startupmania

One of the big advantages a venture capital fund can offer a young start-up company is a complex weave of contacts and connections, both professional and strategic. There’s also the small matter of the millions of dollars they can invest in a company, but there’s those contacts! Many entrepreneurs tell of their early days, when the people working in venture capital helped them out and dedicated days upon days in order to promote the start-up in which they invested.

One of the things a strategy-oriented investor can do for its company is to take them to special events held all around the world where the company can be exposed to potential clients or important business partners. Meeting other start-ups, as well, can help a CEO seeking a collaboration or business model that will serves as his next stepping stone.

Yossi Vardi, who invests in dozens of internet companies, has made a tradition of taking “his” young entrepreneurs on the road. He takes them across the United States, arranges meetings with world internet and media executives, and helps them collaborate with each other. Other Israeli venture capital funds, likewise, organize such networking meets-and-greets for their portfolio company.

Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of the Intel corporation, does one further. It send hundreds of start-up CEOs from all around the world to a dedicated annual convention – CEO Summit. At the convention, attended by Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini, features over 400 of Intel’s portfolio company’s CEOs. Intel Capital’s Israeli Branch CEO Uri Arazi makes sure that “big name Israeli companies such as Amdocs, Teva, Checkpoint and others” are also invited. All are large scale, global companies who may be very interested in the developments made by Intel-supported start-ups.

This year’s CEO Summit, to be held on November 11th at Huntington Beach, South California, Arazi is planning a big group of Israeli start-up CEOs. Among them are Yuval Bar-Gil of Aeroscout, Issac Mazor – CEO of Jordan Valley, Trevor Matz from Aternity, Zeev Bokowski of GigaSpace, Mobixell CEO Amir Aharoni, Safend’s Gil Sever, and many more. Each will be able to present his solution before hundreds of other CEOs and try and search for that next big break.

Among the Israeli high-tech elite slated to join the Israeli delegation are Amdocs Business arm president, Zvika Nagaan and the man behind Amdocs’ start-up investments – Ariel Efrati. From Checkpoint – Dorit Dor, its VP of Products as well as Sachi Gerlitz, Ness Technologies’ CEO. All these will arrive at CEO Summit in order to search for the next best start-up solution.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum