Who will fill Nadav Zafrir's big shoes at Team8?

The departure of Nadav Zafrir, founder and managing partner of Team8, to the position of CEO of Check Point is a significant blow to the group he founded in 2014 along with Liran Grinberg and Israel Grimberg, who is currently only partially active in the group. Nadav is not only one of the founders but also the face of the group. The mythical Commander of Unit 8200 and a graduate of Sayeret Matkal (General Staff Reconnaissance Unit).

In the decade of his activity at Team8, Zafrir was instrumental in establishing the group as one of the most significant entities in the cyber field in Israel. His personal charm and communicative openness allowed the group to gain maximum exposure and quickly connect to the local industry. Currently, the group does not intend to appoint another executive in his place, but if the need for another dominant figure arises, an executive will be added.

Nadav Zafrir.

Team8 executive chairman and serial entrepreneur Yuval Shachar believes that Zafrir's departure is significant, but the machine that has been built since the company's founding will continue to operate as usual even after he leaves. The senior members of the group after Zafrir's retirement in early December will be Rakefet Russak-Aminoach in the fintech field, Varda Shalev, Managing Partner at Team8 Health, Sarit Piron, co-director of Team8, and Liran Grinberg, a co-founder who led the cyber investments alongside Zafrir.

Team8 was established in 2014 with a different model from the venture capital funds that existed until then. It connects entrepreneurs, identifies major problems in the market, and locates opportunities for developing significant solutions. Team8 develops ideas for establishing innovative companies alongside entrepreneurs and accompanies them in the process from the starting point. The support includes strategic and business planning, research, marketing, human resources, talent recruitment, marketing strategy, business development, and more with over 100 professionals.

Alongside his duties in the group, Zafrir was the chairman and co-founder of Claroty and serves as the chairman of SolarEdge. During his activity in the group, he was involved in leading Team8's three fundraising rounds in the cyber and data funds: the first fund with $42 million, the second fund with $85 million, and the third fund with $110 million. Team8 recently raised $500 million, bringing its total assets under management to over $1 billion.

In a conversation with Calcalist, the chairman of Team8, Yuval Shachar, said, "We have built a different operational model here. We have 90 employees who come every day to build companies. We built a machine that builds companies. With us, it is one partnership that manages the whole machine, and it has become bigger than all of us. We build companies in cyber, fintech, digital health, and more. Each field has a dedicated team, and there is a central team that supports everything and makes it possible to create companies in all fields."

According to Shachar, "Nadav is very significant in everything that happened in the group. He has many achievements and deserves a lot of recognition for leading the path that brought us here. But I estimate that tomorrow morning we will not feel a fundamental change. Our name is very strong, and there are many senior professionals who want to be part of the group. We have leading people even after Nadav. As the chairman of the group, I feel that we have room to build something that we haven't built so far."

Since its establishment, Team8 has built and invested in 22 companies under the model it developed and invested in 22 more companies under the venture capital model in a fund led by Liran Grinberg and Sarit Piron. Of the technology companies it has built and invested in over the past decade, Team8 has recorded ten exits.