Chemi Peres: Overcoming Personal Challenges to Build Pitango, Israel’s Largest Venture Fund | E98

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For the first time and the last time in my life, I experienced what it means to be fired. It's a very humiliating event.
I'm not going to be fired again. Jemi Perez, co-founder and managing partner of Pitango Venture Capital, which is really Israel's largest venture capital fund, was over $3 billion in assets under management.
I always wanted to engage with new technologies, to meet other people. And when I looked at venture, I thought this is the right way to go, to raise money, to invest it in the best and brightest.
It's very fulfilling. You lost your dad in 2016.
I think a lot of people don't know you lost your son, Guy, a few years ago. How did that impact all of you? Well, Guy was 33 years old.
He got a cardiac failure that killed him in seconds.

It was devastating, painful, unimaginable.

With all the tragedies, one lesson is...

I'm going to go. Jemi Perez, I am so excited about this conversation today.
He is the co-founder and managing partner of Pitango Venture Capital, which is really Israel's largest venture capital fund, with over $3 billion in assets under management. I mean, it's invested in over 250 startups.
Kemi is also the son of Shimon Peres, the former prime minister of Israel.

And Kemi continues his father's legacy in the most beautiful way as a chairman of the

Peres Center of Peace and Innovation, where he really uses technology

to foster peace and collaboration.

Super inspiring.

Kemi, I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you, Ilana.

It's a pleasure to be here.

So I have to take you back in time

because I kept thinking,

what is it like to grow up

with someone like Shimon Paris?

For all of us that know him,

everybody in Israel knows him,

most of the people in the world know him,

Thank you. What is it like to grow up with someone like Shimon Peres? For all of us that know him, everybody in Israel knows him.

Most of the people in the world know him.

He was a huge inspiration to so many people.

What is it like?

Well, I don't know anything else.

That's what I know.

But I can tell you this.

First of all, I have two wonderful parents.

And if you imagine a picture, the view of the life consists of vertical and horizontal lines.

Thank you. two wonderful parents.
And if you imagine a picture, the view of the life consists of vertical and horizontal lines. I think my mother gave me the horizontal ones, the modesty.
And my father

gave me the vertical ones to aspire, to dream, to serve a great cause. And if you combine those

lines, you get a beautiful picture.

But I think I can say that it's growing by inspiration because he was very busy out of his life.

He had very little time for family, but in the very little time, it was so meaningful.

And out of the person meetings, a lot of inspiration was flowing our way. So I was lucky and I'm grateful for that.
He was an incredible person. And you're saying you got a lot of the modesty from your mom.
And I would say, I think your father is also like, it was so humble. I wish there were more leaders like him today.
But take me there. Does it come with a lot of stress, a lot of expectations?

Is it coming with any hate in school? What does it come with? What are the things that we might not know? I think it's not easy to grow in a house where you have someone who is so dominant. It can crash you, but it can also give you a lot of inspiration.
So I think we were lucky in this family. First of all, my mother made sure that we separate the family affairs than state affairs.
And she was very protective. And he always gave us the notion that whatever we choose, whatever we do is fine, as long as we are decent people, as long as we follow our hearts.
So I think when you are young, you need to build your muscles, you need to build your standing for who you are, not for what you are. And I think as you grow and you are safer, then you can get closer and closer.
and I think that's the pattern that we followed in our life. At the beginning, you shy away because you really want to be the person you are and not have anyone judge you for your father.
So anything that you did good, people may say it's because of him and everything bad is a disappointment. But I think we're lucky.
We came up normal.

We came up stable. It's because of him and everything bad.
It's a disappointment. But I think we're lucky.

We came up normal.

We came up stable.

And each one of us chose a different direction.

And I'm happy with what I did.

But as you grow, you tend to get closer.

And that's beautiful.

I'm grateful that he lived to 93 and we had all the time to catch up. Oh, my God.
I will go back to that because you did have a very special relationship with him. And also your kids had a very special relationship with him.
But when you were about 18, I guess you went to the military, just like every Israeli. And you actually went to pilot school, but I think there were some challenges.
What did you face and what did you learn? Because I believe that the military is one of the best schools possible. It taught me a lot, but I'm curious about you, Kemi.
To make it short, in the middle of the course, you run through medical tests. And that's the pilot course, just to make sure everybody follows.
Yeah. In my time, it was like two years, the course of two years.
And after a year, I went to regular checkup and they discovered that my lungs are not functioning fully. When I was a child, I had very severe asthma.
There were

