EFI helps Israeli founders find their way into America

A startup can cross an ocean in a slide deck. Finding someone on the other side who understands its customers takes more work. That gap is where Entrepreneurship Forum Israel, or EFI, has made a business of being useful: helping founders put their ideas in front of people equipped to question them, improve them and sometimes introduce them to a buyer.

The nonprofit’s current website puts Link-IL near the front of the shop. The initiative matches Israeli startups with experienced American advisers. It is a practical proposition for a founder whose product has outgrown a familiar market but whose address book has not. The destination may be the United States; the first task is deciding what, precisely, the company needs to learn there.

A one-page beginning

Link-IL asks applicants for a short company overview covering such basics as stage, funding and goals. Advisers volunteer their time and connections. Work can involve customers, distribution, design partners or market-entry strategy, with investor introductions where appropriate. EFI describes a typical engagement as several meetings over a few months, with the arrangement adapted to the company.

That modest starting document is worth paying attention to. A one-page brief forces choices: which market, which problem, which next step? It also gives the person making a match something firmer than enthusiasm. A founder who needs help understanding a purchasing process is asking a different question from one seeking a joint-venture partner. Treating those as separate requests is a useful discipline before any introductions begin.

A practical reading of EFI’s approach, not a promised sequence of outcomes.

MIT roots, working-company problems

EFI began in 1994 as the Israeli chapter of MIT Enterprise Forum. Its stated purpose is to support high-tech entrepreneurship by connecting people, technology and ideas. The organization describes a community of more than 8,000 entrepreneurs, innovators, industry leaders and experts. That is a community figure, encompassing people with different relationships to the forum.

Its consulting offer deals with the ordinary, stubborn work behind the startup story: building a company, choosing a business strategy and learning how to grow. EFI also runs workshops and educational activities. Together, these place it in the market for entrepreneurship support, where the deliverable can be a clearer decision as much as a finished document.

The forum’s consulting material emphasizes the experience of its network, including people who have built and sold technology businesses. The attraction is understandable. An adviser who has negotiated with investors or managed a commercial launch can ask awkward questions early. In this setting, expertise earns its keep when it makes an assumption visible enough to examine.

The pitch was the first thing to move

One of EFI’s more revealing participant accounts comes from Hila Shaviv, CEO of Gals Bio. Describing the 2020 She Entrepreneurs accelerator in a testimonial published by EFI, she said the program prompted both a business and a personal pivot. She reconsidered how she presented the company, then revisited its business model, intended first users and revenue expectations.

“I went through two major pivots.”

Hila Shaviv, Gals Bio CEO
EFI-published testimonial on the 2020 program

The account is useful because it identifies something that changed. The presenting of the business had come under scrutiny; so had the thinking beneath the presentation. Her expectation that a revised pitch would help fundraising was an expectation, not a reported financing result. Read that way, the story offers a concrete example of mentorship without making it carry a claim it cannot support.

Other testimonials describe business-plan feedback and investor contacts. These are participant perspectives, selected by the organization. The lesson a reader can reasonably take is methodological: after a workshop, ask which customer assumption, milestone or decision now looks different. Attendance is easy to count. A revised decision takes more explaining.

The consulting bill: zero. The homework: real.

A separate Vanderbilt collaboration makes the exchange especially tangible. EFI’s published announcement for the 2023 edition paired participating Israeli companies with four or five MBA students. The teams would investigate a business question and deliver recommendations. The announcement explicitly set the client fee at zero.

The work had a calendar: meetings in Israel in March, research afterward and remote presentations by the end of April. Companies were expected to stay engaged and answer questions. Proposed subjects included competition, pricing and marketing. The application even asked for a short smartphone video from the company contact, rather than a polished commercial production.

The terms make the practical cost clear. A company had to spend attention: defining a question, supplying context and responding while the students worked. The semester also imposed an end date. Those constraints matter when judging whether a research project suits a business problem. A bounded investigation fits more comfortably than an open-ended request to take over an entire expansion.

There is a reciprocal logic here. Students receive a real business to study; the company receives a team with a research assignment. Vanderbilt’s own account of Cohen’s Israel seminar describes students consulting for startups alongside an immersion trip. For founders, the useful habit to copy is to define the answer they want before commissioning the work.

The money supports other people’s companies

EFI’s own financial logic belongs to the nonprofit world. Its donation page says activities take place mainly with support from government grants, philanthropic foundations and private individuals. It asks donors to help advance technological entrepreneurship in Israel’s social and geographic periphery. Its partners page also describes sponsors committed to supporting high-tech entrepreneurship.

That tells readers what they are looking at: an organization assembling resources for entrepreneurs. Its programs include consulting, education and connections; the funding behind the organization helps make those activities possible. A founder assessing the offer should look at the particular program’s commitments and deliverables.

For personalized acceleration programs, EFI invites inquiries about dates, locations and costs. Those programs combine entrepreneurship education with access to entrepreneurs, investors and other practitioners, and can include carefully matched mentoring. The group-learning format serves a different need from a single company seeking advice about a specific market. Choosing between them starts with how much of the problem is shared.

Japan sends the lesson in the other direction

EFI’s international activity also includes helping entrepreneurs outside Israel. The Tohoku-Israel program was designed for ten startups from Japan’s Tohoku region, with an emphasis on growth beyond Japan. Its nine-month format combined lectures and Israeli mentors. EFI’s program page lists a final demo day on March 23, 2022.

The collaboration involved Israel’s embassy in Japan and the 8200 Alumni Association, among others. It placed entrepreneurial development in the context of a region rebuilding after the tsunami disaster. A later Tohoku University announcement listed EFI among the organizations managing a November 2022 online lecture for the university-linked startup community.

That example broadens the picture. EFI’s contribution can travel as instruction and judgment, as well as introductions into America. It also exposes a condition of the model: experience has to be translated into the receiving company’s circumstances. Advice about entering another country becomes useful when someone does the work of applying it to a particular customer and business.

Quantum hardware meets the business audience

The forum’s subject matter ranges well beyond general startup coaching. Its quantum-computing seminar brought together Brian Lenahan of Quantum Strategy Institute, Classiq co-founder Nir Minerbi and QuEra’s Alex Keesling, with Armando Viteri moderating. The agenda addressed organizational preparation, quantum algorithms and the relationship between hardware development and applications.

For a business audience, the useful detail is the framing. Questions included the knowledge needed for investment decisions, how to prepare teams and what current technologies could support. EFI’s role was to convene the conversation. The quantum hardware and software belonged to the specialist companies taking part.

The knowledge library extends that educational work beyond a scheduled event. It includes material on femtech, medical innovation and founder pivots. A recording lets someone revisit an argument after the excitement of a live discussion has passed. It can also help a founder identify the question that deserves a more focused conversation.

Bring a question worth someone’s time

EFI sits alongside several functional alternatives: a private market-entry consultant, an accelerator, a university program or a founder’s own informal advisers. Its combination of nonprofit support, educational programming and experienced contacts gives it a recognizable place among them. The right choice depends on the work a company needs done.

For a founder, the practical starting point is small enough to write down. Name the customer you want to understand. Identify the assumption you are least sure about. Decide what evidence would change your plan. Then use the meeting to get closer to that evidence.

This approach depends on participation. A mentor cannot test assumptions that remain unspoken, and a company that treats introductions as a substitute for follow-through will leave much of the value unused. EFI’s most interesting promise is access to people who can help a founder think and act more precisely. The founder still has to make the next move.