| HN Mirror

I once approached an Israeli tech company (Gloat) when I was doing market research for a product I was building. The response was… interesting to say the least. It led me to do more digging behind the actual product they were building, what kind of positions they were hiring, and what customers they actually had.

All engineering positions were based out of Israel (nothing wrong with that), they had numerous high-profile clients and seemed very connected, but honestly the tech and their vision was pretty disappointing. At first I was shocked how, with such a rudimentary system, they could be so widely in use by these huge, reputable companies! I was naive. All in all, what disappointed me the most was the amount of resources that obviously went into this company and the presumptions that reeked from it; but in my opinion, there was no deserved substance to back things up. You can argue this is the case for many American VC companies but at least to their credit, they need to put the money where their mouth is a some point or another (whether that means making a viable product or generating more hype). With this company, the vibe I got from resources I interacted with, was that they were almost “owed” this market penetration in the industry and it was very discordant to me growing up in the US tech industry where you really needed to prove yourself, at least initially, and stay growing, open-minded, always hustling.

I think reflecting on it there is probably a lot of state protection of this company and state connections between private US and Israeli individuals that guarantee clients as long as the work is as at a certain level (and yes not saying they have developed some horrible suite of software, just… small-minded). And maybe with this breathing room, it allows the role play of being a cutting-edge tech company without the risk which makes it a dream job and therefore a political asset in the polarized state. And maybe at the end of the day it’s less about building a tech company that is the best but developing Israeli institutional knowledge and collecting data, building connections, everything that isn’t software and above my pay-grade. I’m not sure.

To contrast this, I met with an Irish tech company in the same space a couple weeks later called Teamwork, I believe. The CEO himself met with me, discussed my work, even jokingly offered to hire me. Despite this guy founding a successful company, at no point did I feel “erased” or made to feel beneath him. To take a step back, I’m not making the point that “non-Israeli tech company” better than Israeli tech company. Thinking it through, I’ll say that, it seems like Gloat and the other Israeli tech companies I’ve read about, are more existentially-driven. Like doing their work, building their business, and developing their tech is predicated on surviving… which makes sense when you think it through. At the same time, from a tech focus, I think it holds them back since it’s a form of egocentrism and if you’re not the best, you need diversity of opinions to be the best.