{"id":626676,"date":"2026-09-25T03:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T03:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/626676\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T03:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T03:08:09","slug":"the-start-up-is-just-the-excuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/626676\/","title":{"rendered":"The start-up is just the excuse\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018The start-up<\/a> isn\u2019t the goal,\u201d said Gadi Bahat, founding director of the Leaders program at Ben-Gurion University<\/a> of the Negev. \u201cThe people are.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a deceptively simple distinction, but one that has shaped the program since its inception six years ago.<\/p>\n

While many academic entrepreneurship initiatives operate as accelerators, bringing students together around promising business ideas in the hope of producing the next successful start-up, the Leaders program takes a different route. It operates as part of the university\u2019s Yazamut 360 center<\/a>, led by Dana Gavish and Prof. Carmel Sofer, whose joint vision has helped position entrepreneurship as a strategic pillar at BGU.<\/p>\n

\"GADIGADI BAHAT, founding director of Leaders program at Ben-Gurion University\u2019s Yazamut 360 Center. (credit: Boris Kulikov)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe looked at the traditional model and said not every student wants to become a start-up founder,\u201d Bahat recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cEntrepreneurship is much more than creating companies. It\u2019s a way of thinking, a mindset. It\u2019s leadership combined with personal resilience. These are skills and personal qualities that today\u2019s world demands, whether you launch a start-up or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

That philosophy has produced dozens of graduates who have carried those skills into industry, research, and the public sector.<\/p>\n

It has also led to socially minded start-ups like ANNIE. Founded by Leaders alumni Ofek Eliasko, Idan Mizrahi, and Tal Ben-Lulu, the venture aims to improve the treatment of trauma casualties by connecting first responders, field medics, and hospitals through a real-time monitoring platform.<\/p>\n

\"THETHE ANNIE founding team receiving an investment check from Cactus Capital. (credit: Boris Kulikov)<\/p>\n

Like the Leaders program, the company\u2019s origins are less about technology than about people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t focus on building a technological product,\u201d Eliasko said. \u201cWe became passionate about solving a real human challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bahat, in turn, never intended to work in academia. An electronics engineer with an MBA, he spent decades in Israel\u2019s hi-tech industry, serving in senior executive positions at companies such as Comverse and Alvarion before leading two start-ups of his own.<\/p>\n

Then came an unexpected phone call. A former colleague, BGU\u2019s Sofer, asked him to step in for what was supposed to be a temporary assignment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came for a few months, and I fell in love,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n

The value lies in doing<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t teach entrepreneurship through theory,\u201d Bahat explained. \u201cWe teach everything through practice.\u201d\u00a0
That practical experience unfolds as what Bahat described as an entrepreneurial journey built on three pillars: entrepreneurial knowledge, personal skills, and hands-on work.<\/p>\n

Students are divided into teams and asked to build start-ups together. But unlike a traditional accelerator, success is measured less by the company\u2019s future than by the individual\u2019s development.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe start-up is the learning tool,\u201d Bahat explained. \u201cStudents encounter obstacle after obstacle. Every time they overcome one, they\u2019re building an entrepreneurial mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only later, while completing his master\u2019s thesis, did Bahat discover the academic terminology describing what he had intuitively built.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s called incidental learning,\u201d he said. \u201cStudents come to learn entrepreneurship, but along the way, they leave with far more and acquire a completely complementary set of skills.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those skills range from negotiation and public speaking to resilience and what Bahat calls \u201centrepreneurial agency,\u201d the confidence and ability to drive change independently.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re the engine,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what the market is looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n

That philosophy would eventually help shape one of the program\u2019s most ambitious ventures. Eliasko and Mizrahi first met through Leaders, though their company took shape elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Amid the war and the mass-casualty events that followed, Eliasko experienced an event that would eventually become the foundation of ANNIE.<\/p>\n

\"OFEKOFEK ELIASKO, Leaders program alumnus and co-founder of the medical technology startup ANNIE (credit: Boris Kulikov)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe witnessed a highly complicated medical evacuation following a mass casualty event,\u201d he recalled. \u201cTragically, one person died, while another recovered.\u201d<\/p>\n

