Sequoia Capital today announced that it completed fundraising for its first Israeli venture capital fund, securing $150 million.
This is Sequoia Capital's only fund outside of the Silicon Valley. Sequoia Capital, one of the most successful venture capital funds in America, has established and invested in companies such as Yahoo!, Oracle, Cisco and Apple, which became global leaders in their fields. Since the fund's establishment in the early 1970s, 500 of its portfolio companies have had successful exits, 200 of which became public companies whose combined value stands at 12% of the market value of NASDAQ-listed companies. The others were acquired by other companies.
Sequoia Capital Israel is being managed by two of the fund's 14 general partners: Shmuel (Shmil) Levy, the former president of Lucent's Data Communications system division and CEO of Lannet which was acquired by Lucent, and Haim Sadger, who has managed Sequoia Capital's Israeli investments for the last two years and is a former member of Intel's Business Development team. The fund's offices are located in Herzliya.
According to Michael Moritz, general Partner of Sequoia Capital, "Israel is the second Silicon Valley and it is therefore the only other place we have chosen to expand our activities."
Levy, who recently joined Sequoia Capital as general partner, said, "Sequoia Capital will aid Israeli portfolio companies in penetrating the American market, the most important and hard-to-penetrate market. For this, Sequoia has a unique ability due to its network of leading American companies and its American partners' connections. The partners personally evaluate potential Israeli investments, and help matching initiatives to the needs of the market, establishing contacts with key customers and in recruiting American employees."
Sadger said, "The $150 million we have raised is available for new investments in Israel. We plan to focus on investments in seed and early-stage companies in the telecommunications, chip design and software industries. Shmil and I will personally evaluate potential investments."
Published by Israel's Business Arena March 7, 2001.