Israel is setting the pace in some of the most important industries in the world right now. AI, cybersecurity, the future of work, human capital management…. these aren’t areas where Israel is playing catch-up. They’re areas where Israeli founders, executives, marketers, and people leaders are quite literally building things that have never been built before, solving problems the rest of the world hasn’t figured out yet, and doing it at a speed and scale that would be remarkable anywhere.

So why aren’t we talking about it more?

That question is what led SAGE to build this list.

What Makes A Leader Worth Following

It started as research. We were developing The Ultimate B2B Social Media Playbook and needed real examples of what genuine thought leadership looks like on LinkedIn. People we could point to and say: this is someone worth paying attention to, this is the kind of presence that actually adds value to your feed.

The natural starting point was the most recognizable names. The founders of the companies we all know, the executives whose names come up at every conference, the people building platforms the rest of the world uses every day.

And that’s where things got interesting.

Because most of them aren’t really on LinkedIn. Not in the way we were looking for. The profiles are there, but the activity, where it exists at all, tends to be reshared company announcements or a photo from the latest industry event. Nothing wrong with that. It just wasn’t what we were looking for, and it told us that the list we needed to build was going to require a lot more digging than we expected.

So we widened the search and got much more specific about what we actually meant by thought leadership.

We were looking for two things: people who are genuinely sharing their own insights and perspectives, and people who might not be creating original content regularly but who reshare the ideas of others thoughtfully and intentionally, because that matters too. It signals curiosity. It signals a genuine interest in learning and in bringing others along. Both count.

What we found when we applied that criteria surprised us: finding 100 genuine thought leaders in the Israeli B2B ecosystem is harder than it should be. Not because the talent isn’t there, it absolutely is, but because so much of the thinking, the hard-won lessons, the honest reflections on what it takes to build something from nothing, is staying inside people’s heads instead of making it onto their feeds. The world, other founders, employees, young people entering the industry, global peers, is missing out on perspectives that could genuinely shape how they think and work.

Why This List Goes Beyond the C-Suite

There’s a tendency, in Israel and elsewhere, to treat the founder or CEO as the only voice in an organization that’s worth amplifying. SAGE doesn’t buy that, and this list reflects it.

Thought leadership isn’t a title. It’s a choice.

And in Israel right now, where entire industries are being invented in real time, that choice is available to everyone, not just the people at the top of the org chart. Marketers are figuring out how to build global audiences for Israeli companies at a moment when the word “Israel” itself has become complicated in international markets. They’re learning how to market AI tools when the landscape shifts every few weeks. HR leaders are hiring for roles that didn’t exist when their candidates were in school, and building people programs for workforces that look nothing like they did three years ago. These are not small challenges. These are genuinely new problems being solved in real time, and the people solving them have things to say that the rest of the industry needs to hear.

So this list includes CEOs and founders, but it also includes marketers, HR and people leaders, and a handful of thought leaders whose job titles don’t fit neatly into any category but whose voices are too valuable to leave off. An airline pilot. A chief economist. A former government envoy. The criteria was never about what someone does for a living, it was about whether they show up and share something worth reading.

What the List Revealed: Culture is Contagious

One of the most interesting things to emerge from building this list wasn’t about individuals at all.

It was about companies.

Several organizations ended up with more than one person on the list. Not because we went looking for them as a group, but because their people kept showing up independently, consistently, with real substance. And when that pattern became clear, it said something important: this isn’t coincidence. This is culture.

When multiple people from the same organization are all choosing to show up on LinkedIn with genuine insight and generosity, it means something has been decided at the organizational level, that having a voice online is valued, that sharing expertise is encouraged, that LinkedIn is a place where their people are not just permitted but genuinely supported in thinking out loud. The benefits flow in every direction: the broader community learns from their experts, employees feel seen and recognized beyond the walls of the company, and the organization’s name keeps showing up in the feeds of exactly the people they want to reach.

