Mind the Tech 2024Izhar Shay: “They came to destroy, and we are here to build”
Mind the Tech 2024
Izhar Shay: “They came to destroy, and we are here to build”
The former Minister of Science & Technology and veteran tech investor spoke to CTech ahead of Calcalist’s upcoming Mind the Tech conference in New York about his ‘Next October’ initiative, inspired by the death of his son, Yaron, and the other victims of 7/10
Izhar Shay.
(Credit: Sinai David)
“They came to destroy our values, everything that we stand for in this country, and we are here. Our response is to provide innovation, building products and services for a better world. This is the right, moral, Zionist, high-tech, Israeli response,” says Izhar Shay, a veteran entrepreneur and tech investor, a former Member of Knesset with Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party, and a former Minister of Science & Technology in the Bennet-Lapid government. “They came to destroy, and we are here to build and to provide for a better world.”
CTech sat down with the former minister at his home ahead of Cacalist’s Mind The Tech conference in New York on March 4th, where he will be giving the keynote address. Originally scheduled for November of 2023, the conference was canceled, and now, four months after the events of 7/10 and Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas, the conference, whose theme is 'Standing with Israeli Tech,' takes on greater meaning.
For Shay, reviving Israel’s economy is no less significant than its military response. “We need to reignite the economy, we need to regain the confidence of foreign investors and we expect the innovation ecosystem to do what it did before in many cases: to reignite the economy, to push forward, to create job opportunities, and to create opportunities for investors,” says Shay.
“Israeli high-tech took us out of the recession which was a result of the 1991 Gulf War, it was the real engine of the Israeli economy during the Second Intifada, following the Second Lebanon War, the 2008 financial crisis, and COVID-19. Israeli high-tech recovered very quickly and pushed the economy forward,” he notes. “We need to make sure that they understand that Israel is open for business.”
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Shortly after the beginning of the war, Shay established the Next October initiative whose goal is to establish new startups and to support the growth of existing early-stage startups in order to generate job and investment opportunities for the Israeli economy.
But beyond its economic goals, the project aims to commemorate the more than 1,400 victims, including Shay’s 21-year-old son, Yaron. A combat soldier in the Nahal brigade. Yaron fell during the defense of Kibbutz Kerem Shalom - one of the few kibbutzim in the area that was not conquered by Hamas fighters and whose residents were not massacred or taken hostage.
“He fulfilled his mission of protecting hundreds of civilian lives during that horrible day,” says Shay. “When we were sitting shivah, we started thinking about ways to commemorate his special character, his legacy. We wanted people to remember him as he was: a beautiful boy from the inside and the outside, who affected many people around him. What immediately came to mind was the Jewish tradition of planting trees on behalf of people who’ve passed away, but - because three people in our family are in high-tech - we immediately moved to planting a company, or to ‘seed’ a company.”
Shay established Next October in his son’s honor and in the names of all of those killed on 7/10, with the goal of establishing 1,400 new startups by October 2025, for every victim of the attack.
“We thought that this isn’t only for Yaron. We should think of the hundreds of soldiers who lost their lives while protecting our country, and then we moved on to the victims as well and came up with the Next October initiative, which has the mission to commemorate all of the victims of the October 2023 war,” he adds. “All of them deserve to be commemorated, and the high-tech ecosystem can take this national effort and make it happen.”
You can watch the full interview with Izhar Shay in the video above.
