TechCrunch Tel Aviv
June 7, 2018 — Tel Aviv-Yafo
Speakers
Mor Assia
Founding Partner iAngels
Dan Atsmon
Founder & CEO Cognata
Omer Bar-Yohay
CEO, Co-Founder Eviation Aircraft
Yariv Bash
Co-founder & CEO Flytrex
Tal Ben David
VP R&D & Co-Founder Karamba Security
Ofer Ben Noon
Co-Founder & CEO Argus Cyber Security
Abe Chen
Fiona Darmon
General Partner Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP)
Shuly Galili
Founding Partner UpWest
Michael Granoff
Founder & Managing Partner Maniv Mobility
Ariella Grinberg
Innovation Manager, Israel Advanced Technical Center General Motors
Shelly Hod
Founding Partner iAngels
Liad Itzhak
VP Head of Mobility HERE Technologies
Raj Kapoor
Chief Strategy Officer Lyft
Omer David Keilaf
CEO and Co-Founder Innoviz Technologies
Joerg Lamparter
Head of Mobility Services Daimler Financial Services
Inbal Lavi
Anat Lea Bonshtien
Chairman and Director of the Fuel Choices and Smart Mobility Initiative Prime Minister's Office, Israel
Uri Levine
Co-Founder & Chairman Refundit
Yoav Levy
Co Founder & CEO Upstream Security
Yossi Matias
Vice President, Engineering Google
Jamil Mazzawi
Founder and CEO Optima Design Automation
Orit Nissan-Messing
Chief Architect & Co-Founder Iguazio
Yifat Oron
CEO LeumiTech
Chemi Peres
Co-Founder and Managing General Partner Pitango Venture Capital
Natalie Refuah
Partner Viola Growth
Austin Russell
Founder & CEO Luminar
Eran Shir
Co-founder & CEO Nexar
Oren Shoval
Co-Founder and CTO Via
Ryan Sturgill
Director Gaza Sky Geeks
Fadi Swidan
Director Nazareth Incubator & Hybrid Accelerator
Hilla Tavor
Senior Director of Advanced Development Mobileye, an Intel Company
Ben Volkow
Founder & CEO Otonomo
Dave Waiser
CEO & Founder Gett
Rani Wellingstein
Rafi Yoeli
Founder and Chief Executive Officer Urban Aeronautics
Yahal Zilka
Managing Partner and Co-Founder 10D
Mor Assia is the founding partner of iAngels.
Danny Atsmon, an expert in ADAS and deep learning, is the CEO at Cognata Ltd., a dynamic young technology company that brings the disruptive power of artificial intelligence, deep learning, and computer vision to simulated testing for autonomous cars. He has been in the business of launching high-tech products for more than 20 years. Before joining Cognata, Danny served as Harman’s (NYSE:HAR now Samsung) Director of ADAS and Senior director of Machine learning. He has co-founded two startup companies, Picitup, a computer visual shopping suite, and iOnRoad, which uses a phone’s native camera and sensors to detect vehicles in front of a car (later acquired by Harman International). Danny holds several United States utility patents and has created a pipeline of dozens of patent-pending applications. He has also won many top industry awards, including Design and Engineering Showcase Award (2012) for innovation in design, CTIA award (2012) for Best Mobile Application for Automotive, Safe Driving & Transportation, Microsoft Think Next (2012), and the QPrize (2013), which is awarded after Qualcomm Venture’s seed investment competition. Danny is a graduate of the prestigious Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Haman Talpiot program, where he served in the elite Unit 8200, and holds a B.Sc. degree in Physics from Tel-Aviv University.
Omer Bar-Yohay, CEO of Eviation Aircraft, brings over 15 years of experience leading multidisciplinary teams, in adverse conditions, to perform unique operational and technological tasks as a government employee. He is a member of NASA’s On-Demand Mobility Working Group, as well as the e-Aviation Committees of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA).
