"Inspiration" Podcast Investor Michael Eisenberg | Episode #13

I never thought of myself as someone who gives a damn about the Holocaust.

I suggest people get inspiration from their parents and their children. These are the sources of the Holocaust from the Torah.

My father is an honest man, a man of faith, a man of Torah. To this day, I have weekly friendships with my father. His love of Torah he took from me and also taught me when I was nine years old, I was in the third grade. And my mother is an entrepreneur and creative in an amazing way, and they are both family people. It is registered by their teachers as well, and the family is above all. Family meals on Fridays at their place, still on Shabbat eve, it is the family celebration, the grandchildren come. You know, not everyone is straight inspiring, and we need people to strengthen the matter.

I grew up in New York, in Manhattan. An established family? No, we were never many. I would call it upper middle class. A Torah family. Grandparents who are pillars of the community, if you can call it a frum side community in New York. They founded the Jewish school. Really pillars of the community, very active. Public, Zionist, Torah. Both in the United States and in Israel.

Yes. Zionism always. But then unlike today, there is no Lakewood today without my grandfather, my great-grandfather and great-grandmother. They built the house from Dorosh in Leiko, Aaron Kodesh in Pohnevich. This crazy place came to be there thanks to three people, one of them is my grandfather. The second, by the way, is Zerah Warhabtik, the well-known Zionist, and the third is Lodgisnot, a well-known Zionist. They donated it together, they brought it and donated it to the memory of Ludwig Yessen. He made sure that it was re-gilded. And the Torah world, unlike today, was much more embracing and more expansive, a lot broader. Today it exists, it just became dichotomous. It exists in all places, only it became more dichotomous. And the house of my grandparents, especially, was extremely hospitable.

This is the path of the Torah, this is the path of the Jewish people for generations. And who comes? Welcome.

In a Zionist house? Yes, in New York, I wrote an article when I was 21 about being a Zionist and sitting in a course. This is probably the American recipe for the story. But what happened to me? I came to the land after my first year at university there to study in a yeshiva. I studied at Yeshiva Harzion. A year turned into two years. In the second year, the Gulf War of 1991, January 1991 to Purim. A week later, at the end of the war, I found myself in the auditorium of the yeshiva. Rabbi Yehuda Mitah, one of the two main yeshiva leaders, the second Rabbi Dachnishithim. And I asked him a question from a yeshiva. I asked him if there was a greater mitzvah for the land to be settled by someone who would come and settle in a peripheral place, Negev, Galilee, Judea and Samaria. Settle down in a less populated place. Look at what the difficulty is. You're really asking a question. Your question is nonsense. Go to Israel. Set up a factory that will employ 10,000 people here with dignity. This is the greatest commandment. Settle down in Israel. The whole jaw. I've been in education since I was a child. This is the first time I hear the Rabbi Rosh Sheva talk about the economy, talk about livelihood, talk about livelihood with dignity, talk about the national need for a good, sustainable economy here. And I decided to go there and we'll try to employ 10,000 people who will make a living with dignity. This is my immigration story. I quickly returned to the United States, completed my degree in two years.

The following summer, like a year later, I came to work in Israel because I wanted to feel what it was like, so I came. There's this thing called college in the United States working in the summer. So I came here. I studied in the morning at Netzach Israel by Yatserov Gossman. Early in the morning in Jerusalem. And during the day I worked three days in high-tech, which I was a high-tech consultant at the time, and two days a week I did research at Tel Aviv University, which I discovered at the time that there was no synagogue. So I was looking for another place. And that summer I met the person who is now my wife. So we returned to the United States. I graduated on May 31st, if I remember correctly, I got an appointment. I graduated from university on June 13th. By the way, the day after that, I left for Israel on my first business trip. On June 13th, the 23rd of Sivan. I got married on August 1st. The following year, we started our journey to Israel. We arrived here on the third of August. We didn't take a car. We just set off on our way to a friend's wedding in Europe.

