Oren Zeev

Last updated
Oren Zeev
Born (1964-09-23) September 23, 1964 (age 59)
Haifa, Israel
Alma materBSc cum laude Elecetrical Engineering, Technion, Israel. MBA with Distinction, INSEAD, France
Occupation(s) Venture Capitalist, Entrepreneur, Angel Investor, and Managing Partner of Zeev Ventures.
SpouseHagit Zeev

Oren Zeev (September 23, 1964, Haifa, Israel) is an Israeli-American billionaire businessman. He is venture capitalist and head of Zeev Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm with early-round investments in technology companies. Zeev has had notable investments in Houzz, Audible, Chegg, Navan, Inc., and Tipalti. He is co-founder and co-chairman of ICON, a non-profit organization focused on bridging Israeli and Silicon Valley technology and business. [1]

Contents

As of January 27, 2024, Forbes listed Oren Zeev net worth at US$2.2 billion, ranking him 1393 on the Billionaires list [2] and he was ranked 15th among the top wealthiest people in Israel. [3]

Engineering career

Zeev graduated BsC Cum Laude, EE from Technion-Machon Technologi Le’ Israel, and earned an MBA with Distinction in Business from INSEAD in France.

Zeev developed and implemented image and signal processing algorithms prior to his career as a venture capitalist. He was a Research staff member at IBM and part of the founding team of IBM's chip design group in Haifa, Israel.

Investment career

Following his time at IBM, Zeev spent 12 years at Apax Partners as a General Partner. He joined in January 1995 as part of the founding team of Apax Israel. In 2002, Zeev moved to the US and co-headed, and later headed, the Technology Practice of Apax and its Silicon Valley office. His first investment was Audible where he was also a board member.[ citation needed ]

Zeev Ventures

In 2007, Zeev established Zeev Ventures in Palo Alto to focus on early-stage companies. At Zeev Ventures, he has been an early investor and has held board and chairmanships at various companies including Houzz, [4] Chegg, Homelight, Tipalti, [5] TripActions, [6] and NEXT Insurance. For Houzz, Zeev led the Series A round in the company in 2010, and then invested another $20 million from his fund, Zeev Ventures, expanding on the 8% of the company he already owned. [7]

Tipalti

In 2010, Zeev Co-founded Tipalti when another one of Zeev's portfolio companies approached him with a major challenge they were facing around processing payouts to their global partners. To explore and address this problem, Zeev recruited Chen Amit, who he had studied and gotten his MBA with while at INSEAD, to create and run the company. Tipalti now processes over $11 billion in annual transaction for over 1,000 clients and over 4 million suppliers around the world. [8]

In 2014, Zeev was featured in Techcrunch on his investment approach that has achieved an annual 100 percent IRR. [9]

In 2017, Forbes wrote an article about Zeev's unique investment approach that had led to such a high portfolio success rate. [10]

In 2019, Zeev was profiled by CNBC on how he chooses start-ups for investment. [11]

Personal life

Zeev was born in Haifa, Israel in 1964. He moved to California with his wife, Hagit Zeev, and 2 children in 2002. [12] Zeev currently lives in Los Altos Hills, California.

List of startup investments

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vinod Khosla</span> Indian-American businessman (born 1955)

Vinod Khosla is an Indian-American billionaire businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas such as networking, software, and alternative energy technologies. He is considered one of the most successful and influential venture capitalists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Venture capital</span> Form of private-equity financing

Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc.. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are often from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.

Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California which specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. As of 2022, the firm had approximately US$85 billion in assets under management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apax Partners</span> British private equity firm

Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of six other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Munich and Shanghai. As of March 2024, the firm had raised and advised funds of approximately $77 billion (USD). Apax Partners is one of the oldest and largest private equity firms operating on an international basis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mayfield (company)</span> Venture capital firm

Mayfield, also known as Mayfield Fund, is a US-based venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage to growth-stage investments in enterprise and consumer technology companies. Founded in 1969 and based in Menlo Park, California, it is one of Silicon Valley's oldest venture capital firms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Silicon Wadi</span> Hub of advanced technology in Israel

Silicon Wadi is a region in Israel that serves as one of the global centres for advanced technology. It spans the Israeli coastal plain, and is cited as among the reasons why the country has become known as the world's "start-up nation". The highest concentrations of high-tech industry in the region can be found around Tel Aviv, including small clusters around the cities of Raʽanana, Petah Tikva, Herzliya, Netanya, Rehovot, and Ness Ziona. Additional clusters of high-tech industry can be found in Haifa and Caesarea. More recent high-tech establishments have been raised in cities such as Jerusalem and Beersheba, in towns such as Yokneam Illit, and in Airport City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Index Ventures</span> European worldwide venture capital firm

Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/AI, and security. Since its founding in 1996, the firm has invested in a number of companies and raised approximately $5.6 billion. Index Venture partners appear frequently on Forbes’ Midas List of the top tech investors in Europe and Israel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Accel (company)</span> Venture capital firm

Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Gurley</span> American businessman

John William Gurley is an American businessman. He is a general partner at Benchmark, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm in San Francisco, California. He is listed consistently on the Forbes Midas List and is considered one of the top dealmakers in the American technology industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matt Cohler</span> American venture capitalist

Matt Cohler is an American venture capitalist. He worked as Vice President of Product Management for Facebook until June 2008 and was formerly a general partner at Benchmark. Cohler has been named to the Forbes Midas List of top technology investors and in 2019 was named to the New York Times and CB Insights list of top 10 venture capital investors. Cohler made the Forbes 'America's 40 Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40' list in 2015.

Battery Ventures is a global, technology-focused investment firm. Founded in 1983, the firm makes venture-capital and private-equity investments in markets across the globe from offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Israel and London. Since inception, the firm has raised over $13 billion and is now investing its fourteenth funds, Battery Venture XIV and Battery Ventures Select Fund II, with a combined capitalization of $3.8 billion.

Klaus Hommels is a German venture capitalist. He focuses on early and growth-stage investments and has founded his own venture capital fund by the name of Lakestar, through which he has been investing mainly in digital businesses. He has been invested in Facebook, Skype and Xing; other examples are Klarna and Revolut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Enterprise Associates</span> American Venture Capital firm

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With over $25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of the world's largest venture capital firms.

Floodgate Fund is a venture capital firm based in the United States created by Mike Maples Jr. and Ann Miura-Ko. It was originally named Maples Investments, but was renamed Floodgate Fund in March 2010. It is focused on investments in technology companies in Silicon Valley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Hollod</span> American businessman

Chris Hollod is a venture capitalist, angel investor, and advisor in Los Angeles. Hollod was the co-founder and chief executive officer of Tailwind Acquisition Corp. which merged with Terran Orbital in March 2022 in a $1.8 billion deal. Over the course of his career, Hollod has completed more than 150 deals across five different investment entities, including investments in Uber, Airbnb, Houzz, Spotify, Pinterest, Duolingo, Airtable, Oscar Health, Flexport, Casper, and Warby Parker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unicorn (finance)</span> Startup company valued at over $1 billion

In business, a unicorn is a startup company valued at over US$1 billion which is privately owned and not listed on a share market. The term was first published in 2013, coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures.

Navan is an online travel management, corporate card and expense management company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DCM Ventures</span>

DCM (also known as DCM Ventures) is a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley, Tokyo and Beijing. DCM was one of the first venture capital firms to invest in the early-stage technology sector in China, beginning in 1999. It has increasingly shifted away from Chinese investments due to US sanctions against China.

Rubrik, Inc. is an American cloud data management and data security company based in Palo Alto, California, founded in January 2014. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange after going public in April 2024.

References

  1. ↑ "How Israeli Expats In Silicon Valley Produce Winning Startups". Inc.com.
  2. ↑ "Oren Zeev". Forbes. Retrieved 2024-01-27.
  3. ↑ "Wealthiest People in Israel (January 22, 2024)". CEOWORLD magazine.
  4. ↑ "Houzz's Founders Have Become Tech's Newest Power Couple". Forbes.
  5. ↑ Zeev, Oren (20 February 2018). "Why I Decided to Lead Tipalti's Series C Round of Funding". Medium.
  6. ↑ "TripActions launches its business travel app and unveils a $14.6 million round". House of Bots.
  7. ↑ "Houzz's $4B Valuation Sets Investor Oren Zeev Apart". Forbes.
  8. ↑ "Tipalti Surpasses $11 Billion in Annual Transactions, Grows by 80+%". Bloomberg.
  9. ↑ "Meet Oren Zeev, Silicon Valley's Builder-Investor". Techcrunch. 22 February 2014.
  10. ↑ "Houzz's $4B Valuation Sets Investor Oren Zeev Apart". Forbes.
  11. ↑ "How this venture capitalist chooses start-ups for investments". CNBC.
  12. ↑ "Meet Oren Zeev, Silicon Valley's Builder-Investor". TechCrunch. 22 February 2014.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.