The Israeli Government's Ugliest Website, אתר הכי מכוער של ממשלת ישראל

The following Facebook post/conversation, gave me the idea to run a poll for the ugliest Israeli Government website. The current top 3 nominees follow the Facebook Screenshot below. Please vote for the ugliest one in the comments section below or suggest your own nominee.

הפוסט שפרסמתי בפייסבוק המופיע למטה, הניב רעיון לתחרות "האתר אינטרנט הכי מכוער של ממשלת ישראל." 3 המועמדים המובילים מופיעים למטה מתחת למסך מפייסבוק. נא להצביע בטוקבקים למטה עבור האתר הכי מכוער. לחילופין, אפשר להציע מועמד נוסף.

Masbirim מסבירים

הרשות השופטת Court System

Bank of Israel בנק ישראל

One Side Note: The Bank of Israel is displaying their new design for bills but not for its ugly website!

Fix Political Leadership With A Constitutional Amendment for Longer Terms and No Reelection

As Washington engages in a game of Chicken on the debt ceiling, it is worth considering some structural solutions to solving the problems of America. I am not talking about cutting entitlements, which must be done, or raising revenues, which must be done, but something far more fundamental.

You see, what is broken in America, and in many democracies for that matter, is leadership. The debt ceiling is a symptom. Politicians are so focused on getting elected and staying in office that they forget why they went into politics in the first place. Or, at least why they should have considered politics in the first place. Most, nay...all, of our feckless "leaders" are focused on posturing for elections. President Obama, either purposely or subconsciously, indicated as much when he said that any deal on the debt ceiling and spending cuts must take us through the next election. It is all about getting elected. None of Americas "leaders" in Congress or the Oval Office have the cajones to make leadership decisions, break stupid pledges and just do what is right. They are no Abe Lincolns.

Given the sorry state of leadership in 2011, it is worth considering fundamentally altering the Constitution's view on elections. I would propose that Presidents be elected for at least 6 years (maybe 8) but have a 1 term limit. No re-election. This should give them enough time to make a difference and not fret another election. Senators, who already have 6 year terms, should be limited to two terms and or perhaps one ten year term. And representatives, should be given 5 year terms with a second term possible if they get a super majority of votes.

Longer terms will provide stability. No option of re-election will mean that posturing for reelection will be a waste of time. You can just do what is right. It will also put an end to recycling politicians in Washington and likely reduce corruption since it takes a long time to cozy up to someone inside the Beltway. Taken together though, it will give a chance to people who truly want to make a difference and want to be leaders to take the risks needed in leadership without fear of being punished at the ballot box. It also means that more talented people will come into Politics because you will need to have made a name for yourself; you can serve your country and go back to what you were doing.

Now, what are the odds that some sitting politician will put electoral reform on the agenda for a constitutional amendment? Are there any leaders out there?

Why Israeli Start Ups Should Be Paying Attention To the US Debt Discussion

I have written endlessly about the impact of the declining US Dollar on the cost of R&D in Israel. The political game of Mexican Chicken being played out in Washington over the debt ceiling, whether it ends in a short term deal of not, should be of concern to Israeli CEOs and to the government.

The long term trend of USD:NIS exchange rates is clear. The US economy is declining at a faster rate than the Israeli economy (which is growing nicely). The US is in danger of losing its status as reserve currency (I would argue that we are already partially down that path) and the political deadlock in Washington shows how dysfunctional US Politics is (more on that in my next post).

Today on Bloomberg (worth watching the video), PIMCO's Mohammed El Erian said,

that it will be a “big, big mess” if the U.S. defaults, spurring a sell-off in equities, the U.S. dollar and commodities excluding gold...The U.S. is the supplier of the reserve currency. The U.S. is the provider of a financial system that intermediates other people’s savings and investments. The U.S. is a AAA. The question is whether the U.S. can maintain a AAA.”

The Shekel has strengthened dramatically against the USD in the last 12+ months as per my previous posts. But, it has stayed in a reasonably tight range for the last 45 days. That may be in danger of unraveling, making R&D and operations in Israel even more expensive relative to the USA. Today, I met a company that has R&D management in Israel but develops everything in one of the FSU (Former Soviet Union) Countries where R&D is cheaper. That is 15 jobs that should be in Israel.

The dropping dollar is not a black swan event. It is a neon swan, flashing like crazy. So if you are a CEO, what should you do? First, hedge your currency exposure out for at least 12 months of burn, if not more. Second, push your team for more productivity and more innovation. Third, think through the profitability of your business model and your assumptions that you grounded your business on - your costs are going up.

