Michael Eisenberg () (born May 18, 1971) is an American-born
Israeli
Israeli may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the State of Israel
* Israelis, citizens or permanent residents of the State of Israel
* Modern Hebrew, a language
* ''Israeli'' (newspaper), published from 2006 to 2008
* Guni Israeli ...
businessman,
venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...
ist and author.
Biography
Michael Eisenberg was born in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
, the eldest of seven children. His father was a lawyer and his mother ran various home businesses. His grandfather established a chemical plant in
Petah Tikva
Petah Tikva ( he, פֶּתַח תִּקְוָה, , ), also known as ''Em HaMoshavot'' (), is a city in the Central District (Israel), Central District of Israel, east of Tel Aviv. It was founded in 1878, mainly by Haredi Judaism, Haredi Jews of ...
.
[מייקל אייזנברג: הבנתי שלעולם לא אחשב ישראלי](_blank)
/ref> His grandmother was Els Bendheim. Eisenberg was brought up in an observant Jewish home and studied at Orthodox Jewish schools. After graduating high school and attending Yeshiva University for one year, he did a gap year at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shvut
Alon Shvut ( he, אַלּוֹן שְׁבוּת) is an Israeli settlement located southwest of Jerusalem, one kilometer northeast of Kfar Etzion, in the West Bank. Established in June 1970 in the heart of the Etzion bloc, Alon Shvut became the ...
that extended into two years. Upon his return to the United States, he completed his B.A. in Political Science and philosophy at Yeshiva University. He wanted to be a senator.
In 1993, Eisenberg and his wife Yaffa immigrated to Israel. He is a resident of Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
and has eight children. As of 2023, Eisenberg holds both Israeli and American citizenship.
Business career
Eisenberg is the co-founder and general partner of Aleph, a Tel-Aviv-based venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...
firm.
Eisenberg began his career as a consultant for Marttila and Kiley, Inc. a political consulting firm. In 1995, Eisenberg was appointed Montgomery Securities
Montgomery Securities was an investment bank based in San Francisco, California, that specialized in high technology and health care sectors. The firm was founded in 1978 by Thom Weisel.
The bank was acquired by NationsBank Corporation on Jun ...
Investment Bank representative in Israel. That year, he also began working as VP Investment Banking at Jerusalem Global Investment Bank in partnership with Shlomo Kalish
Shlomo Kalish is an Israeli businessman. He is the Founder and Managing Partner at Jerusalem Global Ventures and also a Managing Partner of Corundum Open Innovation Ltd.
Biography
Shlomo Kalish was born in 1952 in Haifa, Israel to Issacher Dov a ...
. Eisenberg’s first investment was in PictureVision, a photo-sharing company, which was acquired by Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
in the late 1990s.
Between 1997 and 2005, Eisenberg was a partner in Israel Seed Partners, an Israeli venture capital fund. His investments included Shopping.com
Shopping.com is a price comparison service owned by eBay and operates websites in USA, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia. Shopping.com started out with the name DealTime.com which still operates as a related, but otherwise separate w ...
, which went public in 2004 and was later acquired by eBay,Finjan Holdings
Finjan Holdings (Finjan) is a company that focuses on the licensing of intellectual property. Finjan claims to own patented technology used in enterprise web security tools. Formerly a publicly traded company on NASDAQ (FNJN), it was acquired by t ...
, GuruNet and answers.com
Answers.com, formerly known as WikiAnswers, is an Internet-based knowledge exchange. The Answers.com domain name was purchased by entrepreneurs Bill Gross and Henrik Jones at idealab in 1996. The domain name was acquired by NetShepard and subs ...
. Shopping.com reached a market cap of $810 million after its first day of trading, while GuruNet reached a market cap of $11 million on its first day.
In 2005, Eisenberg joined Benchmark Capital as managing Partner and was appointed its representative in Israel. His investments at Benchmark included Gigya
Gigya, Inc. is a technology company founded in Tel Aviv, Israel and headquartered in Mountain View, California with additional offices in New York, Tel Aviv, London, Paris, Hamburg, and Sydney.
Offering
Gigya offers a customer identity manage ...
, acquired in 2017 by SAP,) Conduit, and Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha is a crowd-sourced content service for financial markets. Articles and research covers a broad range of stocks, asset classes, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and investment strategies. Unlike other equity research platforms, insight ...
. Eisenberg also led the investment in the website development platform Wix.com
Wix.com Ltd. ( he, וויקס.קום) is an Israeli software company, publicly listed in the US, that provides cloud-based web development services. It allows users to create HTML5 websites and mobile sites through the use of online drag and dr ...
and WeWork.
In 2013, he co-founded Aleph, a venture capital fund based in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...
