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An Unusual Commute Leads to a Different Kind of
Partnership
AMMAN, Jordan
The drive from here to Tel Aviv is only 75 minutes, shorter than
the ride from San Francisco to San Jose. But Omar Salah is certainly
the only Internet entrepreneur making it regularly.
It is a trip that always leaves Mr. Salah, 34, who built a string
of factories that make batteries and bras before stumbling into
e-commerce, a bit stunned.
Although he had realized early on that Israel was crucial to economic
development in the region, Mr. Salah never expected to be working
with Israeli investors.
But he does, and it has led to TaskMail, Mr. Salah's Internet
start-up, and the reason for his cross-border commute. He is developing
an e-mail filing system with the help of $3.5 million from Israel
Seed partners, a venture capital firm in Jerusalem.
TaskMail, which operates in a high-technology industrial park near
Tel Aviv, expects to release its product by the end of the year.
The company is run by its chief executive, Erez Baum, an Israeli expert on Lotus Notes. Mr. Salah is the company's enthusiastic chairman, sharing words from his favorite how-to-be-a-millionaire self-help books and keeping in constant contact by phone and e-mail message. The project's genesis came from Mr. Salah's industrial investment firm, Century Investment Group, which was founded in 1995 and owns six factories in Jordan that produce a range of products, from cellular batteries for Motorola to underwear for Gap Inc., Victoria's Secret and Calvin Klein Inc. To better manage the factories and their 4,000 employees, Mr. Salah, an engineer educated at Purdue University, had developed software as a method for collaborating through e-mail, allowing colleagues to assign tasks and follow up on projects. The software essentially acts as an electronic agent, which will not only verify that an e-mail message has been received but also check that the recipient is acting on it. In 1998, a couple of years after he developed TaskMail, Mr. Salah attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. There, he met Yossi Vardi, the technology guru who had backed his son and three other Israelis in developing instant e-mail messaging, which was later bought by America Online for $400 million. Mr. Vardi encouraged Mr. Salah to turn his e-mail software into a business venture, but Mr. Salah was reluctant. At the same forum, Mr. Salah met Jacob Davidson, an Israeli entrepreneur. It was Mr. Davidson who persuaded Mr. Salah to use venture capital, rather than his own money, to start TaskMail, helping him refine his marketing pitch while teaching him to be less apprehensive about working with Israelis. "Every once in a while, Omar and I catch our breath and realize just how extraordinary our relationship is," said Mr. Davidson, who acts as an informal adviser and networking consultant to Mr. Salah. Through Mr. Davidson, Mr. Salah met his investors. TaskMail is nearing the end of its first development stage and is being tested in two high-technology companies in Israel. Mr. Salah and Mr. Baum plan to introduce TaskMail by the end of October, at which point the company will follow the traditional Israeli model of setting up headquarters in the United States, with research and development centers in Israel. TaskMail is unique in that it will also have a research and development center in Jordan. So far, testing has gone well, the company said, with users praising the tool's ability to push tasks to completion, particularly customer service requests. "We get really good feedback from people who are frustrated with their e-mail tools," Mr. Baum said. The plan is to integrate TaskMail with existing software platforms, first using the tool for e-mail and instant messaging applications and then adding voice mail. For Mr. Salah, doing business with Israelis has become second nature while earning him criticism from Jordanian associates who have avoided ventures with Israeli investors. Nevertheless, he has forged ahead, with tacit approval from King Abdullah of Jordan and with the cooperation of Mr. Salah's colleagues in Israel. Even when Mr. Salah was starting his business at age 28, he realized that his Israeli neighbors were crucial to the worldwide market. "I had natural hostilities," said Mr. Salah, the son of a Jordanian contractor who spent most of his childhood and early adulthood in Britain and the United States. "But I saw that Israel was part of the path to our future." At that time, 1994, a year after the signing of a peace agreement between King Hussein of Jordan and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, Mr. Salah had never been to Israel. No matter. He wheedled his way across the border, found a taxi to take him to Tel Aviv and settled in the lounge of the Hilton Hotel. He then cold-called several of Israel's industrialists, asking them whether they wanted to cooperate in joint venture plants near the Israel-Jordan border. They did. And that is how his factories were built in the Jordanian city of Irbid. Mr. Salah is also setting up an Arab-Israeli-American venture capital fund that would take successful Internet models from English-speaking countries -- like eBay and Amazon.com -- and set them up in the Arabic-speaking countries. He hopes to involve other Jordanians. Why with Israelis? "We're looking to fill obvious voids in the new Arab economy," he said. "If Arabs can exploit Israeli resources -- the brains, finances and contacts -- and leverage it, it could create so much value. These are the dividends of peace." Jessica Steinberg is a freelance business writer based in Jerusalem. |