a lot of liquid in my lungs, so I was not able to get 100% functionality of my lungs. As a result, they reduced my medical profile to such a level that I had to leave the flight course.
Since I wanted to be a warrior, a combat participant, I went back to the Green Military Service in a platoon of tanks. I spent a year in the Army, but I was very anxious to get back to the flight course because I felt that they went too far with me.
Initially, my profile was so low that I had to do back office activities. I managed to lift it up a little bit, which allowed me to serve as a combat participant.
And later on, I convinced them that I'm doing fine, that I'm capable of functioning. And they agreed to bring me back to the flight course with their certain limitations.
And it allowed me to finish the course as a helicopter pilot. Since I wanted to be a combat helicopter pilot, I was very happy and lucky to join a squadron of COBobra, which is an attack helicopter.
And altogether, I spent 10 years in the Israeli Defense Forces. Which, by the way, I think helicopter flying is probably the most complicated flying ever because there's just so much to do.
So you put that goal, you convince people around you, you build that resilience. How do you summarize all the things that you learned in those 10 years? It's priceless.
I'm sure it built you, Khamenei. I think I learned a few lessons.
First of all, I learned how the human factor is so important in success. In anything that you do, if you have quality people, your chances to be successful are higher.
I also discovered the power of technology, what it can be used for, and the advantage it gives you if you know how to operate it well. I also learned that honesty is crucial to survivability.
And this is why everything that we did, we briefed and debriefed every day. We were touching the toughest points in order to learn and make sure that we do not repeat the same mistakes.
Because if you do, it may cost you your life. So that was a lesson for life for me.
That's incredible, Kemin. I actually want to talk about this a little bit because I think debrief is so normal for somebody in Israel, in the military, but I think it's pretty rare in life, especially here outside of Israel, in the U.S., etc.
And for those listening, debrief is basically when you really have to look and be really honest about what worked and what didn't work. And you do this all the time.
And that honesty with yourself and that complete ownership that you're taking on just lets you learn so much faster. And I think this is something that I don't know if it really caught up in every single place, but I believe it's priceless.
How do you see debriefing today, Kemi? I think debriefing was extended to other branches in the Israeli Defense Forces, which is good. A lot of other platoons and battalions learned from the Air Force this process, this magical, important process, and they implemented almost all over the military parts.
I think, though, that it is a showstopper for a lot of people from the Air Force to join the political arena. because in politics, you're not necessarily sticking to the truth.
And you invent a lot of stories. For pilots, people that spend many years as pilots in the Israeli Air Force, it's very tough for them.
They're not used to swimming in dark waters. They feel much better exposed to the sunlight sunlight where they actually show their flaws and their mistakes and everything.
It's not really goes hand in hand. It's almost a different breed.
Yeah. And I think entrepreneurship to some extent is constantly debriefing.
It's that agility that you get that is almost opposite. But tell me, so around, I think, age 24 or so, you also became a dad.
Did that somehow scare you from flying or impacted flying in any way or not? Or how did that catch you? You know, when you're 24, you have a family, you have a son, and you are in the Israeli Air Force, you're maturing very quickly. And you understand the responsibility that you have both as a family member and as an Air Force member.
It actually drives you to maturity earlier than maybe one should. But definitely, it creates another level of responsibility that you have to deal with it.
I think I was premature at the time. I did not really understand what it means to become a father.
It took some time to adjust to the idea that that little thing that is screaming there is your responsibility. Trust me, at about a week old, I took him swimming with me and I was like, sit down and watch me swim because I have to go back to the regime.
So yeah, I had my moments as well too. Okay, life is a little different now.
And I think you've finished the Air Force and you do go to Israel Aerospace Industries. I think in Israel, everybody knows it, but there was a big project called the Lavi Project.
Tell us a little bit about what it was to move from military 10 years as a pilot. That's a lot, or in the military, right? And then to move into kind of more, I don't know if I would call it corporate, it's different.
But how do you see that change and shift?

So it was a change.

But as a matter of fact, you continued somewhat parts of what you have done because we worked in an environment that had a lot of pilots and a lot of engineers in the Israeli aerospace industries. So it's moving from the Air Force to a defense company was, I think, a little bit softer than if you had to move to something that has nothing to do with defense.
But I was very busy in making sure that I can provide for my family because my parents were not wealthy. They did not create wealth for themselves.
They dedicated their life for the state. And so I had to take care of myself.
And what happened is that I noticed that I'm 28 years old. I have to study and work and provide for myself from the very beginning.
I had to do everything in parallel. At this point, do you have two or three kids? 28, I had only the first one.
The first one, okay. The second one came a little bit later.
So they had like six years in between them. And so I started to work and I started to study and I had to do my reserve duty, which was a once a week duty service where you fly basically night flights.
That means that if you fly on Tuesday night, you have to go on Tuesday early to the base, the airbase. You need to get some rest.
You need to do the briefing. Then you fly, you come back very late and debriefing and then you go home.
So it was very exhausting. And at the same time, you had to study engineering in Tel Aviv University and work in the Israeli aerospace industries.

