Tag: M&A

The Startup Nation’s Hall of Fame: The top M&A in Israeli history

The Startup Nation’s Hall of Fame: The top M&A in Israeli history

Jul 30, 2013 | , ,

As the question is posed in Start-up Nation, how could Israel, a country of 7.1 million people, have more high-tech start-ups and a larger venture capital industry per capita than any other country in the world? Authors Senor and Singer attribute the success of the high-tech world to two main factors, including immigration and mandatory military service to maintain the nation’s strong defense system. Moreover, the success of Israel’s high-tech sector has attracted an unprecedented amount of attention from business journalists around the world. The Israeli startup scene is booming. Six out of Israel’s top ten largest high-tech deals occurred in the past three years alone.  According to the IVC Research Center, 2012 was one of Israel’s most successful years for high-tech M&A in the past decade, and the Israeli M&A environment for 2013 has so far been up to par. All of these small (and large) success story are part of and form the miraculous history of the Startup Nation. Here’s a list of all the high-tech M&As in Israeli history. The Start-Up Nation’s Hall of Fame View more lists from OurCrowd...

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Israeli M&A on fire: mid-2013 update

Israeli M&A on fire: mid-2013 update

Jun 13, 2013 | , ,

The Google acquisition of Israeli social navigation app Waze for $1.03 billion is one of the largest high-tech acquisitions in Israeli history (The all time record goes to Cisco for buying NDS in 2012 for the price of $5 billion). The interest of international tech giants in Israeli startups is nothing new. With more startup companies per capita than any other country, Israel is widely hailed as the Startup Nation. As we know, Israel is more than happy to sell its startups to large entities knocking on its door. According to the IVC Research Center, 2012 was one of Israel’s most successful years for high-tech M&A in the past decade, yielding $9.95 billion in exits – 88% above 2011 levels. When all is said and done, it’s not every day that you hear about titans like Google and Facebook going head to head in a race to buy out a company at these valuation levels. In the end, Google won the war for Waze by letting the company stay in Israel. It was reported that the Facebook tie-up fell apart over Facebook’s insistence on Waze moving its...

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Network Technology Giant, Cisco acquires Intucell For $475M

Network Technology Giant, Cisco acquires Intucell For $475M

Jan 27, 2013 | ,

M&A in the 2013 Israeli start-up realm begins with a bang as Network equipment giant, Cisco acquires Intucell  for a whopping $475M. Intucell’s technology provides a solution for cellular networks to optimize their mobile traffic’s speed and keep disrupted calls to a minimum. Founded in 2008 and located in Raanana, Intucell has grown at a rapid pace, evolving from an idea to a commercial success in less than a year, and has branched out on a global scale to the United Kingdom and Singapore. US based Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the most successful VC funds in the world, will take close to half of the sales price, after funding Intucell’s $6M series a investment round in late 2011, entirely on their own. Intucell’s Co-Founders, CEO Rani Wellingstein and VP products Ido Susan stand to make a nice chunk of cash as well estimated at around $80M each. This is the 12th company and one of the largest deals made by Cisco in the Israeli technology market. The Wall Street Journal summary of M&A in 2012 showed that even...

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What’s the average Israeli M&A look like?

What’s the average Israeli M&A look like?

Nov 27, 2012 | ,

As investors in Israeli startups, we get asked this question a lot. In fact, we’ve dedicated significant slide-age to it in our presentations about why invest in Israel. The environment for Israeli M&A But here’s the hard facts according to the numbers: First, in the aggregate Over the past decade, $15 billion has been invested in Israeli tech companies $37 billion take-out value in M&As and IPOs Average of 80 Israeli M&A deals per year (5 year average) Israeli M&A environment for 2011 average M&A deal: $60M (nearly double the $32.5M average in 2010) 15 deals over $100M, 5 deals over $300M, and 1 deal over $500M 5 IPOs (down from 11 in 2010) raised $126M  Multinationals come to Israeli to partner, acqui-hire, and acquire mostly early-stage technology companies. If you’re investing in Israeli ingenuity, then your investment model must reflect what’s going on on the ground. We believe OurCrowd’s new hybrid model — screening/due diligence for good deals and giving total discretion to our investors to decide which deals they’d like to participate in — is a better...

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Crowdsourcing the next big M&A with Merjerz

Crowdsourcing the next big M&A with Merjerz

Nov 26, 2012 |

I had the privilege of meeting Arye Schreiber, an Israeli entrepreneur and founder of a new startup Merjerz. Optimizing the M&A experience Merjerz is an online “dating” site for prospective acquirers and targets to meet and enhance the M&A experience. It works by users of the site proposing M&A deals, and then other users commenting on the specific deal. For example, Jon Smith puts up a link that says “Cisco should acquire OurCrowd.” Merjerz’s users then can add their insights, creating a stream of up-to-date data, opinion, and crowdsourced sentiment. Now the acquirers are far better informed on specific companies and can make a better and more optimal choice and decision. This information is extremely hard to obtain, and the plan of the Merjerz is to charge large businesses and corporations yearly membership fees. The site also has a Corporate Review page, where the pros and cons of any hi-tech company can be discussed. Everyone can use this information for current, credible, and professional perspectives on a hi-tech corporation. One of the best traits to have when starting a company is experience in the field. Arye...

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