Insight Partners, one of the best known private equity firms in the US tech industry, has appointed a new partner for their investments in Israel. Experienced investment manager Daniel Aronovitz has been appointed as a partner and will manager investments in Israel alongside Liad Agmon, the former Dynamic Yield CEO, who joined three years ago as managing director, and Insight Partners cofounder and managing director Jeff Horing.
When Aronovitz immigrated to Israel five years ago, leaving behind his comfortable life in Long Island, he was a relatively young investment manager who came to open Insight Partners office in Israel. Nothing that Aronovitz had done previously until then - a standard childhood in Long Island, business administration studies at New York University, summer internships at financial giants in Manhattan and his first job as an analyst at Insight, prepared him for what would happen just a year after reaching Israel.
The fund, managed by Horing, became the most active investor in Israel's tech sector for several years, as it rode the wave of huge investments of the Covid years and low interest rates. After years of investing from afar, Insight became a private equity fund that transformed into a venture capital fund and became a well-oiled investment machine.
One of the most outstanding investment funds in Israel
Horing, who has been investing in Israel since 2000, had enjoyed successes like Wix, Monday.com, SentinelOne, JFrog and WalkMe. He would come to Israel often and even bought an apartment in Herzliya, and it was Aronovitz who helped locate the companies, research them, and assisted with the deals. In 2021 and 2022, Insight and another fund called Tiger Global, which has since disappeared from the Israeli landscape, were the most active investors in the country.
During these time Insight achieved quite a few successes. It is one of the biggest shareholders in Wiz, has major investments in Island and Sempris, and has led investments in companies that brought it a handsome exits and profits, including Granolite, which was sold to Intel for $650 million; Own, which was sold to Salesforce for $2 billion; and Deci and Run:ai, which were sold to Nvidia for about $1 billion.
The fund also had a few setbacks. It neglected due diligence before investing in the startup Joonko, which turned out to be a scam, fell out with the founder of OpenWeb, and invested in the grocery delivery company Avo, which promised fast deliveries to offices and operated at huge losses. In total, Insight has invested in 125 Israeli companies, of which 100 are still active. After two years as the most active fund in Israel, Insight took its foot off the gas and lost its status as the most active investor in Israel. A survey by IVC, KPMG, and Gornitzky, found that Insight was only ranked as the fourth most active foreign investor in Israel in 2023, and although the official ranking for last year has not yet been published, its number of first-time investments does not exceed that of the previous year (five new investments per year).
After binging on investments, the interest rate hikes and ensuing crisis that began in March 2022, left Insight with investments in unicorns that were accustomed to raising capital several times a year, with no imminent funding horizon and an inflated valuation. When Liad Agmon was appointed as a managing director at the fund in 2022, he likened himself to someone who come into "a messy room after the party was over," which characterized the tech industry in Israel at the time.
The matchmaker in the huge exit with Nvidia
In an interview with Globes, Aronovitz, Insight's first representative in Israel, recalls, "During the more difficult times, we took a step back, as this was a global trend. We focused on helping the existing portfolio of companies and supporting their needs. We continued to invest in existing companies and in the past two years, we have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Israel. Ultimately, we saw quite a few strategic exits last year, which makes us feel good about 2025."
By the term "strategic exits," Aronovitz is probably referring to the role Insight played in Nvidia's acquisition of three companies last year, two of which were Israeli. Aronovitz served as part of the investment team at Israeli startup Run:ai, which developed an operating system for graphics processors and was sold with Deci for a combined $1.1 billion to the chip giant. "Globes" understands that senior executives from Insight's investment teams and its portfolio companies met with Nvidia executives, which led to the acquisition.
Another exit in which Aronovitz was involved was last year's acquisition of Own (formerly OwnBackup), which was sold to Salesforce for $1.9 billion.
"We poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Israel"
What mistakes did you make and what lessons have you learned?
"We, as a fund, look much more critically at the entry price of an investment. We ask ourselves how big that company can be and what its price will ultimately be when it is sold," replies Aronovitz. "In some cases, the reason for the decline in investments was to let the market go through a kind of reboot. But even if you look at our activity in the last two years, we still poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Israel.
"In 2024 alone, we invested in total in over 25 Israeli companies. Of course, this also includes our portfolio companies, but a big part of the thesis we promote in Israel is to continue to be involved in companies no matter what stage they are at."
To stress Insight's role in the Israeli tech story, Aronovitz reveals that when he moved to the country at the end of 2019, Insight had invested $700 million in local companies by then. "Now, 5 years later, that amount stands at over $5.8 billion." According to the research website PitchBook, the fund has raised about $98 billion to date, so its total investments in Israel amount to over 6% of the total capital it has raised.
Many startups don't have a strategy
The appointment of Aronovitz as a second partner in the Israeli office symbolizes the growth of the fund in Israel, but perhaps also necessarily a preference by Jeff Horing, until recently a partner who would come to Israel very often, to leave more of the activity here in other hands.
Horing himself sits on the boards of directors of companies such as Wiz, Island, Armis, Bringg and OpenWeb. Despite its many investments, including in early stage companies, it is difficult not to forget that Insight is originally a private equity fund. As such, Aronovitz notes, it seeks deals to acquire control (buyout) in Israeli companies, as it did in the cases of Armis and Checkmarx, which it acquired for $84 million and sold for $1.15 billion.
"There are many Israeli startups that want to go through a liquidity event, but they don't have a real strategy. But if a financial entity with flexible capital like Insight can come in and provide the liquidity, then we can provide returns to early investors and take the company to new heights. This will be a big focus for us in Israel in the near future."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 25, 2025.
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