“We are really the advocates for the Israeli ecosystem within this very broad corporate world.”

Leor Ben-Yakov, now chief innovation officer and head of partnerships and ventures at Mitsubishi Corporation, Israel, focused on Strategy, innovation and startups during his corporate work at Cargill. This led him to want to work inside a startup, which is an experience he recommends to anyone in the innovation and investment space. He brought his corporate knowledge to CropX, which helped him see both perspectives. Ben-Yakov advises startups looking to work with corporations to be resilient, prepare for rejection, and be ready to follow up. Now he combines his corporate and startup experience in his role in the Israeli branch of Mitsubishi, a large conglomerate with 1,200 group companies. He spends a lot of time talking to startups and looking for interesting ones to connect to those companies for collaboration. Ben-Yakov shares that his goal is to advocate for Israeli companies and stakeholders and create outcomes that benefit all parties.

 

 

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One thing that caught me by big surprise is that Mitsubishi Corporation is not only Mitsubishi cars.

Yes, that's true. It's actually a lot of fun to study the history of the business. I am effectively the deputy GM of Mitsubishi Corporation, not Mitsubishi Motors, in the Israel office. Mitsubishi Corp is what you would call a "general trading company,” one of the Japanese trading companies.

These are large conglomerates that have been in existence since the 19th century. Mitsubishi Corp is one of the largest ones. Mitsubishi Motors is one of our 1,200 daughter companies.

Who is Leor? How do you end up as deputy GM and chief innovation in the Tel Aviv branch of a company that has 1,200 daughter companies?

I'm married. I've got three kids. I grew up in Haifa, Israel, to a multinational family; we spoke English at home. As a Technion graduate, I did information system work for a while. But then I made the switch when I went to do my MBA at the University of Chicago. The subprime crisis hit. The joke I sometimes tell my friends is that I was Lehman Brothers’ last mistake because I interned there over the summer in 2008.

Following my MBA, I joined the Strategy and Business Development team of Cargill, which is a huge agri business. Part of the time there was with their internal accelerator. You're analyzing innovation, you're talking to startups, you're doing internal innovation, you're doing strategy work and corporate development work. It broadened my mind. You get a broad picture of many of the business units, food ingredients, ag, trading, management. You're working with these senior leaders.

Was there an experience that you felt took you from A to B on a personal growth level?

I think the experience within an actual startup, CropX. After Cargill, at some point we returned to Israel and I was VP of business development for Prigat. I was touching upon innovation and startups from the side of the large corporations. It started to tickle: I think it makes sense to feel what it's like from the inside. That's actually very good advice for anyone doing innovation or investment, at least in my opinion: you have to feel what a startup is from inside.

In parallel, I was also thinking about ag tech and food tech in a very bullish manner. I joined CropX, which was an amazing precision agriculture startup, as the VP of BizDev. It gave me another perspective. This time from the side of the startup. I had to work with these large corporates and gain their attention (because maybe a hundred other startups are also trying to talk to them) and speak to investors, work with the board, work with our management and the amazing CEO with the company, and learn how to deal with that intensity.

During that time, we raised the series B-round. We almost single-handedly opened the new market, which was very important for the development, funding, and creating value within the startup. That gave me a very interesting perspective.

You think that people who are looking to work in innovation in large corporates can benefit a lot from working in a startup. How did you benefit in retrospect?

When I joined the startup with the background of the corporate, it gave me a good idea of what the corporates were thinking and what their agenda was. Sometimes, young people within the startup who haven't had the experience with a global corporate don't really understand what's going on. Why is it taking so long? Why are they asking these questions again and again? Are they disrespecting us?

You have to be resilient in that situation. Not too pushy, but yet also you have to always have your finger on the pulse, to get back and to follow up. This is true for all startups: be ready to hear "no" and "maybe" and work around.

When I began working as part of CropX, bringing in an investor who happened to be a Japanese general trading company, that was a difficult experience. I felt like, "What's going on? They asked these questions two weeks ago and two months ago." There was a happy ending there. It was very difficult and sometimes tedious, but they invested, which was a very important strategic investment. That’s not always the case, but it will happen.

Fast forward to today in innovation for Mitsubishi Corporation. What is it all about for you?

In some ways, it feels like I'm opening a small startup within a large corporate here in Israel, together with my amazing GM. We are really the advocates for the Israeli ecosystem within this very broad world of Mitsubishi Corp.

We are what you would call a liaison office; we're trying to identify opportunities in areas that could be synergetic for our group. The group covers virtually every type of industry. The idea is to be able to connect them to the right business unit or to the right daughter company and facilitate something that will turn into collaboration: a pilot, something commercial, hopefully also investment.

Things take time, but the vision is for years ahead. It's a long-term vision of connecting to this ecosystem, creating a footprint here, and continuing to grow and benefit. The idea is really a win-win-win. It's supposed to benefit the people, the Israeli stakeholders, and of course, the corporation.

What is the process that you go through in forming these relationships with the Israeli ecosystem?

Right now, we're a very small operation. Little did I know, but when I joined, it was only a few weeks before COVID started. But the strategy is really to create a funnel. My day to day is really speaking with as many companies as I can. Myself and the GM analyze which ones might be relevant or interesting in general and interesting for whichever business within our group. We try to facilitate those by making the right introductions and providing the right follow-up.

You're talking about a group that has 1,200 daughter companies?

We're not going to speak with all 1,200. The group is organized into 10 divisions, by industry. Within the verticals we were looking at, the strategy is also to work with stakeholders that can have an aggregate effect. So an example would be a relationship we've created with the agri food investment arm or accelerator called Trendlines. We're looking to do similar things, maybe with other outfits that cover other verticals.

When we find the ones that meet the criteria of: one, interesting; two, if someone wants to champion it internally, then we'll push forward as much as we can. Our vision going forward is to evolve and cut these processes short. Some of the other Japanese companies have evolved into a corporate VC. We want to evolve that way as well.

What is your role as you see it in the Israeli ecosystem today?

A catalyst is a great way to put it. When I describe to my friends my role, I say that it's a hybrid of VC, business development, scouting, and a little bit of the Israel export institute. We're here to represent and really work for the local stakeholders. It's literally our job to help them, for free, to try and get into this very large, traditional, complicated organization.

There are huge advantages for any stakeholder trying to work with us. Just imagine a startup working to raise funds in one of the rounds that can publish, "We're doing a pilot with Mitsubishi Corp." That's a big thing. These are some of the things we're looking for.

Michael Matias, Forbes 30 Under 30, is the author of Age is Only an Int: Lessons I Learned as a Young Entrepreneur. He studies Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University, is a Venture Partner at J-Ventures and was an engineer at Hippo Insurance. Matias previously served as an officer in the 8200 unit. 20MinuteLeaders is a tech entrepreneurship interview series featuring one-on-one interviews with fascinating founders, innovators and thought leaders sharing their journeys and experiences.

 

Contributing editors: Michael Matias, Megan Ryan