Growth solutions · Strategic partnerships
Business development that starts with listening, not with a business card. I identify where your interests meet someone else's, connect the sides, and stay with it until the connection becomes a partnership that works.
No commitment. We will figure out whether there is a connection worth building.
A company wants a partner, a public body wants technology, an investor is looking for a deal. Everyone knows what they want, and few know what the other side needs.
The result is intro meetings that lead nowhere, decks sent into an empty inbox, and partnership agreements that get signed and forgotten.
A strategic partnership is not built from a cold approach. It is built from knowing both sides deeply, and from seeing where the value meets.
Yaron Flint, a friend and colleague, calls it the hidden overlaps in his book Beyond Networking: the informal meeting points between people and interests, where real business connections are born. A true connector doesn't wait for an opportunity. He creates it.
That is what I have been doing for a decade. More than 4,000 in-depth conversations with executives, founders, academics and government representatives, and a community of 3,500+ executives and founders. When I hear what one company needs, I already know who needs the same thing from the other side.
And my rule doesn't change: value has to meet on both sides. If only one side gains, it is not a connection, it is a favor. And I don't build partnerships on favors.
Not "partners", but what the partner has to bring: market, technology, distribution, funding, legitimacy. And what you bring them in return.
From the network and the community, and from research when needed. The people and organizations whose interests meet yours, even if they don't know it yet.
A prepared introduction, with clear context for both sides. Not a contact list, but a conversation with a reason.
From the first meeting through shaping the model, until the partnership is actually running. When needed, I also build the infrastructure around it: a pilot program, a deal structure, or the growth engine that sells what was built.
I am a board member of RIIC (Rhode Island-Israel Collaborative), an organization that advances trade, business and academic collaboration between Rhode Island and Israel. A talk I gave in Rhode Island, hosted by RIIC, on innovation in logistics and ports, advanced a Rhode Island and Ashdod collaboration. From there I connect Israeli companies looking for US market entry, and host delegations coming the other way.
I founded a forum of CEOs and senior executives that meets once a month, with no agenda and no decks. The goal is for people to get to know each other, gel, learn from one another and connect. Out of these meetings come collaborations no one would have planned in a work meeting, because real social capital is built outside the boardroom.
I initiated a forum that connects foreign missions and delegations in Israel with local business and technology opportunities, with participation from countries in Asia, Europe and the Gulf. It was born from community members and one meeting at an innovation hub in Ashdod.
I brought a partner into the company and built the growth strategy with him. The company has since raised funding and sells to more than ten large customers worldwide.
A background that moves between the worlds that need connecting. I led marketing and business development at technology companies, and built operations in North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Europe. At a public transport authority I coordinated negotiations on contracts worth more than $300 million with major service providers. In the Knesset I advanced legislation. And I co-founded five companies. As a connector, I brought together deals worth more than $30 million, in retail, DevOps, health, agriculture and local government.
It means I speak the language of a CEO, a mayor and an investor, and I know what each of them needs to hear to say yes.
The format depends on the kind of partnership: a focused introduction, a defined project (market entry, a pilot program, a deal process), or ongoing business development support. Pricing is set after a diagnostic call, based on scope and goal.
15 minutes, from me to you, and we will figure out whether there is a connection worth building.
Itamar Assaf