And as a matter of fact, it was not enough.

I had to do some more stuff.

So I also served as a pilot in Karmiel in the north in the Cyclone Factory, which was actually taking broken helicopters and different stuff and fixing them.

And I had to test them. Now that's scary.
I was very busy between doing my reserve and studying and working in the Israeli aerospace industries. The Delavis project was fascinating.
It was an attempt by the Israeli government or the Israeli aerospace industries to build a jet fighter, which will be supreme, very advanced. And they took all that battlefield experience from the pilots together with engineers.
It was fascinating to see what they have been doing there. And I had two years.
I spent there two years. The thing is that the La Vie project, at the end of the day, was very successful engineering-wise, but it was not very successful in completing the whole process to manufacturing because, first of all, it cost way too much or much more than it was initially thought.
And also it became a conflict

because you build something that looks like F-16

and when you go to markets,

you actually compete with the American industry,

which was not a good idea.

And also the Israeli Air Force

was not really welcoming the Lavi as expected.

They preferred to buy maybe F-16 or F-15.

And also the notion was that

Let's go. really welcoming the lavie as expected.
They prefer to buy maybe F-16 or F-15. And also the notion was that Israel should not really build a jet plane, but rather focus on the electronics, on the bionics, on the software, on the sensors, on the weaponry, but not necessarily on the fuselage and the engines and wings.
We should actually get that. And then when you get the platform, you can upgrade it by putting a lot of wisdom and knowledge and experience into its systems.
Which is just an interesting way to look at focus overall and products overall, like where is your edge? And also the importance of the software versus the hardware. But I think what happened is that at that time, the government, the prime minister was Rabin.
My father was minister of foreign affairs. My father actually led the coalition against the lobby.
Ouch. What did that do to the relationship? I have to hear.

No, we didn't talk about it.

But, you know, he was the founder of the Israeli aerospace industries.

And by nature, he was supposed to be the one who will drive those kind of projects with his vision and optimism.

But he was also very realistic.

And he understood that it's not going to work.

It's too costly.

It's too costly. It's too controversial and not embraced.
And he thought that we need to take a hard decision. And so the government voted to stop the project.
I think it was the majority of one. And obviously, when it happened,

they had to shut down the project.

