A VC's Journey from New York to Israel's Innovation Hub: Presenting Ariel Sterman of Bessemer Venture Partners
Aliyah Success is a weekly newsletter for Olim and Potential Olim to land their dream job in Israel tech by Andrew Jacobson. For Season 1, we are interviewing 12 Successful Olim, including top professionals across finance, venture capital, marketing and more. If you got this email forwarded to you, subscribe here:
Something that most people don’t know about me:
I love to learn and teach Torah, Jewish philosophy and spirituality.
I made Aliyah 6 years ago.
I made Aliyah from a place of strong Zionist beliefs. I grew up in a religiously observant and Zionist family, as well as with an Israeli mother who brought me to Israel nearly every summer growing up. I just always loved the land, the people, the history.
Ultimately, for me, making Aliyah was the choice to play a part in the future of the Jewish people.
A major turning point in my Aliyah process was taking a gap year at a yeshiva in Israel before studying at NYU.
I had actually wanted to stay in Israel after spending the year in Jerusalem. But I had made an important commitment to my family to return to the United States to attend college.
And so I went back to New York and studied finance and marketing. But even while I was there, I always had the mindset of what is going to set me most up for moving to Israel, not as an end in itself, but as the beginning of a journey.
With that as one of my top priorities, I focused my internships and extracurricular programs towards that goal. In contrast to many of my peers who were at NYU going into investment banking, or consulting, I understood that those weren't necessarily the easiest pathways to Israel. And so I was doing internships with Israeli startups, which actually led me to intern for an Israeli venture capital firm after my sophomore year. One thing led to another and I found myself in the exciting world of venture capital.
After graduating college I spent 3 years working in Manhattan.
I joined a growth equity fund called Stripes Group in 2015. I was part of an analyst class focused on sourcing new deals. I was looking for late-stage opportunities in America and in Europe, but naturally, and because I was the most Israeli related person on the team, I became the point person for sourcing companies from Israel. At the time Stripes had never made any investments in the country.
And so that's what I tried to do for three years, unsuccessfully. Until finally in May of 2018, we actually ended up making our first Israeli investment.
The easiest way to avoid the salary conundrum is to move to Israel sooner than later...
...before you get used to the standard of the absolute value of a given income. A person can live within their means at many different pay scales. But if you spend years climbing the ladder in the United States and then suddenly decide to move to Israel, you’ll likely face a meaningful pay cut. Psychologically that is really difficult, even if it's practically still very possible!
Conversely, if you're just out of school or just a couple years into whatever it is that you're doing, that transition, the percentage change is going to be less material.
Ultimately, it comes down to asking yourself a question.
What do you prioritize?
Are you prioritizing the absolute dollar amount on your paycheck? Are you prioritizing a certain lifestyle? How do those goals fit together?
The salaries are higher in New York than they are in Topeka. Does that mean everyone should live in New York? Of course not, a person makes these decisions based on much more than just an absolute salary.
Early on I received some important advice from a mentor of mine, Michael Eisenberg:
Get a little bit of direct work experience, and get married before you move here.
This was 10 years ago now, so I’m not sure he would say the same thing. But for me the message was to build direct experience in my chosen field (VC). And with the right approach, that experience would allow me to find natural ways to build relationships in Israel. People who go into real estate right out of school probably make a lot of money. But it wouldn't have helped me build relationships and develop a network in Israel. It’s about being very deliberate.
I was lucky enough, while at Stripes, to build relationships with Israeli investors and Israeli entrepreneurs and start developing that network. And so thankfully, as I was moving to Israel, I was able to manage most of the job search from the United States. I had actually closed on the job a few months before officially moving here.
An undergraduate degree from Columbia, Johns Hopkins, or Harvard doesn't necessarily mean much to a fast-moving Israeli company.
But if you come with direct experience that is transferable to being in Israel, that is something that they'll take to.
Anecdotally, I find that Israelis don’t really care what you studied. What matters is – can you do the job?
And if you could point to something specific on your resume that shows heck yeah, you could do the job - that’s really what they’re looking for.
Times have changed.
Israeli startups used to look at an American and say - great! you're gonna do our marketing and our sales. Thankfully, the Israeli ecosystem is now full of both Americans as well as people very experienced in marketing and sales locally. So doing business without an accent is no longer a viable competitive advantage.
If you have certain experience or training in the United States that you can apply directly to a role here then it’s a lot easier to find a position. But if you don’t, you’ll need to be on the ground and networking and finding the relationships that will eventually open the right doors to the right places.
My advice to many potential Olim is to find opportunities within your current role, whatever you are doing, that will provide natural ways for you to build relationships with Israelis.
If you’re in college, there are great programs out there (TAMID, for example) that will give you a deliberate path to forging relationships with the Israeli business ecosystem and tech ecosystem in particular.
Israeli culture is refreshingly different in many, many ways.
There’s a distinct level of just transparency and being forthright and direct with colleagues. Culturally there’s much less beating around the bush. People here are very forthcoming with their thoughts and feelings.
For many people that could feel abrasive or off-putting. But for me, that's something that I really welcomed. After all, you almost always know where you stand within a company or team. If you're bothering them, your colleagues will tell you. If you're doing a poor job, they'll tell you. And if you're doing a great job, they'll tell you that too!
Did you have any difficulty with making the switch culturally?
I’m lucky that I grew up with an Israeli mother, which gave me a high level of Hebrew to begin. My day to day here at Bessemer is mostly in Hebrew. All of our pitch meetings are done in Hebrew. Our internal conversations are done in Hebrew. A lack of Hebrew would have been a bigger challenge specifically for the role that I'm in, given it’s more of an expectation in how we conduct business at our firm.
And of course there are challenges to moving to any new place, but those aren't necessarily specific to Israel. I believe you can either embrace the novelty - and often absurdity - of situations or you can waste time complaining, ruminating and smashing your head against a wall in a futile attempt to fight the system.
If you just embrace the situations you’re in, life just gets easier. The trick is to surrender to the flow.
Where do you see Israel in 15-20 years?
There’s no doubt Israel will continue to be one of the leading global tech hubs and centers of innovation as it has been for the past two, even 3, decades.
In many ways we mirror the innovation that is happening around the world. When silicon was emerging in Silicon Valley, we kept up with semiconductor innovation. Same with cyber, software, fintech and more.
As an ecosystem, we will continue to innovate and stay on top across all sectors: anything from artificial intelligence to gaming and defense tech. Israel’s success has never been limited to any one specific trend or sector.
But more importantly, beyond innovation, we're gonna see more and more businesses being built. More and more companies built in Israel will emerge as independent, enduring global leaders worth tens of billions of dollars. That's my hope - and it’s why I’m more optimistic than ever about the investment landscape here as a Venture Capitalist.