1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shuly Galili of UpWest Labs (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: As part of UpWest, is there a panel of CISOs who look at your companies?

Shuly Galili: We work with a lot of the industry CISOs locally in Silicon Valley as well as across the US. They’re so entrenched in understanding how to work with both ourselves and other players who have access to a funnel of solutions out of Israel. We do have a lot of relationships in the ecosystem.

We also have companies that are building infrastructure technology not related to cybersecurity in enterprises. We’ve had great opportunities to work with big players to be able to advise and look at founders at the early-stages in order to guide them into what it is that they need to do in order to build a really great solution.

Sramana Mitra: You mentioned your investments in AI. All investors are reporting that they’re interested in AI and are seeing great deal flow in AI. Could you give us a flavor of what you are seeing in the deal flow vis-à-vis AI? What kind of companies attract you in the AI domain?

Shuly Galili: I would tell you that for us, we’ve had great success and great opportunities working with companies that are looking at areas that have not yet been touched by technology and where AI can really make a huge difference in terms of the amount of data that these industries already have. I mentioned manufacturing and mining. I think that if you look at ag tech, smart cities, and mobility, there is tremendous amount of data.

We’ve looked and seen companies coming out of Israel, particularly entrepreneurs who are unfazed by approaching industries like that. You really need to understand how to get in there. How do you sell to these old industries? How do you create a champion internally that will be able to adapt a very early and new technology that they haven’t seen in many years, and provide the data in order to create a really sophisticated output for them.

I mentioned that one of our companies, Waycare, has a team of data scientists. They look at all the data that cities are coming up with. Cities have tremendous data on transportation and on traffic with regards to previous accidents that happened or historical congestions. Then there is so much data that comes out of the vehicles today.

Waycare is able to take technology from the vehicles through partnerships with companies like Waze, as well as data from the city in order to provide predictive solution for the cities. It’s very interesting to see them live working today in Nevada and other states. It’s great to see that cities are really opening.

Sramana Mitra: One of my observations is this hotshot machine learning engineer from Technion doesn’t always have the domain knowledge with which to bring AI into a particular industry sector whether it’s insurance, retail, or fashion. There is a domain bridging that needs to happen. It would be very helpful for them to go recruit somebody who’s a domain expert in that domain who can help them understand what happens in that domain, what are the workflows, what are the problems, and how to sell.

Shuly Galili: Absolutely. A lot of AI companies are popping everywhere outside of Silicon Valley. It’s healthy. I mentioned Airobotics going into the mining industry. How do you go into an industry like that? Don’t forget that a lot of Israeli founders, though they have great educational backgrounds, they spent three to 10 years building systems for the Israeli military.

They have a very hands-on approach working with very sophisticated systems in the field and in conditions that aren’t necessarily lab conditions. Because of that, going into other areas like mining and oil & gas is not a scary thing for them. They are looking to go to areas like that. That is where the opportunities are.

Sramana Mitra: Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 4 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shuly Galili of UpWest Labs
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