Yariv Bash is the CEO and Co-founder of Flytrex, which develops drone delivery solutions for the commercial market and was the first in the world to deploy a fully operational, regulatory approved drone delivery service. Prior to Flytrex, Yariv founded and served as the CEO of SpaceIL – the Israeli team at the Google Lunar X-Prize competition, with a mission to land an unmanned spaceship on the moon. Under Yariv’s management, the non-profit SpaceIL has raised more than $30 million.
Tal is experienced in developing new, innovative products into viable, market-changing products. He was a Senior Research and Development Manager at Check Point Software Technologies (NASDAQ:CHKP), where he oversaw the development of endpoint and mobile security technology. Prior, he gained extensive cybersecurity experience overseeing the development of Check Point’s big data analytics and event correlation products. Before entering the private sector, Tal served as a computer science officer in an elite technological unit with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Tal has a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Statistics from Bar-Ilan University. He is married to Osnat and a father of two children.
Ofer Ben-Noon is co-founder and CEO of Argus Cyber Security. Seeking to leverage the unique technical skills of the founders and create a company that positively contributed to the world, Ofer co-founded Argus in 2013 to protect connected vehicles against cyber attacks. Serving as a Captain in the Israel Defense Forces’ esteemed cyber intelligence unit 8200, Ofer gained over a decade of cyber security experience and took part in two Israel Defense Prize winning projects. He was recognized by Forbes as one of Israel’s “Top 30 under 30” and was chosen by Wired Magazine for its short list of exciting individuals and groups bringing about the next wave of digital security. Ofer has spoken in major automotive industry events such as International Congress on Advances in Automotive Electronics, Automotive World Japan and Mobile World Congress. He holds a B.S.c. with honors in computer science from the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel, is a graduate of the prestigious Zell Entrepreneurship Program and has completed management and entrepreneurship studies at Wharton, UPenn. In addition to building the success of Argus, Ofer is passionate about aeromodelling, having previously held the Junior Aeromodelling World Cup championship title and second place in the European Aeromodelling Cup. In his little spare time, Ofer loves mentoring young entrepreneurs.
Mr. Abe T. Chen is a recognized security leader in end-to-end digital and physical investigations, advanced layered security architectures, compliance/risk mitigation methodologies, and product security. He has made a career of successfully bringing leading-edge security techniques to the enterprise across the software, technology, automotive, finance, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, and education sectors. At BYTON, Abe has built a team of experts in cloud and vehicle connecticity focused on security and data privacy by design. By integrating connectivity, cloud, and security into one team, BYTON has developed a security-focused architecture for the next generation mobility platform. Abe comes to BYTON from Tesla and Apple, where he was a leader responsible for global product security programs. In his spare time, he teaches security at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Fiona is an integral part of the leadership team at JVP as General Partner serving on the Partnerships’ Investment Committee and Executive Committee. A member of the Board of Director of JVPs portfolio companies Earnix, Ionir and Highcon (TASE: HICN), Fiona has close to twenty years of experience in venture capital, strategic planning, capital raising and investments in public and private companies, having previously held a variety of executive roles with leading Israeli investment conglomerate, Koor Industries, as well as serving as a founding member of the first Israeli corporate VC – Koor CVC. Fiona started her career as a financial analyst with Claridge Israel LLC, the investment arm of the Bronfman family of Canada. Fiona was an Officer in one of the renowned units of the Israeli IDF, and holds a BA in Finance and IT and an Executive MBA from the Kellogg School of Management’s international program in collaboration with Tel Aviv University.
Shuly Galili is a founding partner at UpWest.
Michael Granoff is founder and Managing Partner of Maniv Mobility, a venture capital fund based in Tel Aviv which invests exclusively in the new mobility future. Founded in 2015, Maniv has a portfolio of over 25 mobility startups, in Israel, the US and beyond. They include companies developing sensors, software, simulation, localization, data monetization, autonomous systems, over-the-air updates, automotive cyber-security, micromobility, new mobility business models and more. Aside from several startup boards, Mr. Granoff serves on the board of Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), a Washington, DC-based policy and advocacy organization he helped establish in 2004. Past board roles included that of electric car network developer Better Place. He has been involved in three US Presidential campaigns and in 2010 received Brandeis University’s Asper Award for Global Entrepreneurship. Mr. Granoff holds a B.A. from Tufts University, an MBA and JD from Kellogg, Northwestern University. He is a veteran marathon runner and lives just outside of Tel Aviv with his wife and four children.