The companies that earned multiple spots on this list – Aleph, Fiverr, Wix, Reclaim Security, Taboola, Team Me, HiBob, Jazz, and Microsoft Israel – deserve recognition not just for the individuals they put forward, but for the culture that made those individuals possible.

We need more companies like them.

How to Get the Most From Following Thought Leaders

This list has 100 people on it, and we already know it’s incomplete. There are people who belong here that we missed, and we genuinely want to hear who they are.

But we also want to say something that might be slightly uncomfortable: not everyone who posts on LinkedIn is a thought leader, and that’s okay. What it means is that the people on this list have genuinely earned their place, and that there’s real work involved in showing up consistently with something worth saying.

If you’re already doing that, keep going. More people are reading and learning from your content than you probably realize, and your voice matters more than you think, especially right now, especially from Israel.

If you’ve been sitting on ideas and haven’t made the leap yet, consider this a nudge. You don’t need a content strategy or a personal brand framework or a posting schedule. You just need to start. You have more to say than you’re giving yourself credit for.

And if you’re not ready to create your own content yet, that’s completely fine, follow these people, engage with what they share, leave a comment, hit reshare. Amplifying someone else’s voice is its own form of contribution, and it counts.

The goal is simple: more Israeli B2B voices in the global conversation. More perspectives from the people who are actually in the middle of building the future. More of the thinking that we know is happening but that isn’t making it onto enough screens.

Want to build your own presence on this list someday?

The Ultimate B2B Social Media Playbook is SAGE’s guide to social media for CEOs, CMOs, HR leaders, and anyone who wants to show up on LinkedIn with something worth saying. It’s the resource we wish existed when we started looking for Israeli thought leaders to feature, a practical, honest guide to building a presence that actually adds value.

[Download The Ultimate B2B Social Media Playbook, link]

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The List: 100 Israeli B2B Leaders Worth Following

CXO / Founder / Partner

Adam Singolda
Founder & CEO
Taboola 

Ami Daniel
Co-Founder & CEO
Windward 

Amitay Boneh
Co-Founder
Builders Lab 

Barak Klinghofer
Founder & CEO
Reclaim Security 

Dudi Malits
Co-Founder and CEO
Viper 

Eldad Postan-Koren
Co-Founder and CEO
WINN.AI 

Evgeny Sinay
CEO
Ultra AI 

Eynat Guez
Co-Founder & CEO
Papaya Global 

Eze Vidra
Managing Partner
Remagine Ventures 

Gal Aga
CEO & Co-Founder
Aligned 

Guy Katsovich
Founding Partner
Fusion VC 

Guy Manzur
Founder
Lunair 

Hadar Sutovsky
Investor 

Helen Gottstein
CEO
Loud and Clear Training 

Ido Livneh
Co-Founder & CEO
Jazz 

Itai Manor
Co-Founder
Rev.Hub 

Jeremie Berrebi
Founder & CEO
Magical Capital 

Kobi Samboursky
Founder & Managing Partner
Glilot Capital Partners 

Lior Div
Co-Founder & CEO
7AI 

Luiza Jarovsky
Co-Founder
AI, Tech & Privacy Academy

Maayan Gordon
5x Founder 

Maor Shlomo
Founder
Base44 

Matti Zinder
Founder & Chairman
DB Group Investments 

Micha Kaufman
Co-Founder & CEO
Fiverr 

Michael Eisenberg
General Partner
Aleph VC

Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk
Corporate Vice President
Microsoft 