What he observed stayed with him long afterward. \u201cAs we later examined what had happened, it became clear that there were significant gaps in the way trauma casualties are managed and evacuated in the field.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than accepting those failures as inevitable, the pair began asking what technology could do differently.
The result became ANNIE \u2013 a platform combining wearable hardware and software that can monitor critical vital signs in real time and transmit them continuously from the point of injury through emergency dispatch centers and eventually to hospitals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Its ambition reaches beyond traditional emergency medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur vision is for ANNIE to become as common as defibrillators,\u201d Eliasko said. \u201cEvery rescue team, every disaster response unit, every emergency situation should have access to it. Ultimately, we want to integrate into existing emergency systems, not only in Israel but everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither founder believes the company would exist without Leaders. \u201cWe actually built the foundations of ANNIE during the program,\u201d Eliasko said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeaders gave us a place to begin before we entered the real world.\u201d Mizrahi agreed, arguing that the most valuable lessons had little to do with business models or investment pitches. \u201cIt challenged us professionally, but even more mentally,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Students were encouraged to leave the classroom, interview strangers, test assumptions, and, above all, make mistakes.
\u201cBahat always said, \u2018Go wild,\u2019\u201d Mizrahi recalled. \u201c\u2018There are no limits; take it wherever you want.\u2019 We made plenty of mistakes, but we also succeeded.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the most lasting lessons had nothing to do with entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe academic degree doesn\u2019t teach you how to stand in front of an audience in English,\u201d Mizrahi said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t teach resilience. It doesn\u2019t teach you how to communicate under pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps even more important were the relationships.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had incredible mentors,\u201d Mizrahi noted, recalling his personal mentor, Yoram Yaacovi, a former Microsoft executive.<\/p>\n

Beyond the BA<\/p>\n

When asked how they fared once the program concluded, Mizrahi laughed. \u201cWho says Leaders is over? Bahat still gets phone calls from us in the middle of the night.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the latter, those conversations are part of the program. \u201cStudents tell us this was one of the strongest experiences they\u2019ve ever had,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd six years later they\u2019re still using the tools.\u201d<\/p>\n

This ongoing connection is formalized through the Leaders Alumni Association. Upon completing the program, graduates join an exclusive, growing network of hundreds of alumni who hold highly sought-after positions across a wide range of industries. Through dedicated networking events and gatherings, the association ensures that the community continues to thrive, offering lifelong professional value, support, and collaboration opportunities long after the academic year ends.<\/p>\n

This relationship has also shaped the program itself. Early cohorts were given almost complete independence, but after it proved overwhelming, changes were made so that every team is paired with alumni mentors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe threw them into the deep end,\u201d Bahat admitted. \u201cIt was too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reflecting less on entrepreneurship than on humility, Bahat asserted that he has learned an enormous amount from his students. \u201cIf you\u2019re open enough and humble enough, younger people will teach you far more than you expect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eliasko offered similar advice to future participants. \u201cLeaders is only a taste of the real world,\u201d he said. \u201cPush yourselves. Stay up late. Take yourselves to the limit. That\u2019s where the real growth happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mizrahi is even more succinct. \u201cIt\u2019s a place where you\u2019re allowed to dream,\u201d he said. \u201cMore importantly, it\u2019s a place where you\u2019re expected to make those dreams happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, the program has also evolved alongside technology, with artificial intelligence becoming a growing part of the curriculum, and next year each student team will develop its own AI agents as collaborative teammates throughout the program.<\/p>\n

Even so, those changes serve the same underlying objective. \u201cThe methodology changes; the person remains at the center,\u201d Bahat said.<\/p>\n

For a university program that insists start-ups are merely a means to an end, the emergence of ANNIE may seem like a remarkable success story. Bahat would probably disagree. The company, after all, is only evidence that the real experiment worked. The real product of Leaders isn\u2019t a start-up, but the people capable of building one.<\/p>\n

This article was written in cooperation with Ben-Gurion University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018The start-up isn\u2019t the goal,\u201d said Gadi Bahat, founding director of the Leaders program at Ben-Gurion University of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[345,114,243,293,28373,15992,85,1720,46,2761,2045],"class_list":["post-626676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-ai","tag-business","tag-education","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-entrepreneurship-in-israel","tag-higher-education","tag-il","tag-innovation","tag-israel","tag-start-up","tag-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}