Ariella is the Innovation Manager at General Motors Advanced Technical Center Israel (ATCI) where she leads open innovation activities that include: scouting, diligence and partnerships with innovators and researchers from the Israeli innovation ecosystem into General Motors via collaborations and corporate investments. Prior to joining GM, Ariella was an associate with ICV, a cleantech focused venture capital fund . Ariella voluntarily co-organized CleanIsrael, the largest cleantech professional network in Israel. Before ICV, Ariella was with Yuval Levy & Co.(now Tadmor Levy), advising clients from industry, private and public sectors on environmental regulation and policy. During her military service with an elite intelligence unit of the IDF, Ariella was an analyst and a project manager of a pivotal data analysis software system. Ariella holds an LL.M degree from Georgetown University (Wolf Fellowship) , an MSc in Environmental Change and Management from Oxford University (Chevening scholar) and an LL.B in a combined program of Law and Environmental Studies from the Hebrew University.
Shelly Hod Moyal is the Founding Partner of iAngels, a VC and co-investment platform that offers investors a gateway into Israel’s early stage startup sector. Before becoming a startup founder herself, Shelly spent many years working in finance, trading and investment advisory roles at UBS, Avenue Capital and Goldman Sachs Investment Bank. Shelly applies her wealth of experience evaluating investment opportunities for private individuals, investment firms and corporations across the globe. She has become an active participant in the blockchain community and recently headed up the launch of an iAngels fund dedicated to blockchain assets. Shelly earned her MBA at Kellogg Recanati, Chicago and holds a degree in Economics (summa cum laude) at Hunter College, New York.
Liad Itzhak is leading the Mobility business unit at HERE Technologies, driving the next revolution of the mobility ecosystem. Itzhak brings vast experience as a leader in the world of smart mobility, with expertise in consumer apps and Big Data . Prior to joining HERE, Itzhak built key units at Waze/Google from the ground up, including Data, Maps and QA. Itzhak led the Data strategy of the company, turning Waze into a data-driven organization.
VRaj Kapoor is the Chief Strategy Officer for Lyft, as well as the Head of Business for Lyft’s self-driving division. He also serves as a board advisor for ClassPass, and a Venture Advisor at Mayfield Fund.
Prior to Lyft, he was a co-founder and CEO of both Snapfish (acquired by HP in 2005) and Fitmob (acquired by ClassPass in 2015), as well as a managing director at Mayfield Fund. Raj holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Omer has spent over 18 years driving cutting edge technologies from inception to commercialization. Before founding Innoviz, Omer led the system and product definition efforts at ConsumerPhysics, building the world’s first handheld molecular sensor for mobile devices. Previous roles include leading the system architecture and engineering teams at bTendo (acquired by ST Micro) and Anobit (acquired by Apple).Omer spent 7 years in the elite technological unit of the Intelligence Corps of the Israel Defense Forces, where he served in leading and critical roles involving large scale technological systems. He holds a BSc and MSc in Electrical Engineering and an MBA, all from Tel Aviv University.
Joerg Lamparter in his role as Head of Mobility Services at Daimler Financial Services is responsible for areas that will change the future of mobility. A major milestone has been the successful closing of the mobility joint venture between Daimler AG and BMW Group in the areas of ride-hailing (FREE NOW), car sharing (SHARE NOW), multimodal mobility (REACH NOW), parking (PARK NOW) and charging (CHARGE NOW) on January 31, 2019. Joerg Lamparter is responsible for Autonomous Services, Digital Mobility Solutions, Urban Mobility Concepts as well as managing the portfolio of several shareholdings such as Blacklane, FlixMobility, Taxify, and Turo.
