The first ever Israel Growth Summit was held recently in Tel Aviv, co-hosted by the Viola Group and the Israel Growth Forum led by Wix, and attended by CEOs and executives from over 150 Israeli tech companies in their growth stage. Although this was an exclusive event, the content was so interesting and valuable, we wanted to make it accessible to the entire community of tech companies and startups in Israel, so for the past few weeks we’ve been publishing video highlights from the event, with speakers from Viola, Wix, ironSource, Mellanox, SimilarWeb, Yotpo, Check Point, Payoneer and Fiverr. In this post, Goldman Sachs Managing Director, Jonathan Penkin, moderates a panel on Growth Financing, with Moovit’s Nir Erez, Zerto’s Ziv Kedem and dapulse’s Roy Man.

Raising funds is sometimes thought of as nothing more than a “technical” or “mechanical” step that isn’t really “meaningful” in the life of a company, but merely a means to achieving its end goals. However in reality, raising funds is one of the most important decisions a startup will ever make.

In our Growth Financing panel, moderated by Goldman Sachs Managing Director, Jonathan Penkin, and featuring Moovit Co-founder & CEO, Nir Erez, Zerto Co-founder & CEO, Ziv Kedem, and dapulse Co-founder & CEO, Roy Man – Nir, Ziv and Ran talk about their experiences raising funds over the years.

Here are highlights from the Growth Financing panel:

Note: The first video (with Jonathan Penkin) is in English and the rest are in Hebrew.

Goldman Sachs MD Jonathan Perkins on the current state of the financing market (Part 1 of 4)

In this video:
Jonathan provides a quick background of the current state of the financing market (which is generally good!), and the IPO market (which is even healthier). Jonathan also talks about the importance of differentiation in the private placement market, and about some of the current trends in certain verticals.

“It’s important to raise money when you can, not only when you need to. We’re all enjoying a wonderful experience with markets hitting new highs every day, but it’s quite difficult to see how that (will) maintain or sustain itself over the next 12 months. So if you are in need of cash (and I know I’m sounding like an investment banker) – it’s worth thinking about tapping the market NOW rather than waiting for the moment when you need it absolutely.”
Jonathan Penkin, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Moovit, Zerto and dapulse on their various financing rounds (Part 2 of 4)

In this video:
Nir, Ziv and Roy provide a quick overview all of their funding rounds to date.

Nir Erez, Ziv Kedem & Roy Man on using strategic investors (Part 3 of 4)

In this video:
Nir, Ziv and Roy share their thoughts on using strategic investors and the use of venture lending to finance their growing companies.

Nir, Ziv & Roy on using investment banks for financing rounds (Part 4 of 4)

In this video:
Nir, Ziv and Roy talk about their experience (and the benefits of) using investment banks for later-stage financing rounds.

About the Israel Growth Summit
The summit was created to bring together this exclusive group of leaders so that they can benefit from the experience of fellow industry colleagues whose companies have already reached significant growth milestone. The summit – which will be held annually – was conceived to provide a forum for tech companies to network and benefit from shared knowledge and connections, in the hope of strengthening Israel’s ecosystem of growth-stage companies as they navigate their journey towards becoming global leaders.

More videos in our Israel Growth Summit video series:
The State of Growth Companies in Israel (with Viola Group Co-founders Shlomo Dovrat & Harel Beit-On)
Challenges faced by tech companies as they scale (with Wix’ President & COO, Nir Zohar)
Why is Inorganic Growth so important? (with ironSource Co-founder & CEO, Tomer Bar Zeev & Mellanox Co-founder, CEO & President, Eyal Waldman)
6 Guidelines for Change & Growth (with Check Point President, Amnon Bar-Lev)
The challenges of taking your company global (with Or Offer & Tomer Tagrin)
Maintaining a healthy company culture as your startup scales (with Payoneer COO, Keren Levy & Fiverr COO, Vered Raviv Schwarz)