"We employ 50 people to support startups in sales, marketing, and recruiting"

Liran Grinberg is the co-founder of venture group Team8 and the Managing Partner of its investment fund, Team8 Capital, where he invests in enterprise technology, cybersecurity, data and AI companies. Liran co-founded Team8 in 2014, initially focusing on the design of Team8’s unique company-building Foundry model. He worked closely with founding teams on the ideation of Team8’s first companies, including Curv which was acquired by PayPal, Portshift which was acquired by Cisco, Sygnia which was acquired by Temasek for $250M, and Claroty which is backed with $100M in funding, alongside Illusive Networks, Hysolate and more. Liran then transitioned to build and lead Team8’s Go-to-Market Group across its marketing, business development and market research functions, alongside the formation of the “Team8 Village,” a tight knit community of hundreds of C-level executives from the world’s leading enterprises. Having led engineering teams at 8200 and did product management roles at two unicorns (Conduit, eToro), Liran brings his diverse background in engineering, product management, go-to-market and company-building, into investing in new companies and working with portfolio companies to accelerate their success.

 

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Did you expect Team 8 to be what it is today?

We're an ambitious group, but I don't think when we started seven years ago, we knew where it would be today. We were always thinking of things differently and started with a unique model of how we form companies ... We didn't know it would become the venture group that it is today. We didn't know the sectors that it would develop into, but it's very exciting. It's been a hell of seven years.

When I was in 8200, I kept thinking back to Liran’s story, that after the Army, you created a company with the head of the unit and the commander of his own commander. That has to be the most extraordinary way to leave.

That's not exactly the story. I did serve for six years in 8200; I was working under Israel's command, who is one of the co-founders, and Nadav was the commander of the unit altogether. Israel and I bonded, and we worked on projects alongside my official role, and Israel saw in me a good representation of the generation that is not immigrants to the digital world, as he sees himself. In all sorts of big events and important strategic discussions, he brought me as this young generation representation. After I left, I had the opportunity to do product management roles in the private sector before starting Team8. I actually had the opportunity to work for two startups that have become unicorns. I led product management for the APIs and developers platforms at Conduit. I did another role at eToro, the social investment network. My boss was Ronen, who's one of eToro’s founders which 7 years after have joined us as a partner at Team8.

From deep technology engineering to product management to venture building, and now to capital, walk me through this trip. What are you with all of those different traits?

I think I’m a well-rounded person. Nowadays, I think I bring all these diverse backgrounds into investments and working with the companies that I invest in. The Team8 journey, if you look at it from seven years ago, started with a focus on this foundry model that builds new companies from scratch. Our fund was aimed at building five new companies, partnering with amazing entrepreneurs to do the ideation process together and found new companies. We imagined a platform that will take what entrepreneurs did in the garage up until then and make a profession out of it, to make it more methodic, make it more resourceful, and hopefully dramatically increase the chances of success.

How did you arrive at this idea?

First of all, it wasn’t very popular. A lot of people were telling us to go build one successful company before you try to “teach” everyone how to build companies or do a company that builds multiple ones. If you look at how innovation was brought to the world, it's generally three ways. One is through academia, which has this amazing, deep research capabilities but lacks the commercial aspects. There are incumbents and really big enterprises that really understand the customers and have great resources, but are bureaucratic, slow to innovate. There are startup companies, which are agile and laser-focused and dynamic, but very resourceless. We said, “Okay, maybe we'll build a platform that will try to bring the good of all these worlds.” The Team8 platform that we've built actually consists of 10 people doing research, in-house data scientists. We have someone full-time working on extracting research in academia that we can commercialize potentially. We have a very strong go-to-market team and a village of enterprise executives surrounding it. These are the ingredients we wrapped with the process. First, let's come up with this research and find a big problem that we believe, if we solve it, there's a great opportunity behind it. Then, let's do ideation to try to bring technology innovation to solve it, and thereafter really validate it extensively with this village, and then we're ready to spin off a new company to the marketplace.

Take me to the founders’ perspective. How is their experience compared to the average entrepreneur?

Today we have two foundry funds, one partnering with entrepreneurs early on to build cyber and AI companies. The newer one is to do the same in fin-tech, but then we have Team 8 Capital, which invests in companies more like in the regular VC world. Our platform supports companies whether they were incubated within Team8 foundry vehicles or if we invested in them through Team8 Capital. There's definitely a unique process within the foundry vehicle and a unique set of value-add capabilities. We have today a 50-person team, including the partners that bring a lot of domain expertise and company-building experience. The company founders are at the center. This process is also very collaborative with our village. We bring all of our strategic investors around the table. We just summarize all the past few months of research, sharing all the dilemmas. You have all these companies, like Microsoft, Cisco, Walmart, which are Team8 LP investors, but they're also design partners and part of the company building. This process is to really be validation obsessed and to de-risk the process.

It’s a kind of accelerator for the launching of the company. Including these feedback sessions from hard to reach people and having them focus on your company.

We do it one on one, like this new company and Walmart, let’s say, but there are also these gate sessions, when all of them come together. This is where the magic happens. The insights the founding team gets out of these discussions are really phenomenal.

Is it still intimate now that it's grown so much?

It's still a small company, 50 people. But it's not the three or four people that we were. But if you look at the gates, there are still the same 40 people. The way we’ve structured, everyone at Team8 has part of the equity stake in whatever we're building. Each of us has a stake in all the different funds and all the different activities. We all succeed if any of those companies succeed. It's all one brand, one family, working very synergistically together.

Why are you having so much fun? What is the part of it that you say, “Wow, I'm so passionate about this”?

A lot of us in the venture ecosystem generally, we're just very happy, very lucky to be working with super smart people, which is just energizing. I'm very lucky to be working with the partners that I have at Team8. I’m young and much less experienced than all of them. It's never boring and always fun. Never a dull moment, a lot of learning new things, entering new domains, working with incredible people.

Did you ever feel like an imposter as you’re young and joining forces with two figures that are arguably some of the most incredible people in the ecosystem?

We had great chemistry; I think we complement one another. I was really privileged to be working, again, with partners like them. These are people that want to do amazing things. I was privileged to be joining this founding team to build this.

I have a few interesting questions. Your favorite subject in school?

That would be biology; my mom was a biologist. She has a company doing alternative health care products; that’s her life mission.

Your role model?

Elon Musk. It’s inspiring to see how far away and how big his dreams and ambitions go.

Three words you would use to describe yourself?

It’s curious, a team player, and pragmatic.

Michael Matias, Forbes 30 Under 30, is the author of Age is Only an Int: Lessons I Learned as a Young Entrepreneur. He studies Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University, while working as a software engineer at Hippo Insurance and as a Senior Associate at J-Ventures. Matias previously served as an officer in the 8200 unit. 20MinuteLeaders is a tech entrepreneurship interview series featuring one-on-one interviews with fascinating founders, innovators and thought leaders sharing their journeys and experiences.

 

Contributing editors: Michael Matias, Amanda Katz