Inbal Lavi has led Webpals Group since 2014. Inbal was responsible for leading all three of the company’s major acquisitions; Dau-Up, MarMar Media and ClicksMob. Her career spans over a decade in the online marketing industry, with expertise in marketing strategy, operations, and P&L management. She holds a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. with honors in Industrial Engineering from Tel Aviv University.
Dr. Anat Lea Bonshtien serves as the Chairman and Director of the Fuel Choices and Smart Mobility Initiative as of January 2017. Prior to this, she served as the Technology and Regulation Manager of the Initiative. In addition, Dr. Bonshtien serves in the Board of Directors of the Capsula Israeli Smart Transportation Center. She is also a member of the National Science Committee for Energy under the Ministry of Science and Technology. Dr. Bonshtien is a former Mimshak Fellow, a science and policy fellowship program which integrates scientific knowledge with decision making. Dr. Bonshtien holds a MSc and a PhD in Biochemistry from Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
Uri Levine is a passionate serial entrepreneur and disruptor.He co-founded Waze, the world’s largest driving traffic and navigation app, with more than 250M drivers around the globe, which was acquired by Google on June 2013 for more than $1.1 billion. Since then, he pursues his dream to create great value for large audiences, through the series of startups he founded. His vision is specifically intended to disrupt inefficient markets and improve under-functioning services, with focus on solving “BIG problems” and saving consumers time and money, while empowering them and changing the world for the better. Levine is Co-Founder, Chairman or Board Member in several startups with the agenda of ‘doing good and doing well’: FeeX, Moovit, HERE, Engie, FairFly, ZeeK, Roomer, WeTrip, Seetree & Livecare. He is always working on his next idea. Uri has been in the high-tech business for the last 30 years, half of them in the startup scene, and has seen everything ranging from failure, middle success and extreme success. He is also a world-class speaker on entrepreneurship, disruption, evolution vs. revolutions of markets, mobility and startups. Motivated to encourage the next generation of thinkers and innovators he also leads an academic workshop entitled “How to Build a Startup”, aimed at undergraduate and graduate level business students.
Yoav is leading Upstream’s strategic direction, culture and business execution, over 17 years of experience with multi-national high-tech companies and start-ups. He brings rich leadership experience in management, marketing and business development of IT and security products spanning over a dozen years of experience in category leading vendors Check Point, Juniper Networks and Broadcom. Yoav is an avid kite boarder and surfer.
Yossi Matias is Vice President, Engineering, at Google and the Head of Google’s R&D Center in Israel which he established. He leads global efforts in Search, AI, and Crisis Response (some highlights here), and is the founding executive lead of Google’s Campus Tel Aviv, the birthplace of Launchpad and other global entrepreneurship programs. In addition to his executive and entrepreneurial experience, Yossi has been on the Computer Science faculty at Tel Aviv University, and previously a Research Scientist at Bell Labs and visiting professor at Stanford. He published extensively, has dozens of patents on his name, and pioneered some of the early technologies for the effective analysis of big data, internet privacy, and contextual search. He is a recipient of the Godel Prize and is an ACM Fellow. Yossi was on the board of IATI – Israel Advanced Technology industries – and is co-chair of IATI’s Multi National Companies Forum.
