00:00 My name is Avi Ayal, I'm the co-founder and managing partner of Entree Capital.
00:08 We're a venture capital firm.
00:10 I'm based in Tel Aviv and we have offices in London, Tel Aviv and New York.
00:16 We're not first time investors, we've been doing this for many years and I think that
00:24 our own personal experiences have given us a certain view of the world and a view of
00:32 how we would like to run our businesses and we try to impart that knowledge to the founders
00:39 and those that we work together with and we hope that that makes a difference to them.
00:47 My background is, I came from a lower middle class family.
00:52 I had to pay my way through college and before.
00:57 I started my first business when I went to university and studied engineering and I used
01:02 that to pay my way through university and I think that that's kind of the background
01:10 that I've had and the way that I've worked and always been hungry and I think that's
01:15 what we try to do at Entree.
01:18 When we meet founders, we don't believe in a pitch, we believe in a process and getting
01:26 to know each other.
01:29 We look towards people that we want to be comfortable working with over a longer period
01:33 of time and again, we prefer directness, we prefer folks that have an interesting story,
01:41 things where they've overcome a certain hardship or they've worked their way into a position
01:48 or to a solution and to an opportunity.
01:53 We feel that our biggest successes are the businesses that we've been in the longest
01:58 and so it's a marriage that one needs to work at and so a lot of the meetings and the way
02:07 the founders answer the questions and the level of honesty and thoughtfulness they put
02:13 into it will get us to a fair amount of comfort.
02:18 Twenty years ago when I was raising money for my companies, it was a very old school
02:24 approach, very investment banking type driven.
02:28 A decade ago when we started Entree Capital, it was driven by an understanding of the technology
02:40 in depth and what could be, imagination and things like that but still very much tied
02:46 to that investment traditional way of evaluating companies and understanding them and I feel
02:55 that in the last couple of years, the pendulum has swung probably a bit too far into the
03:00 imagination and into the every business is a unicorn, every business can be huge and
03:09 I think that folks with less experience came into the market and I think it betrayed some
03:16 of the fundamentals that existed 10 or 20 years ago and in the last year or two, I think
03:23 a lot of that's returned and it is a generalization and there were firms on both sides, both extremes
03:30 of this argument but I think that what we'll see is fewer venture firms over the next 10
03:39 years with a lot more due diligence and a lot more expectation of financial and other
03:50 business driven metrics at an earlier stage.
03:59 I think October 7th was a tragedy, literally a genocide and in many respects a wake up
04:08 call not just for Israel but for the rest of the world.
04:12 As regards our funds specifically, I'm extremely grateful for the people that we have around
04:20 us who stepped up above and beyond.
04:26 Some people were drafted, some folks undertook unbelievable volunteer projects.
04:33 We've all worked double hours to help our portfolio, to deal with where there's been
04:41 tragedy, to deal with those folks who've been affected and I think we've all contributed
04:48 and feel like we, even though we've done a lot like everyone else, everyone feels they
04:52 should do more.
04:53 By and large I think it's a small event in the next five decades of companies and invent
05:05 things and everything else but I think it's been a big wake up call and I think it's mobilized
05:12 and brought Israel as an ecosystem and by and large Israel as a country back together
05:22 again in conversation of its values and what they want, what the country needs.
05:35 Thank you for including me in the list a number of times now and it's a nice reward for our
05:43 firm to know that the work that we all do together results in some recognition and we
05:52 feel that it's an opportunity that certainly in this year and at this time that Israel
06:01 is on the map and that as a venture firm which is rooted in Israel we can do and do continue
06:10 to do business both in Israel and outside Israel and that even in the darkest times
06:17 there's a ray of light and hopefully we can take this as a signal to other firms and to
06:26 other founders to say there's a value system and there's a certain way of doing things
06:31 and hopefully that will get us our fair share of success.
06:35 Thank you.
06:36 [END]
