This is a company which is working in the defense industry. I want to move it into the civilian markets. It was dual use before dual use was used.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
and I need somebody like you on my side to run the marketing, business development, those activities, and tell me what will it take to bring you on board. I said, look, the first thing is that I'm not going to be fired again. So he took out a white paper with a pen and he said, please write what are your conditions. I said, point number one, nobody can fire me from the company. He said,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
That's fine. Point number two, I told him I'm a student, so I need to be very flexible. I need to be the decision maker about how do I allocate my time. He crossed another V. And then we talked about my salary and my terms, my employment terms. And that was the point number three, which he also signed. And then he had point number four. He said, we're going also to pay for your tuition.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
I said, thank you very much. So I joined the company. And we were doing amazing stuff. I think that one of the most exciting part of my experience there was the acquisition of a semiconductor fab in Israel. which was created by national semiconductors.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
They invested a lot of money in this factory, in this pub, and they decided that they want to shut it down after they invested huge amounts of money. Our chairman at that time decided to buy the company and gave them a proposal that was really amazing. And they accepted the proposal. We did not have the resources to pull this transaction,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
So we went to the Israel Corporation at the time, which was a conglomerate, and we offered them to join us in this effort. They would bring the funding. They would get 40% of the joint venture. We keep the 60%. So the deal was done without us putting anything, but holding 60% of the company.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And the two guys that were running the pub, they said, if you guys are buying it, we believe we can make it profitable. So we went with them and the company shortly after went public, it changed its name to Tower Semiconductors. They did a great job and we took the company public and there was huge success for the company.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And then as we were looking for products to get into the civilian market, I started to have meetings with some young people that came up with ideas. but they had no way to fund it. So they wanted us, they heard about us. We went public and we did this. They thought that we are a strategic partner. They wanted us to invest in minority.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And I told them, look, we're not going to invest in minority in companies. Either we buy the company or we license the product. But for sure, we're not going to have a minority in the board seat. But I saw that there are great ideas and there's no platform to finance those ideas. So I spoke with the CEO, who unfortunately, a few years later, passed away of cancer.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And I told him, look, we need to build a platform to finance these projects. It can be done on our balance sheet. And one of the advisors of the company came in and said, look, there is a program by the Israeli government. It's called Inbal.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Thank you, Ilana. It's a pleasure to be here.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
which is the insurance arm of the Israeli government, they came up with an idea or suggestion or offering that venture funds that will raise money on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange will get insurance. 80% of your investment is going to be protected. And based on those guidelines, we decided to build a company.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
We raised $1 million from our own company, but also from some business people and a small investment bank that was active in Israel. And that $1 million was enough in terms of equity to take a company public at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. We raised $7 million on top of it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And that's how I started the first fund, which was MoFed, which means industrial R&D exemplar in a free translation, but also the initials of industrial R&D. And I started to invest in young companies, Very inexperienced. And it was an amazing ride. I did it as a part-time job on top of what I did in the company.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
But I fell in love with the founders, with the vision, with the broad view of different things you can do. And at some point in time, I said, I want to move full-time to run the fund. And they agreed. So that's what I did.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Beginning of the 90s, yes. The public offering was on January 1993. By the way, on March 1993... They raised the qualification for IPO to $3 million in equity. We were able to go on January, which was the last, actually, the last IPO. And ever since I'm doing this for my main business activity as a venture capitalist, investing in startups,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
So first of all, I was in an operating company for five years and I observed how it's done and I was part of the management of the company. I was not the CEO, but I was very close. And I had a lot of influence on things that we've done. But I always felt that I'm much more intrigued by vision, strategy, creation than operation. I thought operation, other people can do better than me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
I'm not the greatest operator in the world. That's something that I always wanted to look at new things, to explore new frontiers, to engage with new technologies, to meet other people. So I felt that venture is better for me. It's more fulfilling.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And as a matter of fact, also, I felt that, you know, in 1973, when Israel was taken by surprise in the Yom Kippur War, what happened to Israel in the course of 10 years, from 73 to actually 84, 11 years, What happened is that the burden of security was so high. And at that time, Israel did not have the high tech sector. And what happened to our economy is that it imploded, it crashed.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Well, I don't know anything else. That's what I know. But I can tell you this. First of all, I have two wonderful parents. And if you imagine a picture, the view of the life consists of vertical and horizontal lines. I think my mother gave me the horizontal ones, the modesty. And my father gave me the vertical ones to aspire, to dream, to serve a great cause.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