It was devastating. And

for the first time and the last time in my

life, I experienced what

it means to be fired from your

job. And somebody

actually needs to tell Kemi

that it's sort of

because of your dad. I feel

sorry for the executives that had to fire thousands of people. They were doing the hard job.
But I can tell you from my own experience, when you are fired from a job, it doesn't matter how good you were, how well you were, or how much you were appreciated, or how important your work was, and it's not your fault. Still, it's a very humiliating event, a situation which I cherished very deeply in my memory to always remember that if I need to fire people, I need to be very, very sensitive.
And I knew what they feel. And also, I promised myself that I'm not going to be in that position anymore.
I will never accept another position or situation like that in my life, which means that I'm going to be the decision maker and the one who's responsible for his destiny. And that is a life-changing event.
And with that, I moved on. That's incredible, Kemi.
And I want the listeners to hear that because I think a lot of our listeners right now are going through some hard times. There were a lot of layoffs in tech.
There was a lot of layoffs in USA. There's a lot of layoffs in federal.
There's a lot of hardship right now. So if you're listening to this, I want you to lean in because Kemi's story right now is just becoming even better.
But it was from that hard moment that it sort of catapulted you to a different place. But talk to me for a second, if that's okay, about that moment.
How do you get yourself back up? And how do you decide? And entrepreneurship was not very common, not venture capital chemi when you started this so first of all how do you recover from that humiliation and how do you leap into something that is basically scary because not many has done it before you didn't know if it's going to pay the bills you didn't know if it's gonna hold to hold your growing family. Like, how do you not hide behind the fear? So first of all, things happened very quickly.
I did not have much time to be sorry. I had to rise up and focus on the future.
I had other positions that I still kept, like being test pilot. I was also a translator of books from English to Hebrew.
I was doing a lot of jobs just to keep on. But the following day of that event, I got a phone call from a CEO of a software company that was very close to Israel Aerospace Industries.
And the CEO learned about me from the chief marketing officer of the company, which recently passed away. His name was David Orr.
I traveled with him to market some of the activities that we've done in the US, both military government. And I think he was very impressed with the work that we did.
So he told him, look, lots of people are living now IAI and there's this guy that I think you should hire him. So he called me and he said, look, I heard great things about you.
I want to hire you to the company. He said, I have a problem with that.
I'm not going to work for you. He said, why? I said, because I just experienced this humiliating scene.
I'm not going to repeat it. He said, will you meet me for coffee? I said, sure, of course.
So we met for coffee. And he said, look, I'd like you to come and work with me.
This is a company which is working in the defense industry. I want to move it into the civilian markets.
It was dual use before dual use was used. And I need somebody like you on my side to run the marketing, business development, those activities.
And tell me what will it take to bring you on board. I said, look, the first thing is that I'm not going to be fired again.
So he took out a white paper with a pen and he said, please write what are your conditions. I said, point number one, nobody can fire me from the company.
He said, that's fine. Point number two, I told him I'm a student, so I need to be very flexible.
I need to be the decision maker about how do I allocate my time. He crossed another V.
And then we talked about my salary and my terms, my employment terms. And that was the point number three, which he also signed.
And then he had point number four. He said, we're going also to pay for your tuition.
He said, thank you very much. So I joined the company.
And we were doing amazing stuff. I think that one of the most exciting part of my experience there was the acquisition of a semiconductor fab in Israel, which was created by national semiconductors.
They invested a lot of money in this factory, in this pub,

and they decided that they want to shut it down

after they invested huge amounts of money.

Our chairman at that time decided to buy the company

and gave them a proposal that was really amazing.

And they accepted the proposal. We did not have the resources to pull this transaction.
So we went to the Israel Corporation at the time, which was a conglomerate, and we offered them to join us in this effort. They would bring the funding.
They would get 40% of the joint venture. We keep the 60%.
So the deal was done without us putting anything, but holding 60% of the company. And the two guys that were running the pub, they said, if you guys are buying it, we believe we can make it profitable.
So we went with them. And the company shortly after went public.
It changed its name to Tower Semiconductors. They did a great job and we took the company public and there was huge success for the company.
And then as we were looking for products to get into the civilian market, I started to have meetings with some young people that came up with ideas, but they had no way to fund it. So they wanted us, they heard about us, we went public and we did this.
They thought that we are a strategic partner. They wanted us to invest in minority.
And I told them, look, we're not going to invest in minority in companies. Either we buy the company or we license the product, but for sure, we're not going to have a minority in the board seat.
But I saw that there are great ideas and there's no platform to finance those ideas. So I spoke with the CEO, who unfortunately, a few years later passed away of cancer.
And I told him, look, we need to build a platform to finance these projects. It can be done on our balance sheet.
And one of the advisors of the company came in and said, look, there is a program by the Israeli government. It's called INBAL, which is the insurance arm of the Israeli government.
They came up with an idea or suggestion or offering that venture funds that will raise money on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange will get the insurance. 80% of your investment is going to be protected.
And based on those guidelines, we decided to build a company. We raised $1 million from our own company, but also from some business people

and a small investment bank that was active in Israel. And that $1 million was enough in terms of equity to take a company public at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
We raised $7 million on top of it. And that's how I started the first fund, which was MOFET, which means industrial R&D, exemplar in a free translation, but also the initials of industrial R&D.
And I started to invest in young companies, very inexperienced, and it was an amazing ride. I did it as a part-time joke on top of what I did in the company.

But I fell in love with the founders, with the vision, with the broad view of different things you can do.

And at some point in time, I said, I want to move full-time to run the fund.

And they agreed.

So that's what I did.

