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After 246 days in Hamas captivity, Israeli special forces rescued Noa Argamani and took her by helicopter to a hospital outside Tel Aviv. There, a doctor turned to her and said, “Noah, we’re really glad you’re here with us.”
Agamani was confused. “The first thing I asked was, ‘How do you know my name?'” she recalled. “I didn’t realize the whole world knew who I was.”
Agamani, 25, became one of the faces of the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. On the morning she was abducted, she was a college student about to begin her third year studying artificial intelligence. She dreams of becoming a software engineer. Maybe one day she’ll start a company.
Argamani began his new role at Vine Ventures in September. Sydney Krantz represents BI
This month, she started a new job. Argamani joins Vine Ventures, a venture capital firm that supports early-stage startups, particularly in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and defense technology. She is working with Israeli founders and companies looking to grow their businesses in the United States. Her new role brings her list of contacts into play: Her ordeal thrust her onto the global stage, connecting her with world leaders and business moguls alike.
“At this point, if I want to learn and make an impact, venture capital is the place for me,” she said. “I want to be surrounded by people who have big dreams.”
For Israeli founders, the United States is often the difference between whether a promising startup is merely a success or a truly huge market. Agamani sees itself as a potential bridge between the two countries—one that can help Israeli founders transform their companies into global industry leaders.
“My mission is to help Israeli startups enter the market and really push the boundaries,” she said. If she succeeds, she could bring more of the world’s best technology, networking and business knowledge back to her home country.
Argamani is based in Vine Ventures’ New York office. Sydney Krantz represents BI
One fall morning, Agamani, now 28, met me in the lobby of Vine’s New York office, a glass of iced matcha in hand. She is slender and has long black hair hanging down her back. Dressed in a blue button-down shirt, faded jeans, and mules, she could be a twentysomething on her way to work in the West Village. She spoke softly and deliberately, keeping eye contact at all times. She flew into the city for interviews and then headed to San Francisco for a conference.
For much of the past two years, Agamani has been asked to reexamine what happened to her. This time, she wanted to talk about what came next. Before we met, she texted: “This interview is very special because [we’re] Focus on resurrection and rising from hell. “
Hours after the initial attack on October 7, a Gaza mob swept through the Nova Music Festival grounds in search of survivors. They found Agamani and forced her onto a motorcycle. Someone took a photo. With his eyes wide open and his mouth open, Agamani stretched out his arms to her boyfriend and begged her kidnappers: “Don’t kill me.” The video sparked a heated discussion on news broadcasts and social media, making Agamani an unexpected celebrity.
Over the weekend, the Israeli military said it had killed the terrorist who abducted her on a motorcycle.
In the months after her rescue on June 8, 2024, she became a prominent advocate for the hostages remaining in Gaza, meeting with presidents and diplomats and speaking at events such as the Time100 Gala. She stood in the gallery of the House chamber as Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress. She wore a borrowed suit; after eight months in captivity, her own clothes no longer fit her.
“I want to be surrounded by people who have big dreams,” Agamani said. Sydney Krantz represents BI
She returned to school at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, a public research university in southern Israel. She discovers that artificial intelligence has reshaped the field of software engineering during her captivity. Models write better code. Digital workers called “agents” began to take on jobs once reserved for humans.
Agamani re-interposed. She and her classmates used large-scale language models to scan news articles for patterns of anti-Semitic speech and then mapped the countries where the speech originated. They set up a website that allows users to select a date and see where these comments appeared most frequently. Through the Entrepreneurship Program, she designed a new startup aimed at helping children with autism.
But the life waiting for her outside school changed. “You before October 7th, and you after,” she said. Strangers stopped her at airports and on crosswalks. She speaks from the stage and shares her life with her 201,000 Instagram followers: posing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, gazing from the bow of a yacht, and video-calling her father from her seat at the World Cup final.
Job opportunities followed. She can join a company or help start one. She could pursue a career in public speaking or modeling. Office work no longer feels ambitious. She has access. She got people’s attention. Suddenly, sitting behind a screen seems like neither is being put to good use.
“I feel like recoding is a waste,” she said. “I wanted to do something more impactful — change the world.”
Through her publicity work, Agamani met Eric Reiner, founder of Vine Ventures. Reiner’s career spans Israeli startups and U.S. capital, first at Insight Partners and then at Dynamic Yield, an Israeli startup that uses algorithms to personalize digital ads and websites, before being acquired by McDonald’s in 2019.
Reiner launched Vine to invest in companies on both sides of the Atlantic, but its strength is in Israel, where its team will discover founders and help them enter new markets. The firm manages approximately $500 million and has backed Israeli breakout companies such as Wonderful, Qodo and Eon.
Israel has long excelled as an entrepreneurial hub. This year, Google completed its $32 billion acquisition of Wiz, founded by a group of former Israeli military officers. But the war put pressure on this “entrepreneurial nation.” A 2025 report by the Israel Advanced Technology Industries Association found that 53% of the country’s technology companies are seeing an increase in employees asking to relocate abroad, citing growing security concerns. After two consecutive years of decline, venture capital funding for Israeli startups is climbing again, driven by huge rounds from companies like Cyera, HiBob and Wonderful, according to PitchBook.
In April, Reina invited Agamani to intern. Something clicked. In the venture capital world, she says, she can help multiple companies at a time. She can use the network she gained to open doors for founders. At Vine, her footprint stretches from San Francisco to Boston and New York to Tel Aviv, helping Israeli startups expand into the United States.
Agamani’s experience in captivity taught her that a person can do anything asked of them and still have no control over what happens next. It’s also a fact of entrepreneurial life, she says. Sydney Krantz represents BI
She has been learning the job for the past five months. How to determine market size. How to validate a young company. She helped the founder push back on another investor’s “no.” Israeli investors, she said, would interrupt the founders mid-stream to explain the problem. Americans tend to be more polite. “They can smile all over the field, but then they’ll pass and never tell you why,” she said. She starts working full-time in September and will split her time between San Francisco and Tel Aviv.
She sees opening up her network as one way she can help. Coaching is another story. Her experience in captivity taught her that a person can do anything asked of them and still have no control over what happens next. It’s also a fact of entrepreneurial life, she says. “Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things don’t go right,” she said. She hopes to help founders navigate these uncertainties and understand what they can learn from them.
She insists she has always been an optimist, even, she laughs, a “naïve optimist.” This instinct, she says, helped her realize the wonder of the darkest days of her life. She survived her captivity. She rushed home in time to visit her mother, who died of brain cancer three weeks later. She watched as the surviving hostages returned to their families. “After seeing so many miracles,” she said, “it makes you more optimistic.”
But she also saw how much could be taken away. She witnessed her friend being murdered. Others remained in captivity after being killed, with their bodies returned months later in a hostage swap. She attended funeral after funeral.
For Agamani, optimism is no longer just a personality trait. It’s a choice she makes in spite of her past – refusing to let the worst thing that ever happened to her determine what happens next.
“I lost a lot of people. I saw hell with my own eyes, in the tunnels, looking into the eyes of Hamas,” she said. “But I choose every day to have another part of my life, to move forward, to work, and not let sadness become my identity.”
Melia Robinson is a senior reporter for Business Insider, where he writes about how artificial intelligence is changing the legal industry.