1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Amos Ben-Meir at Sand Hill Angels (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Can you talk about the highlights of your portfolio?

Amos Ben-Meir: I’ve done a number of exits that range from small to reasonable. There are two companies that are worth more than a billion. One is JUUL, which is an electronic cigarette company. There are people who are not fond of that type of investment because it’s in the cigarette space but it is electronic cigarette. It’s healthier than the traditional tobacco cigarettes. That’s been a good one for me and the group.

Another one, which I made outside the group, is a company which is a solar company that is using solar energy to generate steam for enhanced oil recovery in the oil and gas industry. They’ve got a huge facility that they’ve built for PDO in Oman. They recently got a big contract here in California. They’re going to be building a huge generation facility at Bakersfield, California.

It has replaced traditional methods with solar mirrors that reflect the sun’s rays and focus them on pipes that are carrying water. That causes the water to turn into steam, which feeds directly into the steam injection in a mature oil field that needs to pump steam into the ground to extract oil. These are huge deals. They got a strong pipeline of additional deals.

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. If you look at the deal flow in 2017, what trends do you see?

Amos Ben-Meir: A lot of AI and machine learning is being applied everywhere.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, it’s everywhere.

Amos Ben-Meir: We recently invested in an interesting company called BioCatch which uses behavioral biometrics to authenticate users for financial and e-commerce applications. Through AI and machine learning, they create a profile of biometric behavior which is very interesting. We see a lot of companies applying that to products selling into the enterprise.

We’ve seen a number of space-related startups whether it’s to deploy microsatellites in space for internet coverage or for imaging. There’s a lot of sustainability startups in the food and agricultural space. Everybody’s been hearing and seeing crypto startups whether it’s crypto infrastructure or ICO’s. I’ve stayed away from the space because I think it’s not clear where things are going to fall.

There’re a lot of robotics and autonomous driving-related startups. Those are interesting. We’re seeing interesting deals in healthcare and biotech.

Sramana Mitra: I think healthcare is one of the most interesting fields right now.

Amos Ben-Meir: Absolutely. There’s a lot of work going on in the gene-editing space, genomics, and in just accumulating data on patients and being able to use that data in various ways. There’re a lot of interesting startups. These are the kinds of trends that we’re seeing. Name the latest trend and we’re probably looking at it, including cannabis. I have one cannabis investment as well.

Sramana Mitra: We don’t do those. We only do technology and technology-enabled services. That’s actually a very good overview of your activities. I think our audience has got a very good flavor of what you like to invest in and what you’re seeing in your ecosystem. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

This segment is part 5 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Amos Ben-Meir at Sand Hill Angels
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