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50:50 Startups, co-founded by Northeastern’s Amir Grinstein, fosters connection in the midst of conflict by partnering Israelis and Palestinians on equally owned venture development.
Amid the ongoing and escalating war between Israel and Hamas, tensions within Israel and in the international community remain at a fever pitch. However, in spite of the contentious conflict that has rippled across the global stage, one professor is doing his best to bridge the divide between Israelis and Palestinians using a novel tactic: entrepreneurship.
Amir Grinstein, Northeastern University’s Patrick F. & Helen C. Walsh research professor, will be the first to admit he is not a conflict negotiator. But through 50:50 Startups, the organization he co-founded that develops ventures that are equally owned by Israeli and Palestinian entrepreneurs, Grinstein uses business as a universal language that can foster connection even in times of war.
“In the real world, nothing is equal among these two populations,” Grinstein says. “If we can create a space where they feel empowered and equal and succeed together and fail together, … whatever we do indirectly contributes to trust-building and social impact.”
The focus of 50:50, which Grinstein co-founded with Eran Heyman, is using entrepreneurship as the vehicle for interaction.
Whether they’re Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs or Palestinians, everyone can apply to the program. Participants don’t need to have an idea or a partner; for many of them, this will be their first venture.
What they do need is an open mind and belief in the value of business and of diversity’s role in business, Grinstein says.
The first phase of the program is about building ideas and trust. Participants form connections based on their professional strengths –– marketing, engineering and otherwise –– and coalesce into teams that will set about executing on their ideas. This first part of the program takes place in Jerusalem and includes months of ideation and networking. Eventually, participants are whittled down into about a dozen venture ideas.
The goal is to make the connection between participants as natural as possible, Grinstein says, introducing them, first and foremost, as entrepreneurs with a common purpose.
“You have a business to develop. You have technology to develop. You have to learn about finance and entrepreneurship and the competition,” Grinstein says. “Naturally, you will start to talk about these issues. You will talk about your village, you will talk about your family, you will talk about your army service, you will talk about the person from your family that got hurt because of the army.”
For Lee Ann Dotan, an Israeli entrepreneur and current participant in 50:50, this is a large part of why the program is so successful. Dotan admits that when someone recently asked her whether the relationship she has with her Palestinian venture partner is shallow because they don’t directly address politics, the question annoyed her.
“We address it every day,” Dotan says. “The very fact that we are together, it’s a political statement. It’s a political statement that says we can co-exist, that we can be friends. … Sometimes actions speak louder than words in my experience, and just doing it together can bring hope to so many people.”
Grinstein admits it’s not always easy for people in the program to bring down the walls they’ve built up. For some people, their vision of an Israeli or Palestinian is informed mostly by social media or the news: “They see soldiers or they see terrorists,” he says.
But entrepreneurship is uniquely suited to bridging these gaps.
“Entrepreneurship, it’s months and months and years and years that you have to work intimately with somebody else,” Grinstein says. “It’s a rare opportunity to get to know people.”
The second part of the program starts with Northeastern. Grinstein designed a class with Daniele Mathras, an associate teaching professor of marketing, that tasks his students with serving as marketing consultants for the 50:50 entrepreneurs.
His students separate into teams, each one dedicated to a venture, and spend the entire semester supporting their venture through market research, consumer surveys and pitch deck development. They get an opportunity to work with real clients while tackling real-world problems, “with everything that brings,” Grinstein says.
“When you’re working with people who are in conflict zones, you get a better understanding of the fact that while there is such a huge conflict, there are still people who are actively trying to pursue their passions or trying to pursue new ideas,” says Alexis Mathew, a business administration and communication studies student who took Grinstein’s class.
For most of the semester, students and entrepreneurs communicate virtually, but at the end of the semester, Grinstein brings the entrepreneurs to Boston to meet his students and network with and pitch to potential investors.
Gaining access to these kinds of networks, standing in rooms with executives from companies like Microsoft, is the kind of thing that was unthinkable for entrepreneurs like Kassim Bashir, who identifies as an Arab Palestinian from Israel.
“I am from an Arab village in the north where I had no exposure to anything like that,” Bashir says. “If you tell me, ‘Here in Boston they have networking events,’ I’d be like, ‘What’s that?’ The biggest value that this program gave me is the exposure to entrepreneurship and the business world. It’s the very reason that I’m here in Boston studying for my MBA at Northeastern.”
“It’s really hard to make Israelis and Palestinians right now in these times get together and do something together,” Bashir adds. “Every program like this brings a bit more hope. … It’s not to be taken for granted to see people still trying.”