ניסיון ראשון

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2011

Saving a Life of a Special Woman Who Saved Many Lives
An Article by Gal Beckman in The Forward about Enid Wurtman touched me, emotionally and personally. Enid Wurtman is my partner Elie's mother and she needs a kidney. I knew from Elie that she has been ill but, until the article, I did not know that she was in urgent need of a kidney.

Before the article, I knew that Enid was deeply involved in saving Soviet Jewry. Until the article, I did not appreciate how involved she was. I went to rallies outside in the UN in the cold. Enid went to freezing Moscow to share some light with the refuseniks.

Writes Gal:
That was the year (1973) Enid, a social worker, and her husband, Stuart, both in their early 30s and from Philadelphia, made their first visit to the Soviet Union, an eight-day trip to Moscow and Leningrad. It changed their lives. They met Soviet Jews who had been denied exit visas and were suffering all kinds of deprivation — losing their jobs, having their children thrown out of universities, their telephones cut off. Enid immediately identified with them. She felt as if she were seeing an alternate vision of how her own life would have turned out if her grandparents hadn’t left Russia. And she decided that she had to devote herself to helping these new friends.
Back in Philadelphia, she became involved with the local Soviet Jewry organizations and returned to the Soviet Union two more times in the 1970s to visit Yuli and others. One of her contacts was Anatoly Shcharansky (now Natan Sharansky), the charismatic, young spokesman of the activists. After a trip in 1976, she brought out a tape of Shcharansky rambling sweetly to his wife, Avital, then far away from him in Israel. On it, he says, “Enid asks how to help us. Yes, many people love us.”
In 1977, Enid herself made aliyah with her family. She felt she could no longer fight for others who were being denied the right to live in Israel while not taking the step herself. She never stopped working for Soviet Jews though, organizing protests, writing a column for the Jerusalem Post and keeping track of all the details of the activists’ lives — who was being detained, who was sick, who needed financial help. Yuli said there were years when they spoke on the phone every other day.
“Because of people like Enid, we could stand all the suffering,” said Yuli. “If these two million came out to freedom and if several thousand didn’t die, it’s thanks to people like Enid. She was completely devoted, crazy to the point where no logic, no family could stop her from helping us. It was almost an obsession.”

She started a fund, Emergency Aid for Refuseniks, and has worked tirelessly, while earning no income herself, keeping track of those former activists who need some kind of welfare and making sure they get it.
According to her old friend, Sharansky, “No one spent more energy in Israel to help those former refuseniks than Enid.”
Now, Enid, Elie's mother, needs help. She needs a kidney. So if you have information on potential Kidney donors, please help by contacting enid@wurtman.com
POSTED BY MICHAEL EISENBERG AT 11:54 PM 1 COMMENTS
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 05, 2011

Celebrating The Obvious AND the Unsung Heroes of the Answers.com and MobileAccess Acquisitions

Answers.com and MobileAccess, the two Israeli companies acquired last week, shared one thing in common: my former firm Israel Seed Partners invested in both of them. They share something else in common: both had near-death experiences before taking off. In the case of Answers.com, the company was basically out of money approximately 9 months before its ultimately successful small IPO and in the case of MobileAccess it went through bankruptcy proceedings.MobileAccess CEO Yehuda Holtzman and Answers.com founder and CEO Bob Rosenschein deserve accolades for their roles in leading these companies to success. I was closer to Bob and Answers so I can tell you from firsthand experience that the "pivot" from desktop software to webservice and from information-behind-a-word to instant answers was no easy feat. T
he foresight to acquire what ultimately became Wikianswers and propelled a
nswers.com to a top 50 internet property was all Bob's and he deserves this success. Yehuda went through multiple management changes over 12+ years and funding rounds galore and persevered to success. He too deserves this success. These two CEOs prove that perseverance and belief in your product and company can overcome many obstacles in the lives of a startup and new generations of entrepreneurs should learn from it.


I want to also highlight two unsung heroes who you will not find in the newspapers. My two former partners, Neil Cohen and Jon Medved. In each case, Neil in the case of MobileAccess and Jon in the case of Answers.com, they played pivotal roles to save the companies from death. Neil shepherded MobileAccess through the bankruptcy hearings. He was there in person, never wavering despite the abuse he took in the court room from creditors shouting and screaming at him. Neil arranged the funding with Millenium and shepherded that process as well. You won't see him in the PR on the acquisition but without his fortitude at the moment of truth, there would have been no acquisition of MobileAccess in 2011.


The Answers.com IPO was the result of Bob Rosenschein's insanely great salesmanship and vision and Jon Medved's perseverance. Jon arranged and recruited the bankers and investors that provided the bridge loan that saved Answers.com approximately 9 months before the IPO and Jon found the firm who was willing to take Answers.com public. That public financing was not your typical IPO and saved the Company, providing it fuel to live and ultimately flourish. When many investors (well known VCs and others) abandoned Answers.com and Bob, Jon did not. He rallied the troops and helped raise the money.

For all this, Yehuda, Bob, Jon and Neil deserve my thanks as well the appreciation of all of the employees of Answers.com and MobileAccess. Thanks.