Former NBA player Omri Casspi completes $60M raise for Swish Ventures' second Seed fund

Omri Casspi, former NBA player and the founder of Swish Ventures, has raised $60 million for the fund's second Seed stage venture fund. Investors in the fund include Sequoia, pension funds, and over 25 serial entrepreneurs. Swish, which now manages approximately $125 million in assets, includes portfolio companies such as PointFive, Eon, and Upwind.

"In the NBA, I shared a locker room with LeBron and Steph, in high-tech, I'm like a baby learning to crawl"

The fund plans to invest in around 10 startups, with deals ranging from $5 to $7 million per investment. Among the fund's investors are Sequoia, Israeli and American institutional investors, serial entrepreneurs, and the likes of Ophir Ehrlich (Founder of Eon), Gal Ben-David (Founder of PointFive), Amiram Shachar (who sold a company to Netapp and is a co-founder of Upwind), Asaf Ezra (who sold Granulate to Intel), Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael (Co-founders of Armis), Michael Dolinsky, Zohar Alon, and others.

Omri Casspi.

Swish also announced that Dana Alexandrovich is joining as an Operating Partner. In her most recent role, she served as COO of Microsoft in Israel from 2021 and before that led the field of business planning and operation at the company's headquarters with coverage of 80 countries in the Middle East & Africa (three years). Dana joined Microsoft Israel as the VP of Finance and Operations in 2016.

Additionally, a few months ago during the fund's formation stages Ori Striechman joined the investment unit. In his most recent role, Ori served as the Research Department Vice President at Cyberillium, and in the past, he was a member of Israel's youth national chess team.

"We are launching Swish at a time when the importance of the high-tech sector to Israel is maturing. The industry continues to bring foreign investments into the country. We are hands-on working with entrepreneurs on building large and global Israeli companies,” said Casspi. “The high-tech sector serves as an ambassador for Israel during these challenging times. The network of connections within the industry enabled us to initiate the visit of Elon Musk to Israel, one of the most influential people in the world. We have also partnered with Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Meta and a board member of some of the largest companies in the U.S., to expose facts about Hamas' crimes that she has shared worldwide. Through the industry's network, we had the privilege of participating in raising significant donations for the rehabilitation of communities in the Gaza perimeter. The high-tech infrastructure allows us to serve national interests and is more important than ever."