Chemi Peres: A hundred start-ups open every minute

Peres and Josef Mandelbaum take different view of start-ups' role in generating jobs.

"Israel needs more big companies in order to make the economy grow, because the start-ups do not manage to generate enough jobs 70% of them employ fewer than ten people," Perion CEO Josef Mandelbaum said today at the Israel Dealmakers Summit held by Landmark Ventures in New York. "To grow more companies requires, for example, more mature managers, even to bring them from outside, for them to make aliya. It is certainly possible to live in Israel and manage a company from there, and you don't even need to know Hebrew.

"We also need education with an emphasis on entrepreneurship, cooperation in the form of tax benefits, less regulation, and assistance in getting to various markets. We also need more varied venture capital, because today only 20% of venture capital goes to late-stage companies. We must fix that," Mandelbaum said.

Chemi Peres, founding partner of venture capital firm Pitango, took the stage after Mandelbaum, and rebutted some of his remarks. "I don't agree that start-ups don't generate jobs. I actually think that to create more jobs in the market, entrepreneurs need to grow more companies."

Peres added however, "The employment security we were used to for decades is going to disappear in the coming years. People can no longer build a thirty-year career and rely on being in the same place for all that time. Many old industries are undergoing, and will undergo, change, and we will see how breakthrough innovation reaches everwhere."

Peres's speech was a projection ten years ahead. "What we will see in the next ten years is a window of opportunity for the young. Once they could choose whether to go and study or to work in a large company or in the family business. Today, there's a third option, and that is to found a new company. Every minute, around the world, a hundred start-ups are opened," he said.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 6, 2014

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2013

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