An interview with Guy Holtzman, Co-Founder and CEO
IVC was established back in 1997 by Zeev Holtzman and Guy Holtzman as part of Giza VC. The original aim of its founders was to share information about the Israeli tech and innovation industry with foreign institutional investors, and so the journey began, with a 2-page hard copy magazine…
How would you describe IVC?
IVC is the leading source of data, business information, and insights in Israel's high-tech industry, which caters to a wide variety of business people and organizations across many sectors: venture capital and private equity funds, industry leading companies, emerging startups across Israel, and more. We’re proud to be a primary source of data in the Israeli tech ecosystem for both global and local entities such as the Israeli government, the Bank of Israel, the Israel Innovation Authority, IATI, and many others.
Our goal is pretty straightforward: we help our clients understand the market, make connections, and identify opportunities with access to the latest news, trends, and developments. We do that by providing the most comprehensive, verified, and updated data, research, and insights on Israel's high-tech ecosystem, startups, private equity, and venture capital funds. The information is delivered through our online database and other products such as customized reports, presentations, web interfaces, and more.
Our goal is pretty straightforward: we help our clients understand the market, make connections, and identify opportunities with access to the latest news, trends, and developments.
Do you collaborate with other players in and outside of the Israeli ecosystem?
Of course. As IVC sees itself as a digital tech ecosystem, our company acts with the responsibility to supply as much information as possible about the Israeli tech industry with quarterly reports, analysis of certain tech verticals, deep financial insights about Deals and Deals’ participants, etc. Some of these reports take place with partners from the local ecosystem in order to get more detailed analyses.
Collaborations and partnerships could happen in two forms: horizontal, with data suppliers for other industries, and vertical, with players in the tech industry that have other kinds of products or data about the tech industry abroad. For example, Crunchbase is one of our partners.
What is your primary objective as an Israeli data company?
One of our key objectives is to make the Israeli ecosystem more data-savvy in regard to
understanding the local tech activity. We strongly believe that learning how to ‘read the map’, reviewing data, and keeping track of trends could be a huge advantage to several customer segments and cases of use. We all learned that knowledge is power, and as an entrepreneur looking to navigate his or her startup to success, or to a foreigner interested in understanding the inner workings of the Israeli tech ecosystem it all comes down to data points.
Obviously, IVC can provide verified data, but arguably more importantly, IVC can show the social network which keeps the ecosystem connected: C-level executives’ previous
positions, investors’ portfolio companies, incubators/accelerators graduated startups -
once you know who’s connected to who, you’ll have better chances of reaching the right person.
TEAM
Guy Holtzman, Co-Founder and CEO. Prior to IVC, he founded and managed Keyotta, a headhunting talent boutique for senior level managerial positions. Before that, he wokred as a business development manager at Giza Venture Capital and Vice President of investment banking at THCG Israel.
Doron Rosenbaum, VP and Head of Data, heads the information department, and is responsible for managing the IVC-Online Database. Prior to IVC, he held the position of information manager at Koldoon, online information providers of pre-IPO high-tech startup technology companies and investors in Israel, Europe, and the U.S.
Shmulik Shelach, Head of Data Analytics and Technology, has diverse experience in combining technology and finance throughout his career. Prior to IVC, he worked as a self-employed financial quant and prior to that, he acted as financial and tech correspondent at the Daily Globes, the biggest financial newspaper in Israel.
Oren Avitan Cohen, Head of Sales, leads the sales department and is responsible for all sales activities, support, product, and service operations at IVC Research Center. In the past, Oren was a sales and business development manager at Apoint Systems, Ltd. His previous positions include a regional sales manager at a US-based logistics company.
Ben Klein, Head of Operations and Business Development, is responsible for day-to-day operations at IVC Research Center covering marketing, communications, product and relationships initiatives on and offline. Prior to joining IVC, Ben was a startup entrepreneur. Two of his companies got acquired.
Photos by Alona Abisdris Shillo
Comments