Jami Mazzawi has founded Optima in 2014 to resolve all Functional-Safety challenges for Automotive and Safety-Critical semiconductor chips. Functional-Safety is a major challenge faced today by semiconductor companies, which inhibits and reduces their ability to penetrate the automotive segment of semiconductors. Autonomous Driving is revolutionizing the structure of cars, converting them to supercomputers-on-wheels, with tens of huge and complex chips. These chips need to meet the stringent Functional Safety requirements of ISO-26262, such as ASIL-C or ASIL-D, with no adequate solution in the market. Using its cutting edge, ultra-fast, fault-simulation technology, Optima provide fully automated solutions to convert chips and IP-cores into Automotive grade meeting ASIL-C and ASIL-D requirements, Jamil has over 25 years’ experience in the semiconductor and EDA industries, both in Silicon Valley, Israel and Europe. He worked in engineering, sales and managerial positions at: Ornet Data Communication, Verisity Inc., Rambus, Sun Microsystems, Jasper Design Automation and now Optima. He was involved in developing, promoting and selling disruptive technologies and tools such as: Verisity’s eRM, constraint-random-verification methodology, later OVM and UVM, vManager, low-power formal verification flow, Fault-Simulation-Engine, Soft-error-selective-hardening, Safety-BIST and others. Jamil authored and co-authored seven patents in formal-verification of low-power design, fault-simulations, functional-safety and ISO-26262 solutions. He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the Technion, Israel and MBA from San Jose University, CA.
Orit Nissan-Messing is experienced in cloud architectures, storage, AI and big data. Prior to iguazio, Orit was Chief Architect at XIV (acquired by IBM) and held management roles in various companies from startups to corporations.Orit is currently an active member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and its Serverless and Storage Groups.
Yifat Oron is the CEO of LeumiTech, Leumi Group’s high-tech banking subsidiary. In her role, Ms.Oron is responsible for leveraging Leumi Group’s global capabilities and offerings to support high-tech companies’ financing needs. Ms. Oron has over twenty years of experience working with technology companies, in venture capital, banking and consulting. She spent most of her career as a Partner at Vertex Ventures (an Israeli-based venture fund with over $700 million of capital under management). Prior to joining Vertex, Ms. Oron was a technology investment banking associate at JPMorgan. Previously, she spent three years at the Directorate of R&D of the Israeli Ministry of Defense where she achieved the rank of Lieutenant in the Economics, Budget & Control Department. At the age of 34, Ms. Oron was selected as one of the promising “40 Under 40” in the High-Tech and VC category by Israel’s leading economic newspaper. Ms. Oron holds an M.B.A. from Tel-Aviv University and a B.Sc in Economics and Management from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
Chemi Peres is Managing General Partner and Co-Founder of Pitango, one of Israel’s leading Venture Capital Groups with over $2 Billion under management, and a portfolio of some 230 high tech companies. He serves on the boards of Pitango portfolio companies such as Taboola, Via Transportation Radwin and more. Chemi Peres is also pioneer in the field of impact investments in Israel. He is Chairman of the Al-Bawader Fund, a private-public partnership between Pitango and the Israeli Government, focused on investment in the Israeli Arab Minorities sector. Chemi Peres is chairing the Advisory Board of Impact1st (Israel’s first impact investment platform in technology) and as a board member at Social Finance Israel, Israel social impact bonds platform. He is Chairman of the Peres Center for Peace & Innovation. He holds BSc. degree in Industrial Engineering & Management and MBA degree from Tel Aviv University Chemi Peres served as a pilot in IAF (Israeli Air Force).
Natalie is a Partner at Viola Growth. She joined Viola Growth as an Associate when it was first founded in 2008 and later on was promoted to Partner. Natalie is an experienced investment professional with a vast network and connections in the Israeli high-tech and the VC/PE industry. Prior to joining Viola Growth, Natalie was with Evergreen Venture Partners, an Israeli venture capital fund and an Associate in the Office of the Legal Advisor in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs where she was in charge of Economic Bilateral and Multilateral International Agreements of the Israeli Government. Natalie was a member of the Global Consulting Practicum Program staff of the Recanati School of Business Management in Tel Aviv University and Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. Natalie holds a special BA in Law and International Relations from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and an MBA (Summa Cum Laude) from Tel Aviv University.
