Historical archive · 1992–2015 Atlanta, Georgia · Southeastern United States & Israel
A technology laboratory bench, representing the Israeli technology companies the Chamber screened
A technology laboratory bench, representing the Israeli technology companies the Chamber screened

Services to Israeli Companies

"AICC is your most effective mechanism for penetrating the U.S. market." That was the Chamber's own opening line on this page, and the claim behind it was specific: with almost 500 members across a wide variety of industries and professions, it could address every issue associated with opening an office in the United States, forming partnerships with American companies, and reaching customers or investors.

The Problem This Solved

An Israeli technology company arriving in the United States for the first time faces a set of obstacles that have very little to do with the quality of its product. It has no American credit history, and as one company put it in the Chamber's own testimonial pages, almost everything in America is based on the company's or owner's credit history. It has no local references. It does not know which of the large regional corporations actually buys in its category, or who inside them decides. It does not know whether its pricing translates. And it usually cannot tell, from Tel Aviv, whether early enthusiasm from a US contact is a real signal or ordinary politeness.

The Chamber's answer was to put the incoming company in front of people who could tell it the truth quickly and cheaply, before it had spent a year and a substantial budget finding out.

Screening Teams

The core mechanism was the volunteer screening team. Members gave their time to evaluate an incoming company's needs, provide essential market feedback, and recommend concrete methods of assistance — most often by opening doors to potential partners, customers or investors. Because the members doing the screening were practitioners in the relevant sector rather than generalist trade officers, the feedback was specific and occasionally unwelcome, which was the point.

The Leads Feed

The Chamber published a rolling list of Israeli companies then seeking introductions in the Southeast, described by capability and home city rather than by name so that members could self-select. The entries give a clear picture of the deal flow:

  • A Jerusalem firm working on treatment adherence for health-related organisations, with smartphone apps, network tools and educational kits aimed at HMOs, hospitals, medical centres, drug makers and distributors.
  • A Tel Aviv developer of an all-in-one database security, caching, auditing and masking package for the SMB and enterprise markets.
  • A Tel Aviv company offering health plans member-outreach technology for patient self-management, on a pay-as-you-use platform.
  • A Modi'in developer of a point-of-care breath testing system for diagnosing and managing digestive-system disease, covered by more than sixty patents and patent applications worldwide.
  • A Kfar Shmaryahu developer of anti-theft locking hardware for solar panels, seeking introductions to solar integrators.
  • A Rehovot developer of biological cell-imaging systems built in collaboration with a leading Israeli research institute, seeking introductions to university biology research centres.
  • Companies in international healthcare collections, medication management, food freshness indicators, printer efficiency, employment assessment, proton therapy, web analytics and unmanned systems.

Each entry ended the same way: seeking introductions in the Southeast.

The Virtual Office

For companies not ready to commit to premises and staff, the Chamber ran a Virtual Office programme that gave an Israeli company an American image and presence at low cost and with high visibility. In practice this bridged the gap between "we are exploring the US market" and "we have a US subsidiary" — a stage at which many otherwise sound companies stall.

The Service Network

Around that sat the professional infrastructure a market entrant needs, available through the membership: executive search, commercial space, relocation, legal, mentoring, accounting, venture capital, insurance, business consulting, human resources, banking, housing and hospitality. The Chamber did not provide these itself; it knew who did, and had a view on which of them were any good.

Events as Market Entry

Finally, the US-Israel Business Exchange series existed largely for this audience. Selected Israeli companies presented at industry-specific matchmaking programmes and then took pre-arranged one-to-one meetings with potential strategic partners, investors and customers — a far more efficient use of a transatlantic trip than a conference floor.

Companies weighing a US entry today would start with the Israel Export Institute and with the International Trade Administration, which publishes the current official guidance the Chamber's own material used to summarise. For the regional case the Chamber made, see the FAQ.