Tal Brown

Thank you to Sigalit Ben Hayoun and Yael Steinhart for inviting me to talk to Tel Aviv University Alumni Organization — and to Assaf Gilad for moderating the discussion. Time really does fly 😅 and it was a real privilege to be back to discuss just how much has changed in tech since I first started, including the recent groundbreaking new leaps into AI. What’s incredible is the pace of innovation in this field. Current market estimates range from 3-7 years until AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is achieved (AI systems surpassing human cognitive abilities). When this is achieved one can expect the pace of change to be the fastest we’ve ever seen in history 📈 Technology and AI is neutral - neither good or bad. What matters is what we (humans) choose to do with it. With good intent, AGI could help solve some of the biggest global challenges (health, longevity, climate change, scientific discovery). With bad intent, it can create even bigger global challenges with significant risks. That is why Google’s motto on AI is so important - to be “bold and responsible”. The stakes have never been higher. Hope humanity rises to the moment, does the right thing, and makes the right choices 🌍 Adding below in comments the link to the full discussion (tip: if you just want a summary, past the link directly into Gemini 🪄) #TelAvivUniversityAlumni #GoogleAI

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When it comes to startup success, Israelis don’t just build - they connect. In this episode, Lirone Glikman, CEO of The Human Factor by Lirone Glikman author of The Super Connectors Playbook, joins Yoel Israel to unpack what really makes the Israeli tech ecosystem thrive and why connection is the biggest competitive edge. From cultural clashes in Tokyo to the empathy that drives founders to help competitors, Lirone shares her insights on building authentic relationships, developing a founder-led personal brand, and creating meaningful opportunities through human connection. You’ll learn: - Why Israeli founders stand out in global networking - How to build credibility and visibility through personal branding - The biggest mistakes Israelis make when pitching abroad - Why introverts might actually be better networkers - How The Super Connectors Playbook turns human skills into business success Because behind every great Israeli startup is a network that believes in giving back. 🎙 Hosted by Yoel Israel Watch the full episode - link in the comments 👇 --- Thank you to our incredible partners Deel and The Recruitery for making this all possible!

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Thanks to team clay Kareem Amin Varun Anand Becca Lindquist Mustafa Khan Ziqi Deng for hosting a thought provoking and idea packed CRO summit in San Francisco yesterday. GTM frontier thinking from many folks in the room inc Stevie Case Maia Josebachvili Oliver J. Adrian Rosenkranz Nick Rico and others.   A few takeaways that are becoming abundantly clear: ⏩ Creativity in GTM motions has never been more important as yesterday's innovative idea is tomorrow's commodity ⏩ GTM teams are becoming more like product teams every day. Teams of builders and ICs are becoming the norm. If you are not building, you will be left behind. ⏩Don't overbuild and start with customer workflows and apps first. ⏩Choose and architect your foundational systems that support a very high rate of change and iteration of apps, agents and automations ⏩Hire Systems thinkers/architects that can design and iterate rapidly on workflows and are unconstrained by functional silos or tool limitations ⏩GTM apps and agents are becoming disposable - fast and cheap to create with low switching costs and shrinking lifecycles. ⏩Despite the temptation to jump on every new innovation, tool, copy cat idea etc, don’t forget the fundamentals - pain you are solving, how you solve it better than the alternatives, who your buyer is and what they care about, how they want to engage, showing up authentically etc. For now at least, people also still buy from people (in the enterprise selling context)  ⏩As for the future (3, 6, 9, 12 months..?) and what lies around the corner - despite what you may glean from the LinkedIn echo chamber, there is no certainty. We are all on this adventure together.

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I added the new Israeli Proptech startup landscape by TLV Partners to my 2025 collection on VC Cafe. There are over 200+ Israeli startups operating in the proptech sector (including a number of unicorns). The new crop of AI-first startups are penetrating every layer of the tech stack - from elevating the tenant experience and enabling predictive maintenance, to construction site monitoring and delivering AI-driven infrastructure insights. Link to the CTech by Calcalist article with the commentary below.

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There’s been a lot of noise lately about how AI might make it possible for one-person startups to reach billion-dollar valuations. That still feels far-fetched but what happened this week isn’t. Maor Shlomo, a solo-ish Israeli developer, just sold his 6-month-old AI startup, Base44, to Wix for $80 million. Bootstrapped. Profitable. Viral growth. No outside funding. Built in public. He wasn’t entirely alone. The company had 8 employees by the time of the sale but the project started as a side hustle and spread fast. Base44 hit 10,000 users in 3 weeks. It grew to 250,000. In May, it made $189K in profit despite high LLM costs. It wasn’t vaporware. It worked. The product itself is in the fast-emerging category of “vibe coding”: enter a text prompt, and the tool builds a full-blown app: backend, database, auth, analytics, integrations, even email and SMS support. Zero coding. It’s like handing over product and engineering to AI. The story gained traction because Shlomo publicly shared everything: metrics, infrastructure choices (he picked Claude over OpenAI), roadmap, even cloud costs. Amazon invited him to demo at their Amazon Web Services (AWS) event in Tel Aviv. eToro and Similarweb signed on as early partners. Why sell? He was clear that the demand outpaced what a lean, bootstrapped team could handle. Wix brings scale and infrastructure and Wix gets a fast-growing, profitable, native LLM app builder that slots cleanly into their no-code suite. No, it’s not a solo unicorn but it’s closer than most thought possible even a year ago. The line between indie builder and acquisition-worthy founder is getting thinner, especially with AI as a cofounder. #llm #deeptech #tech #ai #vibecoding #coding #acquisition

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We’ve raised $400M at a $9B valuation. Investors include Georgian, G Squared, Prysm, 1789, YC, Coatue, a16z, Craft, and QIA, with strategic investments from Accenture, Databricks, Okta, and Tether. We’re also lucky to have incredible individuals backing us, including Shaq and Jared Leto. This funding will help us scale our ambition and expand beyond coding into AI systems that center human creativity. Replit is now used at 85% of the Fortune 500. We have an opportunity to help shape the future of work. One where AI abstracts away the boring parts and humans shine as creative directors. We’re also investing more globally, particularly in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Innovation can come from anywhere in the world, and we want to help unlock it.

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Last Sunday I arrived with a pulled back muscle to give a talk. “Leaning in” to AI was not theoretical. But the real point was this: AI won’t eliminate most roles. It will quietly redefine what “good” looks like inside them. When execution becomes cheaper, judgment becomes the constraint. You won’t be measured by hours. You’ll be measured by the quality of your decisions. That’s the shift. Some people are already operating this way. Thank you Michal Brand - Gold and the ACC Israel for the invitation, and Meitar | Law Offices for the hospitality.

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What do ServiceTitan, BuildOps, CloudKitchens, and JobNimbus have in common? Two words: Ershad Jamil Ershad spent time at all these companies leading growth or on the board - he has receipts. In fact, he practically wrote the playbook for vertical saas add-ons. So, we sat down with him to understand → sequencing new products → knowing when to expand → why every vertical saas is now a fintech Full episode link in comments 👇 #SaaS #VerticalSaaS #Growth #AddOnStrategy #GTMPlaybook

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