When Silicon Valley native Edo Perry moved to San Francisco in February after 14 years of living in Israel, the 28-year-old software startup co-founder began to expand his professional network locally.
The first people he reached out to?
“The Israelis and the Jews,” Perry told J.
“I think it’s super, super important, especially with all this antisemitism that’s happening around the world, to have people that look out for you and have your back, that you can trust.”
In April, he joined Tribe, a professional network for Israel supporters in the tech industry. Tribe includes executives, company founders and venture capitalists around the world, as well as high-level professionals seeking jobs. Not all are Jewish. Some non-Jewish allies are members as well. About a third are based in Silicon Valley, with a sizable contingent in Israel.
Tribe is not a company, and there is no website. It exists as a WhatsApp group of some 1,600 members and as a newsletter that reaches more than 32,000 subscribers. In June, Tribe also launched a startup accelerator, a program that connects young companies with mentors and investors.
The idea began in the early weeks of the Israel-Hamas war when Paul Allen, a longtime tech entrepreneur and a startup consultant who splits his time between Sacramento and Denver, connected on LinkedIn with Janel Moses, owner of a Palo Alto-based business that teaches Spanish and English literacy. Both are Jews and Zionists.
Allen had previously created and managed a large Silicon Valley-based network of Jewish investors called Tribe of Angels. He decided to launch a LinkedIn newsletter last August to profile Jewish leaders in venture capital. But when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Allen said he wanted to focus his energy around supporting the Jewish and Israeli community in a bigger way.
“I got it in my head that I wanted to leverage this large network of Jewish angel investors and allies and really pursue my passion, which is finding ways to help Jews in venture capital or startups and technology, to help one another in the diaspora,” Allen told J.
Moses, an American who lived in Israel for five years and later moved to Palo Alto, shared the same vision.
In April, they formed Tribe’s WhatsApp group, and last month selected the first 18 startups from a pool of 100 applicants to work with mentors.
“We’re building an ecosystem in which we’re supporting startups and also want to be able to address antisemitism in the workplace,” Moses said. “During this difficult time, a lot of Jewish people have been struggling at work with politics and have been stripping their resumes of Jewish markers.”
Perry joined Tribe for this very reason. When meeting with prospective investors in the Bay Area, Perry said, he hasn’t been sure whether to mention that he served in Israeli military intelligence for more than six years. He’s concerned they may harbor hostile views toward Israel and the Israel Defense Forces.
“You walk on thin ice,” he said.
The clash over Israel has played out publicly at tech companies, especially since the war began. In April, for example, Google fired 28 employees who organized and joined sit-in protests at its Sunnyvale and New York offices to oppose the company’s ties with Israel. The controversy has been enough to rattle some American and Israeli Jews within the tech industry who worry that being pro-Israel has become a liability.
“We continue to hear from our members that they feel like they’re being marginalized within their organizations when it comes to efforts to address the needs of minority groups, and that DEI efforts mainly focus on particular minorities, which doesn’t include Jews,” Allen said. “We do hear frequently from people who feel like they are either being discriminated against in the workplace, or that they’re being passed over for opportunities because they don’t have the ‘right’ profile.”
Allen and Moses screen each person who requests to join Tribe’s WhatsApp group to maintain the pro-Jewish and pro-Israel nature of the group. Being Jewish isn’t required to join. To vet prospective members, they review their LinkedIn profiles or resumes. If they have any doubts, they ask two questions over WhatsApp: “Do you oppose antisemitism?” and “Do you recognize the sovereignty of the state of Israel?” Moses said.
The WhatsApp group contains seven subchannels for posting jobs across industries: biotech and health tech, finance and legal, HR and recruiter, marketing and sales, operations, technical jobs and internships.
Last week, more than 200 professionals requested to join the WhatsApp group, which receives requests daily, Allen said.
“It’s going gangbusters,” Moses added.
Tens of thousands of layoffs across major tech companies this year have also spurred people to join Tribe.
“One of the frequent posts that we see in the WhatsApp group is, ‘I was just laid off as a part of a restructuring, a downsizing and acquisition,’” Moses said.
Members of the WhatsApp group span North and South America, Israel, Europe, Asia, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Recently, group members have begun meeting in person in San Francisco and in Austin, Texas, and some have traveled to meet with Moses in Palo Alto, she said.
Perry is currently hiring data scientists for his Israel-founded software company, Elements, and has already connected with candidates through Tribe.
Elements is also one of the 18 startups in Tribe’s accelerator program, which spans several fields including food tech, pharmaceuticals, health tech and artificial intelligence.
Tribe plans to launch a second accelerator group focused on biotech and health startups in August, Allen said. Other industry-specific accelerator programs are in the pipeline.
“We have mentors and investors coming out of the woodwork that want to participate and support these companies, which is really cool to see,” Allen said. “In 20-some years of doing this, I’ve never seen this level of interest and engagement.”
He acknowledged that the high level of activity is likely fleeting. But in this moment of global antisemitism and anti-Israel hate, connecting with other Jews has become a priority in venture capital, he said.
“They want to find ways to support one another, and they want to find ways to support Israel,” Allen said. “I think there’s a receptivity to it that didn’t exist.”