Coincidences, a Rolls Royce, and Some Real-Life Magic

This is genuinely one of the absolute craziest stories that’s ever happened to me in my entire career.

The story begins about seven years ago. I found myself in a parking lot in Hertzliya looking for my car. I can’t be the only person who has lost his car in parking lots multiple times.

Anyway, some random dude walks past me and I ask him if he knows where zone one is in the parking lot.

He responds “Aren’t you Hillel Fuld?“.

I asked him his name and what he does. His name was Toby and he was the CEO of a company called Proov. He said to me, “Why don’t you come upstairs and see what we’re doing? It’s a really cool company.”

And so I did.

I went upstairs, learned about the company, and within a few weeks, I joined them as an advisor. I worked with them for years.

So why am I telling you this now? Well, because one of the people I worked with at the company is a man named Steve Elbaz.

OK, pause.

A few weeks ago, I found myself again in Hertzliya, and as I was standing at a red light, a Rolls-Royce Ghost pulls up next to me.

Now mind you, this is a 3.5 million shekel car. It’s not something you see every day. So I took a picture, and I posted it. Obviously.

Within a few minutes, Steve writes me, and says that this car that I just took a picture of actually belongs to his boss.

He tells me he works for a company called WaterGen, which happens to be a company I wrote about many years ago.

The company literally takes air and turns it into water. Read that again, it is not an exaggeration.

So Steve says that I should come into the office and hear more about the company and maybe get a ride in the Rolls-Royce.

He had me at Rolls-Royce!

Today we met.

Sure enough, one of the first things we did is go down to the parking lot where I drooled uncontrollably over this beautiful piece of art.

I got to sit in it. This was just different level luxury.

The ceiling of the car is covered in stars. Not kidding. See the bottom right picture. Stars!

Then we spent the next hour and a half touring the company, hearing about some of the most insane stories I have ever heard in my life, and just getting demos of the technology, a.k.a. watching water be created out of thin air, literally.

The company has solutions that can produce from 20 to 6000 liters of water per day!!

And Steve leads the mobility department, which is a whole other level of awesome. Cars, jeeps, trucks, tanks, and any other type of vehicle you can imagine will have fresh water built in powered by WaterGen.

I don’t know where this relationship will lead, but I will tell you that I told the CEO and chairman, if I can clean the floors in this office, I am there.

The important thing for me is to be around these unbelievable people who are literally changing the world every single day.

If I didn’t already love the company, when I walked in, everywhere I looked there were religious artifacts. A mezuzah, a plaque on the wall to remember the destruction of the temple (an ancient custom, that when a Jewish person builds a home, they leave one part of the home unfinished, and cover it with a plaque to remember the temple.”), and more.

I was told that every board meeting begins with a Torah lesson.

When I did finally sit with the chairman, the owner of this Rolls-Royce, he blew my mind. He is a religious Jew, a billionaire, and someone who has self funded this company from day one.

That’s right, they did not take any external funding.

As you walk through the halls of WaterGen, there are pictures of literally every single possible diplomat from every single possible country around the world, who all came to visit this company and hear about their truly magical technology.

WaterGen has deployed its devices in places from Uzbekistan to remote villages in Africa, and even to Gaza and Syria.

Yep.

As the chairman said, “Our enemies can make up lies about us all they want, but when we bring them and their children running water that is created out of thin air, they have nothing to say other than praise.”

If that is not a kiddush Hashem (sanctification of God’s name), I don’t know what is.

This meeting was genuinely one of the most incredible meetings I have ever had, and I can’t think of a company that I’ve ever met that is more impressive than WaterGen.

Throughout the meeting, the ideas were flowing in my head like water (See what I did there?).

I spoke to the CEO and chairman, and gave them some ideas, and we already discussed potential collaboration.

Whether we collaborate or not, this company is the perfect example of how we are “A light onto the nations.”

This company illustrates the sentence “Doing well by doing good” better than any company I’ve ever met.

As I said to the chairman, my passions in life are technology, Israel, Judaism, and cars.

This meeting checked all of those boxes!

WaterGen has won literally every possible award for its innovation. It was named among the top 10 tech inventions in the world, and one of the leading Israeli technologies alongside the thumb drive, Waze, Mobileye, and others.

I left this meeting absolutely floored and speechless. And I’m not even talking about The Rolls-Royce. That was a nice cherry on top.

Out of all the amazing things in the story, what blows my mind the most, is how many different things had to happen in this chain of events for today’s meeting to take place.

Had I not lost my car back then, had Toby not walked over to me, had he not invited me up, had I not gone up, had I not started working with Proov and met Steve, had I not taken a picture of the Rolls-Royce, had Steve not seen that post, and had he not been working at WaterGen, this meeting would never have happened.

There are no coincidences.

What a story. What a car. What a company! Just wow.