We reached 450% inflation rate. And I felt that the future of Israel depends on its ability to create a vibrant economy. And I felt that since we don't have natural resources, the only way for us to do it is by creating startup companies that will scale. And that will be the driver of our economy.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And I was thinking about a national portfolio of about a thousand companies where 5% of them will generate hundreds of millions of dollars. That would change completely the economy and will allow us to carry on and never get into this crisis that we had. And when I looked at venture, I thought this is the right way to go, to raise money on a global basis, to invest it in the best and brightest and
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
help them scale their businesses and support the Israeli economy. That was a mission that I fell in love with, and I felt that we need to build the ecosystem in Israel.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And I also got involved in building the ecosystem by helping to the formation of the Israel Venture Association, which gathered all the funds in a professional way to take care of taxation, regulation, to pass the R&D bill, the new R&D bill, to get tax exemption for foreign investors, to allow mergers and acquisitions and just to let it scale.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And I got involved in a lot of activities besides the ones that I did in the fund to take care of the entire ecosystem and make sure that we are building something significant in Israel. I think at that time, people did not appreciate the power of technology companies. Especially banks, when you went to raise money from them to support the companies, they say, show me the balance sheet.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Show me your assets.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
But now banks are technology companies by themselves. So they can fully understand what cyber is and what cloud is and what data is. So they understood the power of technology and therefore they started to get involved in the high tech sector. But it took time to build it. So I've been doing it since the early 90s, which means over 33 years now, 34. And it's still fascinating.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
The big challenges first is to convince investors to invest in Israel. They have lots of opportunities around the globe. So we had to explain why Israel is unique, why Israel is important, why Israel can be successful. Why do they need to focus on Israel? It comes from the Middle East. Speak lousy English and don't really understand culture. That was one challenge.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
The second challenge was how do you bring people with operational experience into sitting in the backseat and investing and sitting on boards and not being hands-on? How do you build a partnership? How does it work? How do you go through the decision process? Because everybody wants to decide by themselves, right? They want to run the show. But you have a collection of very capable people.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
So you need to build a partnership. And what does it mean? And how does it work? And how do you take decisions? And then how do you compete on deals? And how do you support your companies? How do you make sure that you are creating successes if you can? And what else do you need to bring besides money? And how the ecosystem is growing and shaping up.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And do you need to change your strategy with it? And we've done all that. But I feel that you work a lot. And it may not be stressful as a startup. But then again, it's not fun to get in a problem with a company that you need to resolve it. The human factor is always augmented in situations like this. But I've learned a lot, constantly figuring out where the world is heading.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And if you combine those lines, you get a beautiful picture. But I think I can say that it's growing by inspiration because he was very busy out of his life. He had very little time for family, but in the very little time, it was so meaningful. And out of the person meetings, a lot of inspiration was flowing our way. So I was lucky and I'm grateful for that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
You need to be able to have the intuition to predict which one is going to be successful. What are the parameters of success? So you learn a lot and you always have more to learn. You never stop learning, actually.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
It was clear that this is the route, but I think the most exciting moments were first acquisition, first IPO, stepping into a company and seeing that just a few years ago, there was only one founder and a couple of employees and you and the fund. And now it's a huge company. It's very fulfilling and people don't even know you and you don't know anyone.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
I was one day in a meeting of a company that celebrated 10 years. They had already like 1,500 people. And the CEO said, everyone was in one huge room. And he said, those that were here 10 years ago, please stand up. So a couple of people are standing up. And then he said, those that are here for nine years, stand up. And a little bit more people stood up.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And all of a sudden, the whole audience standing up is fascinating.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
My father was a surprise. Although he was 93 years old, I have a very good friend. He's an American physician that we used to meet every year in the World Economic Forum. And he would check him. Every time we were there, he would look at me. He would talk to him. And I told him, what do you think? He said, he will be a centennial. He will live to 100.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
