The Israel venture capital market continues to be tough. Israel Seed Partners has announced its decision not to continue preparations for raising a fifth fund, and has also announced that two general partners, Jonathan Medved and Michael Eisenberg, are leaving. The announcement follows similar announcement recently from Concord Ventures and Evergreen Partners' secondary fund, Harvest Fund.
Israel Seed Partner said that Neil Cohen, together with partners Daniel Chinn and Sigal Widman, would continue to manage the firm and its active portfolio of companies.
Jonathan Medved will participate in setting up a new start-up company, while Michael Eisenberg is joining Benchmark Capital. Eisenberg will manage the investment of the $250 million raised for the Benchmark Israel II fund.
Israel Seed Partners was founded in 1995, and has managed a total of $262 million in four venture capital funds. The firm has not managed to make substantial exits in the past few years, apart from Shopping.com (sold to eBay a week ago, shortly after its IPO), and Gurunet. According to the annual report for 2004 recently published by California Employees’ Retirement System's (CalPERS), Israel Seed Partners was the worst performing of six venture capital funds in which CalPERS invested. Since the period to which that report relates (the year to September 30, 2004), the firm's return has been boosted by three exits: the IPOs of Shopping.com and Gurunet, and the sale of Native Networks to Alcatel.
Besides Shopping,com, Gurunet, and Native Networks, Israel Seed Partners has invested in Compugen (Nasdaq: CGEN; TASE: CGEN), Tradeum (bought by VerticalNET), and Business Layers (bought by Netegrity/Computer Associates).
Israel seed Partners' current investments include Cyota, Broadlight, Finjan, Digital Fuel, Raysat, Ultrashape, and Go Networks.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on June 9, 2005