Silicon Valley women visit to boost gender equality in Israel, Gaza tech scene

A delegation of six female executives from Silicon Valley visited Israel and the Gaza Strip this week, in a bid to empower women in the local tech scene by sharing experiences and setting up a network of contacts that will enable continued mentorships and exchanges of ideas.

The delegation, called WE2 or Women for Economic Equality, is being hosted in Israel by Start-Up Nation Central, a nonprofit organization that aims to match foreign corporations and governments with Israeli tech startups and entrepreneurs. In Gaza, the delegation was hosted by Gaza Sky Geeks, the first startup accelerator in Gaza, run by the nonprofit Mercy Corps.

“The statistics for women in the tech industry are poor,” said Penny Herscher, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who set up and led the delegation in a private initiative. “Less than 5 percent of venture capital funding in the US goes to women entrepreneurs.”

Although women account for some 51 percent of the Israeli population, they account for just 10 percent of the 4,247 startup founders listed in the database of Start-Up Nation Central who set up their firms since 2014.

“Women benefit from mentors and role models, and that is why we are here,” Herscher said. “We want to create a network to help Israeli women entrepreneurs and women in Gaza, and encourage and support them in building successful companies.”

The delegation spent two days in the Gaza Strip working with some 147 entrepreneurs, half of them women.

Two of the startups they met in Gaza were Momy Helper, a mobile app that supports mothers through community and psychological support, and an initiative that prints custom T-shirts for the Saudi Arabia market.

“The situation in the Gaza strip is dire and they often don’t have access to power and water,” said Herscher. “But we met remarkable young men and women who are building their own online businesses. Whether in Israel or in Gaza or in the US, building a startup has the same challenges, no matter where you are.”

These challenges include developing the product, penetrating the market and getting funding for the venture, Herscher explained. “Much of Israeli VC funding comes from the US, and it is generally harder for startups to raise funds from VCs that are further away. As it is, just less than five percent of US women entrepreneurs manage to raise VC funding. So it is so much harder if you are an Israeli woman entrepreneur who is also 8,000 miles away.”

Creating confidence

Creating confidence at the negotiating table is another hurdle, Herscher explained. “We do feel women hold back, have less confidence,” she said. “We want to help build up that confidence so that women will be able to ask for what they want, on an equal footing, without giving in to male aggression.”

The idea of the delegation is to help connect these enterpreneurs to sources of funding in the US, and to mentorships that will help them better succeed in their vision, Herscher said.

Herscher has been a high-tech CEO for over 15 years. She took her first company, Simplex, public in 2001 and sold her second company, FirstRain, in 2017. Other women on the delegation include Nancy Heinen, a former senior VP and general counsel of Apple, who was recruited in 1977 by Steve Jobs to join the firm’s executive team; Carol Mills, who has spent more than 25 years in CEO and other senior executive roles; Erin Keeley, an engineer and investor who for the past four years has been a women and tech mentor; Faith Chiang, a product executive who was most recently the product VP at HG Data and FirstRain; and Kim Clancy, the founder and CEO of Hampton O’Bannon Partners, LLC, an executive recruitment company.

During the week-long visit, which started on Saturday, the women also met with officials from the Israel Innovation Authority, in charge of setting out the nation’s innovation policies, Start-Up Nation Central officials, and women entrepreneurs and venture capital partners, discussing the successes and challenges of women entrepreneurs in Israel’s tech ecosystem.

“We need role models,” said Ayelet Tako, the strategic partnerships manager at Start-Up Nation Central. “These women shared with us their failures and challenges, not just their glory stories. Sharing their views on how they overcame the challenges was very powerful.”

This is the first foray of WE2 out of the US, Herscher said, adding that she expects more such delegations down the road.

“As a group, we believe in creating economic equality and power and want women to take an equal place at the table,” Herscher said. “We need more women at the table to create a more peaceful world.”