So when he died at the age of 93, I was shocked. I couldn't understand what happened. I have a diary that I write every day and I browsed through the last year and I've seen through my notes, there was a process that I could have understood that life do not goes on forever. I think the challenge was I was at the time working with him at the Paris Center and I was chairman.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And I thought to myself, what are we going to do next with the center? A few years before that, I asked him to write a spiritual will for the center after 120 years. He wrote a beautiful document that I have full of vision. And what I did is, the day after he passed away, after the funeral, I gathered everyone in the center and said, those who want to leave, feel free to leave.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
I'm not holding anyone. But those who want to carry on the mission are welcome to stay. And the way we're going to operate is as if he's here, stepped out of the room. We need to figure out the road ahead. and follow the footsteps. We're not trying to fill in the shoes, but we need to walk the walk.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And that was also triggering the notion that his legacy is the legacy of tomorrow, not a legacy of memory. And legacies of tomorrow can grow over time because it's action. We're not a museum. We're not leaning back and thinking about what was the past. But he constantly said the past is not interesting because you cannot change it. Only the future is interesting. So we follow that idea.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
We managed also to help him write a book, the last book before he died. A few weeks before that, we finished the writing and we took upon ourselves to publish it. And it's called No Room for Small Dreams. It's a short memoir of lessons he learned and achievements that can be served for future leaders. Lessons of resiliency, of optimism, of believing in what you do, of serving a great cause.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And it's a legacy that is worth carrying on. So I took it upon myself to continue and carry the legacy forward and augment everything that we did at the center. Especially in the last years of his life, we started to work on the innovation center at the Paris Center. And I understood it's not only about peace building activities through projects that the center has been doing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
We need now to fill in much more functions. And the most important one is the innovation. wrote in his will, we need to protect the island and calm the ocean. We thought that innovation and technology is the best way to protect the island and calm the ocean. So we stick to that. And now we work on the Future Institute. We are now building the Future Institute because we think it's essential.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
that people will look forward into the future, try to imagine what the future brings to us. The future is sending signs. Methodologically, you need to be able to identify them and separate them from noise and get ready for what's happening next, whether it's AI, whether it's climate change, and take action, not just be a think tank, but a do tank. So we're working on that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
That's the third layer of the center. If the first one was privatizing peace, the second one was building the innovation center, and now it's about the future.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Some people say that you need to wear two hats, but I'm saying I wear one hat with two hats. I'm a believer in the same things that he believed in. We shared the love for innovation, for technology. We believe that the future holds so much promise. If you marry this with values, human values, make sure that it goes on the right way. So it's very easy for me to do that. That's what I'm doing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And I have an amazing team at the center, which makes it even easier. But I feel that he's with us, and I think that we carry the legacy forward. And I'm having these discussions from time to time with him, spiritually, of course.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
I think it's not easy to grow in a house where you have someone who is so dominant. It can crash you, but it can also give you a lot of inspiration. So I think we were lucky in this family. First of all, my mother made sure that we separate the family affairs than state affairs. And she was very protective. And he always gave us the notion that whatever we choose, whatever we do is fine.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And I think he would have been proud the way the center continues to operate and get an impact by fostering innovation and entrepreneurship, optimism, future looking, forward looking, and all the activities that we do with all the people that come from abroad and from within Israel. And of course, working with Arab countries. It's very fulfilling.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
So I combined my work at Bitango with the center and it works quite well, I must say.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Well, Guy was an illustrator, very talented, very smart, very bright. I won't say a genius, but maybe he was a genius. Very capable, extremely smart and knowledgeable. You'd never win when you argued with him. He had a very clear view of the world. And from a very early stage in his life, he was focused on superheroes and gaming and movie and music, comics.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
and graphic novels, and he was an illustrator. And he decided to study illustration in the Academy of Art in San Francisco. And he went to San Francisco and spent five years there. We would often come and visit him. And he just came back home when corona started, and he had his own studio at home. And in 2021, we spoke about the fact that this world
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
of creativity, superheroes, this world of imagination and creation of stories and figures is not well accepted in Israel as it is in Japan or in the US, Europe. It's not yet developed and he wanted to develop it. So we started to work on a project which was called Yucca Monsters. And the idea was to start with a concept store in Tel Aviv that we showcased the most exciting product.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
