Summarizing 2021 is not an easy task. It has probably been the most unique year we have ever experienced, specifically in the tech investment and in the Israeli venture capital space. Post Covid, adjusting to the “new normal” in an environment of hunger for growth, it was a year that will go down in history, nothing less. Here at Elron Ventures we concluded a year of multiple activities and much innovation. We reinvented ourselves with a new identity, logo and brand name – Elron Ventures – while we also made various structural and operational changes so we can provide our portfolio companies with the best support possible, and address the specific set of challenges facing early-stage vc funding for startups today, such as seeking product-market fit on their long-term mission to become market leaders.

What have we done this year?

–    Our team has grown: Elik Etzion joined in order to lead our cyber and enterprise software venture capital investments, our one and only Kobi Katz joined us full time as our in-house CTO, Uria Lin joined as Principal (and unofficially as Chief Workflow and Networking Officer), and lastly Maryana Simonovich (and her sharp analytical mind) joined as Senior Associate. We are likewise thrilled that our board nominated Dan Hoz, CEO Siemens EDA Israel, as chairman of our board. Dan has also brought on Siemens as a strategic partner (see further below).

–    The crème de la crème of CISOs joined our advisory board: Four new global domain experts have joined our advisory board to provide our venture capital VC portfolio companies with their unique experience & network as the c-suite of global market leaders. Welcome aboard Jeff Trudeau, Gil Gur Arie, Al Ghous and Dr. Selim Aissi.

–    We are happy to welcome Idan Tendler, Sharon Wagner, Dr. Uri Weinheber, Gadi Naor and Elad Frenkel, our homegrown entrepreneurs who joined our investment platform. Our current portfolio companies benefit from our entrepreneurial backbone – our special team of founders who successfully built market leading companies and joined our network, creating an important circle of entrepreneurs backing each other.

–    We’re also pleased to share that our platform now includes additional strategic partners from the insurance, banking and telecom industries who share our vision of building promising software companies, side by side with our longstanding partner Rafael and our newly added partner Siemens. We devised these new partnerships in order to better support our portfolio companies in the process of finding product-market fit as well as help them to develop their first product with real data, in production environments, and with real potential customers. Stay tuned for more news on this.

As far of our investment’s achievements and activity, we had a busy year. We have extended our portfolio with new companies in the cybersecurity and enterprise software domain. Investments in the field of software supply chain, future of work and SaaS security have joined us.

Our later stage portfolio companies raised impressive funding rounds while pushing their growth forward. Amidst this funding activity we had the pleasure of joining forces with some of our old-time partners as well as collaborating with existing ones.

On top of these developments, I also want to congratulate Sharon Mantin and Yossi Barshishat on the acquisition of Imvision by Intuit; Alasdair Rambaud, Ran Shulkind and Yair Finzi on the acquisition of SecuredTouch by Ping Identity; Gadi Naor, Amir Ofek and Ranny Nachmias on the acquisition of Alcide.io by Rapid7; Maor Cohen on the acquisition of Kindite by Ring Central; and Shimon Hason and Omer Raviv on the acquisition of OzCode by Datadog. We wish all of our founder alumni good luck in their next adventures. Thank you Zohar Rozenberg for all the hard and fruitful work done this year.

Loud applause should be given to Nir Altschuler and Zvika Slovin for CartiHeal’s $500M deal with Bioventus.

Wishing you all a happy New Year filled with health, new beginnings, and continued growth and innovation.

Elron Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm based in Tel Aviv providing VC investor relations and a unique go-to-market strategy for startups, specializing in venture capital funding for business, enterprise software, and cyber security investments.