Michal Oshman
CEO & Founder
Maximize Consultancy 

Moshe Dalman
CEO & Co-Founder
RodRadar 

Nadav Ellinson
Co-Founder
Blue and White Finance 

Natalie Lorberboym Mano
General Manager
PepsiCo Labs 

Neta Meidav
Co-Founder & CEO
Vault Platform

Nicole Priel
Investor 

Noa Zilberman
Co-Founder & CEO
Future Summit 

Noam Bardin
Founder
Flytrex

Omer David Keilaf
CEO and Co-Founder
Innoviz Technologies 

Pini Yakuel
Founder & CEO
Optimove 

Raquella Raiz
CEO
Stealth 

Ronni Zehavi
Co-Founder and CEO
HiBob 

Ruben Hassid
Founder & AI Content Creator 

Sagiv Malihi
CTO
Aleph VC 

Shahar Matorin
Founder & CEO
Startup Grind Education 

Shelly Tsalik
Founder & CEO
She.E.O Forum 

Sivan Cohen Shachari
CEO
The DeserTech & Climate Innovation Center 

Tal Alexandrovitz Segev
CEO
Ben Horin & Alexandrovitz 

Tomer Cohen
Advisor, Former Chief Product Officer
LinkedIn 

Tomer Diari
General Partner
Aleph VC 

Yael Kochman
GM, Syte by Nayax | Partner & CEO
Re:Tech Innovation Hub 

Yasmin Lukatz
Investor 

Yoseph Haddad
CEO
Together – Vouch For Each Other 

Yotam Tzuker
CEO & Co-Founder
Team Me 

Yuval Passov
Global Founder Advocate
Google for Startups 

Yuval Yarden
Founder
Pollinate 

Zohar Einy
CEO
Port.io 

HR / People

Adi Kovalyo
HR & Community Growth
WIZO 

Amit Lavy
Global R&D Brand & Developer Relations Team Lead
AT&T Telecommunications

Elit Hershko
Director of Global Talent Acquisition
Orbia (Netafim) 

Hadas Almog
CPO
Cloudinary 

Liron Hiroshi
Head of Global People Experience
Wiz 

Michal Gonen
Senior Employer Branding & Communications Manager
Plarium 

Mihal Elior (Sharabi) Ophir Azran
AI-Savvy Organizational Consultant
Ministry of Education, Israel 

Moran Segal
Country HR Manager
ARM Israel Semiconductor 

Naama Gelband
Global Internal Communications & Employer Brand Lead
Fiverr 

Naama Koren
Tech Career Consultant 

Netanel Ben Gigi
HR Manager & Employer Branding Manager
OZ 

Nofar Amos
Employer Branding Specialist
Monday.com 

Ofer Hirsh
Corporate Communications and Employer Branding Director
Israel Railways Company Transportation