and then do it also online. And then, as we continue to scale, we'll set up a publishing house, very unique, the first of its kind in Israel, to publish comics and graphic novels, and then start a studio that will foster and support young artists and ideas to tell stories. We can grow them into the global markets. We found a place in Tel Aviv. We started to design it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Guy started to create lists of products that we want to bring. And then we were in New York for a few days. He stayed in his apartment with his dog and we left our dog with him. We communicated he wanted to buy some stuff in the US and he sent us stuff to the hotel to pick it up.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And then all of a sudden we didn't hear from him and we got very worried because it was not something that we would accept or expect. And we called him and he didn't answer. So we sent our daughter to see if everything is okay. Unfortunately, he was 33 years old. He got a cardiac failure that killed him. in seconds.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And only later on, when we did the autopsy, we discovered that he had myocarditis in his heart, the beginning of heart disease. But its first appearance was cardiac heart failure. It was devastating, painful, unimaginable. Nothing that people that did not go through this can understand. There is a wall between the room that people that lost their kids are in to those who did not.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
There is no bridge, so nobody can understand it. What I decided to do together with my family is to carry on with his legacy, to build the Yuko Monsters without him, to realize his dream. and to make his life meaningful, because they were very short. They were very meaningful, but very short. And he realized his dream.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And at the same time, we formed the cathedral in Shankar, which is a visual school. And in this cathedral, we are doing also some amazing stuff for others. We pay scholarships for people from the periphery. We give awards to students that excel.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
as long as we are decent people, as long as we follow our hearts. So I think when you are young, you need to build your muscles, you need to build your standing for who you are, not for what you are. And I think as you grow and you are safer, then you can get closer and closer. And I think that's the pattern that we followed in our life.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
We started a master's degree in game design, and we launched an AI research center, which is called Parameter, which is doing AI for visual communication, which is quite fascinating. So there is no comfort. There is no cure. It's an ever-ending story. Time doesn't do any good. But you have to live with it. There's nothing we can do about it. It's irreversible.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
We tried to think about the fact that he had a beautiful life. At that point, he did everything that he wanted. He was very gifted. He traveled the world. He studied. He had amazing friends that loved him. He had everything besides luck to keep on living.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Of course, I'm aware of it. It was important for me to keep him with us. The fact that he's not alive anymore doesn't mean that he will be faded away. So he's part of the family. His dog now is with us. So every day we walk into a morning and yeah, morning and evening, his car is with us.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Lots of things that are present in our life, but you have to believe that there is some different shape of, or form of continuation. Cause it doesn't make sense that somebody vanishes is with us. And when I'm in the, in the store, And I see people coming in and I see how they look at the things and the impact it has. It fills me with a notion that he's with us, that he's proud, he's happy.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Although I know it's in our hearts and our heads, but it provides us some kind of, I will say, comfort. I would give everything to have him back, but we chose that route. We are, by the way, celebrating his birthday, not the passing day. So we're celebrating his birthday. And actually, the day after tomorrow, we officially launch the publishing house.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
We already have four books out, but we're going to do an event to kick off.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Oh, you can go to the website, which is yuka, Y-U-K-A, monstersinoneword.com. And you can read the story and you can see the store and you can see the publishing house. You can get online and go shopping if you want. We are focused on Israel, of course, but you can see the activities and you can go to Shankar, S-A-G-N-K-A-R, and see the cathedral on Gai.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
I think you can find most of it on yucamonsters.com.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
The mission of the center, as was written in the spiritual will, in a brief way is to strengthen the island, protect it. The island means Israel, and calm the ocean, which is reduce hostility and calm the ocean. The way we do it is by the three platforms that we created. The first one is people-to-people projects. We call it privatizing peace or coexistence or shared future.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
At the beginning, you shy away because you really want to be the person you are and not have anyone judge you for your father. So anything that you did good, people may say it's because of him and everything bad is a disappointment. But I think we're lucky. We came up normal. We came up stable. And each one of us chose a different direction. And I'm happy with what I did.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
We work on a lot of programs with different people, mostly young people around sports, around healthcare, around business, around entrepreneurship, culture. And over the years, we impacted hundreds of thousands of people through these programs. The second one is to foster innovation, to provide a future for the young people to understand that They are capable to achieve everything.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
They need to be entrepreneurs and they need to embrace what the world of technology and innovation is offering them. There's no limit to where they can go. So we showcase and we build a community and we do events and we do programs where we teach people across all walks of life about innovation. And the third mission is to bring Israel to the future.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
to focus on nature, to learn how to research the future. I'm not talking about just futurists. I'm talking about every person, every company, in every aspect. It can be in healthcare, it can be in work, it can be in education. How do you deal with things that are going to disrupt or provide opportunities, whether they are man-made or nature-made, or a combination of the two?
