Interview with Michael Eisenberg
Michael Eisenberg is a venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and a general partner of Aleph, a Tel-Aviv based firm.
Struggle With It
Contents
Max Raskin: How many languages do you speak?
Michael Eisenberg: Two — English and Hebrew.
MR: How did you get good at Hebrew?
ME: When I was in yeshiva in my second year, I learned all morning with an Israeli. All the classes I went to were in Hebrew, and so even when I didn't understand something, I just struggled through it.
I have a generic view about learning anything — if you don't understand something, if you read it and keep reading it and keep reading it, you form logical patterns in your head so that by the 10th, 11th, 12th time, you understand something. I would sit through things even though I wouldn't understand it.
MR: What else do you use this theory of learning for?
ME: Someone asked me once how I learned about crypto. I am not a tech guy. Basically, it's about learning the language. Every topic has its own language. Once you learn the 5-10 key words in a certain space, that unlocks the ability to have conversations with experts, because it shows people you care, and have done some homework, and then those conversations accelerate learning really fast.
MR: Is there any application of that to investing? Did you study investing in school?
ME: No, I didn't study investing. I studied political science. But I was too busy learning Torah in the morning and editing the college newspaper in the afternoon.
When I first got involved in the venture business, I started reading S-1’s, which are SEC filings for IPOs and K-1’s, which are annual reports, even though I didn't understand them. I didn't have a finance background, so I would actually read balance sheets and profit-and-loss statements, but I didn't really understand them. And I would ask someone here and there and just by reading it, you start to see patterns.
MR: What's your reading in the morning look like?
ME: I study Torah every morning. Well, right now I'm writing mostly. For the last bunch of years, I've been writing my books. I've written six books in Hebrew and two in English, all but one at the intersection of Torah, economics, and technology.
MR: What does your study routine look like each day?
ME: Right now, mornings are filled with three things: Editing weekly Torah portion pieces that I write — I write two every week, one for the Globes newspaper here and one that goes out to a WhatsApp distribution list. And then I do background research one of two upcoming books. One is in Hebrew on Deuteronomy. The other is on the future of capitalism in English. So that's what I spend my mornings doing.
The Sacred and the Prosaic
MR: What's the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?
ME: Wash my hands. Like a good Jewish boy.
MR: What’s the first secular thing you read in the morning?
ME: My email and probably Twitter afterwards.
MR: How good are you with email?
ME: Complicated question. I'm very good at priority email. I'm less good at finishing off the email. I'm not an inbox zero guy. I can't finish.
MR: How are you with productivity?
ME: Most people would tell you I'm excellent with time management and productivity. I don't have to-do lists. I have a mental framework.
I have a view in life that you can only have one thing at the top of your priority list at any given point in time. And I know how to prioritize that.
MR: What is it right now?
ME: This second or today?
MR: This second.
ME: That's meeting with you. That's why I don't have my phone on or anything like that.
MR: What about today?
ME: Getting my back better.
ME: My back is hurting a lot this last week and a half. And so I deprioritized other things to make room for that.
ME: And then I have a portfolio company called Healthy.io that I know needs my time and attention to the fullest. And that is occupying many, many hours a day. It's the second thing at the top of my list right now.
MR: How do you think about maintaining a successful marriage and family?
ME: My wife and I try to go out once a week, it happens every other or third week. But we try to go out once a week and we have a super open sharing relationship and I try to discuss everything with her or her with me.
MR: Do you talk to her about work problems?
ME: Sure. She's interested and she has good points of view.
Herzlean Task
MR: Do you care about fashion at all?
ME: No. I own 13 or 15 colors of this shirt. It's a Brooks Brothers Polo shirt that I've been wearing for I don't know how many years.
MR: And you wear that shirt every day?
ME: From Passover until Sukkot. It gets too cold in the winter.
MR: Do you collect anything?
ME: I don't have time for that.
MR: Nothing?
ME: As a kid I collected some baseball cards, but not even seriously. I can't even say I did it seriously.
I collect people I like, and I find interesting.
MR: How do you organize how you stay in touch with people?
