UAE-Israel deal has potential for major breakthroughs, says OurCrowd CEO

The UAE has some of the ‘most sophisticated investors in the world,’ Medved told the ‘Post’; Predicts high demand for Israeli companies dealing with smart cities and vertical agriculture.

By HAGAY HACOHEN
Jon Medved, CEO of OurCrowd (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Jon Medved, CEO of OurCrowd
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
The Israeli hi-tech sector is optimistic about the Israel-UAE peace agreement, known as the Abraham Accord.
Trade between Israel and the Gulf kingdom is already worth about $1 billion per year, News 13 reported.
News that National Security Council head Meir Ben-Shabbat is leading preparatory work ahead of further discussions with the United Arab Emirates has sparked speculation that the UAE might have future Israeli cybersecurity deals in mind, perhaps even purchasing the Iron Dome system.
While optimistic, OurCrowd founder Jon Medved told The Jerusalem Post there is much more potential in the relationship.
“They are some of the most sophisticated investors in the world,” he said, adding that the UAE is “really good” in logistics. He cited its impressive ports and state-of-the-art airports and aviation companies.
“They ‘get’ finance,” Medved said. “They’re hungry for technology, and if the issue is smart cities or vertical agriculture, there will be great opportunities for Israeli companies.”
This means that in addition to buying products and services from Israeli firms, the UAE likely will seek to invest in and work alongside them on equal footing, he said.
“This is an eye-level relationship,” Medved said. “It’s not just that they have money to invest. What they build is impressive. They’re the real deal.”
OurCrowd is an equity crowdfunding platform with more than 8,000 investors. Beyond Meat, in the meat-substitute industry, and Lemonade, in disrupted-real-estate insurance, are among its success stories.
Medved has been doing business in the Arab and Muslim world for years. Friendly attitudes toward Israel keep getting better and better, he said.
“Guys like me, when we take off our kippah and put on a baseball cap [in the Gulf], we’re not fooling anybody,” he said four years ago in a Jerusalem panel.
“When I was head of Vringo, we had New York printed as our address on our business cards,” Medved told the Post. “But whenever we worked in the Gulf, they would make fun of us and ask, ‘Why can’t you go to our development center in Lebanon?’”
“They knew where we really lived,” he laughed. “We used to call them at what was noontime for them. How could we have done so had we really been in the states?”
Israeli products have been sold in the Gulf and other Arab countries for years, Atid Trade director Seth Vogelman told the Post. He should know – he’s been going to the UAE since 1999.
“Saudi babies have been wearing Israeli-made diapers for years,” he said.
If the product was fairly easy to rewrap, such as erectile-dysfunction medicine or an irrigation drip, it was bought in the UAE and other Arab markets, Vogelman said.
“One time an irrigation product came wrapped in an Israeli newspaper,” he said. “So the guy who got it gave it back and said, ‘No thank you.’ He was worried that guest workers, of which there are many in the UAE, might violently object to being asked to work with Israeli products.”
Israelis won’t be able to hop on the planned Gulf Railway anytime soon, Vogelman said. But he thinks Israeli know-how will be very useful for other projects in the Gulf, such as the Saudi future city of Neom.
“Will they let Israeli companies set up a stall in the 2021 Arab Health Expo event in Dubai? Once they allow Israelis to sell products with the name Israel on the box, that will be the watershed moment. There will be no stopping after that,” Vogelman said.
The UAE-Israeli relationship is a “win-win” for everyone, Medved said. A new peace agreement will be signed between Israel and another Muslim country in the upcoming year, he said, without naming it. Israeli media reports have been suggesting Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Sudan as possible options.
As a sort of “unofficial spokesperson for the Start-Up Nation,” Medved travels often in the hi-tech world. Online tools are “great to manage relationships that started face to face,” he said, adding that flights must resume to enable face-to-face meetings to take place again.
Medved admits that one of the things he misses about the pre-COVID-19 world is the “culture of being a part of the world” and discovering new things – like a Guayabera shirt while visiting Colombia or the Hawaiian shirt brand Jams World.
“I’m sure it’ll come back,” he said.


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