| ▲ | 0_____0 5 hours ago |
| Wiz and Waze are both Israeli companies. Not that suspicious, I think it probably just sounds better in Hebrew. |
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| ▲ | sokz 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Wix too. Very interesting that founders of Waze and Wix have Unit 8200 pedigree and Wiz co-founder was part of an elite recruitment program in the IDF. On account of the mandatory draft, it was bound to happen but those three companies have very similar names as well. |
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| ▲ | alephnerd 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Everyone in Israel who is entrepreneurial tries to self-select into 8200 - it's the equivalent of American high schoolers who want to enter VC and tech entrepreneurship targeting CS@Stanford. In Israel, the university you attended matters less than the unit you served. For example, if you want to become a senior politician, you join Sayeret Matkal and if you want to become an academic you end up in Talpiot (which the founders of Wiz are alums of). 8200s success is largely due to a couple early exits by 8200 alums (Gili Raanan, Nir Zuk, Shlomo Kramer) who were biased in recruiting from their unit. 8200 alums aren't better or worse than other Israelis - they just have a better network. And Israel has multiple SIGINT and offensive/defensive cybersecurity units, all of whom created similar networks as well. | | |
| ▲ | sokz 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Network effects wasn't what I considered although I should have. | | |
| ▲ | alephnerd 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's the same in the US as well - if you join the right divisions and units and take advantage of educational programs with the GI Bill, you will open a lot of doors professionally speaking. | | |
| ▲ | bigyabai 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm sure the Room 641A employees have an excellent professional network, but I'm still going to judge them on a personal level. |
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| ▲ | darth_aardvark 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Unlikely, since modern Hebrew doesn't have a letter for "w". |
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| ▲ | bonesss 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Is it possible the foreignness makes ‘W’ appealing as it signals cool modern tech alignment or something? Like how ‘X’ attracts marketing and typographic knuckle-draggers in English, or how all our AI companies have butthole logos for reasons that only make sense if you understand the underlying companies and culture. | | |
| ▲ | darth_aardvark 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_of_Israel#W There's 5 of them, two of which happen to have been acquired by Google. Fair to say it's likely a coincidence. Interestingly, they all use "vav vav" as the start of their Hebrew names. "Vav" is the hebrew letter for V, so it's kind of like using VV to represent W. Maybe you're right, and it's a stylistic thing! My knowledge of Hebrew ends in Hebrew school, and that mostly focused on blessing and prayers over startup naming. | | |
| ▲ | edanm 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Despite commenting on this literally five seconds ago in the sibling comment, I hadn't made the connection that if "vav" is V, then using "vav vav" is like "VV" which is like "W". I wonder if this is a real thing. In any case, I'm pretty sure it's just a coincidence, I don't think it's a stylistic thing, unless I'm missing something. |
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| ▲ | 1-more 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It has vav which gets transliterated as v, u, o, or w. How does the average modern Hebrew speaker pronounce these company names in a sentence? Vix, Vayz, Viz? Is the "w" transliteration an example of Latin to Hebrew transliteration but not vice-versa? | | |
| ▲ | edanm 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's pronounced the same as in English. Wiz, Waze, Wix. It's written with "double vav" in Hebrew, not just a single vav which would make it read as Viz. | | |
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| ▲ | 0_____0 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Oof, you got me there! |
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