Sharon Steiner
CHRO
Fiverr 

Yarden Gur
Brand Marketing Manager
Intuit 

Marketing

Adi Stein
Snr Cloud & AI GTM EMEA-Israel
Microsoft 

Amir Barkol
Head of Social Media & Brand
Microsoft Israel R&D Center 

Amit Ashbel
VP Marketing
Reclaim Security 

Ari C. Applbaum
VP Marketing
LeapXpert 

Asaf Azulay
Partner & CMO
Team 8 

Danielle Guetta
VP Marketing
Jazz 

Dror Wayne
Head of Marketing
Zimark 

Elit Ben Basat Nuriel
Head of Cloud Marketing
Google Cloud Israel 

Erica Marom Chernofsky
CMO
Aleph VC 

Gai Van-Straten
Senior Marketing Manager
HiBob 

Gily Netzer
SVP Marketing EMEA
JFrog 

Guy Aga
האקדמיה למקצועות הבינה המלאכותית 

Igal Bareket
CMO
Bank Hapoalim 

Jennifer Gutman
Director of Product and Customer Marketing
Oktopost 

Joanna Braunold
Director of Brand & Communications
Band

Judith Charbit
GTM Lead
Team Me 

Liz Cohen
Head of Marketing, VP Platform
Hetz Ventures 

Ofir Bloch
SVP Corporate Marketing
WalkMe

Polly Alluf
VP Marketing

Ran Gishri
VP Marketing, Self Service Business
Taboola 

Sarah Adam
Head of Influencer Marketing
Wix 

Sharon Argov
CMO
AI21 Labs 

Shira Levy Barkan
Marketing Strategy & GTM
Tel Aviv University 

Shiri Katalan
VP Marketing
Onit Security

Shlomo Genchin
Creative Director
Unbore 

Tom Orbach
Director of Growth Marketing
Wiz 

Thought Leaders

Adva Amir
Airline Pilot & TEDx Speaker 

Ben Lang
Building
Cursor 

David Schwartz
VP Tech Strategy, Partnerships and Innovation
PepsiCo 

Dror Poleg
Author & Speaker
Decoding the Future of Work & Cities 

Gad Levanon
Chief Economist
Burning Glass 

Noa Tishby
Former Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism 

FAQs

What platforms are best for following thought leaders?

For B2B, LinkedIn is the clear answer – it’s where professional conversations happen, where industry knowledge gets shared, and where the people on this list are most active. That said, many thought leaders carry their ideas across multiple platforms. Some publish longer-form thinking on Substack, where they have more space and fewer algorithmic constraints. Others are active on X, particularly for real-time commentary on fast-moving industries like AI and cybersecurity. The best approach is to start with LinkedIn and then follow the people who resonate with you to wherever else they publish.

How many thought leaders should I follow at once?

There’s no magic number, but there is a principle worth keeping in mind: quality of attention beats quantity of follows. Following 500 people and scrolling past most of them is less valuable than following 30 people whose content you actually read, engage with, and learn from. We’d suggest starting with a focused list, maybe 20 to 30 people across the verticals most relevant to your work, and letting it grow organically from there. If someone’s content keeps making you stop and think, follow them. If you realize you’ve been scrolling past someone for months, it’s okay to unfollow. Your feed should feel like a resource, not an obligation.

How do I find niche thought leaders in my specific B2B vertical?

A few approaches that actually work: start with the people you already respect and look at who they follow and engage with – thought leaders tend to cluster around each other. Search LinkedIn for keywords related to your vertical and filter by posts rather than profiles, because the people writing consistently about a topic will surface faster than people who just have it in their headline. Pay attention to who keeps showing up in the comments sections of content you find valuable – the most thoughtful voices in any niche are often more visible in replies than in their own posts. And lists like this one are a shortcut. We’ve done the work of identifying people across verticals so you don’t have to start from scratch.

Are influencers the same as thought leaders?

Not quite, and the distinction matters. An influencer’s value is primarily in their reach: the size of their audience and their ability to get a message in front of a lot of people. A thought leader’s value is in the quality and originality of their thinking: the ability to shift how you see a problem, introduce an idea you hadn’t considered, or articulate something you felt but couldn’t name. The two can overlap: some thought leaders have large audiences, and some influencers do genuinely original thinking. But when we built this list, we weren’t looking for follower counts. We were looking for people whose content makes you smarter, more curious, or better at your job. 

Drawing on data from 150+ active clients across 8 social platforms. Exploring what separates B2B brands building durable audiences from those still broadcasting into the void.

B2B social media is splitting in two: brands that own audiences and brands that rent attention. 

In 2026, LinkedIn consolidated its dominance. 84% of B2B marketers say it delivers the best organic results, and it now accounts for 84% of all B2B social media leads. Short-form video emerged as the highest-ROI content format, yet the majority of B2B tech teams are not taking advantage of this type of content. 

AI-generated social content has increased drastically, yet, is not always the best solution for content creation. Buyers have noticed: 57% say they can detect it, and 71% of those report reduced trust in that brand. The platforms posting with genuine human perspectives and not with generic content are creating the warmest B2B pipeline. 

Meanwhile, employee advocacy remains the most underleveraged channel in B2B social. Employee posts generate 8x more engagement and leads from advocacy convert 7x more frequently than brand-direct leads. Yet fewer than one in three companies recognize its importance for company visibility.

The divergence is accelerating.

