Column: Israeli startup execs soldier on as war disrupts all

After the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of more than 1,400 Israelis and the missile attacks that followed, Aharon Horwitz's 7-year-old daughter Livia stayed put for hours, frozen by fear.

"She just sat on a chair by the door because she was so afraid of the rockets and that she was going to have to run out," said Horwitz, 43, CEO of Fullpath, an auto dealership marketing platform company headquartered in Jerusalem and Miami.

The war has created challenges for Israel's startup culture, which has fueled many companies in the auto technology space. More though, Horwitz's experience is a reminder that many of these CEOs and their employees are delicately juggling the upheaval war is causing in their personal lives.

It is easy for business journalists to forget this. We typically focus on financial results, growth strategies and CEO perspectives on industry trends. Personal challenges aren't part of the equation because they're typically not part of business. When is the last time the average person wondered how a CEO and his or her family is doing?

In a matter of hours, Horwitz's quiet Saturday morning escalated from a synagogue service in his Jerusalem neighborhood to the "booms" of multiple explosions in the distance, the undulation of missile warning sirens, huddling in bomb shelters and, then, war.

After the attack on Israelis, the Palestinian death toll in Israel's response has surpassed 10,000, according to media reports.

The attack immediately triggered for Horwitz worries about family, country and the company he leads, which employs 80 people in Israel.

"We were aware that this was going to be a long haul, and we were going to also, as a company, have to make decisions about how we're going to handle the situation," Horwitz, a former infantry soldier, said about a week after the attack. "Sunday morning, when we woke up, we were in a new reality."

Fullpath, formerly AutoLeadStar, has about 150 employees overall. Right away, about 30 percent of the Israeli team or their spouses were called up for emergency reserve duty, Horwitz said.

Horwitz had Fullpath's "digital situation room" channel on Slack enacted immediately. The space houses the procedures and documents the company has maintained through the COVID-19 pandemic and other attacks. It addresses who will fill in for various executives and employees called up to serve, and contains guidance on tracking goals in a time of crisis. Each day, Fullpath assesses any draft-related staffing changes, plus government security and safety announcements that could affect the team in Israel and the company overall. Employees help with babysitting or anything else that's needed.

"We operate as one family … and our redundancies are built in to the company so that we're able to keep everything moving, and people step up," Horwitz said.

Work goes on, but the war is a never-ending worry for Horwitz, his family and friends. While sirens have quieted recently in Jerusalem, they remain ever-present in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, he said.

"This is a very difficult time for Israelis, for me personally and for our team," Horwitz said. "We have an inner circle of friends and families who have been directly impacted."

That includes people who have been murdered, kidnapped or who remain missing, such as Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a Jerusalem resident who grew up in the Chicago area. He was last seen being loaded by Hamas militants into the back of a pickup along with other hostages abducted from a music festival where at least 260 people were killed by terrorists, according to reports. A portion of one of his arms was blown off.

"He's a very close friend of the company," Horwitz said. "We all know people who were impacted."

Horwitz describes his life right now as a split screen. He can be on a customer call, but the other screen in his brain is worrying about southern Israel. He wonders, in random moments, where his wife Alieza, 9-year-old son Chanan and daughter are, and if they're safe.

There isn't a lot of time for sleep, in part because Horwitz is working late hours. At night, when the conflict first started, war with Hamas came crashing through.

"The kids are in and out of our bedrooms because they're scared," Horwitz said. "It's a challenging time but we'll get through it."