“It’s the best time to be in this business and definitely the best time to be an entrepreneur”

“The hottest trend is how everything is becoming so fast,” said Renana Ashkenazi, General Partner at Grove Ventures in her opening remarks at the Poalim Hi-Tech and Calcalist Roadshow. Speaking with James Spiro at the event, VC leaders from OurCrowd, Grove Ventures, Team8, and Glilot Capital joined a panel to discuss some of the most interesting trends in the industry.

She continued: “In 2021 we’ve seen this rapid-fire dealmaking that’s changing how we all do business, how we evaluate companies, how we close deals, that’s one thing. The other is who’s playing the game and that’s another super hot trend where you used to see venture being done by venture, and now venture is being done by a lot of other types of players.”

According to Kobi Samboursky, Founder and Managing Partner at Glilot Capital, the trend is creating almost a Golden Era-type feeling. “I’ve been an entrepreneur at a VC now for many years, it’s definitely the best time ever to be in this business and definitely the best time to be an entrepreneur. We’re seeing a boom in the industry like never before in terms of the speed of investment of money, but most importantly the number of companies that have a chance to become big and to make an impact. We saw it last year with 10 Israeli IPOs and the numbers will continue to rise. I think we are in a perfect place in terms of the local ecosystem which is booming, and it’s really super exciting. It’s the best time ever to be in this business.”

For Liran Grinberg, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Team8, entrepreneurs have different motivations than only a few years ago. “The Israeli entrepreneur became more experienced, talented, and really wants to build big companies in a way that is very different from what we had a few years back. The skillsets around not only the product and technology but the business parts of running a startup have really matured in the ecosystem in getting people together. We see more entrepreneurs who are ambitious to build big companies and not just quick exits, which is phenomenal for our industry.”

Laly David, Partner, Head of Business Development at OurCrowd, summed it up nicely: “There are three things: it’s the different types of players, it’s the pace, and it’s the nature of the entrepreneur.”

According to David, the fact that most meetings took place virtually helped increase the pace of meetings and deals. “The pace, and the fact that everything has been done virtually for a while, has been so quick. A two-minute minute delay for a Zoom meeting is like being late. Think about traffic before and getting to the conference room and the setting up of a meeting. Now everything is done so quickly and so the pace is incredible.”

You can watch the entire exchange in the video above.