Avi Eyal, co-founder of Israel-based Entrée Capital, said he and his partners have spent the past year trying to prepare cash-burning startups for the economic slowdown that has hit technology businesses around the world. The venture capital firm, one of the biggest operating in Israel, manages about $1 billion in assets and has current investments in some 150 companies internationally. His message last year — the most lucrative ever for Israeli technology — was that CEOs should accelerate fundraising efforts and determine where expenses could be reduced.

Backup Plan: “We actually went to most of our portfolio companies, and in between June and December, we raised money for the bulk of them,” Eyal said in an interview with The Circuit’s Jonathan Ferziger. “At the same time, we told all the companies to have a backup plan, have a simulation of how they would cut costs very quickly, and how they would use that money, not to achieve the same growth but to achieve a quarter of their profits or less,” he said, “Some did, some didn’t.”

Serial Entrepreneur: Born in Israel and raised from age 6 in South Africa, Eyal is an engineer and a serial founder of start-ups who opened Entrée Capital in 2010 with internet entrepreneur Martin Moshal, a childhood friend. The firm was an early investor in Monday.com, a maker of workplace management software that held its initial public offering on the Nasdaq a year ago, and fraud-detecting Riskified, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange. Tracking the markets, both have shrunk in value since their 2021 IPOs.

Gulf Investments: Recently, Entrée has been investing in the Gulf, deepening relationships with Mubadala, the $284 billion Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, and other Emirati businesses, after starting quietly before the September 2020 Abraham Accords. As the collapse of Israel’s coalition government sets up the fifth national election in three years, Eyal, 51, said the political instability holds much less of a threat to tech companies than the prospect of recession in the U.S., where many seek to raise money. “Governments come and go and I don’t think it has any impact on the technology space,” he said.

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Heads of state, oil executives and the richest man in the world pondered the prospects for a U.S. recession last week during the Qatar Economic Forum. The three-day conference in the capital city of Doha focused on matters ranging from the global economic slowdown and escalating crude prices to whether Qatar can rustle up enough beds to handle 1.2 million ticket-holders for soccer’s 2022 World Cup in November.

Twitter Riddle: Elon Musk, however, stole the show when he injected new uncertainty into the question of whether he will ultimately buy Twitter and talked about where he’s spending other portions of his $220 billion personal fortune. Musk, the 50-year-old chief executive of electric carmaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, said there were still “unresolved matters” holding up his $44 billion bid for the popular social media platform.

Recession Inevitable: Asked about the U.S. economy in an interview by video feed with John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, Musk said a recession is inevitable and outlined the job cuts he’s ordered at Tesla that will reduce the salaried workforce by 10%. “As to whether there is a recession in the near-term, that is more likely than not.”

Energy Deals: Also at the conference was ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, who said oil companies will need three to five years to “catch up” on the investments required to assure adequate world supply. He spoke on a panel with Qatari Energy Minister Saad Al-Kaabi, with whom he also signed an investment agreement to take a 6.25% stake in Qatar’s $29 billion North Field liquefied natural gas project.

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On a scorching summer afternoon, tourists to Washington, D.C., came to relax in the shade of the makeshift wooden majlis, Arabic for a sitting room, on the National Mall. The Washington Monument towered in the background. Children picked up brushes to paint watercolor pictures of flowers. A veiled Emirati girl held a falcon on her wrist, demonstrating the Bedouin discipline of handling the predatory bird.

Traveling Falcons: The dozens of interactive demonstrations and events were part of this year’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival, spotlighting the culture of the United Arab Emirates. More than 90 participants flew in from the UAE to showcase the nation’s vibrant, diverse culture. (No special plane was needed for the falconry participants; travelers on Etihad Airways can bring a caged bird with them on the plane.)

Saffron Perfume: Mona Haddad, a young woman mixing scents from saffron and rosewood to create perfumes, said she learned the craft from her mother. She dabbed a bit of oil on her fingers and rubbed it behind one visitor’s ears, telling her the fresh scent would last for three days. The festival concludes its first week on June 27 and picks up again from June 30-July 4.

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