There’s something I haven’t seen mentioned in any of the articles about Google buying the Israeli startup Waze for a supposed $1.1 – 1.3 billion. Aside from the fact that Waze is able to stay its own entity and keep its team in Israel (proving that it can be done – and making things more interesting for future buyouts) is the fact that an Israeli charity, Tmura, won as well.
Tmura is a non-profit organization that allocates the funds received from startup exits to education- and youth-related charities in Israel. Many Israeli startups have agreed to donate a portion of their exits to Tmura – and according to the newsletter sent out this morning, “…Tmura is due to receive proceeds of $1,500,000 from Google’s expected acquisition of Waze (pending closing of course).”
That’s amazing, considering the organization has one staff member and is basically run by volunteer VCs, like Eyal Gura at Pitango Venture Capital. 289 Israeli startups have signed up for this – which makes me wonder, why only 289? Certainly we have more startups than that in our eco-system. What kind of douche wouldn’t sign their startup for this? (The only valid excuse would be not knowing Tmura exists, and if you’ve read this – you don’t have that excuse anymore – go find Baruch Lipner, the Executive Director right now and sign up your startup).
In Silicon Valley there’s a version of this called Entrepreneurs Foundation (Tmura adopted the model from them) and there’s also a Canadian version, The Upside Foundation of Canada.
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Tmura has raised over $9 million dollars for Israeli kids in the past 11 years. I’d say that’s another big reason to celebrate this exit – and all of the exits from startups that are members of these organizations. How about we focus on that? And maybe we’ll have a few less people in the industry complaining about how everything wonderful is being ruined by success.
Other Israeli companies that have signed up to Tmura are: Outbrain, BillGuard, MyHeritage, Ravello Systems and Early Sense.
Image credit: AFP / Getty Images
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