The start-up is just the excuse

The useful part

"The people are." It's a deceptively simple distinction, but one that has shaped the program since its inception six years ago. It operates as part of the university's Yazamut 360 center, led by Dana Gavish and Prof. Carmel Sofer, whose joint vision has helped position entrepreneurship as a strategic pillar at BGU.

How it works

• "We became passionate about solving a real human challenge." Bahat, in turn, never intended to work in academia.
• "We teach everything through practice." That practical experience unfolds as what Bahat described as an entrepreneurial journey built on three pillars: entrepreneurial knowledge, personal skills, and...
• Amid the war and the mass-casualty events that followed, Eliasko experienced an event that would eventually become the foundation of ANNIE.
• Boris Kulikov) "We witnessed a highly complicated medical evacuation following a mass casualty event," he recalled.
• "The academic degree doesn't teach you how to stand in front of an audience in English," Mizrahi said.

What to take from it

Students were encouraged to leave the classroom, interview strangers, test assumptions, and, above all, make mistakes. Program prepares the problem-solvers of tomorrow for extreme uncertainty. GADI BAHAT, founding director of Leaders program at Ben-Gurion University's Yazamut 360 Center.

Example or evidence

• Every time they overcome one, they're building an entrepreneurial mindset." Only later, while completing his master's thesis, did Bahat discover the academic terminology describing what he had intuitively...
• "We had incredible mentors," Mizrahi noted, recalling his personal mentor, Yoram Yaacovi, a former Microsoft executive.
• The real product of Leaders isn't a start-up, but the people capable of building one.
• These are skills and personal qualities that today's world demands, whether you launch a start-up or not." That philosophy has produced dozens of graduates who have carried those skills into industry,...

Details worth keeping

Boris Kulikov) By RONNIE ROSENMAN, IN COLLABORATION WITH BGU SEPTEMBER 24, 2026 21:02 Updated: SEPTEMBER 24, 2026 21:21 'The start-up isn't the goal," said Gadi Bahat, founding director of the Leaders program at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. While many academic entrepreneurship initiatives operate as accelerators, bringing students together around promising business ideas in the hope of producing the next successful start-up, the Leaders program takes a different route. "Entrepreneurship is much more than creating companies.

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