Jul 24, 2026 · 27 min · 11 segments
Ian Mark joins David Levine to share his Aliyah story — from a stressful finance job in New York to moving to Israel in three weeks, finding work, building community, dating as an oleh, and eventually…
Ian MarkGuestDavid LevineHost
So a little bit more about myself, I guess, is before COVID even started, I was already kind of like a community builder type of person.
I founded a group or co-founded a group called Olimen Tech, around i think 2000 and i was hosting and hosting events for hundreds and hundreds of people maybe 500 people at a time whether it was events with like top speakers we brought in some of the biggest speakers in venture capital and startups to speak to to olim the focus was really bringing in people who made aliyah themselves but occasionally would bring in israelis as well and i was also hosting like happy hours that would bring 300 400 people on top of that i had kind of like in tel aviv i had this community that i built from going to from the synagogue, from being in the tech ecosystem, from just being a social person and meeting people.
So I would host like even events at my apartment over a nighttime would, I'm not exaggerating, would have anywhere between 500 to a thousand people come through the doors overnight.
People would just tag their friends on the post or just share the post with people.
So basically the first day, myself and other people, we started writing these posts about our friends or we were getting people to join the group.
Like I really grew my network here very, very quickly because of all the activities I was involved in.
And then because the content was good and it was during COVID and people were bored and sitting at home there, it just, it went viral.
So everybody was invited and people who were joining were all inviting their friends to join.
And you would have people that were We never even knew or met or I didn't know who were first of all asking to join, but I was still picky about accepting only friends or friends of friends, but they would join and then they would invite 100 people, 200 people right off the bat.
Newspapers and online newspapers were reaching out to us for interviews and things like that.
So a little bit more about myself, I guess, is before COVID even started, I was already kind of like a community builder type of person.
I founded a group or co-founded a group called Olimen Tech, around i think 2000 and i was hosting and hosting events for hundreds and hundreds of people maybe 500 people at a time whether it was events with like top speakers we brought in some of the biggest speakers in venture capital and startups to speak to to olim the focus was really bringing in people who made aliyah themselves but occasionally would bring in israelis as well and i was also hosting like happy hours that would bring 300 400 people on top of that i had kind of like in tel aviv i had this community that i built from going to from the synagogue, from being in the tech ecosystem, from just being a social person and meeting people.
So I would host like even events at my apartment over a nighttime would, I'm not exaggerating, would have anywhere between 500 to a thousand people come through the doors overnight.
People would just tag their friends on the post or just share the post with people.
So basically the first day, myself and other people, we started writing these posts about our friends or we were getting people to join the group.
Like I really grew my network here very, very quickly because of all the activities I was involved in.
And then because the content was good and it was during COVID and people were bored and sitting at home there, it just, it went viral.
So everybody was invited and people who were joining were all inviting their friends to join.
And you would have people that were We never even knew or met or I didn't know who were first of all asking to join, but I was still picky about accepting only friends or friends of friends, but they would join and then they would invite 100 people, 200 people right off the bat.
Newspapers and online newspapers were reaching out to us for interviews and things like that.
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