"Korean startups are going to Silicon Valley to learn how to enter the U.S. market, but rather to Israel."

"Korean startups are going to Silicon Valley to learn how to enter the U.S. market, but rather to Israel."

Rabbit Ventures CEO Aviram Jenik made the announcement at the startup festival "Try Everything 2026" held at Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul on the afternoon of the 9th. Unlike U.S. startups that started in the U.S. market from the beginning, Israeli startups have been pioneering the U.S. with the disadvantage of being foreign companies. "There will be a lot to learn from Israeli companies that are not Americans and have entered the U.S. market and succeeded," he stressed.

Participants in the "Israel-Korea Joint Development and Open Innovation" session also agreed that adding Korean companies' engineering and mass production capabilities to Israel's fast execution and experience in overseas market development can create synergy in high-tech fields such as defense, cybersecurity, physical AI, and robots. They say that they should not only introduce each other's technologies, but also continue to produce and commercialize actual products through joint R&D and supply chain linkage.

Defense industry and cybersecurity were cited as the main areas where the two countries could expand cooperation. CEO Genic said, "South Korea and Israel have high technology skills to compete with each other in various defense technology fields, including missile defense," adding, "As they have similar competitiveness, there is a high possibility of joint development." He predicted that there is also a lot of room for cooperation between Israel, which has a strong cybersecurity startup ecosystem, and South Korea, which is actively trying to foster the field.

Hyundai Motor Company cited "speed" and "technology competitiveness" as the strengths of Israeli startups. "If speed is important in a project, Israeli companies can be great partners," said Oh Won-taek, head of Hyundai Motor's Future Strategy Research Team. "They have excellent talents and technologies in physical AI, robots, and cybersecurity, so they have strengths in solving complex problems in manufacturing sites."

Another characteristic of Israeli startups was the culture that targets the global market, not domestic, from the start-up stage. CEO Genic suggested, "Korean startups should also think about ways to compete in the global market, away from the idea of succeeding in the domestic market first and then going overseas." Rather than unconditionally accepting the demands of large companies, he advised that it is also necessary to judge whether they are customers that fit their core technologies.

Barriers to be overcome in the process of collaboration were also discussed. Israeli companies exchange opinions directly and horizontally, while Korean conglomerates have a relatively common decision-making structure from top to bottom, which can lead to differences in the speed of negotiation and execution. In response, Team Leader Oh explained, "Hyundai Motor has a local open innovation base in Tel Aviv and is establishing a long-term cooperative relationship with local startups while reducing such cultural differences."

The use of AI and the way it deals with failures have also become a hot topic. "Even the early start-ups I invested in are not fully utilizing AI," said CEO Genic, stressing that rather than being satisfied that companies are already using AI, they should look for work and product areas that have not yet applied AI. The Korea-Israel Industrial Research and Development Foundation cited a culture that gives small teams bold experimental authority and accepts failure as a learning process rather than an object of accountability as Israel's strength. It is explained that Korean companies, which are delayed in new attempts due to several stages of approval procedures, also need to speed up the pace of getting results from experiments and moving on to the next attempt.