Petrushka
Family Stories
Israeli Historical Fragments
The Man Who Made
the Fastest Exit in the World
Liron Petrushka, a 33-year-old Israeli from Ramat Gan, drove his car on an autumn day in 1999 to the office of Commercebid – a small startup he founded in Silicon Valley, California.
His car phone rang, and on the other end was the voice of a senior manager from a well-known public company whose shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
"Hello Mr. Petrushka," the senior manager said, and after a few polite words, he got straight to the point: "We would be interested in talking business with you."
Such calls were not surprising. They arrived one after another – at the company's offices, on his car phone, and even at his home in the picturesque town of Los Gatos. He had a mobile phone installed in his car – an impressive gadget, a technological marvel held by anyone considered a serious businessman.
The call he received on his way to work, concerning business, was one of many similar calls he had received, and he knew what it was about. "I'm busy right now. If you are interested in acquiring the company, I am not interested in selling it," he replied to the caller. The conversation continued: "You don't understand," the voice on the other end said, "we're talking about a nine-figure sum." Liron swallowed hard in excitement, coughed, and after a moment recovered and replied: "No thank you, but at the moment, it's out of the question."
The times were those of the "dot-com bubble" that swelled to enormous proportions in the late 1990s.
The computer industry had dispersed into small companies, the software development industry had reached saturation, and around the corner emerged the internet, which swept the world by storm. Tens of thousands of entrepreneurs roamed Silicon Valley, searching for the next startup that would ride the wheels of the developing global network connecting computer to computer on its way to the real revolution of the high-tech world. Large companies and investors from all over the world pulled out their wallets and poured tens of millions of dollars into startups that would bring them billions.
Among those pulling out wallets were also successful companies that wanted to eliminate competitors, and paid huge sums to acquire innovative software that threatened to harm their success. The bubble roared and surged. Hundreds of small companies pounced on the internet, searching for their philosopher's stone.
Liron Petrushka found it.
Together with Naomi, his wife, and a friend they knew, they developed an online bidding software that was then considered a breakthrough in the business field. Until then, procurement departments in large companies conducted multi-million dollar deals – purchasing raw materials for manufacturing their products. The deals were done using traditional methods that excelled in bureaucracy: requesting offers from suppliers, lengthy correspondences via fax and email, price comparisons, and choosing the product at the most attractive price.
The use of Commercebid's startup software revolutionized and drastically shortened the procurement processes.
On the websites of the purchasing companies, a tender was uploaded displaying the details of the required product, and competing suppliers were asked to submit a price within a defined time window. The tender concluded within a few hours, allowing the company to achieve favorable prices, while saving time and bureaucratic expenses.
What seems simple and obvious today, holding a tender on a website, was considered a technological marvel at the end of the 20th century. In an era when only a few companies dared to establish a website, it was received as a sophisticated service that shortened the supply chain processes in giant corporations. The first to purchase the software services were the giant companies HP and General Motors, and the acquisition generated great interest in the business community and the financial press. Journalists sought interviews, and businessmen were interested in acquiring the venture.
Liron Petrushkain his thirties,
a salesman and startup manager in California
The calls continued to come in, even to Liron's cell phone, and he rejected the offers, with the asking prices climbing from call to call, from refusal to refusal.
He thought about an "exit" but didn't believe it would happen to him before a year had passed since he started.
His nerves stretched and stretched. One hundred million dollars climbed to one hundred and fifty, and he bit his lip and refused. He also politely declined two hundred million. Some of the offers he kept to himself and didn't even share their content with his wife, fearing she would be tempted by the offers and convince him to sell their company.
In November 1999, just eight months after Commercebid was founded, he decided it was time to execute what appeared to be the fastest exit of such magnitude in the high-tech world, and sold the company to a competing bidding company, Commerce One.
The acquiring company's managers agreed to pay a sum of $242 million. The consideration was paid in cash and shares of the acquiring company, and was divided among the main shareholders of the acquired company – Naomi and Liron Petrushka, and a few other investors who supported the startup's development.
From the Pitch in "The Crater" to Silicon Valley
Liron Petrushka's name was well-known in the 1980s among sports enthusiasts in Israel, especially football fans.
The ardent supporters of "Hapoel Ramat Gan" football club knew Petrushka – the tall, iron-willed defender, who fiercely protected the "16-yard box" and prevented opposing players from advancing towards his team's goal.
They called him "Peter the Wolf."
Liron, son of a nurse at Tel Hashomer and a taxi driver, both Holocaust survivors, grew up in the legendary club that operated at "The Crater" stadium in Givatayim. From the children's and youth teams, he moved up to the youth national team and won the State Cup with them.
At 18, he was already placed on the senior team, playing for it concurrently with his military service.
Upon his release from the IDF, he was called up to the Israel national team reserve, and his future in football seemed secured. But then Naomi entered his life, an American volunteer who came, with her friends, to assist the IDF, bogged down in the mud of the First Lebanon War.
At the end of her volunteering, Naomi returned to her home in Chicago, and Liron followed her. They married, and Liron began working at a small computer company in Chicago.
In the mid-1990s, he left the company, equipped with severance pay which he invested in an agency selling payroll software in California. A few years later, he sold the agency for $5 million. He invested this money in developing the bidding software that brought him the fastest exit in the world for a quarter of a billion dollars. After the exit, he continued to invest in various ventures in Israel and worldwide.
After the exit, Liron and Naomi, with their three children, moved to California. He continued to be involved in the high-tech field, and invested in various ventures in Israel and worldwide. He was a board member of the startup company "Chek" (formerly "PageOnce"), whose offices are located in Kfar Saba and Palo Alto. He was also a partner in a technological incubator in Silicon Valley, California, promoting young entrepreneurs from Israel.
In March 2024, a plane carrying Liron and Naomi crashed, and both were killed.
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1984 – Defender Liron in the red and white uniform of Hapoel Ramat Gan
The story of Liron's exit, the youngest child of Hanna and Avraham Petrushka, is brought here in brief, and it is one of the family stories published in the book "Petrushka." The book describes the tumultuous and amazing journey of Avraham Petrushka, a taxi driver whose childhood was spent in the Łódź Ghetto in Poland. His parents and sister were murdered by the Nazis, and he was sent to the Kaufering camps of Dachau. Upon the camp's liberation by the Allies, he immigrated to the Land of Israel on an illegal immigrant ship, was conscripted into the "Haganah," fought in the major battles for the liberation of Jerusalem, was among the famous Nabi Daniel convoy members, and was wounded in the battle for Notre Dame Monastery.
After the establishment of the State of Israel, he met Hanna, also an immigrant from Poland who endured upheavals and the Holocaust of deportation during World War II, between Russia and Poland. They married and established a modest home in Ramat Gan, and had three children:
Miri Reuven Petrushka – Principal of the Hebrew Gymnasium's middle school in Jerusalem.
Gershon Petrushka – VP and partner at Newpan, the largest electrical appliance importer in Israel.
Liron Petrushka – who traveled the long road from Hapoel Ramat Gan to the American exit.
The family story of the Petrushkas from Ramat Gan was published in detail in the book written by Shlomi Rosenfeld and self-published by the family.