As I keep saying, we cannot control the exchange rate but this real currency issue should push us to be more awesome, more groundbreaking and more innovative. We need to move quickly on to new platforms and be on the bleeding edge. Without it, we could lose our edge as a tech center of the world and with it many engineering jobs.

Helping My Daughter Help Ethiopian Immigrants...an Update

This is a chance for a little Jewish Nachas and chance for all of you to help integrate Ethiopian Jews into Israeli Society.

Our oldest daughter Tamar has been working with Ethiopian children in an absorbtion centers for the last two years, spending many a shabbat on a mattress in a non-descript room in Mevasseret Zion. She also goes for hours every tuesday to work with the kids there.

Tamar had plans to run a summer camp for the kids this summer but the Jewish Agency withdrew funding for the program. About two weeks ago she looked for a solution and spent 48 hours (nights and days) putting together a Wix website and video (video editor was our son Sonny) in order to raise money for this camp. It does not take a lot of money to provide the Ethiopian immigrants a meaningful summer experience but it does take some.

I sent an email blast 10 days ago that seems to have traveled far and wide and many wonderful people across the world have made generous donations enabling the camp to get off the ground. Thank You!! Now, the camp starts in the 3 days so we are making a last minute push to raise more funding for these wonderful kids. Below is the video. Here is the link to the website and this is a direct link to donate. Below I pasted the heartfelt note Tamar sent by email. Please help Tamar help the kids and join in our nachas!

"Dear Friends,

This past year I, together with 15 friends, were part of an Ezra youth movement volunteer group taking responsibility for welcoming and nurturing approximately 70 Ethiopian children who made aliya within the last two years. These children and their families live in an absorption center in Mevaseret Zion (just north of Jerusalem). The culture shock the children experience in every area of their lives is unimaginable. To ease that transition, we provide the children with midweek after-school activities; take them on trips throughout the country and spend many shabatot together. We welcome them and integrate them into today's Israeli society and Jewish life. Through these activities we educate, entertain, enrich and show our love to these wonderful children. In turn, we are inspired by their unqualified happiness, hospitality and constant optimism. We have been warmly welcomed into their homes and lives and they have become part of ours. Now that the school year has come to an end, we hope to offer a summer program to ensure that the children use their time off from school wisely - with positive, enriching and fun activities keeping them occupied, creative, inspired and off the streets. The Jewish Agency has cut off most funding for this program and we are now also responsible for raising the funds to underwrite the summer program.

The overall goal of the summer program is to positively impact the children and facilitate their adapting to changes in their life. The cost of sponsoring one child is 200 NIS - but the impact is priceless. Please support us and the work we are doing and be a part of absorbing and integrating our Jewish brothers and sisters in the Holy Land.

Watch our video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grz5ai7oWA4 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grz5ai7oWA4> . For further information or to join and support our activities throughout the summer, please email EzraMevaseret@gmail.com<mailto:EzraMevaseret@gmail.com> mailto:EzraMevaseret@gmail.com>> or visit our website:www.wix.com/ezramevaseret/israel<http://www.wix.com/ezramevaseret/israel> <http://www.wix.com/ezramevaseret/israel> Donations can be in cash or by check made to*: Adiya Miller and mailed to: Adiya Miller, 42 Tesharnechovski St. Katamon, Israel, 92585. You can also donate through PayPal<http://www.wix.com/ezramevaseret/israel#!page-4>.

*Since we do not have tax exempt status, all donations must to be made out to Adiya Miller, the advisor.If you are paying by check or cash, please notify Adiya via Email (above) so we know to expect your donation.

On behalf of the children and ourselves, we thank you in advance!

Tamar"

Dearth of Engineering Talent in Israel

In Part 1 of the Humus Manifesto (It would be a good idea to read it again) I complained about Israel's dearth of engineering talent for forward thinking architectures.

"...our talent is focused on the wrong technologies. I can't believe I am saying this but, as a country, we are developing yesterday's technologies or, more accurately, we are developing on yesterday's technologies....

When scale is the name of the game in cloud computing, Saas, internet and software development, we are a country of midgets. One of our companies, Conduit, needs to hire tens of internet engineers and is getting there because of their growth and size but it is not easy! It is a rate limiting factor on the scalability of a very high growth company and Conduit are the best at it in Israel. Facebook can hire at will in Silicon Valley but in Israel, we are talent constrained. Conduit's hiring success is very very hard work and it is the outlier and not the norm. Avishai Avrahami, CEO of Wix (another of our companies) told me "My business grows at over 10% a month but my competitors will catch me because I cannot find Java and Ruby on Rails talent in Israel. I cannot find any engineers with experience in scaling big data centers for many customers. I am willing to pay top wages but I cannot find the talent. I am flying to Russia to find or buy talent."

