A lot has been said about the ‘equity gap’ in Israel – the fact that Israeli funds have been struggling to raise additional funding and international funds don’t all have local presence in Israel. That ,among other reasons, is why angel investors like Yossi Vardi, Jeff Pulver and others did great business in recent years in Israel – lots of talent, but not enough seed funding around. Today, seed funding in Israel got a little boost with the launch of the first Israeli Super Angel Seed Fund (or a so-called “Micro Venture Capital Fund”) with $25 million in funding, most of which has already been raised. The Israeli super angel fund is dedicated to invest exclusively in seed-stage startups or apps in Internet, telecommunications and software. The fund was started through a merger between Startup Factory, Yatir Ventures and Plug and Play Tech Center, the shared office complex and company incubator in Silicon Valley.
The super angel fund will focus on investments of up to half a million dollars at a time and each company which receives an investment will have its own office space in the same building in Hod a Sharon, Israel, with an option to move to Silicon Valley if needed, following the Plug and Play model. The fund’s plan is to make 40 seed investments, which will produce about 9 exits in the $4 to $10 million range, 3 exits in the range of $40 million, and one or two exits in the range of $40 to $100 million (assuming 20-25% equity). In total the fund hopes to make $120 million in profit from its investments.
To date, Plug and Play has funded 260 startups through its branches in silicon valley and its regional offices in Spain, Italy, Canada and Singapore. The fund’s partners are Avi Domoshevizki, a former partner at Battery Ventures Israel, Sani Sanilevich (@sanirun)former partner of Yatir Ventures and a technology consultant to Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netaniyahu, Ofer Arieli, founder of the first Startup Factory fund and Saeed Amidi, founder of Amidzad Ventures and Plug and Play Tech center.
Source: TheMarker (Hebrew)
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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