And that's around the 90s, right, Remy, for people listening? The beginning of the 90s, yes. The public offering was on January 1993.
By the way, on March 1993, they raised the qualification for IPO to $3 million in equity. We were able to go on January, which was the last, actually, the last IPO.
And ever since I'm doing this for my main business activity as a venture capitalist, investing in startups. And we'll talk about it because you don't just invest in startups, you completely change the ecosystem in Israel.
But I want to go there for a second because it's very, very different to be an operator versus an investor. You need to look at different things.
You need to not run to the solutions, but you want to actually look at the problems and to look at why people didn't realize some of these things, etc. What do you see as the differences or what was the learning curve in terms of what's going to make it, what's not going to make it, the pace of change or the pace of knowing if something will work out is different in venture capital? How do you see the differences? So first of all, I was in an operating company for five years and I observed how it's done and I was part of the management of the company.
I was not the CEO, but I was very close. I was this right hand and had a lot of influence on the things that we've done.
But I always felt that I'm much more intrigued by vision, strategy, creation than operation. I thought operation, other people can do better than me.
I'm not the greatest operator in the world. That's something that never filled me with satisfaction.
I always wanted to look at new things, to explore new frontiers, to engage with new technologies, to meet other people. So I felt that venture is better for me.

It's more fulfilling.

And as a matter of fact, also, I felt that, you know, in 1973,

when Israel was taken by surprise in the Yom Kippur War,

what happened to Israel in the course of 10 years,

from 73 to actually 84, 11 years,

what happened is that the burden of security was so high. And at that time, Israel did not have the high tech sector.
And what happened to our economy is that it imploded, it crashed. We reached 450% inflation rate.
And I felt that the future of Israel depends on its ability to create a vibrant economy. And I felt that since we don't have natural resources, the only way for us to do it is by creating startup companies that will scale.

And that will be the driver of our economy.

And I was thinking about a national portfolio of about a thousand companies where 5% of

them will generate hundreds of millions of dollars.

That would change completely.

The economy will allow us to carry on and never get into this crisis that we had. And when I looked at venture, I thought this is the right way to go, to raise money on a global basis, to invest it in the best and brightest and help them scale their businesses and support the Israeli economy.
That was a mission that I fell in love with, and I felt that we need to build the ecosystem in Israel. And I also got involved in building the ecosystem by helping to the formation of the Israel Venture Association, which gathered all the funds in a professional way to take care of taxation regulation, to pass the R&D bill, the new R&D bill, to get tax exemption for foreign investors, to allow mergers and acquisitions, and just to let it scale.
And I got involved in a lot of activities besides the ones that I did in the fund to take care of the entire ecosystem and make sure that we are building something significant in

Israel. I think at that time people did not appreciate the power of technology companies, especially banks.
When you went to raise money from them to support the companies, they said, show me the balance sheet, show me your assets. I'll show you in a few years.
But now banks are technology companies by themselves, so they can fully understand what cyber is and what cloud is and what data is. So they understood the power of technology and therefore they started to get involved in the high tech sector.
But it took time to build it. So I've been doing it since the early 90s, which means over 33 years now, 34.

And it's still fascinating.

You've seen a lot in those years.

As somebody that is basically creating this big venture capital very early on,

what are some of the big challenges that you ran into that you needed to overcome?

The big challenges first is to convince investors to invest in Israel. They have lots of opportunities around the globe.
So we had to explain why Israel is unique, why Israel is important, why Israel can be successful. Why do they need to focus on Israel? It comes from the Middle East, speak lousy English and don't really understand culture.
That was one challenge. The second challenge was how do you bring people with operational experience into sitting in the backseat and investing and sitting on boards and not being hands-on? How do you build a partnership? How does it work? How do you go through the decision process? Because everybody wants to decide by themselves, right? They want to run the show.
But you have a collection of very capable people. So you need to build a partnership.
And what does it mean? And how does it work? And how do you take decisions? And then how do you compete on deals and how do you support your companies how do you make sure that you are creating successes if you can and what else do you need to bring besides money and how the ecosystem is growing and shaping up and do you need to change your strategy with it? And we've done all that. But I feel that you work a lot.
And it may not be stressful as a startup. But then again, it's not fun to get in a problem with the company.
You need to resolve it. The human factor is always augmented in situations like this.
But I've learned a lot, constantly figuring out where the world is heading. You need to be able to have the intuition to predict which one is going to be successful.
What are the parameters of success? So you learn a lot and you always have more to learn. You never stop learning, actually.
It's fascinating to me because you've seen so much, but you also have seen a full country move from something that nobody barely knows anything about venture capital to the startup nation. Are there moments where, especially in the beginning, that you're like, you know what, this is dumb.
I'm not going to do this. This is ridiculous.

Are there moments that you're just like, what on earth was I thinking?

Or was it very clear that this is the route?

