David Fogel

Founding Partner a Dad, a Husband, Fractional CCO/COO, Startup operator and Ex-VC. Tweeting about Start-ups, Angels, VCs, LPs & GPs.

[David Fogel @FogelDavid]

Everyone says “hire people better than you” or “only hire A players”, but when you start doing that and you face someone better than you, it’s terrifying!!

In your head you know they can do the job better than you and you can see them replacing you.

[Nuseir Yassin @nasdaily]

I am proud to announce https://t.co/cuzKJP81vX raised $27 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures.
Huge thank you to everyone who participated:
Vinod Khosla & Nicole Frankel
iAngels (@iangelscapital)
500 Global
V Ventures
Factorial Capital
Tim Ferris
Gloria & Stanley Tang
Scott Adelson
Erika Kullberg
Jordan Matte
Shuo Wang
Sahil Bloom
Maor Shlomo
Dean Leitersdorf
Keisuke Honda
And others.

[claire vo 🖤 @clairevo]

https://t.co/fDUH5YnQ3m

[Sreenath Rangapuram @SreenathRanga]

1/ Last night at the Alma Angels Christmas party, I was reminded why ambitious goals need ambitious communities behind them. ✨
Their mission: generate $1 trillion in women-led wealth by 2050 not through quotas, but by backing exceptional founders who happen to be women.
#AlmaAngels

[Nuseir Yassin @nasdaily]

the billion dollar startup country

The country with the most unicorns per capita is not the US, it’s not the UK… it’s my home country.
Thank you to @waze @CheckPointSW @AI21Labs

[Nuseir Yassin @nasdaily]

the country with the fastest ambulances

it only takes 3 minutes to save your life.
thank you @Mdais for everything you do!

[Nuseir Yassin @nasdaily]

the impossible dinner

All this food was made without a single animal. It's wild when you think about it.
Thank you to @Remilk_Foods @beeio_ @RedefineMeat @oshiseafood Yo Egg Foods and Meshek Barzilay for agreeing to be part of this video!

[Nuseir Yassin @nasdaily]

let’s go back to 1948

In Italian, there is a famous phrase: “La verità fa male.” It means, the truth hurts.

And when it comes to 1948, there is a lot of truth that hurts a lot of people. So here it is in an AI video :)
That's 1 minute, see you tomorrow for Day 91!

[Matt Clifford @matthewclifford]

The UK is a great country with an extraordinary history. Our stagnation is real, but it's fixable and worth fixing.

Enjoyed giving this talk at @lfg_uk last week and so encouraged by the optimistic responses I've had from people who are building a brilliant future for Britain 🚀

[Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby]

BREAKING: In an unprecedented move, Angela Buchdahl, the Rabbi of NYC’s largest reform Synagogue comes out against Zohran Mamdani.

“Mamdani is echoing age old antisemitism, with claiming Jews across the world are the root cause of our problems here.”

[Sam Parr @thesamparr]

Dear London $3M+ founders and CEOs,

I’m building 8-person peer groups in London.

Vetted only. We have 40+ members in your city, 1k+ members in Hampton & do hundreds of irl events per year.

Want to join?

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

Listen, @ComicDaveSmith, from the very first time I heard of you, when you "debated" @DouglasKMurraym, you’ve consistently proven how ignorant you are about everything related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

🧵In this thread, I will try to educate you, and the useful idiots who think you're an authority on the subject.

I’m Jordanian. I lived in the region. I was shaped by this conflict. I’m a former Muslim who understands its true nature. I don’t have high hopes that you’ll change your mind, but maybe those who blindly listen to you will.

(1) A brief breakdown of the history of the conflict.

By the late 18th century, Jewish communities were present in the land, not in overwhelming numbers, but they had maintained a continuous presence.

The land was not heavily populated, only a mix of Arabs, Jews, Christians, Druze, and others living in scattered communities with no real national identity.

There were no "Palestinians." No "Lebanese." No "Syrians" in the modern sense. These identities didn’t exist yet.

Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, didn’t start this movement because of some divine mandate. His motivation wasn’t biblical, his intent wasn't colonial, it was survival.

European pogroms and antisemitism were tearing Jewish communities apart, and he saw the need for a Jewish homeland as a matter of life and death.

By the late 19th century, Jews began migrating back to the land in greater numbers, legally purchasing land from absentee Ottoman landlords. They weren’t invading with weapons, they were buying property and building something out of nothing.

Tel Aviv was founded in 1909. Haifa’s port was developed between 1910 and 1912. Swamps were drained, fields were cultivated, cities were built.

As Jewish settlements grew, so did Arab migration into those areas, because the Jews were bringing jobs, infrastructure, and healthcare.

The Arabs weren’t being displaced. They were moving toward Jewish communities because life was better there.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised a Jewish homeland, wasn’t unique. The French also backed Lebanese Christians, promising them a state. The Brits promised Iraq to Arab allies, and Jordan to Prince Abdallah.

