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In a recent episode of The Jerusalem Post Business and Innovation Podcast, Yaniv Golan, general partner at lool ventures, shared his perspective on the rapidly evolving world of Israeli tech.
Golan, with decades of experience as both a founder and investor, discussed how AI is transforming the startup landscape.
AI tools have significantly lowered the barriers to entry for startups, enabling individual developers to achieve what once required large teams. However, this has also erased the competitive advantage that startups once had in speed and feature delivery. Today, the challenge for startups is to innovate beyond just being faster, focusing on long-term advantages that AI cannot easily replicate.
Golan also highlighted the shifting dynamics in the SaaS (Software as a Service) model. Public SaaS companies, once valued at double-digit multiples, have seen those numbers contract, signaling a fundamental change in the market.
As AI simplifies software development, companies must now find ways to build moats through proprietary data, unique hardware, or regulatory barriers. Speed is no longer enough; companies need to innovate in ways that cannot be replicated quickly by competitors using AI.
According to Golan, a true moat today is found in three areas: physical infrastructure, regulatory trust, and proprietary data.
Companies that can integrate these elements into their business models will have a more sustainable advantage in the rapidly changing tech landscape. He stressed that AI is a tool, not the product itself, and the companies that succeed will use AI to complement innovations in hardware, data, or other real-world technologies that are harder to replicate.
Looking ahead, Golan believes that deep tech and energy infrastructure are critical areas for future innovation. As AI workloads grow, so does the energy demand, making energy-efficient startups key players in the next wave of disruption. He also sees food tech, particularly molecular farming, as another promising field with the potential to address global food security challenges.
Golan predicted that Israel’s tech ecosystem will increasingly focus on deep tech, with the country’s strengths in military engineering and academic research positioning it well to lead in areas like semiconductors, quantum computing, and AI-integrated hardware.
"We're transitioning from being a startup nation to a scale-up nation," he said, emphasizing that Israel’s entrepreneurial spirit will continue to drive the next phase of global innovation.