The B2B social media leaders in 2026 are doing two things simultaneously: activating their people as genuine content channels and accepting that their best-performing content will always be the kind their competitors cannot copy.

LinkedIn’s organic reach is tightening, but quality content is outperforming more than ever.

LinkedIn engagement jumped 44% year-on-year. Yet 68% of B2B buyers review a vendor’s LinkedIn before agreeing to a first sales meeting, and 54% have eliminated a vendor entirely because of a weak social presence. Multi-image carousels generate the highest likes and comments on the platform; videos are the most shared content type. Top-quartile content now earns 4.2x more impressions than the average post.

Employee advocacy is the most underleveraged channel in B2B social.

Posts from individual employees generate 8x more engagement than equivalent brand page posts, and leads sourced through advocacy programmes convert 7x more frequently. 76% of B2B buyers say they are more likely to trust content shared by an employee than the same content shared by a brand account.

Short-form video is the highest-ROI format  and the biggest execution gap.

55% of B2B marketers say short-form video delivers the highest ROI of any content format. TikTok B2B usage doubled year-on-year, from around 8% to 19% of marketers. 46% plan to increase social video distribution over the next 12 months. Yet the majority of B2B tech companies still produce short-form video at low volume, creating a significant first-mover window.

Dark social generates the warmest pipeline and the lowest attribution confidence.

84% of B2B marketers say integrating data across platforms is their single biggest measurement challenge. 56% identify social ROI attribution as their top strategic challenge. Private channel sharing (LinkedIn DMs, Slack, WhatsApp) generates warm, qualified inbound but registers as direct traffic in analytics. 84% of B2B buyers actively seek peer input when researching, most of it in channels invisible to standard measurement.

AI content is detectable  and it is eroding brand trust at scale.

81% of B2B marketers now use generative AI tools: up from 34% in 2023. 52% use AI specifically for content creation. Yet only 4% fully trust AI output without human review, and only 38% have formal AI usage guidelines. The brands winning on social use AI for scheduling, reformatting, and research, not for generating the voice or opinion that buyers actually engage with.

Platform performance

The B2B social landscape has consolidated sharply: LinkedIn is now the only platform where 84% of marketers say it delivers the best organic value, while X/Twitter has seen active abandonment. 39% of B2B marketers no longer use it at all, up from 27% the prior year. YouTube has emerged as the clear second platform for video-led strategies, with usage up 31% in a single year. TikTok’s B2B footprint doubled but remains nascent. 

Platform investment shift – percent of marketers increasing use:

Content Strategy

LinkedIn’s own engagement data shows which formats are earning attention: multi-image posts (6.6% engagement rate), native document posts (6.1%), and video (5.6%) consistently outperform other content types. Educational carousels generate up to 3.1x higher engagement than static posts. Lo-fi vertical video produces 2–3x more engagements than standard produced content for B2B brands.

Most effective B2B social media content formats – percent of marketers reporting high ROI:

Content volume on social has surged since AI tools became mainstream. 81% of B2B marketers use AI tools, but only 4% fully trust the output without human review.

Audience, Engagement & Dark Social

The warmest leads live where you can’t measure them. 84% of B2B marketers say integrating data across platforms is their top measurement challenge. The channels generating the most qualified pipeline: private DMs, Slack groups, WhatsApp shares, word-of-mouth referrals, all register as direct traffic in standard analytics. Investment follows measurement, so the best-performing channels remain chronically underfunded. 56% of teams identify ROI attribution as their top social media challenge. 

Social attribution confidence by channel

Employee Advocacy & Thought Leadership

Your people are your most powerful social channel. Employee content generates 8x more engagement than equivalent brand posts, and leads from advocacy programmes convert 7x more frequently. 76% of B2B buyers are more likely to trust content shared by an employee than by a brand account. 74% of marketers say employee advocacy is effective for brand awareness, but 74% of advocacy programme managers cite consistent participation as their biggest challenge.