Austin Russell is an engineer, business leader, and self-driving industry pioneer as the Founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies (NASDAQ: LAZR), the global leader in automotive LiDAR hardware and software technology. Under Austin’s leadership, Luminar has developed the first LiDAR and software technology capable of powering production autonomous vehicles, has amassed over 50 commercial partners including the majority of the world’s largest automakers, and went public on the Nasdaq in December 2020 with a current market valuation of approximately $7 Billion. Austin started Luminar in 2012 at age 17 after previously working on various photonics and optoelectronics projects, architecting a new kind of LiDAR to enable safe autonomous functionality on cars, trucks, and robo-taxis, with over 100 awarded patents. At age 25, Austin has been recognized as the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. Austin is also a Thiel Fellowship, MIT Tech Review Innovators Under 35, and Forbes 30 under 30 alumni.
Eran is the CEO and co-founder of Nexar. Prior to Nexar, he was an entrepreneur in residence at Tel Aviv venture fund, Aleph and ran the global Creative Innovation Center for Yahoo!. Eran received his bachelor’s and master’s in physics from Technion-Machon Technlogi Le’ Israel and his PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from Tel Aviv University.
Oren Shoval is the co-founder and CTO of Via, a fully dynamic, on-demand transit network currently operational in NYC, CHI and DC. He is a former strategy business consultant at McKinsey, and has spent 10 years in the Israeli Air Force developing and deploying real-time avionic systems for fighter jets. Oren holds a PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science where he focused on finding simplifying patterns in complex biological phenomena. He also holds an MSc in electrical engineering and a BSc in physics and math.
Ryan Sturgill is the Director of Gaza Sky Geeks, a leading startup accelerator, digital outsourcing agency, and first full-stack coding academy in Palestine. Before moving to Gaza, he helped establish a startup incubator in Afghanistan with support from Google and has advised small businesses on operations and financial strategy in Palestine, the UAE, Iraq, and Pakistan. He has analyzed, structured, and managed investments for The Abraaj Group, a growth markets private equity firm in Dubai, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a major lender to small businesses around the globe. He began his career in J.P. Morgan’s investment banking division in New York. Ryan holds a bachelor’s in Middle East studies from Georgetown, an MBA from MIT, and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School.
In his role, Fadi is responsible to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation among the Arab community, seeking to bridge the “technological entrepreneurship gap” between the two communities. His mission is to “Transform and Stimulate the Arab/Israeli economy through Tech-Entrepreneurship and startups”, to successfully establish entrepreneurship ecosystem by developing partnerships and collaborations with leading organizations from the private and public sector, and to assure real and substantial social impact, Fadi holds MBA degree from Clarck University, Boston, and a Bsc in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Technion, Israel. In the past years, Fadi worked as freelancer Consultant for startups, writing business plans, finance and go-to-market strategies. Prior to that, Fadi worked as the assistant of Nazareth Municipality CEO.
Hilla is Senior Director of Advanced Development at Mobileye. She manages the Advanced Development department overseeing Mobileye’s future technology business development activities, that lead all pre-production/advanced development programs. With a Computer Science and Math degree, Hilla has held in the past various software development management positions in several tech companies. Hilla lives in Rehovot with her wife Noga and 4 children.
As founder and CEO of three successful companies, Ben brings an extensive track record and rich entrepreneurial experience. Prior to founding otonomo in 2015, Ben served for four years as a Business Unit General Manager at F5 Networks (NASDAQ:FFIV), which he joined after the acquisition of Traffix, where he was Co-Founder and as CEO. As the founder and CEO of Traffix, Ben has built a multi-million-dollar global business, working with partners and tier-1 service providers around the world. Before founding Traffix, Ben managed R&D groups in Sendo (UK), which provided advanced mobile data solutions. Prior to Sendo Ben has filled various roles in Panasonic Mobile Communications (UK), which included building their first European market products. Ben was also Co-founder of VC-backed Sedona Networks, a provider of advanced network solutions.
