Moneta Seeds Venture Capital announced today that it has concluded the initial closing of its fund raising. The fund manages $20M that it plans to invest in about 20 seed and pre-seed stage startups in the fields of: Fintech (Financial Technology), Cyber security, Information Technology, Big Data and Analytics platforms.
The fund managers, Adoram Gaash and Meirav Har Noy, are both experienced Technology investors with a successful track record of two decades in the seed investments arena. Adoram founded his first venture capital, Stageone Ventures in 2001 after he sold Radwiz that he founded and managed during the 90’s. He was also one of the owners of Labone Innovations, a government support Incubator that has created significant success stories. Meirav has worked for many years at Intel Capital and Apax partners, and recorded some meaningful success stories as an investor. She later managed one of Israel’s technology incubators.
Moneta offers two types of investment models: (i) an early stage lead investor of $1M in established teams who seek seed-funding, and (ii) a pre-seed in-house acceleration that is located in the fund’s premises that were designed to host 4 new ventures every 6 Months. The fund managers intend to take a hands-on approach and seat on the startups boards to guide its build-up process.
Another unique component in its model, is Moneta seeds’ syndication method that is based on a set of pre-organized strategic co-investments agreements that it has reached with leading corporations including Banks and blue chip vendors. Adding the co-investors to Moneta’s led rounds will be one of the main strengths of the fund’s investments thesis.
In addition, Moneta seeds has announced that it will sponsor and operate the prestigious SLP (Startup Leadership program) entrepreneurship training program. The SLP is an international program with a curriculum and content that is guided and controlled from USA (originally created at Harvard University). Meirav Har Noy, Moneta Seeds’ managing partner, brought the program to Israel in 2012 and admits 40 new entrepreneurship teams every year. During the last 3 years, more than 70% of the teams managed to raise funding and build their companies.
