Welcome Mish

Last Summer, we started our search for new additions to the LocalGlobe team. We advertised the roles widely and used an open process, receiving hundreds of fantastic applications. Our team of 8 spent weeks reading your Medium posts, checking out your GitHub accounts, and playing with the products you built. We also asked you about the best thing you had seen or read in the last year — Shoe Dog, Sapiens, and Blue Planet featured frequently. Particular thanks to the two people who recommended Red Notice by Bill Browder and Principles by Ray Dalio — both fantastic books that would otherwise have passed me by. Thank you to the smaller group of people who took the time to meet with us, and those that joined our dealflow meetings.

We’ve posted in the past about playing total football at LocalGlobe. The famous Holland 1974 team had a formation of 10, with anybody capable of playing anywhere. Every player had to think like a playmaker. This was football from another planet. It’s this approach that underpins our search for practical science fiction. We have a fully integrated investment and operations team, discarding conventional notions of attribution. Everybody is capable of supporting portfolio companies and contributing to investment decisions, and everyone at some point plays multiple roles in the process.

Our Cruyff turn — our USP — is developing strong conviction early and making timely decisions. But this hiring process was long. It took us months to get to know the two people to take our team of 8 to that balanced formation of 10.

We’re delighted to welcome Michael Mashkautsan as a Partner and our 9th playmaker. Mish shares LocalGlobe’s values and behaviours: a relentless obsession with technology, a bias for transparency, and a focus on community. As an alum of Israel’s top military program for R&D leadership, Mish spent the last decade in the defence community and the government, working on key challenges across domains in which technology was central — as a threat, a catalyst or an enabler. In his last role, he served for four years as Chief of Staff at the National Cyber Bureau in the Prime Minister’s Office. He holds a BSc in maths and physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an MBA from Tel Aviv University, and a Master of Public Policy from Oxford University.

Mish’s deep-tech background combined with his intricate understanding of teams gives him great versatility — he’s particularly interested in cyber security and AI, but has shown already that he can add value to companies across all sectors. He’s also excited about the future of AR and non-obvious applications of blockchain. We hope you find time to chat with Mish — it’s never too early to start a conversation.

You won’t find him on Twitter or Medium just yet. And you’re unlikely to see him at networking events. This kind of promotion tends to make him feel — in his own words — “somewhat nauseous”. But you will find him spending his time supporting founders and teams; that’s the part he loves.