Michael Belkin is a serial entrepreneur of a particularly rare breed. Like other serial entrepreneurs, he never stopped developing, researching, and inventing throughout his life, but he did so not out of a pursuit of money, but primarily out of the joy of creation, curiosity, and a desire to bring medicine to the world. It so happened that he made his first exit when he was already 68 years old. At an age when most of his peers were retiring, Belkin sold a company he founded for $180 million. Even then, he had no intention of retiring, but continued to research and invent. Last year, when he was 82, the second exit came: one of his greatest inventions, an automated device for treating glaucoma, was sold for $466 million to the eye care giant Alcon.
And there’s still no talk of rest. Every morning, as he has for 30 years, Belkin shows up at the same office at the Eye Research Institute at Sheba Medical Center, turns on the fluorescent light above him, and begins his workday in a space that looks like a small museum. The room is packed with compact binders, framed certificates, photos, posters of organs of vision, and medical models collected over decades. It perfectly suits his image as a professor of ophthalmology at Tel Aviv University who has authored more than 500 scientific articles and holds over 40 patents.