Tel Aviv University Coller School of Management
Nir Eidelberg has all the tech cred needed to build his software and fintech startup. He studied uncrewed and autonomous systems in graduate school, worked seven years in commercial drone operations, and is currently building the drone and robotics inspection business at Echo NDE in Alberta, Canada.
What he doesn’t have is formal business training to scale what he is building.
“I didn’t want a generic MBA that teaches case studies from industries I’ll never touch,” says Eidelberg, co-founder and COO of MovePlnr, an AI-enabled SaaS and fintech platform for residential moving companies. “I wanted something built around how hard tech and deep tech companies actually get funded, built, and scaled.”
Nir Eidelberg
Eidelberg is among 15 students in the first cohort of Tel Aviv University’s Deep-Tech MBA. Coller School of Management launched the hybrid program in January, targeting working engineers, scientists, technologists, tech founders and other STEM professionals trying to make the jump to managing highly complex companies.
“Israel punches so far above its weight in deep tech: defense, aerospace, autonomous systems, cyber. It’s hard to find a comparable concentration of relevant founders, operators, and investors anywhere else,” Eidelberg tells Poets&Quants.
“There are hybrid MBA programs closer to home, but none of them are built specifically around deep tech commercialization the way Coller’s is.
“TAU is one of the top schools in the world for producing unicorn-status companies.”
DEEP TECH MBA V. AN MBA WITH TECH COURSES
Deep tech refers to technologies grounded in significant scientific or engineering advances. Think quantum computing, biotechnology, robotics, advanced AI, aerospace. Companies in these sectors require extensive R&D, complicated intellectual-property strategies, specialized funding, and a much longer road from laboratory to market.
Yaël Steinhart, dean
Coller set out to create a program to serve STEM professionals specifically and connect them with Israel’s deep tech startup ecosystem. Israel is often dubbed Startup Nation for its outsized concentration of founders, venture capital, and deep tech companies.
“Tel Aviv University is ranked seven in the world in alumni that were able to recruit money from venture capital and establish startup companies. Coller’s Global MBA is ranked 14th in the world in terms of this achievement,” says Yaël Steinhart, dean of Coller School of Management.
Coller’s Deep Tech MBA, the first in Israel, is a two-year hybrid program with most of the traditional MBA core delivered online through a mix of recorded lectures, live sessions, and group work. Three times per year (for a total of six weeks), students travel to Tel Aviv for immersive “peak weeks.”
These are where students study deep-tech entrepreneurship, patent strategy and intellectual property, venture funding, technology commercialization and venture capital. A three-day “Venture Builder” workshop teaches engineers to identify market problems and build companies around them. Another course places students in simulated investment committees, negotiations and boardroom decisions.
“The leadership course right at the start set the tone. It’s a very non-traditional course, not what you’d expect walking into your first week, and it broke the ice for our cohort fast,” Eidelberg says.
“By the second peak week I felt like I knew my classmates well. The professors have been just as accessible. We’ve been introduced to VC partners, investors, and program affiliates from the deep tech VC ecosystem along the way. As long as you show up and actually seek out the connections, the network here is real and it’s valuable.”
SMALL BY DESIGN WITH ROI IN MIND
As prospective students increasingly scrutinize tuition, career outcomes and the usefulness of a general management degree, business schools are looking for places where an MBA can make an obvious value proposition.
Coller’s answer is to start with students who already possess technical expertise while keeping the program small enough to offer individualized access to mentors, investors and industry leaders.
Its Deep-Tech MBA costs $41,500.
Its first cohort has just 15 students. Coller is targeting about 25 for its next intake but plans to cap future cohorts at roughly 30 to 35. Students will generally enter with at least three years of work experience.
At that size, students can be paired with mentors, connected with an advisory board of executives, and brought repeatedly into Tel Aviv’s startup, VC and research ecosystem.
And while Coller marketed its inaugural cohort only in Israel, about a third of the students came from abroad anyway, Steinhart says. Eventually, she expects international students to make up the majority of the program.
BUILDING A GLOBAL MBA AMID GLOBAL CONFLICT
In the current geopolitical climate, launching a globally oriented MBA in Israel means convincing international students not only that the degree is worth the tuition, but that traveling to Tel Aviv is worth the physical risk.
Steinhart acknowledges that the last several years have changed the composition of Coller’s international programs.
Before the current conflicts, international students came broadly from India, South America, Europe, and the United States. More recently, the mix has become less diverse, with Americans making up a much larger share of its Global MBA population.
The most recent Global MBA cohort numbered about 35 students with roughly half coming from the United States. The Deep-Tech MBA has one or two Americans in its first 15-person cohort, Steinhard says.
Security concerns indeed factored into Eidelberg’s decision, even though he has family ties in Israel and previously served in the Israel Defense Forces.
“I went in with a realistic sense of the situation rather than a naive one,” he says. “The university was proactive about communicating ahead of peak weeks, giving guidance on travel logistics, and keeping us informed with the right resources throughout.
“We actually went through the US-Iran situation with Israel in the mix during the program, and despite that backdrop, it never disrupted our ability to keep going. Most of our classmates live in Israel and are embedded in that reality day to day, and the university made sure the rest of us had what we needed to stay informed.”
‘WE ARE GOING TO MANAGE NOT ONLY HUMANS BUT ALSO AGENTS’
Practically all business schools are wrestling with what sills they can teach managers in an era when artificial intelligence can analyze data, strategize, and automate an increasing level of junior roles.
Coller’s answer is not less management education, but different management education.
“The main challenge is that we are going to manage not only humans but also agents,” says Steinhart.
Future managers will need to oversee both people and AI systems, know when to trust automated outputs and retain enough foundational knowledge to recognize when those outputs are wrong. That puts even more weight on strategic judgment and critical thinking.
Coller is working toward what Steinhart calls an “AI-native school.” It introduced more than 10 AI-focused courses this year, gives students an AI orientation at the start of the academic year and is reworking assignments, simulations and courses around the technology.
Since late 2025, the school has also been mapping its curriculum, consulting employers and training faculty to incorporate AI into their teaching. Some fundamentals remain fundamentals, but he difference is knowing what to hand off to AI, what to question and what decisions cannot be outsourced.
“We want to teach the students to use the AI, but to use it in a smart way and to use it as a friend or as a tool,” Steinhart says. “They must have the core knowledge in order to use these tools in a smarter manner.”
AN MBA FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN’T STEP AWAY
With a full-time leadership role at Echo NDE, running a startup on the side, and a family in Alberta, stepping away from work and his family for a full-time MBA was not possible for Eidelberg. The hybrid format of Coller’s Deep Tech MBA allows him to balance school and his career while planning ahead for the peek weeks, getting real time in Israel.
As a founder, Eidelberg wanted more than business theory. He wanted to understand the mechanics of building and scaling a company, meet people who could help with that journey and get closer to the investors, operators and startups shaping AI, drones, aerospace and other deep-tech industries.
“That combination — the mechanics, the people, and watching where this industry is heading — isn’t something I think a conventional MBA could have given me,” he says.
Eidelberg ultimately wants to move into upper management, build MovePlnr into an enterprise-scale company and eventually experience an acquisition, merger or exit.
Just as important, he wants to become a broader manager — one capable of handling the organizational, financial and strategic complexity beyond the technology itself.
“Between MovePlnr’s own AI and automation focus and the Coller program giving me the finance, fundraising, and go-to-market frameworks I didn’t have coming from an engineering background, plus a network in a deep tech ecosystem, I feel like I’m building exactly what I need for where I want to take things next.”
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