It was clear that this is the route. But I think the most exciting moments were first acquisition, first IPO, stepping into

a company and seeing that just a few years ago, there was only one founder and a couple of employees and you and the fund. And now it's a huge company.
It's very fulfilling and people don't even know you. And you don't know anyone.
I was one day in a meeting of a company that celebrated 10 years. They had already like 1,500 people.
And the CEO said, everyone was in one huge room. And he said, those that were here 10 years ago, please stand up.
So a couple of people are standing up. And then he said, those that are here for nine years, stand up.
And a little bit more people stood up. And all of a sudden, the whole audience standing up.
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Now back to the show. I actually want to take you, if it's possible, to maybe deeper places for you, Kemi, because the last 10 years of your life have been pretty rocky on a personal level.
And if it's okay, I want to take you there. I mean, first of all, you lost your dad in 2016, which I'm sure impacted a lot of things, but you also, which I think a lot of people don't know, you lost your son, Guy, a few years ago.
And this changes everything on life and legacy, and I'm sure everything you can think of. So first of all, let's talk about your dad, because I think that's insanely hard, but it's also a little more expected.
And then if it's possible, how did that impact all of you? My father was a surprise. Although he was 93 years old, I have a very good friend.
He's an American physician that we used to meet every year in the World Economic Forum. And he would check him.
Every time we were there, he would look at me. He would talk to him.
And I told him, what do you think? He said, he will be a centennial. He will live to 100.
So when he died at the age of 93, I was shocked. I couldn't understand what happened.
I have a diary that I write every day, and I browsed through the last year, and I've seen through my notes, there was a process that I could have understood that life does not go on forever. I think the challenge was I was at the time working with him at the Paris Center and I was chairman.
And I thought to myself, what are we going to do next with the center? A few years before that, I asked him to write a spiritual will for the center after 120 years. Wow, how brilliant.
He brought a beautiful document that I have full of vision.

And what I did is the day after he passed away, after the funeral, I gathered everyone in the center and said, those who want to leave, feel free to leave. I'm not holding anyone.
But those who want to carry on the mission are welcome to stay. And the way we're going to operate is as if he's here, stepped out of the room.
We need to figure out the road ahead and follow the footsteps. We're not trying to feel in the shoes, but we need to walk the walk.

And that was also triggering the notion that his legacy is the legacy of tomorrow, not a legacy of memory.

And legacies of tomorrow can grow over time because it's action. We're not a museum.
We're not leaning back and thinking about what was the past. But he constantly said the past is not interesting because he cannot change it.
Only the future is interesting. So we follow that idea.
We managed also to help him write a book, the last book before he died. A few weeks before that, we finished the writing

and we took upon ourselves to publish it.

And it's called No Room for Small Dreams.

It's a short memoir of lessons he learned

and achievements that can be served

for future leaders.

Lessons of resiliency, of optimism,

of believing in what you do,

of serving a great cause.

And it's a legacy that is worth carrying on.

Thank you. of resiliency, of optimism, of believing in what you do, of serving a great cause.
And it's a legacy that is worth carrying on. So I took upon myself to continue and carry the legacy forward and augment everything that we did at the center, especially in the last years of his life, we started to work on the Innovation Center at the Paris Center.
And I understood it's not only about peace building activities through projects that the center has been doing. We need now to fill in much more functions.
And the most important one, as he wrote in his will, we need to protect the island and calm the ocean. We thought that innovation and technology is the best way to protect the island and to calm the ocean.
So we stick to that. And now we work on the Future Institute.
We are now building the Future Institute because we think it's essential that people will look forward into the future, try to imagine what the future brings to us. The future is sending signs.
You need to, methodologically, you need to be able to identify them and separate them from noise and get ready for what's happening next, whether it's AI, whether it's climate change and take action, not just be a think tank, but a do tank. So we're working on that.
That's the third layer of the center. If the first one privatizing peace.
The second one was building the innovation center. And now it's about the future.

And by the way, for those who haven't seen it, this is one of the most beautiful, inspiring buildings, locations.

It's a place that you go there and you immediately feel a lot more innovative, inspired, hopeful.

Like it's just so, so, so special.