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Disruption and opportunities are scaling up and we need to be much more aware of the future. So for me, it's the human factor of people to people. It's the platform for innovation and entrepreneurship, and it's a deep look into the future. By doing that, we try to shape a new tomorrow. that can be shared by people, that is accessible to people.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Because, again, some people say that the Israelis are different tribes. They're not a people, they're tribes. I think it's a question of leadership. But most importantly, we are busy and looking backwards at what happened to us instead of looking at the future and see what the opportunities are. My father said that people prefer to remember than to think.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Remembering is the past, thinking is the future. And a lot of people are looking back at what they did, and they're very pleased sometimes with their achievements, but for him it was not important. What happened in the past is done, it's gone, we cannot change it. Whether it's a great success or a failure, you just need to rise up and move into the future. And the future sets the agenda for today.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
So the past has been forgotten. The present has no meaning. And what sets your activities and agenda is the future. So we try to bring those values to as many people as possible.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
It's a tough question because there is no reverse in history or in life. There's only forward. So I try to learn. I think one lesson is to spend more time with your parents and with your kids. It's precious. And don't let your weaknesses or feelings drive you apart. Stay focused on that because there's no moment that can be brought back in time. I'm saying it's relevant for my father.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
It's relevant for my son. Maybe I would spend time in the US in a university earlier. I spent a couple of years in Silicon Valley, but maybe in an earlier stage in my life to help me calibrate myself. When you come from a small country like Israel, you have very few or very certain... Skewed.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And I think opening up to the world and learn from a great country like the US would have been helpful, I think, for me. I would read more, for sure. Maybe I would learn more languages. Maybe I would stick to my piano and guitar. In hindsight, there's a lot of things you can improve.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
But as you grow, you tend to get closer. And that's beautiful. I'm grateful that he lived to 93 and we had all the time to catch up.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
But with all the tragedies, I'm grateful for being lucky to be born as an Israeli at the time after the Second World War to such parents and to be a father for such great kids.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Thank you, Ilana. Appreciate it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
For the first time and the last time in my life, I experienced what it means to be fired. It's a very humiliating event. I'm not going to be fired again.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
To make it short, in the middle of the course, you run through medical tests.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Yeah. In my time, it was like two years. It's a course of two years. And after a year, I went to regular checkup. and they discovered that my lungs are not functioning fully. When I was a child, I had a very severe asthma. There were a lot of liquids in my lungs, so I was not able to get 100 percent functionality of my lungs.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
As a result, they reduced my medical profile to such a level that I had to leave the flight course. Since I wanted to be a warrior, a combat participant, I went back to the green military service in a platoon of tanks. I spent a year in the army, but I was very anxious to get back to the flight course because I felt that they went too far with me.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Initially, my profile was so low that I had to do back office activities. I managed to lift it up a little bit, which allowed me to serve as a combat participant. And later on, I convinced them that I'm doing fine, that I'm capable of functioning, and they agreed to bring me back to the flight course with certain limitations. And it allowed me to finish the course as a helicopter pilot.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Since I wanted to be a combat helicopter pilot, I was very happy and lucky to join a squadron of Cobra, which is an attack helicopter. And altogether, I spent 10 years in the Israeli Defense Forces.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
I think I learned a few lessons. First of all, I learned how the human factor is so important in success in anything that you do. If you have quality people, your chances to be successful are higher. I also discovered the power of technology, what it can be used for, and the advantage it gives you if you know how to operate it well. I also learned that honesty is crucial to survivability.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And this is why everything that we did, we briefed and debriefed every day. We were touching the toughest points in order to learn and make sure that we do not repeat the same mistakes. Because if you do, it may cost you your life. So that was the lesson for life for me.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
