We Are (Still) Investing đ
Let's be honest - everything has already been said about the downturn. A lot of smart and well-known industry insiders such as Craft Ventures, Sequoia, a16z, and more have pitched in with their takes and we wonât offer another original analysis of why it all happened, whether itâs going to get worse; and we donât have our own sophisticated prediction of how long the situation will last (12m? 18m?? longer???).
In this atmosphere of uncertainty, what we can say with confidence is that WE ARE STILL INVESTING. We continue to actively look for promising pre-seed stage Israeli startups.
Although the correction is likely to trickle down and affect just about all stakeholders in the ecosystem, we believe that in early-stage investing, the fundamentals still hold true. Pre-seed investing is (still) about exceptional mission-driven teams with unique product approaches and business models addressing huge and growing market opportunities at the right time.
What has changed is that the bar for raising a seed round has been raised, with companies being required to show more traction than before. This means that while bootstrapping for a few months before raising a seed might have made sense in 2021, pre-seed founders in 2022 will need to raise capital earlier to fuel their jetpack in order to ensure they gain enough momentum and validation and hit the milestones seed investors expect to see before pulling the trigger.
The funding environment might have changed, but the real-world problems and opportunities waiting for new startups to solve arenât going anywhere - in fact, theyâve become more pressing than ever. If youâre an early-stage founder working on something compelling weâre here to potentially lead or join your first round. Our doors are open and we would love to buy you coffee â
**Check out **Layoffs.org.il - a special initiative by our âwizard in residenceâ Yoav Anaki, Junior Partner at fresh.fund who together with our colleagues from Angular Ventures built an aggregator for tracking recent layoffs in Israeli tech companies and matching people who were impacted by it, with companies who are actively recruiting.
đ„ł Welcome to our Portfolio
Firmus - Founded by Shir, Firmus empowers contractors to effectively assess design completeness, correctness, and readiness for construction, so they can bid and build with confidence. Firmus applies advanced computer vision techniques to analyze construction blueprints and other documents and automatically uncover design issues â such as missing or incorrect information â that often lead to inaccurate pricing estimates, onsite rework, project delays, scheduling conflicts, and legal claims. Read more about the round.
Slyod - Co-founded by Ăyvind, Andreas, and Avi, Sloyd enables users to generate 3D models in a fast and simple way. It combines procedural generation and machine learning to provide many variations of objects and styles and is able to generate a whole city in runtime. Their initial go-to-market is indie developers and they plan to expand to larger gaming studios and metaverse creators in the future. Read more about the round (in Norwegian!)
Carbon Blue - Co-founded by Iddo and Dan, Carbon Blue is Carbon Dioxide Removal (âCDRâ) startup developing a scalable, economical, and energy-efficient âocean-captureâ method for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The startup aims to become one of the leading global players in helping the world reach net-zero and achieve its climate goals.
đ« Portfolio Highlights
Major news at **Remilk!** The company recently announced its plans to build the worldâs largest precision fermentation facility (in Denmark) and received a regulatory green light, in the form of a self-affirmed GRAS (generally recognized as safe) approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for selling non-animal, real dairy protein in the USA. Also - check out the article published in Sifted on âthe lab-grown breakfastâ.
Payem is presenting an ideal âemployee lunch cardsâ alternative - theyâre not taking additional commissions from the restaurants.
Visitt has been busy expanding its partnership network closing deals with leading US-based real-estate players such as LXP Industrial Trust, Monarch Realty Group and K&R Realty Management. Also - listen to Visittâs Head of Product, Jonathan Kroll speaking about digital transformation in the real estate industry, featured in the Beyond Rent podcast.
AccSense shared its take on redefining âgangsâ in the age of ransomware and critical assets targeted as collateral.
Zorba was featured in Tech12âs special section on up-and-rising Israeli startups.
ITC showcased in the annual EcoMotion conference how they are reducing traffic jams with AI by collecting real-time data from existing road cameras and manipulating traffic lights based on vehicle flows.
GiantLeapâs co-founder Ori Hofnung was interviewed about his entrepreneurial journey and on building the worldâs first child development evaluation that can be conducted by parents.
đ Students Love Startups
We have always believed that universities and colleges in Israel are ideal environments for meeting co-founders, starting a startup, and generally cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset.
We're glad to share our new âUniversity Startup Landscapeâ project in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) & DreamIt revealing new and exciting data on the different Israeli universities' startup ecosystems.
The first one is focused on Reichman University (IDC Herzliya) with more to come. Read our post about it and donât miss this article published in Tech12 covering this project.
**Startups that were founded by students, researchers or within the academic ecosystem and interested in updating their information, are invited to fill out this form
**Israeli students, faculty members, and university entrepreneurship centers leaders, who are interested in conducting a similar mapping in their academic institution are invited to reach out to us via email: contact@startup-mapping.com
đȘ Portfolio Job Opportunities
Peech is looking for a product designer, DevOps engineer, CS manager, and more {EXPLORE HERE}
Lexense is looking for developers, CS managers, marketers, and a product manager {EXPLORE MORE}
MDI Health is looking for developers a clinical CS manager and a senior marketing manager {EXPLORE MORE}
Payem is looking for developers (full-stack, front-end, back-end..) and more {EXPLORE HERE}
Remilk has various lab and research-related roles open {EXPLORE HERE}
Wisor is looking for a head of product and a backend developer {EXPLORE HERE}
Nas Academy is looking for a head of engineering, product manager, growth marketing manager and more {EXPLORE HERE}
Joyned is looking for an SDR, CS manager, and a data analyst {EXPLORE HERE}
đ Fresh Opportunities & Links
PLANETech is organizing its first global climate tech conference in Tel Aviv {MORE DETAILS}
Nofar Schnider, Principal at StageOne Ventures, shares the story of the NuVc community she has co-founded, a powerful community of VC professionals that weâre happy to be a part of. {READ}
A special video covering historical artifacts that helped build the economy of what would become the State of Israel. Special thanks to David Matlow for sharing. {WATCH}
Our favorite âdownturn tweetâ by Logan Bartlett from RedPoint Ventures
The End.
fresh.fund is an Israeli venture fund investing in pre-seed stage startups across segments and verticals. We invest up to $1,000,000, often as the first institutional investors, and provide follow-on funding up until Round A.
To date we've invested in over 25 startups, 90% of which have gone on to raise follow-on funding from top-tier investors both in Israel and abroad, including Lightspeed, Pitango, NFX, LocalGlobe, Graph Ventures, Vertex, CPT Capital, YC, and others.Â
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