I started the fight with political ovulation. And luckily I was fired. I started here government and fired me. I didn't think it was lucky so because I was really fired. Like the big stories that start with dismissal. I don't know to this day they still owe me money and quite a bit.

Everything is fine, everything is fine. And I was looking for a job and I couldn't find part of it was because I didn't do the army. Why didn't I do the army? I arrived at the age of 22. There was then a Russian taxi and before my wedding I had melanoma cancer. The light that brought it out is the scar here. And yes, the army doesn't want to mess with it. We call it an open wound to this day. I haven't done the army. I still do a kind of reserve, some types of reserve, although it's not exactly reserve because I've never done the army.

Children, grooms. We are a very mobilized family in the last two years.

Yes. How many? In my opinion, in 1500 plus days inside Gaza. Children and sons-in-law among the majority in Gaza, or overwhelming in this, a little Judea and a little Lebanon. In short, I was unemployed, I couldn't find a job. I was endlessly theorizing. In the end, what age are we talking? I was 23 or 24, I don't remember, with a girl. And in the end I decided, because I couldn't find a job, to try to start something. A long story, but I managed to get representation of an American investment bank even though I didn't understand anything, neither in banking nor in drinks nor in high-tech. And the most important thing I had was high self-awareness that I knew I didn't understand anything. And I got this representation and I went to [ __ ] Klish, who is a big investor, a convert, a big investor, a good man. And he had a consulting company. I had a business model with no knowledge, without anything. He had a lot of knowledge with a less good business model of mine. We just merged and founded together on global investment banking, which is a kind of investment bank for high-tech in the 90s, mid-90s, when high-tech was just starting here. We did it for a few years together and then I moved into the world of venture capital. Since then I have been at a fund called Izrosid, then at Benchmark, which is very well known in the United States, and in 2013, Eden Shohat and I founded A' Karno Evun Sikhun. Now, just open the brackets. This word venture capital is a literal translation of the American phrase capital. It's supposed to be an adventurer, not an adventurer. But the academy brought the language wrong here.

One thing is for sure: the decision to immigrate to Israel, and the other is to marry my wife. I always say that the decision to immigrate to Israel is the second best I've ever made in my life. The first is to marry my wife. And this is probably the most important decision I've ever made in my life. I got it on the first date too.

More understanding even with love. Love later, but yes. And it took her longer. But that's how much I reminded my sister of goodness. My sister called my mom after the date and said we're in trouble. We are in trouble. My sister Shafrira. So we were in Israel, yes, so in the summer it was different. I'm at this investment bank. They tried to bring me back to the United States in the middle with a very, very offer. The map of the sea for the sake of it. Yes, to return to the United States. I don't remember what year it was. 96, 97. It was at Tata.com. And I served myself for a few days. Did you take it and go back there for a few years or not? And one night I was lying in bed. I hired Rabbi Mittal, may his memory be blessed, and I said to my wife, we didn't come to Israel for money. We won't leave him for money. By the way, this is a quote from the Book of Ruth from the story of Elimelech. Leaving Israel in an economic crisis is a temptation abroad. And we decided to stay. And we decided to stay. As if it was a great decision. And I'm happy every day. And by the way, the children. My wife always tells the children. We made a decision to come to Israel so that they wouldn't have to make this decision. Yes, and they are. I have to say that all the children thank us. This is such a recurring refrain that we made this decision.

