“Early-stage investing is about people. That hasn't changed with AI”

“Early-stage investing is about people. That hasn't changed with AI,” said Dr. Miri Fenton, Investor at Maverick Ventures Israel. “As lead time disappears and competitive landscapes change faster than ever, resilience, adaptation, strong vision, and hard work are the key traits we're looking for. The best founders attract talent, pivot fast, and sell early. These are usually the factors that boost valuation.”

Fenton joined CTech for its VC AI Survey to share insights about the adoption of AI, both in everyday use and when considering investment opportunities. The fund invests across diverse industries to focus on finding game-changing products created by unique teams.

“We think this is a great time to be investing in Israeli founders. We have made five investments in the past 18 months and are continuing to deploy capital to AI native, early-stage Israeli startups,” she added.

You can read more below:

Fund ID
Name and Title: Miri Fenton, Investor
Fund Name: Maverick Ventures Israel
Founding Team: Yaron Carni, Founder, Michel Abadi
Founding Year: 2015
Investment Stage: Seed to Series A
e disappears and competitive landscapes change faster than ever, resilience, adaptation, strong vision, and hard work are the key traits we're looking for. The best founders attract talent, pivot fast, and sell early. These are usually the factors that boost valuation.

What financial risks do you associate with investing in AI companies, beyond the usual technological risks?

We try to avoid investing in startups that will have high infrastructure costs. We also avoid startups with data dependencies. We look for startups that will be able to build unique data sets through serving customers. We believe there are significant wins to be made by AI startups in regulated industries, though GTM in these industries is often difficult to navigate for early-stage startups.

Do you focus on particular subdomains within AI?

We focused on the founders and the markets they're addressing, more than the technology they're using to get there. We assume that the tech tools our founders are deploying now will change significantly within the lifetime of our fund. We are looking for people who can adopt new waves of emerging tech to enhance the solutions they offer customers.

How do you view AI’s impact on traditional industries? Are there specific AI technologies you believe will be especially transformative in certain sectors?

We believe that for AI to be impactful in highly regulated industries and/or use cases where high accuracy is essential, machine unlearning will become central. Being able to alter the data input to models without retraining and making AI models "forget" certain data points will fuel widespread adoption in critical use cases. This is why we led Hirundo's seed round.

What specific AI trends in Israel do you see as having strong exit potential in the next five years? Are there niches where you believe Israeli startups particularly excel?

B Investment Sectors: AI, FinTech, Compute, SaaS, HW, Defense,

On a scale of 1 to 10, how has AI impacted your fund’s operations over the past year - specifically in terms of the day-to-day work of the fund's partners and team members?

7 - Using note-taking tools that accurately summarize and create action items for meetings in Hebrew is a game-changer. We're still using Affinity and have more work to do to automate workflows, including with LinkedIn.

Have you already had any significant exits from AI companies? If so, what were the key characteristics of those companies?

Not yet.

Is identifying promising AI startups different from evaluating companies in your more traditional investment domains? If so, how does that difference manifest?

From the current fund, we have invested across deep tech (including hardware), AI, and traditional B2B SaaS. We assume that most AI functionality is going to be commoditized. The differentiation we're looking for is focused on unique access to data, transforming traditional industries, and companies with defensible tech (this is usually compute hardware).

What specific financial performance indicators (KPIs) do you examine when assessing a potential AI company? Are there any AI-specific metrics you consider particularly important?

Because we are early-stage investors, and because AI metrics are changing very fast, we are focused on the founding team and their target market. We're looking for founders who are running fast to build AI native companies, who can execute, and have the experience to target a particular pain point for customers.

How do you approach the valuation of early-stage AI startups, which often lack significant revenues but possess strong technological potential?

Early-stage investing is about people. That hasn't changed with AI. As lead timeyond cyber, we see big potential for AI-enabled defensetech. Both core defensetech and AI startups that address the challenges of deploying AI in highly regulated industries or in use cases where accuracy is mission-critical.

Are there gaps or missing segments in the Israeli AI landscape that you’ve identified? What types of AI founders are you especially looking to back right now in Israel?

We're looking to back founders tackling new markets that are not overly competitive. Many traditional and regulated industries are ripe for transformation, often with large budgets and a lack of specific tooling. We are looking for teams with enough AI tech experience but who have also experienced particular pain points outside of tech companies and the Israeli tech industry.

e disappears and competitive landscapes change faster than ever, resilience, adaptation, strong vision, and hard work are the key traits we're looking for. The best founders attract talent, pivot fast, and sell early. These are usually the factors that boost valuation.

What financial risks do you associate with investing in AI companies, beyond the usual technological risks?

We try to avoid investing in startups that will have high infrastructure costs. We also avoid startups with data dependencies. We look for startups that will be able to build unique data sets through serving customers. We believe there are significant wins to be made by AI startups in regulated industries, though GTM in these industries is often difficult to navigate for early-stage startups.

Do you focus on particular subdomains within AI?

We focused on the founders and the markets they're addressing, more than the technology they're using to get there. We assume that the tech tools our founders are deploying now will change significantly within the lifetime of our fund. We are looking for people who can adopt new waves of emerging tech to enhance the solutions they offer customers.

How do you view AI’s impact on traditional industries? Are there specific AI technologies you believe will be especially transformative in certain sectors?

We believe that for AI to be impactful in highly regulated industries and/or use cases where high accuracy is essential, machine unlearning will become central. Being able to alter the data input to models without retraining and making AI models "forget" certain data points will fuel widespread adoption in critical use cases. This is why we led Hirundo's seed round.

What specific AI trends in Israel do you see as having strong exit potential in the next five years? Are there niches where you believe Israeli startups particularly excel?

Beyond cyber, we see big potential for AI-enabled defensetech. Both core defensetech and AI startups that address the challenges of deploying AI in highly regulated industries or in use cases where accuracy is mission-critical.

Are there gaps or missing segments in the Israeli AI landscape that you’ve identified? What types of AI founders are you especially looking to back right now in Israel?

We're looking to back founders tackling new markets that are not overly competitive. Many traditional and regulated industries are ripe for transformation, often with large budgets and a lack of specific tooling. We are looking for teams with enough AI tech experience but who have also experienced particular pain points outside of tech companies and the Israeli tech industry.