Venture Capitalists, pt1

I'm definitely quite a bit late in getting a post out about this, but every time I thought I'd have a free moment to start putting down my thoughts, I'd get distracted by something else. Anyway, better late than never! 

This past Sunday, May 30th, the team visited two venture capital firms in the Tel Aviv area before returning back to Haifa in the late afternoon. Our meetings at both locations lasted a little over an hour, and in both instances we were given an opportunity to ask questions. Given the differences in each visit, I've decided to break up my coverage of each into two separate posts.

The first meeting was at DFJ Tamir Fishman, the local affiliate of Menlo Park, CA based Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson (DFJ). DFJ and its worldwide partner organizations (including DFJ Tamir Fishman) manage a portfolio of companies and assets worth approximately $6 billion. DFJ Tamir Fishman itself is actually the venture capital subsidiary of the larger Tamir Fishman Group, which is a full-service financial management firm.

At DFJ Tamir Fishman, our host and point of contact was Moshe Levin. Currently a managing general partner, Moshe is a 25 year veteran of the Israeli venture capital industry, having previously served as a partner at  Pitango, Israel's largest VC firm. It was pretty clear from the get go that Moshe would be able to offer us a wealth of information and experience - and we were not disappointed.

Moshe's presentation was in some respects a recap of Start-up Nation. That being said, his presentation did dig into some prime examples of Israeli created technologies that many of us had not been aware prior to our meeting. I realize I've already gone into some of this in previous posts, but it still bares repeating.

It is quite extraordinary how many technologies - upon which our current global economy is based - that were created in Israel. To be honest, these contributions are drastically out of proportion relative to the size of this country, its population, or its economy. Listed below are a just a few of these technologies as well as the Israeli (or Israeli subsidiary) that was responsible for each creation.
Seriously, it is astonishing the range of technological innovations that have emerged from Israel over the past twenty years! From the internet, to personal and portable computers, to telecommunications, and medical devices, each of the above technologies was critical to the development and evolution of these markets and industries. Given their impacts, it would be hard to imagine a world in which these technologies had not been invented.
Posted by Daniel Branscome / Jun 2, 2010 /
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