The kids are laughing, so it's a conversation. This is the playroom. Look, I don't think there is a couple that doesn't fight. There is no lack for me. What is important today, I have to say, even in the last 15 years, me and I are quite connected in many things. We divide the work. It is better to talk to this child, I am in front of this child, it is in front of this parent, in front of this parent. You know, to impose one on the other. But the beginning of the marriage there was a gap, there were real gaps. Simple thing: I am a morning person. When we got married, my wife was six questions being that she would talk to me and I slept. I woke up in the morning and you really thought what I said? You didn't know what she was talking about. So we tried to change Luz to be connected. Yes, mainly she is better in changing herself than me. And it is actually working with Americans. It is good to be the wife of my man. Yes, what is marriage? It is a journey together. It is a journey and life is better two than one. And life is better when you share it with someone. In my case, and we share everything, really share everything. You said she has no business understanding. I share everything with her. It interests her, it interests me what she went through, what she went through that day, that week. So we start a conversation and we always laugh when we go on vacation. It doesn't happen much. Right now, we went out more or less for the first time since the war. What's funny is that you end up talking about the children when you go on vacation, too. Yes, they don't leave you. But this is super critical.

A lot. Look at adventure capital, which is mistakenly called venture capital, and the statistics say you're going to fail more than you succeed, and that's true for me too. I haven't beaten the statistics of the number of failures, so I know with absolute certainty that the chances are that the investment I'm making now is the most certain in the world that it will succeed. Most of the odds are that it will connect. It's hard to hold a saint like such a risky investigation that you hold clearly two opposites. I'm 100% sure that this is going to be a loss, basically. No, no, I'm not. I'm 100% sure that I'm going to make 100 times the money from this investment, but I also know again the sum I'll make and it will be worth zero. This is just the beginning, so I failed completely, as if more than 50% of the investments I made ended up in zero. How much is venture capital? The math works like this. You make 10 drinks. If you're good at this business, one out of 10 makes 20 to 25 times the money back. And if you're good at this business, then three more minuses between two and five times the money. Everything else is zero. And it's understandable because you're looking for asymmetry. A relatively small investment and a very, very, very high return, big. In one of them because it changes the market and this result in general is supposed to herd the market, the stock market. In practice, the venture capital index, I mean the average of the venture capital, loses money or makes very little money. Few are the funds that most purchases lose money. I didn't say most funds lose money. The average index is a small form to a loss. As if it's a bet and a bet this is that you return 9 on the money to 1.1 on the money over 10 years. As if it's a terrible salvation. The supreme sovereign or Syria, the supreme ship of principles, beats the market. And what do you want? There funds continue with you and you are good. But I failures without end. Can you share with us the failure of one to one and what did you learn from it?

I get up very early in the morning.

Five.

No, I'm getting up, just getting up. No alarm clocks. I'll go to bed very late so I'll wake up at 3:00 a.m. But that's usually an internal clock. I usually study or write because I'm in the middle of writing another book. Now I write a Torah commentary for the weekly parsha every week that is distributed to thousands of people. And I write articles. So I study and write. I'm trying to finish the book of Deuteronomy this year. I have already published a book on Deuteronomy. Yes, I have already published on Genesis, Shevut, Leviticus, and the Midrash. And I have published another book on the Book of Esther. I have published another book on the Jerusalem Talmud in Tractate Berachot, which my friend Shibi Friedman says will never be read. Comparisons between the Babylonian and the Jerusalemite. I go to pray at six. 6:4. Return home. It depends on whether it's Monday, Thursday, or another day. Who has a mohel in the minyan? And I sit and write. I study a little more. And recently, since the war, I must say that my study time and my writing time have shortened. Because I'm busy with other national things. In the last two years, even more than I was busy before. I was busy before. I go out on my day, whether it's work or public needs or whatever. I try to get home to eat dinner. Only our little one has stayed home for the time being, as if others have already gone out or Army meetings, marriages. And a bag of long meetings, physical meetings. I hate Zoom. I love people. I'm really innocent. I love people. I like meeting different people, but in his sessions they get shorter because the schedule gets very busy. So I have a standard meeting today, it's half an hour. In a short session, it's fifteen minutes. There are few meetings except for the partners and my wife, who are in government discussions like this. They take a long time. Unfortunately, they haven't learned the secret of halos yet.

Yes.