29 Jun AICC Guest VC-Expert Zeev Holtzman @ AICC Get-Together
On the 29th of June, the Austrian Israeli Chamber of Commerce (AICC), in cooperation with the Israeli embassy and the Israeli Trade Centre, invited to an evening get-together with VC-expert Zeev Holtzmann. The guest of honour was Ambassador Talya Lador-Fresher.
In his keynote, Zeev Holtzmann, founder and CEO of Giza Venture Capital, emphasized the enormous potential of Israeli Start-ups and the Israeli technology sector. According to him, nearly 1000 start-ups are founded in Israel each year – making Israel the “global market leader” for innovations. Strong arguments for the Israeli market are the executed entrepreneurship, highly qualified workers and the targeted technological support by the government. Around 100 Israeli companies have already been listed on the NASDAQ.
Chinese companies are currently making additional investments in the Israeli area as well. The expert stated this phaenomenon with the restrictions imposed by the United States and the fact that Israel possesses an enterprise density in technological start-ups nearly as big as the Silicon Valley (around 8000 firms). Thereby, Lenovo, Alibaba and Huawei rank among the best best-known companies, partly also being engaged in local R&D centres.
Talking about his business in Venture Capital, Zeev Holtzann refers to it as a “risky business”, because around 60% of the investments are not leading to a successful exit. Therefore it is even more important to discover true success stories and help them to achieve a so called “homerun”.
Giza Venture Capital is one of the leading Venture Capital firms in Israel and being active in the market for over 20 years now. The company focuses on “seed investments” – funding start-ups in the early stages of their developments. As a leader in the industry, Giza Venture Capital already helped 43 Israeli start-ups to achieve a successful exit with a total value of over 8 billion US-Dollars. In his speech, Zeev Holtzmann especially emphasised the “State of the Art” technologies of Israel and the enormous potential of the Israeli economy. Thereby he quoted Bill Gates, who also describes Israel as a “major player” in the high-tech world.
