Yozma program

The second part of the year involves volunteer work, learning and teaching, and community living. A variety of programming options are available for evenings, Shabbat, and winter and Pesach breaks.

Yozma focuses on the individual, and not on a specific diagnosis, in order to address the cognitive, social, or other challenges faced by each young adult. In keeping inclusivity as a strong value, Yozma frequently examines its resources and capabilities and will evaluate what services it can provide on a case by case basis. At this time, Yozma cannot accept those who need help with basic daily life skills or those who cannot take their own medication.

The Yozma staff includes the assistant director of Yozma , based in Israel, who has a special needs background and works with the director of Nativ and the assistant director of admissions to help identify and recruit participants and formulate program guidelines and expectations. The assistant director will also work throughout the nine month program with specially trained counselors with special needs experience. There will be approximately one staff member for every two to three Yozma participants.

They will be seen as additional staff for the Nativ group but their focus is the success of the individuals in the Yozma program. In order to ensure Yozma participants are fully engaged in their courses, Yozma staff will be in constant contact with the academic counselor from Hebrew University as well as relevant professors. Throughout the semester, our staff can assist as needed with assignments and coursework depending on the level of independence of each individual.

Initially staff can be available to orient the participant to the campus and accompany them to and from classes. Click here for more information about Hebrew University courses. Yozma participants spend the spring semester volunteering in either a youth village or development town with the entire Nativ program.

Click here for more information about Nativ spring semester volunteering. Seminars and tiyulim will take place together with the overall Nativ program. Click here for more information about Nativ seminars and tiyulim. The Yozma staff will always be available at Beit Nativ for the participants to have the option of staying at Beit Nativ.

According to Florida and Kenney , the VC industry plays a central role in coordinating various high-tech agents: entrepreneurs and managers; professional employees; specialized suppliers; investors and capital markets; and product markets. We will briefly describe the second and the third phases of development.

At the Pre-Emergence phase 2, there were first signs of regional high tech industrial concentration. A central feature of this phase is the appearance of significant startup activity and the gradual acceptance of technological entrepreneurship. Some startup financing took place. However, a VC industry did not exist yet. As a result significant startup and VC-related experimentation and learning took place.

This is necessary for the country to transform a pool of technological opportunities into a stream of potential business opportunities. The Emergence process phase 3, presented rapid quantitative growth of startup and VC activities and the eventual emergence both of the startup-intensive ICT cluster and of the VC industry.

Israel's VC industry was triggered by a government targeted-program — the Yozma program. The rapid growth of the cluster was an outcome of the VC industry emergence and of a few early successful startups many of them backed by VCs that were the source of spin-off and imitation by many new agents.

This enhanced a critical mass that created cluster externalities. Emergence began with a fluid sub-phase followed by rapid growth that eventually led to the bubble During the fluid sub-phase significant experimentation and collective learning took place both with respect to startup and VC strategies and with respect to their form of organization. During the rapid growth sub-phase an accelerated entry of startups and VC companies occurred. A domestic VC industry was created. It is then that the cluster attained a size, which enabled it to sustain a large number of supporting services.

This induces entry of additional leading multinational companies and of additional domestic and foreign VCs, rapid creation of startups and rapid growth in the IPOs and acquisition 1 Such conditions occurred in Israel at the mids the creation of the software industry and the PC industry, and the change in the business model in the semiconductor industry toward the fables model.

As long as external and internal conditions remain unchanged, the process of creation of large numbers of startups continued and the cluster continue to grow. VC Emergence VC emergence involves two groups of conditions: first, those underpinning demands for VC services; second, those underpinning rapid growths of VC supply. The existence of an adequate demand for VC services in Israel depends on a prior appearance of a critical mass of startups in the pre-emergence phase.

The supply-side pre-conditions for VC emergence include liberalization of capital markets, other institutional changes, restructuring of defense industries, the appearance of the startup business model, experimentation with VC-related activities since the late s, and the implementation of the Yozma program The actual trigger was implementation of Yozma in This provided the critical mass for the cumulative, self-reinforcing process of growth of VCs and startups. In addition, significant imitation by other private VCs occurred during this period.

This triggered strong collective learning processes, which contributed to attain the critical mass, which made this process effective and self-sustaining. This further stimulated entry of new VC companies, and accelerated creation of second and third funds by existing Yozma VC companies and other VC companies.

The cumulative process was also fueled by favorable changes in the external environment in particular the rise of the NASDAQ Index, and deregulation of communications markets. Additional internal factors were the Oslo peace agreements, the highly educated Russian immigration to Israel, Israeli highly experienced returnees from the U. Four VC companies were established under Inbal regulations. The incubators are privately managed since they became also privately owned.