Now some proof: I received this email from a friend who is an entrepreneur, moaning that two of Benchmark's portfolio companies were vacuuming up all the talent in the marketplace. On one hand, I am happy it is our companies! On the other, this shortage threatens the innovation in our local start up pool. Read it and judge for yourself (I kept the writer and entrepreneur anonymous at their request). Editors note: Spelling and punctuation mistakes are the writers but I wanted the authentic version.

From:XXXX

"I wrote on every serious JS group i know and none are available,
in the past 2,3 month WIX.com are recruiting every js programer available (20 programmers and counting)
(even offerd me full time job for x2 i did in seekingalpha which i declined),
Also a few month before conduit was also recruiting (~10 very skillfull programers)
this is just a bad time to find a good client side programer.

recently i started working with programers from ukraine and romania which is proving to be
very succesfull.

If your goal is to develope tons of extantion using you current API this can be a perfect solution.
If you gola is to further develope and improve the API then you might need a serius expert that
currently is very hard to get (unless you have 40-50K / month)

My ears are allways open and if i'll hear on an available JS programer i'll send it to you right away."

הגיע הזמן! משרד האוצר מדרבן חדשנות

כלכליסט (אסף גלעד) מדווח שמשרד האוצר החליט לכלול יותר חברות גדולות במסלול התמלוגים הגבוה למקבלי מענקים מהמדען הראשי. לטעמי, זהו אמנם צעד קטן אך מאד חשוב כי הוא מאותת שפני האוצר לחדשנות ולא לביטוח מאזנים.

במסגרת ההצעה תורחב ההגדרה של חברה גדולה, כך שיותר חברות יחויבו בתשלום תמלוגים גבוהים על מכירותיהן, וכן תועלה הריבית שעליהן לשלם בגין המענק שקיבלו.

תוגדר החברה כגדולה, יירד ל-70 מיליון דולר של הכנסות שנתיות במקום 100 מיליון דולר. לכך ישנן השלכות מרחיקות לכת על התמלוגים שמשלמות החברות מהכנסותיהן למדען הראשי.

אם עד כה שילמו החברות 3% ממכירותיהן, הרי שהורדת רף המינימום תכניס את אותן חברות ל"מועדון" החברות הגדולות המשלמות 5% מהמכירות. נציגי האוצר טענו בועדה כי הורדת הרף תפגע בחמש חברות בלבד במשק. נוסף על כך מציע האוצר להעלות את שער הריבית שיחול על ההחזר שמשלמות החברות הגדולות מריבית הפריים, לריבית הגבוהה ב-2% מריבית הליבור. עוד מבקש האוצר להחיל את חוק המו"פ גם על התעשייה המסורתית.

!המפתיע הוא שהמדען הראשי לא הציע את זה בעצמו

במניפסט החומוס פרק ב כתבתי

התמונה כוללת גם את השקעות המדען הראשי בחברות הגדולות. באופן מסתורי, גוגל מסוגלת לפתח את אנדרואיד, גוגל TV, גוגל אפס

וחידושים אחרים ללא סיוע מהמדען הראשי של ארה"ב. אפל, שנאבקה על חייה בסביבות שנת 2000

, אפל המציאה את האייפוד, האייפון, האייפד ואייטיונס ללא מימון מהמדען הראשי, אבל אי.סי.איי אינה מסוגלת לפתח את מוצרי הדור הבא ללא סיוע. הדבר תקף גם לגבי טאואר סמיקונדקטור.

אני לא מבין את זה. אם מדובר בהזדמנות כדאית מבחינה מסחרית או בשוק הגדול הבא לחברה ציבורית, על המנהלים לממן אותה מתזרים המזומנים השוטף או לגייס הון בבורסה. מדוע צריך משלם המסים לממן פרויקטים של חברה ציבורית כאשר הנהלת החברה עצמה אינה מאמינה שהם מצדיקים השקעה מתוך המאזן? ומה הסיכויים שהחברה באמת תשקיע את כספי הציבור שהועברו לידיה בפרויקטים שייצרו דבר חדש ומהפכני? זוהי בדיוק דרך הפעולה המוכיחה את צדקת התיאוריה של קליי כריסטנסן בספרו "Innovators Dilemma".

