After holding an IPO for Matomy Media Group (LSE:MTMY), while continuing all the while to nurture startups in the TheTime incubator in cooperation with the Office of the Chief Scientist, Ilan Shiloach recently founded a new investment fund. Shiloach, who is increasingly abandoning the advertising profession from which he sprung as former CEO and still part-owner and Chairman of McCann Tel Aviv in favor of startups, established the fund a few months ago, together with his partner in TheTime, Nir Tarlovsky.
The fund, called First Time, has raised $20 million to date of a planned $40 million. 25% of the amount raised came from shareholders in TheTime, including executives in McCann Tel Aviv and Matomy, and Eurocom Group. The other investors in First Time will be US and Israeli investors, including financial institutions.
In contrast to TheTime, which invests in startups at the seed stage and advises them for several years as part of the Chief Scientist's incubators project, the new fund will focus on the post-seed or pre-A stage, and will invest up to $2 million per company. Like TheTime, First Time will focus on Internet and media companies.
The fund has invested to date in five of the eight companies in which it planned to invest by the end of the year: emaze and PlayBuzz, in which the TheTime incubator has already invested; Talkspace, founded by Oren Frank, who worked with Shiloach at McCann; Biogaming; and WannaBiz.
Shiloach explains that the fund also plans follow-up investments in these companies, and in other companies it will invest in, in order to maintain its equity at the later stages. He also emphasizes that most of the fund's investments will be made together with other partners, as in the case of Talkspace (Softbank and Spark Capital) and PlayBuzz (Carmel Ventures). Jonathan Benartzi, founder and CEO of Israeli startup Latto, which deals in streaming and split screens in video TV, is expected to become a partner in the new fund in the coming months.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 28, 2014
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