VC Targeted Policies New national priorities emerged with the beginnings of the massive immigration from the former Soviet Union during the early s. The government of Israel began searching for means to employ the thousands of engineers that came to this country. Simultaneously the military industries had laid-off hundreds of engineers; and there were many attempts to create startup companies, which largely failed. One of the main targets was enhancement of startup formation, survival, and growth.

Till the s, the percentage of successful young companies was extremely low and the accepted view was that this resulted from weak management abilities. The basic problem was lack of capability to grow after the product development phase.

He thought that the missing link was marketing and management skills; and that the way to get it was to foster VC activity. At the time, there were only VCs in Israel, and it was clear that the total capital available and the scope of VC activity were inadequate for the task at hand. It was launched in , years before the implementation of Yozma.

Its central idea was to stimulate VC funds by guaranteeing the downside of their investments. The program imposed certain restrictions on the investments of the 'protected' funds.

Four funds were established. They and the Inbal program, as a whole was not a great success. Fund valuations in the stock market were low and the funds encountered bureaucratic problems. In addition, publicly traded VCs has greater difficulty in exploiting reputation earned from early exits to increase the capital invested in LP form of VC organization it would be easy to rapidly raise a second fund ; and they absence of incentives relevant to the upside.

There was no mechanism for drawing professional VC agents into the program; it did not generate VC investors and partners with adding value capabilities; and it was exposed to 'stock market sicknesses' and short-term thinking. These, together with a cultural shift where entrepreneurship were increasingly being considered prestigious in Israeli society, generated a spurt of startup activity during the early s.

More specifically, we argue that at the beginning of operation of Yozma, there was a clear demand for VC services.

The pool of startups included also some very high quality ones such as RAD Group, Checkpoint, Ornet, Galileo, and M-systems who made a significant direct and indirect contribution to emergence see also Ellies at el. In addition, we should not underestimate the specifics of the design and of the implementation of Yozma. The basic thrust was to promote the establishment of domestic LP VC funds that invested in very young Israeli high tech startups with the support of government and with the involvement of reputable foreign VC investors.

Each Yozma fund had a call option on Government shares, at cost plus interest for a period of five years. Thus, Yozma did not simply provide supply, risk sharing incentives to investors, but it also provided an upside incentive the private investors could leverage their profits through acquisition of the government shares.

The incentives to the 'upside' also stimulated entry of professional VC firms and managers when you have higher returns the government incentive becomes more significant. The program also assured the realization of learning through the compulsory participation of foreign financial institutions most of them were well- experienced foreign VC companies — See table C2. These previous features assured that the Yozma program was a Catalytic Program.

Did not attract any having a reputable foreign financial institution global financial nor strategic investor into Israel The Government owned fund started to invest No mechanism to encourage VC firms to invest immediately - encouraged VCs to invest fast.

These very high rates of return of the Yozma funds4 suggest both the very supportive environment that existed when the program was implemented and the successful design and application of the program. At the same time, the other PE agents experienced moderate growth rates.

Thereafter, there was a rapid growth of the Israeli VC industry both in terms of capital raised and in terms of number of funds. Total capital raised per year by Israeli VCs grew rapidly during the s. It was then that the first foreign VC companies began to invest directly in Israeli startups. Later on, a few of them e. Benchmark, Sequoia, Intel Capital and others established Israeli offices.

To sum up, the Yozma funds initiated a dynamic, cumulative process involving: learning by doing and learning from foreigners. It was a collective learning process, which also contributed to exploitation of economies of scale and specialization.

This and the insights received during our interviews are the basis for our inference that Yozma triggered VC emergence. Most Yozma funds were followed by three or more additional funds managed by an expanding core of managers. The total sums managed by this group was 3. Table C6, shows that former Yozma funds are among the top VC companies in Israel during the years This in part reflects the Inbal incentives on Public VC; but capital were also raised by the other two categories of financial institutions-PE Funds, and Investment Companies.

The number of new startups created in the three years prior to the implementation of Yozma is approximately companies. Significant increases during approximately companies and sharp increases year by year after that up to This reflects the impact of implementation of the Yozma Program and the increased availability of VC.

While the direct impact of Yozma is reflected in backed companies, the indirect impact also includes the acceleration of startup formation in the cluster. Another indirect impact is the rapid entry of non-Yozma related funds, something triggered by the handsome profits obtained by Yozma Funds see table C7.