Recent;y the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange went wild. The cause of the drama was Mellanox Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq:MLNX; TASE:MLNX), the provider of enterprise communications solution from Yokne'am. The previous evening, Mellanox, which is listed in Tel Aviv and New York, published record results, astonishing the market. Its share price shot up 43% on Wall Street, 48% in Tel Aviv, and its market cap jumped to NIS 15 billion. Overnight, Mellanox became the sixth largest company by market cap on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, worth more than some of Israel's foremost banks and industrial concerns, and it was being crowned the company of the decade in high tech.
One might have thought that Eyal Waldman, the company's founder, chairman and CEO, who was at its California office at the time, would be able to let go of some of the sense of fear that has accompanied him like a shadow ever since he founded Mellanox in 1999, and free up time in his diary for a few whoops of joy.
Not him, it turns out. "I'm afraid all the time. You can't rest on your laurels," Waldman explained. "There are expectations all the time. You are under constant pressure to continue to execute."
For years, you were the entrepreneur with the strange technology swimming against the tide and trying to prove that your way was right. Are you now vindicated?
"I'm always having to justify myself. Even now. Many people have said to me in the past few days, 'You've done it'. But we still haven't done anything; we are halfway there, perhaps even at the start. You don't feel that you have done something. As far as I am concerned, we are still a small company."