Venture Capital
Vertex Israel


Israel and Asia share a commitment to excellence, and their areas of expertise – Israel in technology, Asia in design and manufacturing – complement each other perfectly.

The executives at Vertex Management Israel, an arm of the Vertex Group of Singapore, leverage their entrepreneurial experience and their international strategic relations to connect cutting-edge Israeli technology with development and marketing opportunities in Asia and around the world.

"As an Israeli venture capitalist, Vertex has the great advantage of access to the Pacific Rim," says Yoram Oron, President and Founder of Vertex Management Israel. "Entrepreneurs nowadays are not just looking for a blank check. They want VCs that can offer business acumen and provide them with business opportunities. The Asian market is an important one for any start-up that wants to succeed. Our relationship with the Vertex Group opens doors throughout the Pacific Rim, Japan and China."

Vertex Management Israel manages three funds of more than $280 million. Its first fund closed at $35 million just three years ago, and it is currently about to close one at $200 million. Its investors include public and private organizations and Israeli, American, Asian and European concerns. The International Vertex Group manages nine funds of over $1 billion. Over the past 13 years, the Group's funds have reported an average IRR of 37%.
Yoram Oron earned an MBA at Tel Aviv University in Israel, and completed post-graduated studies at the Wharton Business School. He founded two start-ups in Israel and managed two companies that went public in the United States.
Dr. Gideon Shichman, Vice President of Vertex Management, holds a PhD in Computers and Information Sciences from Yale University and spent 10 years at IBM's Research Lab in Yorktown Heights. He was part of the team that assembled the first speech-recognition system, and helped develop massive parallel processing, the foundation of IBM's current line of super-computers. In the past 25 years, before and after his tenure with IBM, Shichman founded four start-up companies in Israel and the U.S.
Dr. Gideon Shichman

The Vertex Group was established in 1983 as the VC arm of government-owned Singapore Technologies. Today, the Singapore connection is particularly important for the telecommunications industry, one of Israel's prime fields of technological expertise. Singapore has wired just about every building with fiber connections to a modern ATM-based system, and this serves as a huge beta site for Israeli companies.

"We helped one of our portfolio companies, Telegate, bring their cable telephony technology to Singapore for testing and deployment," says Shichman. "Telegate was ultimately sold to Terayon, creating a major successful exit for Vertex Management Israel."

MoreCom Inc. develops software for Internet traffic, carried by digital cable TV infrastructure, and is another Vertex success story. "We were involved throughout every fundraising stage – seed, first and second rounds and finally, we coordinated the M&A with Liberate."

Also prominent in the Vertex portfolio is Geyser Networks, founded by Wu Fu Chen, who sits on the Vertex Group's advisory board. Another Vertex portfolio company, ImageID, develops image-recognition technology, which instantly recognizes people in photos, and provides a new paradigm for sorting, distributing and selling photos on-line.

"We helped ImageID build an operation in Japan," says Oron. "One of our managers, David Heller, practiced law in Japan for a number of years, fostered numerous business relationships and speaks and writes the language fluently. This is the kind of added value Vertex can offer companies."

Oron was recently appointed the chairman of HeliOss Communications, which is developing technology that delivers broad-band traffic over microwave links. "Here's a situation where the company's management needed experienced support to take them to the next level, and the board called on Yoram," says Shichman.

"We strive to achieve the business and financial objectives of our funds, our investors and our portfolio companies. We've started companies, we've managed companies, we've succeeded and we've failed. We've been there," says Shichman. "We look for innovative and capable entrepreneurs who know their technology, business, and markets. As for our investors, they seem to be quite pleased."


Inquiries should be sent by e-mail to Vertex at: contact@vertexmgt.co.il.


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