Chemi Peres
speaker
118 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Chemi Peres’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
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
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.
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.
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.
Show me your assets.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And all of a sudden, the whole audience standing up is fascinating.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Showing 61–80 of 118 · page 4 of 6
← Previous
Next →