Aleph

Hey Business Insider - the last day of the year was as good a time as any to call out Agora RE as one of the hottest proptech companies of 2024. (And in case there was any doubt - we agree with you.) "Investors expect a digital-first experience; they're tech-savvy and need access to information quickly. Firms can't work without it, and clients need a platform like Agora more than ever," says Asaf Raz, Agora's VP Marketing. Congrats Bar Mor, Lior Dolinski, Noam Kahan and the whole Agora team! If you don't know why Agora's hot yet, check out the link in the comments 👇

Unpopular opinion for founders: Your idea matters more than your team, says Gilad Uziely, Co-Founder and CEO of Sequence. Read why Gilad calls bull$hit on the "We invest in founders" mentality in our newsletter, coming to your inbox this Monday. Link to subscribe in the comments. Tom Reuveni | Oren Reuveni

Kicking off the morning with huge, exciting news from Windward and the London Stock Exchange: FTV intends to acquire Windward for 2.15GBP per share ($271m USD)! Windward was the first investment announced by Aleph, and to say it has been a whirlwind is an understatement. Eden Shochat said it best: "From the very beginning, Ami Daniel and Matan Peled stood out, being navy officers rather than the classical 8200 grads. They transformed from deeply knowledgeable subject matter experts—capable of delivering insights like Russian ships suspiciously sailing above communication cables —into leaders who took their company public and established it as a market leader." Ami Daniel, Matan Peled - thank you for being incredible partners. Full release in the comments 👇

Huge move for the future of AI in Israel. The incredible founders of Aporia - Liran Hason and Alon Gubkin - have built one of the greatest AI teams in Israel. Today we celebrate their success and announce its acquisition by Coralogix (link in the first comment). Quick recap - Aleph's portfolio company Coralogix is a data infrastructure company in the observability field. They offer a real-time streaming analytics pipeline for logs, metrics, tracing and security. This move will help them expand into AI observability - a critical new market. But there's more to the story. Coralogix is going to invest tens of millions of dollars into a dedicated AI research center in #Israel. While everyone is talking about the importance of AI excellence in Israel, it's people like Ariel Assaraf and Yoni Farin who actually deliver. Well done friends! Congratulations team Aporia, welcome home!

Important reminder from Michael Eisenberg at the Jerusalem Post Miami Summit conference: "We have the most capable civilians of anywhere on the planet. We don't have as capable a government, but our power's in our civilians. So we need to get rid of all of the bureaucracy and all the regulation, invest in the infrastructure, and then call on the civilians." Bringing back one of Michael's blog posts in the comments for ways civilians have been showing up again and again and again since October 7th 👇

We know so much about the travel industry - except when it comes to intercity transportation.  So Travelier came out with a phenomenal report, in partnership with Skift Advisory, to change that.  And if your business even remotely touches this $198 billion (!) industry, you need to read it now now now. Link to the world’s first State of Ground and Sea Transportation Report in the comments. David Yitzhaki Noam Toister Omer Chehmer Noa Greenfield - hats off!

May Piamenta believed in the mission behind Vee - AI For Good so much she almost went to jail for it. Everything about her story is unusual, from growing up in Dimona to shaving her head at age 13 and selling her first company three years later. Listen to the latest episode of Invested for the ethos behind Vee, how to convince 36 army officers to let you break the law, what laying off an entire company and successfully rebuilding from scratch looks like, whether experience or ambition is more important for hiring, and how values can truly create value. (You’ll also learn that Michael Eisenberg clearly doesn’t know anything about pop culture - listen ‘til the end.) Episode linked below!

True price discovery is only in the public markets. Over the next few years we'll know the real price of ServiceTitan that a true market is willing to pay. As of now, the IPO looks a bit underpriced, but that's a short term price to pay for liquidity and a public float.

Meet Michael’s next guest on Invested: the unstoppable May Piamenta. Founder/CEO of Vee - AI For Good, serial entrepreneur, breakfast hater, force for a better world.  If we had to pick one quote from the episode that summarizes the entire conversation, it would be: “When people tell me I cannot do something - I do it.”   Exactly what May went ahead and did dropping Wednesday. Subscribe with the link in the comments.

What makes a successful venture capitalist?  Do you need to be a dreamer or a skeptic? Go to conferences or stick to one-on-ones? Adam Fisher and Michael Eisenberg get into it in the latest Invested episode. Here’s the 40-second version, but trust us - you’ll want to hear the full thing. Full episode linked below.