Israel Reinterpreted
While I was in Israel last week, a debate erupted in The Jerusalem Post and then the blogosphere about Ambassador Michael Oren’s invitation to be commencement speaker at Brandeis University. Apparently, some Brandeis University students objected to the selectionof Oren because they disagreed with the current Israeli government’s management of the ongoing conflict. Daniel Gordis, among the my most eloquent conservatives I have ever read, saw this as an opportunity to challenge the loyalty of jewish students on American campuses. It’s a pretty powerful piece. Of course, it took one day to find out that Gordis had massively overplayed his hand.
Enter Ilan Troen, the Chairman of the Israel Studies Program at Brandeis, to set the record straight. Turned out Gordis had hijacked the small protest at Brandeis to inflame the passions of Israelis and American Jews who have bought into the mistaken black and white narrative of us vs. them.
To be sure, I witness plenty of misguided anti-Israel sentiment in multiple political circles and have sensed some of these discussions to be tinged with anti-semitism. These incidents are more than unpleasant — they are frightening.
However, these periodic conversations obscure the reality of modern Israel and modern American Jewish life. Things are not black and white. They are gray. I think gray should be celebrated.
In my office in Jerusalem, there are 20 people who voted many different parties into the Knesset across Israel’s wide political spectrum. Some believe in a two state solution and some think the country will never have peace. But they are united in their efforts to make AnyClip a great company and in their loyalty towards each other. Despite Milluim (mandatory annual military reserve duty) their lives are not dominated by middle east conflict. They are trying to figure out how to improve search or create metadata for films. When they are not working, they hang out with their kids, play basketball, and go to the movies. To a large degree, my Israeli colleagues are just like us.
And increasingly so is Israel. Make no mistake, there is an intimacy among Israelis that must originate in that unique national purpose, the shared military service, and a society that lives through continuous wars. But despite those differences with American life, many, many Israelis have moved way beyond the simple Hatfield/McCoy narrative to see themselves as part of a broader global society.
At the annual JVP meeting last week, I met limited partners from Germany, Netherlands, and Belgium. Portfolio CEOs talked knowledgeably about doing business in India, China, Indonesia, and Brazil. This economic expansion can’t really happen if the whole world is trying to destroy Israel as some on the right would have us believe.
Recently, a friend of mine joined a delegation of Israeli officials and business people to open the Israel pavilion at the World Expo in China. He reported that China treated his colleagues as if they were heads of state stopping traffic for their motorcades and closing major tourist attractions so the Israelis could have private walk-throughs. This was not for security purposes, but done to show respect and a sign of Israel’s rise as a global economic power.
Lost in the bipolar coverage that portrays Israel as a militant, colonial power or as the place that protects Jews from the next genocide attempt is the reality that the country is growing, changing, adapting, and making a net contribution to global civilization. This should be explored and even celebrated. Those that stick to the ancient narrative do modern Israel and Israelis a disservice.
AnyClip One Year Later
A year ago, I flew to Israel to make some sweeping changes at AnyClip.
For starters, gone was the two year old company name PopTok along with 4 executives and a bunch of others who had been a part of the very family-oriented culture here. I’ll never forget that morning. Tough way to start a trip.
The next day my co-founder Nate Westheimer arrived and the mood abruptly changed. He was full of compassion for the team but determined to set a new course. We began work that day and when, after 10 more days, Nate departed Israel with the team full of enthusiasm and vitality. AnyClip was on its way.
Without question, AnyClip is the most exhilarating, challenging, and complex startup that I have ever managed. We set a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) to index the world’s entire film catalog. We dream that one day we will see and share any moment from any film.
Some of my most respected mentors told me that it was a naive, almost foolish vision. Pick your poison they claimed: it’s legally impossible, altogether too expensive, and technically overwhelming. To top it off, we would face the complexity of building a cohesive team with 2/3 of the employees separated by 7000 miles, 7 hours, and only sharing a 4 day work week (Israel is open Sunday and closed Friday).
Well, we’re still here.
We went to TechCrunch 50 with a prototype that was completed 4 months after Nate arrived in Israel and emerged a finalist. AnyClip is engaged in meaningful negotiations with almost every major studio. We have completed two still unannounced deals with major indies and are in final redlines with a handful of others. We launched our live product in March and passed 75k users in our first month — this before we have meaningful video content. Our traffic goals are ambitious: grow an order of magnitude every year for the next 3 years. 100 MM users by the end of 2013. Difficult? Sure. But not impossible — this is the movie business. We work here because we believe in the magic.
Credit for our early success reaches far and wide. The PopTok team never wavered in their enthusiasm. Morale could have plummeted and people could have gone through the motions. Instead, they worked their asses off to launch a new product from scratch. In particular my management team of Amit Kahn and Maor Gillerman kept the team together and focused. We were fortunate to add Eyal Gersht in time for the release of the prototype and eventually the product. But AnyClip is really a team effort and this includes Guy/Dima/Moti//Efrat/Avia/Kfir/Itai/Miriam/Or/Itai/Tania/Yulia and now Sagie. They are complemented by dozens of metadata creators too numerous to mention here.
In America, the Aaron Cohens (Chris and Fisher), Gabi (our hardcore, overworked designer) Greg, and my right hand Jenaveve have formed an amazing culture. We just finished a month in my apartment between office spaces and didn’t miss a beat despite Ry and Georgia wanting to play as with me, them, or their friends from 4pm on. Our itinerant office life now moves to Times Square for the summer and our downtown crowd sucked it up and moved in yesterday. We’re a block from Red Lobster.
Meanwhile we are professionally represented by Hollywood pros who understand their town. The High View Media crew (Rich Goldberg, Rob Jacobson, and Phil Schuman) together with Brad Sorensen (Indie Man) have provided me with an education and a chance to make this work. We’re following the Yellow Brick Road. And we’re aided by Fandango founder and former CEO Art Levitt who has made an enormous, positive impact on the company as an outside director. He’s a true mentor and he believes.
The most credit goes to our founding investors Erel Margalit from Jerusalem Venture Partners and Mickey Schulhof from GTI. They wooed me for 3 months prior to my arrival at Poptok. By then I had some visibility into the challenges of this turnaround. It would have been very easy for them to give up on this investment. Last Spring, the economy was a disaster and venture capitalists were pruning portfolios. Nate and I articulated the vision for AnyClip and on that alone they doubled down. It was a big risk, particularly given the fact that Nate and I were outsiders pitching a completely new company.
And that’s what I love about my investors — particularly JVP. The venture business is hit driven and the partners here know AnyClip could be huge. I always tell VCs we could return your fund. But investors prefer to pay up for more certainty. I get that. So we’ll see.
Finally, I want to single out Nate. He has lead a multi-national team and built the foundation of what we hope will become the standard for sharing film moments. Simply put, without Nate’s vision and leadership, we would not be here.
Startups have risks. Our job as entrepreneurs is often risk mitigation. AnyClip’s challenges are intensely daunting. We must navigate Hollywood, author incredibly complex search algorithms, scale a massive metadata creation factory, and release AnyClip products on many platforms. I should confess I have lost a little sleep this year.
But any moment from any film ever made. Are you kidding me? Now it’s our holy grail. Feels appropriate to have penned this post in Jerusalem.
