1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Oded Hermoni of Rhodium Venture Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What about industry sector? Do you have preferences? Do you have concentrations? Do you have expertise in specific sectors?

Oded Hermoni: We usually invest a lot in media. A couple of months ago, you covered two Israeli companies Outbrain and Tabula. We invested in Outbrain very early on. We also invested in a company called Gizmo, which is a US-based company. One of our latest investments is a company called comedy.com that now has 3.5 billion views per month. Those were our investments in media.

We have some consumer-related companies. We have security companies such HexaTier that was acquired by Huawei. We have face.com which was the first AI company that Facebook acquired in 2012. It’s doing all the tagging for Facebook profiles. We have a fin tech company called Zooz and a social review company called Yotpo. We care mostly about the entrepreneurs rather than the industry. We invested in a company called StoreDot that recently raised $60 million. It’s a very fast-charging battery.

Sramana Mitra: It’s pretty diverse. You have a wide range of investment sectors.

Oded Hermoni: Yes, we do. Because of the flexibility of the family, we can do those things.

Sramana Mitra: Interesting.

Oded Hermoni: The way we look at things is, first of all, we need to have access to the best deal flow. We use platforms for that. I’m involved with TiE. I was a part of the screening committee for TiE for many years. We have a very similar platform for the Jewish-Israeli community here called J-Angels.

We have 150 angels and VCs. It’s an amazing group with top-level people. We see lots of companies coming from that community. I’m the Co-Chairman and Co-Founder of that group. Those are platforms that enable us to ensure that we see good deal flow coming in.

Sramana Mitra: When you invest in the US, is it a requirement that the entrepreneur has Jewish roots?

Oded Hermoni: No. We invest in good entrepreneurs regardless of their passport or religion. When we talk about friends and family, it always comes from where you feel part of a community.

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely.

Oded Hermoni: It’s beyond the PayPal mafia or the Google mafia. We see amazing deal flow coming from TiE. I recommend it to anyone. We see amazing deal flow coming from J-Angels, which is not investing only in Jewish or Israeli companies. The group, itself, is mostly this community, but the people we’ve invested in are some of the biggest unicorns that ever happened in Silicon Valley. We see lots of great companies from all over.

Sramana Mitra: For J-Angels, what is the stage that they like to invest in? Is it also the post-seed, pre-Series A, or do they go earlier?

Oded Hermoni: The members of the group has enough capital to invest in any stage they want. We have billions of dollars under management for the group as individuals. What we are focused at is doing early-stage investments of up to $10 million cap. It’s not only the size of the check. It’s also the people who write those checks which are top-of-the-line investors. These are senior executives, serial entrepreneurs, and former partners in VCs.

We have a structure of screening committee and advisory board. We have Jake Said who is the Managing Partner at Lightspeed and Jeff Epstein who was the CFO of Oracle. We are now transforming into a small VC or community VC for the members which will enable us to have initial checks for those companies not only for the members but by the members.

Sramana Mitra: What trends do you see in your deal flow right now? What kind of companies are looking interesting? How would you synthesize the trends in the deal flow?

Oded Hermoni: We see a lot of interesting companies. If we look at the big corporates, they are someone that could acquire startups that develop specific things. These days, those corporates can come up with solutions that kill so many young companies. We’re looking for things that can really change the world. There is no category for it. This is what we are looking for. It’s not just another feature that one of the corporates can develop but something that will be fundamental.

This segment is part 2 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Oded Hermoni of Rhodium Venture Partners
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