Companies where the CEO maintains an active LinkedIn presence – posting regularly on industry topics, company milestones, and their own point of view – report measurably higher brand credibility, stronger inbound volume, and faster trust-building at the top of the funnel. A start-up CEO’s LinkedIn profile is often the first search result a prospect encounters. Marketing teams consistently report that CEO social activation multiplies the impact of every other channel.

Budgets are shifting from paid amplification to content and people. 

46% of B2B marketers plan to increase investment in social content distribution, and 41% plan to increase video distribution spend in the next 12 months. 84% currently use paid social channels and 73% run social ads. Budget allocation is shifting away from declining platforms toward content production, employee activation, and community management. The table below reflects SAGE client portfolio data across 150+ B2B tech companies.

Planned budget increases, next 12 months – percent of respondents

Track your social where your pipeline lives

The biggest barrier to sustained social investment is not performance, it’s proof. When social data lives in a separate analytics tool, disconnected from your CRM, email campaigns, and revenue data, it is almost impossible to demonstrate pipeline contribution to leadership. The measurement challenges documented throughout this report, 84% struggling to integrate data, 56% unable to attribute social ROI, are often a technology problem as much as a strategy problem.

Why SAGE Recommends HubSpot for B2B Social Tracking

HubSpot holds 38% of the global marketing automation market, the largest share of any platform, and serves 248,000+
customers across 135 countries. It is the only platform where B2B teams can manage social publishing,
monitor brand mentions, score leads from social engagement, and connect every interaction to a named CRM contact and a
revenue outcome, without any integration or data transfer between tools. LinkedIn organic social delivers 229% ROI and
LinkedIn paid delivers 192% ROI over three years when measured inside a unified platform like HubSpot.

HubSpot capability	What it solves for B2B social teams
Social publishing + scheduling	Consistent cadence managed within the same platform as CRM
Social monitoring / listening	Brand keyword and competitor tracking alongside pipeline data
Contact-level social attribution	Every social interaction tied to a named CRM contact record
Campaign-level reporting	Social alongside email, ads and content in one dashboard
Lead scoring from social	High-intent prospects identified automatically from engagement
Revenue attribution reporting	Social touchpoints connected to closed revenue
1,500 integrations	Connects to every tool in your marketing stack

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SAGE implements HubSpot for B2B tech companies at every stage, from initial CRM setup through full RevOps configuration and social attribution. As a HubSpot Diamond Partner, we have implemented unified social and pipeline tracking for over 150 B2B companies. The most common outcome: marketing teams can show leadership exactly which social activity is generating pipeline.

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What the highest-performing B2B social media teams are doing differently

Five behaviours consistently separate the top B2B social media teams from the rest. These are not tactics, they are structural commitments that compound over time. 

• Make your people the channel, not just the brand account: Leading companies activate founders, executives, and subject-matter experts as primary LinkedIn channels. Individual thought leadership consistently outperforms brand page posts across every content format. This is infrastructure. It requires programme design, content coaching, and consistent activation.
• Invest in short-form video: Lo-fi vertical video consistently outperforms produced content. The execution gap is wide and the window to establish category presence is still open.
• Build community infrastructure, not just follower counts: Top performers build private communities(LinkedIn groups, invite-only roundtables) alongside their public social presence.
• Accept dark social and measure leading indicators instead: Track DM volume, branded search uplift, profile visits, and content saves as leading indicators rather than demanding last-touch proof for every post.
• Use AI for production logistics, never for voice: Use AI for scheduling, reformatting, research, and distribution. Do not use AI to generate opinion or narrative. Buyers engage with genuine expertise – AI cannot replicate it at the level that builds trust.
  

About this research 

Data point	Detail
Client base	150+ active B2B tech companies
Research period	2024 – 2026
Company states	Seed to Series B
Primary markets	US, US, EMEA
Platforms tracked	8 B2B social media platforms