I always wanted to engage with new technologies, to meet other people. And when I looked at venture, I thought this is the right way to go, to raise money, to invest it in the best and brightest. It's very fulfilling.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
I think the briefing was extended to other branches in the Israeli Defense Forces, which is good. A lot of other platoons and battalions learned from the Air Force this process. this magical, important process, and they implemented almost all of the military parts. I think, though, that it is a showstopper for a lot of people from the Air Force to join the political arena.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Because in politics, you're not necessarily sticking to the truth, and you invent a lot of stories. For pilots, people that spend many years as pilots in the Israeli Air Force, it's very tough for them. They're not used to swimming in dark waters, they feel much better exposed to the sunlight, where they actually show their flaws and their mistakes and everything.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
It's not really goes hand in hand.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
You know, when you're 24, you have a family, you have a son, and you are in the Israeli Air Force, you're maturing very quickly. And you understand the responsibility that you have both as a family member and as an Air Force member. It actually drives you to maturity earlier than maybe should. One should, but definitely it creates another level of responsibility that you have to deal with it.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
I think I was premature at the time. I did not really understand what it means to become a father. It took some time to adjust to the idea that that little thing that is screaming there is your responsibility.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
So it was a change, but as a matter of fact, you continued somewhat part of what you have done because we worked in an environment that had a lot of pilots and a lot of engineers in the Israeli aerospace industries. So it's moving from the Air Force to a defense company was, I think, a little bit softer than if you had to move to something that has nothing to do with defense.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
But I was very busy in making sure that I can provide for my family because my parents were not wealthy. They did not create wealth for themselves. They dedicated their life for the state. And so I had to take care of myself. And what happened is that I noticed that I'm 28 years old. I have to study and work and provide for myself from the very beginning. I had to do everything in parallel.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
In 28, I had only the first one.
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Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
The second one came a little bit later. So they had like six years in between them. And so I started to work and I started to study and I had to do my reserve duty, which was a once a week duty service where you fly basically night flights. That means that if you fly on Tuesday night, You have to go on Tuesday early to the base, the air base. You need to get some rest. You need to do the briefing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
Then you fly, you come back very late and debriefing, and then you go home. So it was very exhausting. And at the same time, you had to study engineering in Tel Aviv University and work in the Israeli aerospace industries. And as a matter of fact, it was not enough. I had to do some more stuff.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
So I also served as a pilot in Carmiel in the north in the cyclone factory, which was actually taking broken helicopters and different stuff and fixing them. And I had to test them.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
I was very busy between doing my reserve and studying and working in the Israeli aerospace industries. The Lavi project was fascinating. It was an attempt by the Israeli government or the Israeli aerospace industries to build a jet fighter, which will be supreme, very advanced. And they took all that battlefield experience from the pilots together with engineers. It was fascinating to see what
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
they have been doing there. And I had two years, I spent there two years. The thing is that the Lavi project at the end of the day was successful engineering wise, but it was not very successful in completing the whole process to manufacturing because first of all, it costs way too much or much more than it was initially thought.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And also it became a conflict because you build something that looks like F-16, And when you go to markets, you actually compete with the American industry, which was not a good idea. And also, the Israeli Air Force was not really welcoming the Lavi as expected. They preferred to buy maybe F-16 or F-15.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98
And also, the notion was that Israel should not really build a jet plane, but rather focus on the electronics, avionics, on the software, on the sensors. on the weaponry, but not necessarily on the fuselage and the engines and wings. We should actually get that. And then when you get the platform, you can upgrade it by putting a lot of wisdom and knowledge and experience into its systems.