The Garage

What a way to kick off The Founder’s Combat! Eyal Waldman, CEO, Mellanox: “It’s important to learn how to speak American, I wore this jacket here especially for you. This is the way you should address every single thing you do”. Noam Bardin, CEO, Waze: “Ideate around domains that you yourself find painful or attractive, that is the only thing that will help you get back up when it’s hard, and continue struggling for 10 years straight.” Amitai Ratzon, CEO, Pentera: “We were a team of 4, each leading a major vertical in their area of expertise, and none of us would trade roles. That’s the kind of diversity you need in a founding team.” Two days ago we had the privilege of hosting hundreds of ex-combat soldiers entrepreneurs who gathered to hear top industry leaders share insights on the entrepreneurial journey. This event marks the beginning of a program we've developed with top Israeli VCs Bessemer Venture Partners | Insight Partners | Lightspeed | StageOne Ventures | F2 Venture Capital featuring VC meetups, office hours, and resources to support combat veterans in launching their startups. We’re excited to help guide this community of talented entrepreneurs into the ecosystem. Thanks to EY for the amazing #EYJOURNEY24 and to our speakers for sharing their insights and lessons: Eyal Waldman | Noam Bardin | Amitai Ratzon | Omer Nagar | Yoram Tietz | Dror Bin | Asaf Kochan | Liad Agmon | Amit Karp | Tal Morgenstern | Eyal Redler | Jonathan Saacks | Or Natanson | Dvir Ginzburg | Romi Littman | Gal Rotman | Boaz Dinte | Nate Meir 🎗 | Eli Barda | Eldan Levi | Izhar Shay

השקעה, פיתוח וחיזוק היזמים נמצאים, לתפיסתנו, בבסיס היכולת להתייצב ולהמשיך לצמוח. אנו מאמינים ש"בציר" היזמים- הלוחמים של 2023-2024, שכבר תרמו למדינה מעל לכל שיעור, יביא לפריחה מחודשת של הסטארט-אפ ניישן. חברנו לשורה של שותפים - הכוללת קרנות ידועות ומוכרות, פירמות ייעוץ, משרדי עו"ד, זרוע בנקאות הייטק מובילה ושחקנים נוספים, כדי לבנות תוכנית ייעודית ליזמים - לוחמים להייטק. מחר יתקיים כנס שרקמנו יחד עם EY, המסמן את היציאה לדרך של תכנית הפיתוח שלנו בגראז' לקהילת היזמים הלוחמים. לינק לטור דעה שהתפרסם בCalcalist כלכליסט בתגובה הראשונה. StageOne Ventures LeumiTech ARNON The Garage Bessemer Venture Partners Lightspeed F2 Venture Capital

The Founder’s Combat event is coming up tomorrow!    Due to overwhelming response, we’ve secured a larger venue to accommodate all attendees.   We’re looking forward to hosting leading ex-combat soldiers and hear from our remarkable lineup of speakers.   13:30-16:00 | Journey conference | Hilton Hotel Looking forward to seeing all of you there! Bessemer Venture Partners | Insight Partners | Lightspeed | StageOne Ventures | F2 Venture Capital | EY Eyal Waldman | Noam Bardin | Amitai Ratzon | Izhar Shay | Dror Bin | Asaf Kochan | Liad Agmon | Amit Karp | Tal Morgenstern | Eyal Redler | Jonathan Saacks | Or Natanson | Dvir Ginzburg | Romi Littman | Gal Rotman | Boaz Dinte | Nate Meir 🎗 | Eli Barda | Eldan Levi | Omer Nagar

Big shoutout to Sedric.ai for raising their Series A! Nir Laznik, Eyal Peleg, and the entire Sedric team, it’s a privilege to be part of this journey and work alongside you. With regulatory and compliance demands growing, there’s no one better positioned to disrupt this landscape 💪 Foundation Capital and Amex Ventures, welcome on board! Link to the article in the first comment.

