A Conversation With JVP, One of Israel’s Biggest Venture Funds

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During our visit to Israel, BOOM visited the media quarters of JVP – one of Israel’s biggest venture fund. We spoke to Uri Adoni, on the kind of startups they invest in and the lessons learnt after investing two decades in the business.

JVP stands for Jerusalem Venture Partners and is headquartered in, as the names hints - in Jerusalem. The firm was the brainchild of Erel Margalit and was founded in 1993. It today, ranks 10^th among the world’s top venture funds and it has honed its investing strategies over two decades with successful exits of close to $18 billion. The fund has raised close to a $1 billion to date.

The firm specializes in early stage (seed and round A) startup investments. The firm goes in with $1-1.5 million in funding and is currently focusing on media technology companies and cyber-security. This focus in cyber-security brought it to the attention of Chinese giant Alibaba, earlier this year. Alibaba went on to invest in JVP and the reason provided was, “Due to JVP’s attractive portfolio which includes enterprise security software makers like CyberArk and CyActive (which was recently purchased by PayPal)”.

JVP also runs an incubator program that focuses on cyber-security startups. It has offices New York, New York; London, United Kingdom; Tokyo, Japan; and Shanghai, China.