A few days ago, The Marker released an update on the status of Israeli venture capital. It turns out that 28 funds have been hurt from the current economic downturn. More than 7 funds have executed lay-offs in more than five portfolio companies each. One of the most impacted funds was Pitango, Israel’s largest VC fund, which closed one portfolio company (Negevtech), seven portcos laid off employees and three companies were sold for a loss. Sequoia is not in a much different condition. The fund has reportedly laid off more than 500 people in its global portfolio, and five Israeli start ups have been impacted. In the post “The Sequoia Layoff Scorecard” Om Malik reports on the scope of the lay-offs made by Sequoia (courtesy of Brendan Gahan and Susie Lin): 
Among the Israeli companies that were hit by the recent wave were Personata, ScaleMP, Amobee, Pontis and Discretix. The deepest cut was made by online shoe retailer Zappos, who eliminated 128 posititons. Sequoia Israel has been relatively successful so far, with more than eight successful exits.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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