ME: I'm very disorganized about that. People will tell you that I have a mental network map of people I like and find interesting and people I can call. My firm has created the most unbelievable, actionable database of connections and networking. It's stunning, but I have this ongoing joke that I like to compete with the computer and see who can find their way better. I'm kind of associative like that.
MR: Is this database just an Excel spreadsheet?
ME: No, no. It's a giant database and CRM system that is super well annotated, populated and consistently added to in both automated and manual fashions.
MR: What's the output?
ME: Three outputs. Deal sourcing, recruiting talent, and then what you would broadly call business or corporate development, which is sales opportunities, business development opportunities and funding and funders.
MR: Are you involved in politics now?
ME: People would tell you I'm involved in politics. I don't care terribly much about politicians. I'm more interested in policy and in policies that help people. And I have been involved with numerous policy initiatives here in Israel. And I get calls from politicians here and the States on issues and for advice. But I'm a deep believer in civic movements.
I'm really a Herzlean, a Herzl guy. Herzl was all about civic movements. There was no state. Zionism is a civic movement. And I believe the future of society is civic movements.
MR: Franz Oppenheimer wrote about society versus the state — about the race between productive, civil society and the state.
ME: I think the civic movements are about to win big time.
MR: So you'd like this guy. He's dead, but he's still fine.
MR: You've raised money from people. What's the best way to get people to give you their money?
ME: I think people want to be in business with people who are earnest and authentic and are hardworking. I find all this crap today about people taking it easy, not going to the office, long weekends, work-life balance…I find it nonsense. I think there's no substitute for hard work.
MR: Do you wear a suit?
ME: No. You see me in shorts. The reason you see me in shorts is because my back is out. I don't wear shorts to work.
Washington and Jerusalem
MR: What restaurant do you think you’ve eaten at the most in the past year?
ME: It's an ice cream place called Mousseline.
MR: Right by the president’s residence! What kind of ice cream do you get there?
ME: Coffee and salted caramel. I love their ice cream. I think it's world class.
MR: What about non-dessert?
ME: In Jerusalem — 1868 and Angelica.
MR: Is there anything you miss about America?
ME: I'll say two things: One is no matter how long you spent in a place, the place you spent between four and 15 still feels like home. So when I get back to Manhattan, I still know it like the back of my hand. I took a friend of mine from Israel on a fast walk through Central Park and know every nook and cranny. And so there's something that still that feels home — Madison Square Garden in particular. The thing I miss about America is the Knicks and the Yankees. But I think everyone misses the Knicks today because they stink, and I can't get into Israeli sports. I stayed a steadfast Yankee and Knicks fan, but I dropped the rest of the sports.
MR: What is the least Israeli thing about you?
ME: Probably my Brooks Brothers shirts.
MR: Do you consider yourself an American?
ME: I am an American citizen and Israeli citizen I pay taxes from both places, unfortunately.
MR: Did you ever think about giving up your American citizenship?
ME: I have over time.
MR: And what's keeping you from doing that?
ME: It's really complicated to lose your American citizenship, to give it up. It's expensive and complicated.
MR: Is it more expensive than paying American taxes?
ME: Yes.
That's one thing. I think there's something that's a part of me that psychologically probably has a hard time giving it up.
MR: And what do you think that is?
ME: For some strange reason I think it has to do my grandfather. My grandfather was an officer of the US Navy in World War II. And I don't know there's something about that. And America was very good to my family. My family was there for a while. We weren't in the Holocaust, we came earlier. But for example, if I ended up for some reason in government service, which I have no plans for, and they made me give it up, I'd give it up.
I view my future as being in Israel, and my children's future. And I view the future of the Jewish people here.
MR: Are your children Israeli?
ME: Yes,
MR: Do they have American citizenship?
ME: Yes.
MR: Do they view themselves at all as American?
ME: No.
MR: What did you try to instill in them from America?
ME: Not everything needs to be done at a high decibel level.
MR: From America?
ME: Well, the America that I grew up in is not the America of today. The America that I grew up in was respectful, more civil, less polarized, more respectful of real difference. Not skin color difference or not sexual gender difference. But real difference.