The Europeans were trying to implement their nation-state model in a region that had never operated that way.

For the Jews, the British Mandate was an opportunity.

They had been buying land, building cities, and now had international recognition of their efforts. They weren’t doing anything different from the Lebanese, Syrians, or Iraqis, everyone was scrambling to stake their claim in the post-Ottoman chaos.

But for Muslims, this was existential. For the first time in Islamic history, there was no caliphate. The Ottoman sultan was gone. The Muslim world was lost, leaderless, and to add insult to injury, a Jewish state was rising in the heart of the Middle East.

Lebanon, a Christian-majority state at the time, got the same hostility. But the Christians eventually caved under pressure. The Jews didn’t.

The Muslim Brotherhood saw an opportunity and took it, using religious fury to rally Arabs against the Jews.

Before the 1940s, "Palestinian" didn’t mean "Arab." It meant anyone, Jew or Arab, who lived in the British Mandate of Palestine.

Jews in Tel Aviv were called Palestinians. But the Brotherhood rebranded it as an exclusively Arab identity, erasing the Jewish history tied to the land.

The Jews, like the Lebanese and Syrians, fought to shake off British colonial rule. They declared independence in 1948.

The Arabs rejected every peace deal, starting with the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which would have given them their own state alongside a Jewish state, all the way up to Their rejection of Camp David in 2000, when Israel offered them 96% of the West Bank and Gaza, and 4% of Israel.

They never wanted a state. They wanted to erase Israel. That’s why every single offer was turned down.

Arab leaders didn’t actually care about the Palestinians. Egypt, Jordan, and Syria all used the Palestinian cause for their own political gain.

Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt flirted with recognizing Israel when he needed Western weapons. When the U.S. denied him, he turned to the Soviets and ramped up anti-Israel rhetoric.

Saudi King Faisal saw Nasser as a threat and pumped money into the Muslim Brotherhood’s causes, not out of love for Palestinians, but to undermine his Arab rival.

And the so-called Palestinian flag was originally used in the failed 1958 Jordan-Iraq federation, before it was repurposed as a Palestinian nationalist symbol in 1963.

There was no Palestinian nation before that, just a movement searching for branding.

The Arabs didn’t lose their homeland in 1948. They lost a war they started to take one that was never theirs.

This was never about land. It was never about occupation.

If it were, why did Muslim-majority nations persecute Jews long before Zionism? Why were 850,000 Jews expelled from Arab lands in 1948? Why did Muhammad himself declare that “no two religions can exist in Arabia”?

Because this isn’t a geopolitical dispute. It’s a religious and ideological war.

The Jews built a nation from nothing, reclaimed their homeland, and refused to be erased.

And that’s why this conflict rages on, because Israel exists, and for many in the Islamic world, that is an unforgivable offense.

[The Persian Jewess @persianjewess]

A pro-Palestine “influencer” tries to interview a random pedestrian about the Gaza War.

He doesn’t realize he’s picked an Iranian man.

What follows is a masterclass lesson on the Israel-Palestine conflict:

https://t.co/oI0xo2dYRs

[Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby]

CNN’s Christine Amanpour: “The Israeli hostages have probably been treated better than the average Gazan because they are the pawns & chips that Hamas had.”

Evyatar David was quite literally forced to dig his own grave.

Absolutely unacceptable from CNN.

[Karoline Preisler @PreislerKa]

Done.

[David Fogel @FogelDavid]

@SuzzaneWatson_ I think it plays a big factor. Most of us define our personal value in relationship to our work. it's tough to transcend it and just see the value the company will get from A players other then yourself.

[David Fogel @FogelDavid]

Everyone says “hire people better than you” or “only hire A players”, but when you start doing that and you face someone better than you, it’s terrifying!!

In your head you know they can do the job better than you and you can see them replacing you.

[Dr. Eli David @DrEliDavid]

Massive protests in London against the ongoing massacre of the Druze in Syria 👇

[David Fogel @FogelDavid]

Thia

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Marc Andreessen explains why startups are an “irrational act”

“The biggest thing people don’t understand about what it’s like to be a startup founder is it gets very romanticized. Even whey they fail, it still gets romanticized about what a great adventure it was. But the reality of it is most of what happens is people telling you no, and then they usually follow that with ‘you’re stupid.’ No, I will not come to work for you. No, I’m not going to buy your product.”

Marc explains why:

“When you’re a founder, you cannot let on that this is happening because it will cause people to think that you’re weak and they’ll lose faith in you. So you have to pretend you’re having a great time when you’re dying inside. Just misery.”

Why do it then?

“For most of these people - on a risk-adjusted basis - it’s probably an irrational act. They could probably be more financially successful on average if they just got like a real job in a big company. But some people just have an irrational need to do something new and build something for themselves and some people just can’t tolerate having bosses.”

Video source: @lexfridman (2023)

[Dr. Eli David @DrEliDavid]

Hi @BBC 👋
Fixed it for you.
Shame on you!