► Serial Entrepreneur. Silicon Valley and Israel ► 20+ years of CEO experience in hyper-growth startups and public companies ► Passion for technology and enterprise sales ► Love taking new ideas to the market (at scale) At Gett, I am part of a team of entrepreneurs who love to challenge the status quo. Gett is an enterprise SaaS solution solely focused on corporate Ground Transportation Management (GTM), a market worth $1.3T globally. Gett is the (GTM) category leader, serving a third of the Fortune 500 companies. Our mobility software operates the worldwide transportation grid, helping businesses thrive by modernising their existing transportation infrastructure. We are on a mission to bring the fragmented world of ride-hailing companies and corporate fleets together on one platform, optimising the entire experience from booking and riding to invoicing and analytics, while saving corporations both time and money. Founded in 2010, Gett has raised more than $750M in funding, including $300M+ from the Volkswagen Group.
Rani Wellingstein, Oryx Vision’s CEO, is a serial entrepreneur who most recently was CEO and Co-Founder of Intucell. Following Intucell’s acquisition ($475m) by Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) in 2013, Rani served as VP and BU manager of Cisco’s Self Optimized Networks Business Unit, in Cisco’s Mobility division. Rani holds BSc EE from the Technion and MScEE from Tel-Aviv University and served 5 years, as a SONAR engineer, in the technology unit of the Israeli navy.
In 2000, Dr. Rafi Yoeli established Urban Aeronautics Ltd in order to pursue the dream of developing the world’s first high performance, internal-rotor aircraft. The result is a family of revolutionary, VTOL aircraft known as ‘Fancraft’. These include the company’s X-Hawk and its flagship product, AirMule which is currently in flight testing. Prior to establishing Urban Aeronautics, Dr. Yoeli spent the early years of his career with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and the Boeing Aircraft Company in Seattle. At IAI he was part of a preliminary design team responsible, among other projects, for the Lavi fighter aircraft and the Westwind 1124 and 1125 business jets as well as the world’s first UAV, the Scout. Dr. Yoeli left IAI to establish his first company, Aero-Design & Development (AD&D) which he ran for 15 years and sold to Elbit Systems in 2002. AD&D was an advanced, rapid prototyping company known for its ability to develop innovative products in response to cutting edge technical challenges. AD&D’s accomplishments included advanced modifications for helicopters and fighter aircraft, the Stingray unmanned surface vessel, a solar powered, high altitude aircraft, advanced flight control computers and software, one of the earliest modifications of a helicopter to unmanned and the Hummingbird flying platform. AD&D’s ‘Skylark’, now produced by Elbit, remains at the top of its class in the mini-UAV market. Dr. Yoeli is a licensed pilot for both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft and holds a B.Sc. In aeronautical engineering from Tel Aviv University, an M.Sc. in aeronautical engineering and a P.hD. in Artificial Intelligence both from the Technion Institute of Technology.
Yahal is the Managing Partner of 10D and the co-founder of Magma Venture Partners. Magma is positioned as the leading Venture Capital Fund in Israel, with numerous success stories that Yahal has led. Prior to Magma, Yahal served as the CFO of VocalTec Communications from 1995 to 1999, where he was part of the team that pioneered VoIP. Yahal led the company from seed to its public offering on Nasdaq (NASDAQ:CALL). Yahal is very active with the business development and financing-related activities of the companies that he works with. Yahal led and was on the boards of Waze (acquired by Google), Onavo (acquired by Facebook), Argus (acquired by Continental), DesignArt Networks (acquired by Qualcomm), Phonetic Systems (acquired by Nuance), and Adience (acquired by Teddy Sagi Group). Yahal currently serves as a director on the boards of Valens, Applitools, Iguaz.io, Hola, Scylla DB, Gloat, and Magisto, among others. He is also an investor in leading companies such as Vayyar, Fundbox, MeMed, and Replay (acquired by Intel). For the past several years, Yahal has been very involved in the automotive and mobility ecosystem, building strong relationships, and focusing on the automotive industry as a major investment opportunity. As a part of Magma, Yahal has invested in seven companies focused on the automotive space and autonomous driving enabling technologies, including Waze, Autotalks, Valens, Innoviz, Argus, Iguazio, and JpU.