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The word “Firgun” (Hebrew: ??????/ pronounced ‘feer-goon’) is an informal modern Hebrew term and concept in Israeli culture (originally Yiddish), which describes genuine, unselfish delight or pride in the accomplishment of the other person. It’s the opposite of “schadenfreude”. Firgun is all about genuinely feeling and expressing happiness, pride, or admiration for someone else’s accomplishments, good fortune, or well-being. More about Firgun and why it matters on VC Cafe: https://lnkd.in/dg2a86p
I was in Chicago last week and saw a poster of the American hostages still held in G**a including 23 year old American Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who lost a hand on October 7th and has been denied a Red Cross visit. We must #BRINGTHEMHOME Now.
A study by the Israel Innovation Authority shows that tech employees pay over a third of all income tax in Israel. The report emphasises the urgency of investment in startups and education for underrepresented populations to secure one of the main sources of tax revenue.
In the wider tech world, Google launched Pixel 9, its first AI powered phone and a new image generator, Imagen3, criticised for being too censored. Meanwhile Grok launched Grok-2 a new upgraded language model which include a controversial image generator – the latter is creating some really offensive images. Perplexity answered ~250M queries in July vs. 500M in all of 2023. Anduril Industries raised $1.5 billion (!) for its defence tech. Finally, Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon just reported that the company is using generative AI to increase its productivity, updating 850 million product catalog entries 100 times faster than human-led methods.
Heads up that #Firgun is taking the week off next week for summer holidays. Wishing you a good summer break!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
In memoriam:
“Leadership is not defined by the title you have but by the mindset you bring.” – Susan Wojcicki, former CEO of Youtube who passed away last week aged 56
NEW FUNDING ROUNDS
- Congratulations Omer Goldberg and team Chaos Labs on your $55M series A for your Blockchain risk management platform that secured over $765 billion in cumulative trading volume!
- Well done Itzik Cohen and team PayZen on securing a $32M series B extension for your AI platform to tackle healthcare affordability!
- Good stuff Yossi Appleboum and team Sepio on your $11M series B for your hardware asset risk management platform based on device existence!
- Way to go Roy Daniel and team definity on securing a $4.5M seed round to give companies the tools to observe, fix and optimise their data pipelines!
- Nice job Hadassah Backman and team Guardoc Health on your $3M seed round to help relieve nurses workload with AI!
EXITS
- Congratulations Uri Gruenbaum and team TipRanks on selling 80% of the company to Prytek in a deal valuing the company at $200M!
- Way to go Kobi Eisenberg and team Autofleet on the acquisition by Element Fleet Management for $110M!
LINKS FOR YOUR BROWSER
Israel:
- Israel’s Weizmann Institute, Hebrew U, and Technion make global top 100 list
- The biggest global VCs are secretly battling over Israeli defence-tech startups
- Opinion: Now Is the Time to Invest in Israeli Companies
Global:
- State of the market H2 2024 – by SVB
- How far AI has come in 2 years – by Ethan Mollick
- Apple’s Next Big Thing Is Reportedly an iPad on a Robot Arm
MEDIA OF THE WEEK
Smart cookies – number of foreign born founders who created billion dollar companies in the US
Average benchmarks according to revenue scale by Bessemer Venture Partners
The best is yet to come. 25 years of the venture capital industry booms and busts visualised by SVB.
A matter of perspective. Views on value of portfolios depend on the eye of the beholder. By PitchBook
Makes sense. The future of senses market landscape by CB Insights
Founders humour – the perks of being a startup founder ?
Finally, Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire says he wants to raise his kids in Israel so they learn resilience and grit
That’s all for this week. There’s a lot to celebrate in our “small” community, Keep on creating!
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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