ח"כ רוברט אילטוב שפועל רבות למען תעשיית ההיי טק טועה במקרה הזה כשהוא מתנגד לשינוי המוצע על ידי האוצר. אסור לבלבל את הצורך לבנות חברות חדשניות גדולות עם חברות בינוניות וגדולות במונחים ישראלים שלוקחים את כספי משלם המיסים לממן פרויקטים שתקציבם ומאזנם אינם תומכים. אם הפרוייקטים היו החלטה כלכלית טובה אזי היו ממנים בעצמם. כנראה שמנכ"ל האוצר חיים שני שבא מאחת החברות הגדולות האלה מבין את הדבר הזה ומתחיל לפעול בכיוון הנכון.

***אני מבקש סליחה על הפורמט של הפוסט. אינני שולט בבלוגר בעברית

You can read Part 2 of the Humus Manifesto in English here.

Social Balkanization

Lost in the endless reviews of Google+ is what another Social environment means for web publishers. For approximately 10 years, web publishers have focused on generating visits and traffic from social networks, using SEO, SEM and other Google friendly techniques. They also really only had to focus on one traffic hose: Google, which controlled 65+% of web search traffic. For the last few years, web publishers could safely focus on Facebook to generate traffic. Before that, Myspace was the 800 pound gorilla in social and though it did not generate a huge amount of traffic, web publishers (or widget makers at the time) could focus their attention on Myspace to generate traffic.

As Fred Wilson points out in yesterday's blog post entitled "Why I am Rooting for Google+" , all that is changing:

"Not everyone wants a Facebook experience; default private, mutual follow, best for close friends and family. Not everyone wants a Twitter experience; default public, asymmetric follow, best for broadcasting short burts of information to large networks. Not everyone wants a Tumblr experience; totally public, asymmetric follow, best for posting microchunked media."

I agree with Fred and think it goes beyond the modality of experience: People have multiple identities. They seek their financial analysis and interactions at Seeking Alpha differently than their entertainment on ESPN or MLB.com (see this friends exchange). And, they do it with different groups of friends or colleagues. I post on LinkedIn using professional language and on Facebook more colloquially. Likewise my comments on Seeking Alpha differ markedly from a comment I would post on the New York Post if I read it. This is actually not terribly different from real life where I interact with different people at a Bar Mitzvah than I would at a Wall Street Journal conference and I discuss different things with them.

Online, I maintain different social identities and I want to port those identities and groups to their appropriate experience. Here is where it is beginning to get tricky for web publishers. Web publishers need to ready themselves for customers and the way the customer wants to interact. With different people using different identities differently (that is a mouthful), a web publisher like the New York Post, Seeking Alpha, Hulu or ESPN and even my blog need to enable multiple identities so they can capture sharing and traffic from all of those identities and platforms. The New York Post wants the Twitter and Facebook traffic hose and communities to interact on the The NYpost.com and it is impossible to predict which of them will generate the most interaction. The same goes for brands like Nike or Pampers who are web publishers like any other today.

When we invested in Gigya, the leading provider of social login and social sharing solutions for web publishers, our biggest fear was that one network would own social sharing and identity. Then, in 2007, we feared Myspace. 12-18 months ago we feared that Facebook Connect would own web login and sharing. Today, as Fred points out, we have multiple networks for multiple needs, varied communities for a variety of interactions and different sharing patterns for different content.

If you are a web publisher, managing this balkanization and optimizing it is becoming complicated, to say the least. However, it is critical that you master it. When you get down to managing it, try to prioritize the top 2-4 networks that will lead to the most traffic. For example, Techcrunch has figured out that LinkedIn is more valuable today as a traffic source than Twitter. For Seeking Alpha, Twitter and LinkedIn are more important than Facebook. Still, however for most of the web, Facebook is the most important traffic source. It is still to early to tell where Google+ fits in to this picture.

Additionally, one of the lessons from Google's hegemony on web search is that the algorithm giveth and the algorithm taketh away. Just ask Demand Media (DMD) or Answers.com. The same will be true on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as they grow and need to optimize their feeds for relevancy. Therefore, the best strategy is always to build organic traffic and have community interactions on your page. You do not need to create your own registration for that. You can leverage registrations of bigger social nets but then keep the feeds and interactions on your web sites. Spend time to analyze cross network scenarios and understand the commonality of those who visit your website who clearly have content and community affinity one for the other.

Managing this social balkanization is complex but it is a better web for all of us. The fragmented social web has fewer "single points of failure" or critical dependencies. And, that is good news for web publishers.

Full Disclosure: Gigya, Seeking Alpha and Twitter are Benchmark portfolio companies