Amazon's aggressive poaching tactics in Israel have start-ups threatening to abandon AWS

Amazon's aggressive striker tactics in Israel shocked the country's start-up community and prompted some companies to abandon Amazon's cloud service as retaliation.

Shai Wininger, the co-founder of Lemonade, a start-up for insurance that raised $ 180 million, took his frustration on social media, wrote several posts on LinkedIn and Facebook about the poaching activity of Amazon.

"We have just learned that Amazon is actively targeting and testing Lemonade Inc. employees," Wininger writes on LinkedIn. "I wonder if their idea is to support the startup ecosystem - reconsider Amazon AWS."

Wininger later followed and said that the poaching by Amazon's customers, such as Lemonade, is a "breach of trust". He added that the "amount of obscene money" offered to steal his employees could damage the entire Israeli start-up market.

Wininger wrote in a separate Facebook post: "Game on! Werner Vogels FYI", marks Vogels, Amazon's chief technology officer.

Wininger's complaint is the latest proof of the growing tension between Amazon and emerging technology companies. Last year, Amazon thwarted a number of startups after releasing a product that looked and functioned almost as a device manufactured by Nucleus, one of the Alexa Fund portfolio companies. It can also paralyze Amazon's efforts to broaden its presence in Israel, a start-up powerhouse with some of the world's best technical talent.

Although Wininger's messages are gaining popularity, Birds has left a comment below, indicating that he does not support Amazon's poaching by his customers.

"Let me take a dip here," Vogels wrote in the Facebook section posting comments. "It can be a sourcing agency compared to Amazon, and I notice that sourcing from our customers is extremely counter-effective."

Talent War

Amir Konigsberg, CEO of the Tel-Aviv-based start-up company Twiggle, said the problem is not necessarily about the theft of start-ups by Amazon, but rather about the aggressive nature of syrups.

He pointed out that Amazon had "systematically" been in contact with groups of employees working on specific projects in start-ups, which threatened to lose one team at a time. Konigsberg, who previously led Google's expansion to Israel, said that Amazon is much more aggressive than other multinational companies such as Google or Facebook.

"The talent war is going well, but you have to remain respectful," said Konigsberg, adding that Amazon is damaging its relationship with the rest of Israel's technical community. "It is very important to keep a balance in the way you operate: Apple, Google and FB all have a lot of money, but you have never seen such complaints about them."

The biggest problem for Amazon is that it can hurt itself.

In the comment section under Wininger, a number of Israeli start-up CEOs said they are considering other cloud providers because of Amazon's actions. This would add to the flow of companies avoiding AWS, a group that includes a number of large-box retailers such as Walmart, Target and Kroger.

"We spend almost $ 2,000,000 a year on AWS, but Amazon recruiters are aggressively trying to trick our TLV developers," said Liad Agmon, CEO of Dynamic Yield, Tel Aviv. "This is a data point that I consider seriously as part of our internal debate, whether we stay with Amazon or go to Google Cloud."

Once reached to comment, Amazon said it did not recruit by focusing on employees of a specific company or a specific customer.

"We have many open positions around the world and hire talent based on work-related skills and expertise, not from the current employer," Amazon said in a statement.

"Although we have employees who leave Amazon for other companies and vice versa, we have not built the kind of customer base that we have by specifically targeting our employees to hire customers - we focus our attention on helping our customers to get big business. create. "AWS."

Given the enormous share of Amazon in the cloud space, it is difficult to imagine that this will have a material impact on AWS. But at least by opening the door for competitors to offer better offers, just like a commercial Google Cloud LinkedIn.

"Google Cloud would like to have you - send me a message", wrote the Google representative under Wininger.