But how do you balance between your own legacy and the legacy that you're building for your dad? Is there a way to balance? Some people say that you need to wear two hats, but I'm saying I wear one hat with two heads. I'm a believer in the same things that he believed in.
We shared the love for innovation, for technology. We believe that the future holds so much promise.
If you marry this with values, human values, make sure that it goes on the right way. So it's very easy for me to do that.
That's what I'm doing. And I have an amazing team at the center, which makes it even easier.
But I feel that he's with us. And I think that we carry the legacy forward.
And I'm having these discussions from time to time with him, spiritually, of course. And I think he would have been proud the way the center continues to operate and get an impact by fostering innovation and entrepreneurship, optimism, future looking, forward looking and all the activities that we do with all the people that come from abroad and from within Israel.
And of course, working with Arab countries. It's very fulfilling.
So I combine my work at Pitango with the center and it works quite well, I must say. You wear a lot of hats because you somehow managed to do so many things that I can't even wrap my head around it.
And I'm a big believer in portfolio careers, but your portfolio career is a whole different level. But take us to 2022.
How do you recover? Well, Guy was an illustrator. Very talented.
Very smart. Very bright.
I won't say a genius, but maybe he was a genius. Very capable.
Extremely smart. And knowledgeable.
You never win when you argued with him. He had a very clear view of the world.
And from a very early stage in his life, he was focused on superheroes and gaming and movie and music, comics and graphic novels. and he was an illustrator and he decided to study illustration in the Academy of Art in San Francisco.
And he went to San Francisco and spent five years there. We would often come and visit him.
And he just came back home when Corona started. And he had his own studio at home.
And in 2021, we spoke about the fact that this world of creativity, superheroes, this world of imagination and creation of stories and figures is not well accepted in Israel as it is in Japan or in the US, Europe. It's not yet developed and he wanted to develop it.
We started to work on a project which was called Yucca Monsters. And the idea was to start with a concept store in Tel Aviv that we showcased the most exciting product and then do it also online.

And then as we continue to scale, we'll set up a publishing house,

very unique, the first of its kind in Israel,

to publish comics and graphic novels.

And then start a studio that will foster and support young artists and ideas

to tell stories. We can grow them into the global markets.
We found a place in Tel Aviv. We started to design it.
Guys started to create lists of products that we want to bring. And then we were in New York for a few days.
He stayed in his apartment with his dog, and we left our dog with him. We communicated he wanted to buy some stuff in the U.S., and he sent us stuff to the hotel to pick it up.
And then, all of a sudden, we didn't hear from him, and we got very worried because it was not something that we would accept or expect. And we called him and it didn't answer.
So we sent our daughter to see if everything is okay. Unfortunately, he was 33 years old.
He got a cardiac failure that killed him in seconds. And only later on when we did the autopsy,

we discovered that he had myocarditis in his heart,

the beginning of heart disease.

But its first appearance was cardiac heart failure.

It was devastating, painful, unimaginable. Nothing that people that did not go through this can understand.
There's a wall between the room that people that lost their kids are in to those who did not. There is no bridge, so nobody can understand it.
What I decided to do together with my family is to carry on with his legacy, to build the Yuko Monsters without him, to realize his dream and to make his life meaningful because they were very short. They were very meaningful, but very short and really realize his dream.
And at the same time, we formed the cathedral in Shankar, which

is a visual school.

And in this cathedral,

we are doing also some amazing

stuff for others.

We pay scholarships for people from the

periphery. We give

awards to students

that excel.

We started a master's degree in game design

and we launched an AI research center which is called Parameter which is doing AI for visual communication which is quite fascinating. So there is no comfort, there is no cure, it's a never-ending story, time doesn't do any good but you have to live with it.
There's nothing we can

do about it. It's irreversible.
We try to think about the fact that he had a beautiful life.

At that point, he did everything that he wanted. He was very gifted.
He traveled the world. He

studied. He had amazing friends that loved him.
He had everything besides luck to keep on living. And yeah, nobody can understand any of this.
I think what I can see is the way that you and your family and everybody is just marching to do more good on his behalf and on everybody's behalf. Your instinct, I feel, as a family to give back and to, you know, your healing is to do more good in the world.
And to me, that's just such an inspiring thing to see. Not that I want anybody to go through any of this, but I'm just saying the way you heal is the way

you impact more people in the world. And to me, that's just such a beautiful way to take this.

And I don't know what made you do that, or it's an instinct or somehow that you were brought up

and this is your instinct to do, but it's incredible to see. I don't know if you noticed that.

