Marc Abitbol Immigrant innovators are encouraged by government support At the beginning of the 1990s, a significant migration of Russian Jews converged on Israel. More than a million reached the country, representing nearly 20% of the Israeli population. Both from an economic and social perspective it was necessary for the Israeli state to build an infrastructure that would enable Israel to thrive despite this influx of immigrants. The Israeli state therefore decided to launch a series of programs to facilitate and foster the emergence of technological areas within Israel. This program particularly focused on providing incubation facilities to high-tech start-ups. Between 1994 and 1996, Visionix developed in this context. During these years the company grew within the Jerusalem College technology incubator, which was key to our success as we started with a team with no experience in running a company and developing a business. One of the founders had a sales background while the other came from a technical background. In the incubator , we were coached and taught how to manage a company, to build a budget, to be international, to understand the global challenges we were facing , to build up the team, etc. In addition, this active support enabled us to reduce the time between the idea and its implementation on the market. After two years we became totally different people with the capacity to launch our company. Today Visionix is located in an industrial park that includes many other start-ups. This industrial park does not provide particular support to these companies, but it does provide a suitable environment to develop high-tech activities. Technological superiority is one key to success for start-ups As for many Israeli companies, the first asset we developed was our technology. Providing technological innovation was the condition of success to penetrate the market. This is necessary when you are a small company and you want to compete with giant international firms in the same field. Visionix has, therefore, developed a unique technology for lens measurement, which enabled us to strongly position ourselves . The second component is people. You can't start a company without highly motivated and talented people. The quality of the team is a key issue, not only in management, but also in marketing, research and development, and in the administrative side. It was also very important to have a good marketing manager, someone able to "feel" the market and to guide the R&D people in a positive direction. Developing strong marketing leadership was fundamental, and at Visionix we managed to have customers before we had a product. This is particularly crucial for an Israeli company as we are far from the market, which is mainly located in Europe and in the United States. This is in fact a major key success factor of many Israeli companies that are forced to go outside the country to sell their products. IPO in Europe is a good option We chose to have our IPO on the European market rather than on the Nasdaq, since Europe is leading the optical technology market. France, and especially Germany, take the lead with regards to optical technologies. In addition, 60% of our business was done in Europe, and our industrial clients are European, so Visionix chose to go public on the Neuer Markt to be close to its strong European customer base. We felt confident that our core technology and current applications for optical diagnostic equipment would be well appreciated by leaders in the optics industry. Through the IPO we strive to increase our brand awareness within the European market, which sets standards throughout the optical world. We have also concluded an important agreement with the French Essilore, which is number one worldwide in ophthalmic lens manufacture. We collaborated with this company in 1998 to produce a new diagnostic device for opticians and optometrists, which has been distributed all over Europe since 1999. We also have a retail distribution agreement with Marco in the U.S. Israel as a " high-tech island " ? Around 98% of our sales are for export, although there is nothing in the Middle East. Major high-tech products could not find markets in that area. This has negative and positive impacts. The negative impact is that it is more difficult for us to sell across the world. The positive impact is that it forced us at a very early stage to look outside Israel. We have to think globally, and therefore the drawback of being isolated from the market became an advantage that forced us to become a global company. | 