Entrepreneur pitches more Israeli, R.I. business ties

BY SETH CHITWOOD

PROVIDENCE – Israeli entrepreneur and AshdodTech co-founder Itamar Assaf met with Rhode Island officials and entrepreneurs on July 26 to tell them about the city of Ashdod and ask them to consider doing business with its start-ups, including AshdodTech.

“Rhode Island seems like a beautiful place. It’s a beautiful state,” Assaf said at the meeting, held at the RIHub. “Everything is so quiet and peaceful. This is what typically the people in Israel are looking for… I think there’s a great opportunity here.”

Assaf spoke in great detail about what Ashdod, which is the largest Israeli port and only 20 miles from Tel Aviv, can offer from a business standpoint.

“It’s similar to Rhode Island, in a nutshell,” Assaf said, adding that Ashdod is a leader in maritime technology.

“We’re talking about approximately 50 to 70 companies in the maritime industry,” he said about the start-ups that are looking to collaborate with a U.S. business. Their needs are in the areas of “renewable energy, compliance and security, safety management … all management,” he said.

Assaf said most of the start-ups eventually want to make it to the United States.

For the past decade, Assaf has held senior positions in the public and private sectors that focus on community engagement and initiating new partnerships. His main job now is figuring out how to help Israeli companies find the best partner in the U.S.

“The people in Israel, in general, are looking for something that we don’t have business-development services in,” Assaf said. “Execution will be much easier for us if we find the partner or the business development to help.

“If AshdodTech doesn’t have a success story, we won’t continue,” he added. “We just need to choose the right partner in order to do that.” AshdodTech is the largest technology community in Ashdod.

Rhode Island Israel Collaborative President and CEO Avi Nevel said his team has been working hard to grow the Israeli-Rhode Island connection. “We try to expose Rhode Island and its benefits,” he said.

The state currently has only two or three Israeli-owned companies, which Nevel said is a disappointing number compared to Boston, which has almost 200.

According to its website, https://rihub.org, RIHub is “a network of innovators, investors, students, citizens and those interested in building our economy through new ideas.”

“In order to get Rhode Island on the map more quickly. We want to … expand opportunity for all countries out there,” said RIHub Managing Director Annette Tonti.

“I firmly have a personal belief that if we can bring these high-tech people here, let them land here, expand here, it helps our talent pool, it helps our DNA,” she said.

Among its services, RIHub offers a bridge program to businesses outside the U.S. that includes six months of administrative assistance.

Jeanne Boyle, the director of commerce for the city of Pawtucket, also attended the meeting. She said she is optimistic about opportunities for Israeli companies to connect with small businesses in Rhode Island.

“Because of all the older mill space that we have, we do have a lot of entrepreneurs who have occupied that space, a lot of them are sort of small tech,” Boyle said. “There are opportunities for us to connect some of those businesses … there’s a cybersecurity company that has been looking for some room to grow.”

Nevel said that it is meetings such as this one that will help bring more Israeli businesses to Rhode Island.

In fact, RIIC is already helping a few Israeli companies connect with bigger local companies. For example, RIIC connected Rhode Island Hospital with an Israeli company that develops games geared toward people who have autism. Through the BIRD Foundation, which supports high-tech industries that mutually benefit the U.S. and Israel, RIIC was able to get the company a $1 million grant.

“We are trying to figure out how much more is to come, “ Nevel said. “I say to my board, ‘It's not what we do, it’s what happens because of us.’”

For more information about AshdodTech, go to www.ashdodtech.com.

SETH CHITWOOD (www.sethchitwood.com) is a features reporter for The Standard-Times in New Bedford from Barrington, RI. He is also the creative director of the award-winning Angelwood Pictures production company.