, together with Eden Shochat
Eden Shochat () (born October 1, 1977) is an Israeli businessman and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder of Aleph, an early-stage venture capital fund, with Michael Eisenberg.
Biography
Eden Shochat was born on Kibbutz Ruhama in the Negev i ...
. Aleph is an early-stage fund with $850M under management focused on partnering with Israeli entrepreneurs to build large and impactful global brands. Since its founding, Aleph has invested in over 50 companies, including Melio, Lemonade Frank (acquired in 2021 by JP Morgan), Freightos, Bringg, JoyTunes, Healthy.io, Fabric, Windward, Honeybook and Nexar.
The fund has seven exits to date, among them four M&A transactions and two public offerings. Lemonade (NYSE: LMND) was traded at a market cap of $3.88 billion as of November 2021, while Windward and WeWork (NYSE: WE), went public through a SPAC.
In April 2016, Aaron Rosenson, formerly of Insight Venture Partners
Insight Partners (previously Insight Venture Partners) is an American venture capital and private equity firm based in New York City. The firm invests in growth-stage technology, software and Internet businesses.
History
Insight Partners was fo ...
, joined the fund as a third partner, immigrating to Israel from New York to assume his new role. In September of that year, Aleph raised $180 million for its second fund. In December 2019, Aleph launched a $200 million third fund. Aleph now has five partners, including Yael Elad, who became operating partner in 2019 and Tomer Diari, formerly of Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners (Bessemer) is an American venture capital firm. The firm has over $19 billion under management and invests globally, with offices in San Francisco, Redwood City, New York City, Boston, Israel, India, and London.
Bessemer ...
, who joined in February 2021.
In December 2021, Aleph launched its fourth VC fund amounting to $300 million.
In April of 2023, Charlie Javice, the founder of Frank, an Aleph investment prior to Frank's sale, was arrested for artificially inflating her company’s user numbers before selling it to JPMorgan Chase for $175 million. Forbes reached out to Eisenberg in January when JP Morgan sued Javice, but Forbes reported that Eisenberg, had no comment.
Public and community service
Eisenberg is a board member of Yeshivat Har Etzion, which combines advanced Torah study with military service. He is also chairman of Hashomer HaChadash, a social movement established in 2007 to continue the historic path of the Zionist movement and strengthen the values of mutual responsibility, civic action and love of the land. Eisenberg was also the director of Snunit, a non-profit organization that promotes technology studies in Israeli elementary schools.
In 2017, Eisenberg organized a Content Marketing Seminar for Olim to help new immigrants integrate in Israel’s high-tech eco-system.
In 2020, he established Nevo Network, a fellowship program for new immigrants working in high-tech, and spearheaded a two-year program run by the non-profit Machshava Tova that teaches high school students from disadvantaged homes to code and build websites.
Journalism and social media
In 1991-1992 Eisenberg was the news editor of ‘’The Commentator,” the student newspaper of Yeshiva University.
In 2005, he launched an Internet blog called "Six Kids and a Full-Time Job,” where he discusses politics, technology, Judaism, Zionism, macroeconomics, investments, entrepreneurship, family and parenting.
In 2010, he published ‘’The Hummus Manifesto,” a series of articles on the challenges facing Israeli high tech. Eisenberg is a frequent contributor to Israel’s daily business papers TheMarker
''TheMarker'' ( he, דה-מרקר) is a Hebrew-language daily business newspaper published by the Haaretz group in Israel.
''TheMarker'' was founded in 1999 by journalist and entrepreneur Guy Rolnik along with Haaretz group and U.S.-based invest ...
, Calcalist, and Hashiloah, an Israeli journal for thought and policy.
He has also written for Tablet Magazine
''Tablet'' is an online magazine focused on Jewish news and culture. The magazine was founded in 2009 and is supported by the Nextbook foundation. Its editor-in-chief is Alana Newhouse.
History
''Tablet'' was founded in 2009 with the suppor ...
, PB Daily and the Washington Examiner
The ''Washington Examiner'' is an American conservative news outlet which consists principally of an online/digital website with a weekly magazine, based in Washington, D.C. It is owned by MediaDC, a subsidiary of Clarity Media Group, which is ow ...
.
Eisenberg writes a weekly column for ''Globes'' about the weekly Torah portion
It is a custom among religious Jewish communities for a weekly Torah portion to be read during Jewish prayer services on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. The full name, ''Parashat HaShavua'' ( he, פָּרָשַׁת הַשָּׁבוּעַ), is po ...
and how it links up to technology and economics.
