When Eyal Bino named his fund 97212 Ventures, the logic was straightforward. 972 is Israel’s country code. 212 is New York City’s area code. He has spent 20 years living between the two, and the fund is essentially a bet that the overlap between those two worlds is where some of the most interesting early-stage technology is being built right now.
Bino is a Founding Partner at 97212 Ventures, a New York-based fund investing in Israeli early-stage startups. His conversation on the IsraelTech podcast with Yoel Israel covers how the Israeli startup ecosystem in New York has grown, what it actually means to be a day-one partner to a founder, why luck deserves more credit than most people give it, and what a “go-to-market board” looks like in practice.
New York Has Become the Primary Offshore Hub for Israeli Tech
The numbers Bino cites tell the story directly. Around 2010, there were 10 to 20 Israeli startups operating out of New York. By 2015, that had grown to roughly 50. Today, there are around 580 startups in New York with an Israeli base, many of them founded by Israelis who have been in the city for years and built their careers there.
Part of what is driving this is structural. New York is seven hours behind Israel, not ten, which makes the operational reality of running a distributed team significantly easier. But Bino points to something more cultural as well. Israeli founders who relocate to New York tend to cluster together. They live in the same neighborhoods, send their kids to the same schools, play poker together on Friday nights. That density creates an informal support network that reinforces itself over time.
The other dynamic worth noting is how these companies get characterized publicly. When a New York-based company with Israeli founders gets acquired, the press tends to call it a New York story. Bino points to Wiz, sold to Google, being described as a New York-based company rather than an Israeli one. He sees this as a branding shift, driven partly by New York’s push to establish itself as a serious global technology hub, and partly by how thoroughly Israeli founders have embedded themselves into that ecosystem.
What “Day One Partner” Actually Means
97212 Ventures positions itself as a day-one partner to its portfolio companies. Bino is careful to explain what that means in practice, because the phrase gets used loosely.
It does not mean being the first check in. It means being available before the company even needs a check. Founders come to him before announcements, before formal processes, to ask how to approach a specific customer, what to put in a follow-up email, whether a given investor is worth pursuing. The value he provides in those moments is access combined with candor. He can send a text to someone he knows well and get an unfiltered answer within hours, which saves a founder days of uncertainty about whether a prospect is going anywhere.
More concretely, his goal at the early stage is to help a company get its first three to five US customers, people who have no prior relationship with the founders and no cultural or personal reason to give them a chance. That is the proof of concept that matters to most serious investors further down the chain. Warm introductions from the Israeli network get you started. Real US customers who found their way to the product on its merits are what unlocks the next stage.
The synagogue connection he mentions is not incidental. He has been a member of a reform synagogue in New York for over 12 years and describes it as one of the more productive networking environments he operates in. The setting creates a genuine community bond, people know each other’s families over years, and that trust makes introductions more meaningful and more likely to be followed through.
The Go-to-Market Board Concept
One of the structural ideas Bino has been developing is what he calls a go-to-market board. The concept addresses a specific gap: Israeli founders who need access to senior executives in US industries but do not have those relationships, and Jewish executives in the US who want to contribute meaningfully to Israeli companies after October 7 but may not have capital to invest as angels.
The model he describes works roughly like this. Two to four board members are matched to a portfolio company based on industry expertise and relevant connections. They commit to a three-month engagement, meeting regularly with the founders, and each commits to making at least three meaningful introductions, defined as introductions to VP-level or above contacts at relevant companies. In exchange, they receive advisory equity.
The filter that makes this work, in his view, is the commitment itself. Executives at that level who agree to make specific introductions on a defined timeline are signaling real intent. Someone who says they can make introductions but does not commit to it is not the same thing.
On Luck, and Being Honest About It
One of the more direct parts of the conversation is Bino’s willingness to credit luck as a real factor in his own trajectory.
He made a bet roughly five years ago that New York would become the primary ecosystem for Israeli founders outside of Tel Aviv. That bet has paid off. The Israeli startup presence in New York has grown from a small cluster to over 580 companies. But he is honest that the bet could have gone the other way. A different mayor, a different political climate, a different economic cycle could have redirected that flow to Miami or somewhere else entirely. The timing was right and he happened to be positioned for it.
His best-performing portfolio company, Connect Team, an employee engagement app for field workers, grew massively during COVID because the pandemic created an immediate need for exactly what the product does. Bino says plainly that he cannot take much credit for that outcome. He was lucky to invest in the company when he did, and he is grateful the founder built something that was ready for the moment when it arrived.
The point he makes is not that luck is everything, but that the standard investor or founder narrative tends to airbrush it out. That is misleading to people who are trying to learn from those stories. His framing is closer to the idea that luck is opportunity meeting preparation: you cannot plan the opportunity, but you can do the work that puts you in a position to take it when it arrives.
The Coaching Gap for Israeli Founders in US Markets
Bino spends a significant amount of time helping founders recalibrate their expectations when dealing with American investors and customers. Israelis tend to take enthusiasm at face value. When a US investor says they love what a founder is building after a first meeting, the Israeli interpretation is often that the deal is close. The American reality is that enthusiasm in a meeting is just part of how those conversations go, and it does not predict whether an email will get returned the following week.
He coaches founders through that mismatch, and it comes up in sales contexts too. The warm referral market, where a company sells to Monday, Lemonade, or other Israeli-connected companies in the US, is a starting point, not a growth strategy. The signal that matters to outside investors is whether the company can sell to customers who have no particular reason to help them, who went through a real process and decided the product was worth paying for on its own terms.
Building for the Long Term
Bino turned 50 during the period this conversation was recorded and was candid about thinking through what he wants the fund and his career to represent over time. He has an associate named Jeremy who joined as an intern and has been developing quickly. The vision he describes is handing the fund over to Jeremy in ten years, having built something with enough reputation and track record that it can continue without him.
His parents were blue-collar workers, his mother a nurse for 35 years, his father working at a factory for 40 years. The perspective he took from that background is not to measure his success against whoever is doing better, but to be genuinely happy with what he has built. In venture, he notes, there is always someone who got into Uber earlier or raised a bigger fund. That comparison is endless and not particularly useful.
What he keeps coming back to is relationships and reputation. In the Israeli tech community, which is large but interconnected, a positive reputation travels fast. The deal flow he gets in Tel Aviv, sitting at a cafe for 10-hour days of back-to-back meetings, comes largely from word of mouth. Founders mention him to other founders. That flywheel, as he describes it, requires constant maintenance, but once it is running, it compounds.
About Eyal Bino and 97212 Ventures
Eyal Bino is a Founding Partner at 97212 Ventures, a New York-based early-stage fund investing in Israeli startups. He has been based in New York for 20 years and focuses on helping portfolio companies establish their first US customer relationships and build go-to-market traction outside the Israeli network. Portfolio companies include Connect Team, an employee engagement platform for field workers with tens of thousands of customers. He is reachable on LinkedIn and through introductions from 97212 portfolio founders.
