Author: Michal Lipsitz

Making the Rounds: What investors need to know about the different stages of startup funding

Making the Rounds: What investors need to know about the different stages of startup funding

Apr 10, 2014 | ,

Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp last month marked the largest recorded deal for a venture-capital-backed company in history. While the unprecedented price tag of the purchase was certainly a story in and of itself, what really garnered attention among venture capitalists was that Sequoia Capital was WhatsApp’s lone VC investor.  Although sources differ on the exact stage at which Sequoia first invested in WhatsApp, as well as the exact amount of the initial investment, the general consensus is that the company will reap a return of approximately 50x on an investment made as early as a Series A round of funding. How is it that Sequoia managed to emerge from this deal with profits estimated to be in excess of $3 billion? The answer, though undoubtedly a combination of a variety of factors, is largely based on timing. Jumping back almost three years to April 2011, when WhatsApp had just secured an $8 million investment from Sequoia, the newly-founded messaging service had all of 4,050 reviews for its Blackberry app. To put that into perspective, the Blackberry app now...

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Technology Transfer: The engine driving Israel’s startup industry

Technology Transfer: The engine driving Israel’s startup industry

Nov 27, 2013 | ,

Have you ever wondered how technologies that are developed on university campuses make it out of research labs and into the real world? For the majority of researchers—and particularly for student researchers— the commercialization process can appear to be a slightly daunting task at best and a giant black hole at worst. To help students and faculty utilize their research for commercial purposes, many universities employ a “technology transfer office” (TTO) which acts as a liaison between an academic institution and industry. TTOs are generally experts on patents, research collaborations, licences, and other relevant legal and financial matters. TTO’s and Israel: Together from the start You may have assumed—understandably so—that TTOs only started to spring up in Israel over the last decade, as excitement surrounding the country’s startup scene has skyrocketed. You’d then be surprised to learn that the first Israeli TTO, Yeda, was established at the Weizmann Institute in 1959, just 11 years after the country’s founding. During this period, revolutionary agricultural engineering research that was being conducted at Israeli academic institutions was transferred to kibbutzim and private...

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