Published works
In 2016-2017, Eisenberg published ‘’Ben Baruch,’’ an analysis of Tractate Brachot in the Jerusalem Talmud
The Jerusalem Talmud ( he, תַּלְמוּד יְרוּשַׁלְמִי, translit=Talmud Yerushalmi, often for short), also known as the Palestinian Talmud or Talmud of the Land of Israel, is a collection of rabbinic notes on the second-century ...
and ‘’The Vanishing Jew: A Wake-Up Call From the Book of Esther,’’ which looks at Megillat Esther from the perspective of economic philosophy and the struggle for money, power and control.
In August 2021, he published ‘’The Tree of Life and Prosperity: 21st Century Business Principles from the Book of Genesis.’’ [Michael Eisenberg, Jo Maugham and Maria Tatar, Episode 58, Mooch FM](_blank)
/ref>
Other books by Eisenberg are ''Kol Ehad Moshe Rabbenu'' (“Everyone can be Moses”) and ''Shevet Sho'eg'' (“Roaring Tribe”), published in Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
.
In May 2022, Eisenberg published ''Halav dvash v'evada'ut'' (''Milk, Honey and Uncertainty''), a guide to "attitudes, initiatives, structures and leaders" in times of uncertainty."
Views and opinions
Eisenberg credits Rabbi Yehuda Amital, one of the heads of Yeshivat Har Etzion, for giving him direction and providing the inspiration for his life’s work. In answer to Eisenberg’s question about the mitzvah
In its primary meaning, the Hebrew word (; he, מִצְוָה, ''mīṣvā'' , plural ''mīṣvōt'' ; "commandment") refers to a commandment commanded by God to be performed as a religious duty. Jewish law () in large part consists of discus ...
of where to live in the Land of Israel
The Land of Israel () is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine (see also Isra ...
, Rabbi Amital said: “It’s all nonsense – set up a factory to employ 10,000 people so they can earn an honest and decent living. That is the biggest mitzvah.”
Analyzing the Israeli start-up industry and the phenomenon of early exits, Eisenberg offers a psychological hypothesis: “This is a country where people want to be their own boss...There is less of an appreciation of the impact of the size of the overall pie versus my piece of the pie” He believes that Israeli companies need to aim for bigger outcomes, such as attempting initial public offerings and SPACs, while keeping their headquarters in Israel.
Eisenberg describes himself as a "Herzlean" — a follower of Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl; hu, Herzl Tivadar; Hebrew name given at his brit milah: Binyamin Ze'ev (2 May 1860 – 3 July 1904) was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish lawyer, journalist, playwright, political activist, and writer who was the father of modern p ...
's belief in civic movements.
Awards and recognition
Eisenberg was ranked #98 in Forbes Midas List: Top Tech Investors 2019, and #11 in Midas List Europe: Top Tech Investors 2020. In 2021, he rose to #8 in Midas Europe.
Media appearances
Eisenberg lectures and appears on TV, radio and podcast programs, including Harry Stebbings’ “Twenty Minute VC,” the Tikvah Podcast, Anthony Scaramucci’s “The Mooch” and Mark Gerson’s “The Rabbi’s Husband.” He speaks about venture capital, Israel and entrepreneurship. In September 2021, he appeared on Dan Senor
Daniel Samuel Senor (; born November 6, 1971) is an American-Canadian columnist, writer, and political adviser. He was chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and senior foreign policy adviser to U.S. presidential candidate ...
's podcast "Call me back." He also spoke about "Biblical Wisdom for the Tech Era" on Rabbi Ari Lamm's podcast ''Good Faith Effort''. In February 2022, he spoke to Russ Roberts about Israel's image as a start-up nation and the moral aspect of investing. In June 2022, he was interviewed on the financial news magazine of Kan 11.מייקל אייזנברג על "משבר בהייטק"
/ref>
See also
*Economy of Israel
The economy of Israel is a developed free-market economy. The prosperity of Israel's advanced economy allows the country to have a sophisticated welfare state, a powerful modern military said to possess a nuclear-weapons capability, modern inf ...
*Start-up Nation
''Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle'' is a 2009 book by Dan Senor and Saul Singer about the economy of Israel. It examines how Israel, a 60-year-old nation with a population of 7.1 million, was able to reach such economi ...
References
External links
In the spirit of Abraham, Israel-UAE business ties must be built on a foundation of trust
Israeli author offers wisdom of Genesis for modern problems, Daily Signal
Spreading the Wealth: The Jewish holiday of Sukkot reminds us that economic opportunity must be widely available, City Journal
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eisenberg, Michael
Living people
1971 births
Israeli Venture capitalists
Israeli investors
Yeshiva University alumni
Israeli businesspeople
Israeli company founders
Businesspeople from Jerusalem
American emigrants to Israel
Israeli writers