Yozma

Yozma’s contribution to the creation of a professionally managed venture capital industry in Israel has generated a strong brand recognition for Yozma as a top-tier, value-added, and dominant player.

As a result of Yozma’s activities in the past decade, there is a substantial network of angel investors, industry-insiders, lawyers, consultants, government agencies, press, and academia that recognize Yozma’s unique standing in Israel.

Over the decades, Yozma has has developed close working relationships with several of the leading academic institutions in Israel.

Some of the most promising companies in the portfolio of Yozma have come directly from these institutions. Yozma’s partnership with the academic institutions in Israel started when Mr. Erlich established the Generic Technology program in order to foster cooperation between technology companies in the private sector and research institutions and universities worldwide.

Yozma had a Director on the Board of Directors of Hadassit (The Hebrew University’s Hadassah Medical Center commercialization company) and has contributed significantly to the Board of the Technion Research and Development Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of the Technion Institute of Technology- Israel’s leading technological and scientific academic institute. Examples of portfolio companies that came to Yozma through this channel include: Paragon Communications and Predix.

A key part of Yozma’s strategy to maintain its competitive edge is to strengthen its network of peer venture funds in the US and Europe.

Yozma is then able to augment its internal capability to assess potential investments and add significant value to its portfolio companies post investment. In particular, the network of peer funds supports portfolio companies in their effort to establish presence outside Israel.

Some of the venture funds with which Yozma has been developing working relationships are: Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Morgan Stanley private equity, OrbiMed, Sequoia Capital, Skypoint Capital, Intel Venture and Infineon Venture. Yozma maintains direct person-to-person contact, and open-channel communications with its network.

Prior to founding Yozma in 1993, Mr. Yigal Erlich was the Chief Scientist of the state of Israel between 1984 to 1992. In this capacity, Mr. Erlich and Mr. Boaz Goldcsmidt who worked with him, supervised investments in hundreds of startup companies.

As a result, the core Yozma team gained a reputation for excellence nationwide and became intimately familiar with most of the key players in the local industry. This is one of the factors that helped create a brand name recognition for Yozma in Israel and a superior deal flow.

Yozma has developed tight links with a wide network of more than twenty technology incubators spread throughout Israel.

The close working relationships with the incubators is a natural continuation of the active role Yozma’s senior members took in establishing the Israeli program of Industrial and Technology Incubators which employed over 1,500 scientists in 300 projects nationwide. As a result, Yozma has been able to scan the incubators on an ongoing basis and cherry-pick promising business opportunities.