Of course, I'm aware of it. It was important for me to keep him with us.
The fact that he's

Thank you. But it's incredible to see.
I don't know if you noticed that. Of course, I'm aware of it.
It was important for me to keep him with us. The fact that he's not alive anymore doesn't mean that he will be faded away.
So he's part of the family. His dog now is with us.
So every day we walk into the morning and evening. His car is with us.
Lots of things that are present in our life. But you have to believe that there is some different shape or form of continuation.
Because it doesn't make sense that somebody vanishes. So he's with us.
And when I'm in the store and I see people coming in and I see how they look at the things and the impact it has, it fills me with a notion that is with us, that is proud, happy. Although I know it's in our hearts and our heads, but it provides us some kind of, I would say comfort.
I would give everything to having back, but we chose that route. We are, by the way, celebrating his birthday, not the passing day.
So we're celebrating his birthday. And actually, the day after tomorrow we officially launch the publishing house.
We already have four books out, but we're going to do an event to kick off. Amazing.
So how do the listeners find it? You can go to the website, which is yukamonsters in one word, dot com. And you can read the story and you can see the store and you can see the publishing house you can get online and go shopping if you want we are focused on his but you can see the activities and you can go to Shankar S-A-G-N-K-A-R and see the cathedral Guy.
I think you can find most of it on yukamonsters.com. Let's go back to the Paris Center just for a second to end kind of on a positive, inspiring note.
As far as I can see, the center has this mission of building a brighter future. How do you see the Center's mission in overall Israel, and how do you cultivate it? The mission of the Center, as was written in the spiritual will, in a brief way is to strengthen the island, protect it.
the island means Israel, and calm the ocean, which is reduce hostility and calm the ocean. The way we do it is by the three platforms that we created.
The first one is people-to-people projects. We call it privatizing peace or coexistence or shared future.
We work on a lot of programs with different people, mostly young people around sports, around healthcare, around business, around entrepreneurship, culture. And over the years, we impacted hundreds of thousands of people through these programs.
The second one is to foster innovation, to provide a future for the young people, to understand that they are capable to achieve everything. They need to be entrepreneurs and they need to embrace what the world of technology and innovation is offering them.
There's no limit to where they can go. So we showcase and we build a community and we do events and we do programs where we teach people across all walks of life about innovation.
And the third mission is to bring Israel to the future, to focus on the future, to learn how to research the future. I'm not talking about just futurists.
I'm talking about every person, every company, in every aspect. It can be in healthcare, it can be in work, it can be in education.
How do you deal with things that are going to disrupt or provide opportunities, whether they are man-made or nature-made, or a combination of the two, disruption and opportunities are scaling up, and we need to be much more aware of the future. So for me, it's the human factor of people to people.
It's the platform for innovation and entrepreneurship, and it's a deep look into the future. By doing that, we try to shape a new tomorrow that can be shared by people, that is accessible to people.
Because, again, some people say that Israelis are different tribes. They're not a people, they're tribes.
I think it's a question of leadership. But most importantly, we are busy and looking backwards at what happened to us instead of looking at the future and see what the opportunities are.
My father said that people prefer to remember than to think. Remembering is the past, thinking is the future.
And a lot of people are looking back at what they did and they're very pleased sometimes

with their achievements. But for him, it was not important.
What happened in the past is done, it's gone, we cannot change it. Whether it's a great success or a failure, you just need to rise up and move into the future.
And the future sets the agenda for today. So the past has been forgotten.
and present has no meaning.

And what sets your activities and agenda is the future. So we try to bring those values to as many people as possible.
And you do it so beautifully, Kemi. So maybe last question.
If you would look back at your younger self, would there be something that you wish you

knew or somebody would tell you? It's a tough question because there is no reverse in history or in life. There's only forward.
So I try to learn. I think one lesson is to spend more time with your parents and with your kids.
It's precious. And don't let your weaknesses or feelings drive you apart.
Stay focused on that. Because there's no moment that can be brought back in time.
I'm saying it's relevant for my father, it's relevant for my son. Maybe I would spend time in the U.S.
in a university earlier. I spent a couple of years in Silicon Valley, but maybe in an earlier stage in my life to help me calibrate myself.
When you come from a small country like Israel, you have very few or very certain skewed notion.

And I think opening up to the world and learn from a great country like the U.S.

would have been helpful, I think, for me.

I would read more, for sure.

Maybe I would learn more languages.

Maybe I would stick to my piano and guitar. In hindsight, there's a lot of things you can improve.
But with all the tragedies, I'm grateful for being lucky to be born as an Israeli at the time after the Second World War, to such parents and to be a father for such great kids. And as an Israeli, I have to say that thank you for inspiring and showing what's possible and creating this economy that just changed everything for Israel and for all of us.
So thank you for the role model that you've been and instilling hope and peace and love, which I think is important. Thank you, Ilana.
Appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.

If you did, please share it with friends. Now, also, if you're feeling stuck or simply want more from your own career,

watch this 30-minute free training at leapacademy.com slash training.

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See you in the next episode of the Leap Academy with Zilana Gulanchuk.