I'd say the second thing I try to instill is just how to think about the world as a big place. I think one of the things Israel struggles with is it's so small that everything is kind of parochial and the world's a big place. And I think one of the things America teaches you is the world is a big place. And then the third thing — I was talking to Zohar Atkins about this — I think there is a healthy tension in general between the particular and the universal, in Judaism and in life. And I think that's an important difference to recognize and to be able to play both.
Coding The City of David
MR: Where do you take someone who's never been to Israel before?
ME: The City of David.
MR: Not the Wall?
ME: No.
MR: Why?
ME: Because you got to go down, you got to go way down and the feeling of being underground and seeing just how deep our history and our roots are here, I think, is foundational.
MR: Do you code?
ME: In seventh and eighth grade I coded, and I think that was probably the last time I wrote a line of code. My first program that I really wrote was to calculate Jewish times, like when to say the Shema by. This was like 1984.
MR: You have an incredible amount of energy. You do a lot.
ME: I try to.
MR: How do you relax?
ME: Nothing much. The place I clear my head is skiing.
MR: But will you ever crack open a beer and watch TV?
ME: No.
MR: Really?
ME: No. I don't watch live TV.
MR: At all?
ME: No.
MR: I want to ask you about historical memories. You remember where you were on 9/11, I assume?
ME: Yep. I was in a board meeting here.
MR: Do you remember where you were when Donald Trump was elected? Or does it not rise to that level?
ME: No.
MR: What rises to that level?
ME: I remember when I woke up in the morning when I heard that Yitzhak Rabin was shot.
Hot Topics
MR: When do you go to bed usually?
ME: Tough question. Too late.
MR: Can you look up your average screen time on your phone?
ME: Five hours and 47 minutes — it’s because I live on email.
MR: But there's a big spike in one day.
ME: Sundays are a big spike because that's our partner meeting and in our partner meeting, I'm looking at data all the time.
MR: Do you want to be on your phone less or more?
ME: To be honest I don't, either way. I'm pretty good with my time management as is.
MR: What's your secret to time management?
ME: I just try not to waste it. I had a rabbi in the ninth grade. He and I didn't see eye to eye for what it was worth. I wasn't a favorite of his to say the least…
MR: Why?
ME: He thought I was a large waste of potential.
But he had one great line where he said, "There's no better English phrase than killing time. Because once it's passed, it's dead and gone forever." That had a huge impact on me. As I got older, it had a huge impact on me. And I watched Rabbi Aaron Lichtenstein — he was always doing something.
MR: Do you meditate?
ME: No. I daven in the morning and in the afternoon at night. That's enough.
MR: How do you keep from rushing through your davening?
ME: Who says I shouldn’t? I don't know what you mean by rushing through davening, but I'm not one of these people who thinks davening should be long. The Talmud Yerushalmi in brachos says that Shmuel used to count chickens while he was saying Shmoneh Esrei and Rav Chaim [Soloveitchik] was famous for saying that if you pray too long the thoughts catch up with you because you're in the slow lane. So I'm not a long davening fan at all.
MR: Where do you think is the most holy place in Israel?
ME: I don't think like that at all. I don't think there is such a thing.
The Temple Mount, which I don't go up to, is the holiest place. Everything else is kind of the same. But I'm not a spirituality seeker. I think Judaism is a way of life.
MR: Do you listen to any secular life advice people?
ME: No. I think all this kind of pop psychology stuff is a waste of time.
MR: Who are your must-read Twitter accounts?
ME: I have pretty eclectic taste. I like Zohar Atkins a lot. I find Balaji Srinivasan thought provoking. Bill Gurley, my former partner of Benchmark — super interesting. Gavin Baker, who's an investor. Michael Mauboussin. Keith Rabois. And every once in a while, Niall Ferguson because I think he's a good article picker.
MR: Do you read any newspapers?
ME: None.
MR: Why not?
ME: I read articles from here, there and everywhere. I just printed three articles on meritocracy from Sapir. I just printed two articles, one on Lebanon from The Economist. I have topics I'm interested in and then I'll print them, and I go down a rabbit hole.
MR: What is your topic that you're interested in right now?
ME: Three. Civic movements is a big one. Lebanon is a topic I'm really interested in right now. And then the third one I'm interested in is how one creates ethical frameworks around new technologies.