The Founder’s Combat: The tech community gives back to combat soldiers and reservists looking to kick-start their entrepreneurial journey! Combat soldiers have been paying a huge price over the course of the last year. We at The Garage, together with JOURNEY, and incredible partners from Bessemer Venture Partners, Lightspeed, Insight Partners, StageOne Ventures, and many more, are happy to give back. We've assembled an incredible panel of speakers - former combat soldiers and officers who have successfully transitioned into unicorn founders, leading investors, and key figures in our ecosystem. They'll be sharing their inspiring stories and invaluable lessons, drawing from their own experiences as individuals who have walked in your shoes. September 10th | 13:30-16:00 | Journey conference | Hilton Hotel Register now through your unit's alumni association (list available in the first comment). Spots are limited, don't miss out on this opportunity! Eyal Waldman | Noam Bardin | Amitai Ratzon | Izhar Shay | Dror Bin | Asaf Kochan | Liad Agmon | Amit Karp | Tal Morgenstern | Eyal Redler | Jonathan Saacks | Or Natanson | Dvir Ginzburg | Romi Littman | Gal Rotman Noam Canetti | Eli Barda | Eldan Levi | Omer Nagar | Shay Dan | Orit E. | Elad Sternlicht

Glad to be a partner at Tel Aviv University’s #AIweek! The Israeli Academia is an integral part of the Israeli tech sector. A recent Stanford University study found that 5 of the 7 top universities for unicorn founders outside the US are Israeli. We are happy to support initiatives that combine the business and academic sides of Israeli tech. Together, we can drive groundbreaking advancements and cultivate the next generation of tech leaders.

Today, our own Shay Dan and Romi Littman took the stage at Money20/20 in Amsterdam, diving deep into the revolutionary potential of quantum computing in the finance world. Here are a few takeaways from their insightful session: 1. Quantum computing holds immense promise, particularly for the financial industry. However, fully realizing its potential will still take several years. We recommend assigning a team and starting to explore.  2. Quantum computing holds great risk. This risk is imminent and must be addressed by financial institutions immediately. The cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of proactive preparation.  3. As a fintech investor, there is a lot at stake - quantum comes at a high cost and still constitutes a risk (timelines to market). That said, quantum computing is positioned to be the next big disruptor to the financial industry, and in our humble opinion the reward will be worth reaping. We are incredibly proud of Shay and Romi for leading the charge in such a critical and emerging field. Stay tuned as we continue to explore and invest in the cutting-edge technologies that will shape the future of finance! 🌟 Bank Leumi בנק לאומי  #QuantumComputing #Fintech #Money2020 #Innovation #FutureFinance

Insightful read by Elizabeth Lumley. When we established The Garage, we understood that legacy financial institutions have long been struggling to innovate, incorporate start-up solutions, and cooperate with fintechs due to differing mindsets, bureaucratic constraints, regulation, and potential misalignment. This misalignment and even conflict of interest are evident not only in the accelerators, but also in labs and even more so in CVCs, which unlike the founders, are measured not on their financial success but on the strategic value to their parent company. Most early-stage startups soon realise that the fact that they received an investment from a CVC or are accepted into a bank’s accelerator rarely turns into a real engagement - not a POC and let alone a financial agreement. Over the last few years, a few pioneers have understood this and started building different models. These included bank-tech focused VCs having a large number of financial institutions as their LPs (BankTech Ventures, Anthemis, Mendon, and Jam Fintop), traditional CVC which have started to distance themselves from their motherships (Mouro for example) and single LP’s venture builders like CBA’s X15, Standard Chartered’s SC ventures and more. We at The Garage chose another approach. We invest in fintech and enterprise-tech companies and have built our vehicle from scratch to specifically address the above challenges when connecting startups to legacy. We have tried to combine the perks and avoid the pitfalls of traditional vehicles. As a sovereign VC, measured only upon financial returns, we maintain full alignment with entrepreneurs, and are entrepreneur-first in our approach. On the other hand, our strategic partnerships with our LP banks provide fast-lane access to their knowledge, experience, and tangible resources such as their data. This intimate partnership also allows us to almost guarantee initial engagements like design partnerships, POCs, or commercial agreements with the banks when it's relevant for the PortCos. This partnership doesn’t prevent us, however, from investing in fintechs that are not related to bank-tech. We chose to work with top-tier banks that are large, advanced and open to innovation, yet agile enough to enable (relatively:) fast progress when working with startups. We believe—and have already proved—that it’s much easier to build a product within these institutions. Having some of them as customers makes it significantly easier to approach industry giants and to scale and sell to smaller financial institutions. Valley Bank, Bank Leumi בנק לאומי

Get ready to witness the next big thing in finance! Join Shay Dan and Romi Littman at Money20/20 in Amsterdam on June 5th as they dive deep into the revolutionary world of quantum computing and its impact on finance!  #QuantumComputing #Money2020Amsterdam

Big congratulations to Sedric for being selected as one of the 50 Most Promising Israeli Fintech Startups of 2024! 🏆 A pleasure working with you guys.