Speakers

Gonzalo Martinez de Azagra, Founder of Cardumen Capital Israel/EU Venture Capital firm

Founder of Cardumen Capital Israel/EU Venture Capital firm. Investor and board member with a deep business/financial training and the ability to understand technology at the engineering level. Past and present board and observer seats at StoreDot, Corephotonics, Giraffic, EarlySense, Aveni, Replay Technologies, Humavox and at the YVCF. Formerly leading Samsung Group investments in Israel. Investments include: PrimeSense (acq. by Apple), StoreDot, Replay Technologies (acq. by Intel), ScyllaDB, Humavox, Cortica, Giraffic, EarlySense, Elastifile, Rounds (acq. by Kik), Imagry, Celeno, and an undisclosed automatic consumer video editing platform and multiple undisclosed Fund of Fund investments.

Eyal Niv, Managing Partner, Pitango Ventures

Eyal joined Pitango in October 2015 as a Managing General Partner. He is serving on the Board of Directors of Graphcore, Optibus and igiazio.

Prior to joining Pitango, Eyal was Managing Partner at Giza VC, where he led the operation of the fund and focused mainly on IT infrastructure, Semiconductors & Internet.

Among the investments Eyal was involved in were:

• XtremIO (acquired by EMC)
• CrossWise (acquired by Oracle)
• Pebbles (acquired by Facebook)
• Oplus (acquired by Intel)
• Cyota (acquired by RSA & later acquired by EMC)
• Odysii (acquired by Gilbarco Inc.)

Prior to that, Eyal was an Analyst at Giza Financial Advisory where he advised large and public clients on M&A transactions.

Eyal was involved in the following investments: LogzIO – Machine Data Analytics, CallApp – Social mobile identity provider, Altair Semiconductors – LTE chipset provider (acquired by Sony), AdExtent – An Adtech company, Lucid – Embedded power management for mobile devices (acquired by Google).

Eyal is also a Co-Founder of The Public Knowledge Workshop – a leading non-profit organization for freedom of information.

Eyal holds a BCom in Corporate Finance from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.

He’s an avid mountain biker and passionate about photography, basketball, snowboarding and gaming.

Erez Gold, Automotive, Mobility and Smart Cities Manager, Israel Export Institute

Since June 2018, Erez has been the Manager of Automotive, Smart Cities & Industry 4.0 at the Israel Export Institute.

Erez Gold is a business development and consultation to Israeli companies in the following verticals: Automotive, Smart cities and Industry 4.0. He is active in business matchmaking between Israeli companies (mostly start-ups) and corporates (e.g. OEMs, Tier1, VCs and mobility oriented companies). He also helps develop the optimum collaboration models during the process of establishing business relations.

The Israel Export Institute (IEI) is the premier gateway for doing business with Israeli companies. For sixty years, the organization, which was established and funded by the government and the private sector, has provided expertise in technology and product scouting, joint ventures and strategic alliances with Israeli companies.

The automotive sector of the IEI continuously monitors current global trends in the field and helps exporters to successfully penetrate markets around the world. By leveraging this knowledge and maintaining strong relationships with key players in the ecosystem such as VCs, academia, accelerators and the government, the sector has positioned itself as a go-to partner for hundreds of start-ups and MNCs alike.

Ruby Chen, Head of Office, CRADLE Tel Aviv

Ruby is a Corporate Development professional with a proven track record in initiating, leading and executing corporate development processes. Prior to joining CRADLE Tel Aviv, Ruby served in Corporate Development positions at NICE (NASDAQ: NICE) and Amdocs (NYSE: DOX) where he led +$500M worth of investments, acquisitions, divestitures and growth initiatives. Ruby also has been a co-founder in a deep learning computer vision startup as well as team member of Stage One Ventures in Israel. Born and raised in the US, Ruby has an MBA from Tel Aviv University.

Dr. Itay Bengad, Co-Founder & CEO, MDGO

Itay co-founded MDGO in 2017 together with Eli Zerah and Gilad Avrashi. A doctor of medicine, his extensive medical knowledge, combined with his teammates’ business experience and innovative spirits, enabled them to develop a unique software tool to predict personal injuries and vehicle damage following a car crash.

Itay has a Doctor of Medicine in Oncology and Cancer Biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before that, he was an intern at the Sourasky (Ichilov) medical center, in Tel Aviv. He also served as a medical doctor at the Medical Corps (army reserve service). He also founded Cycle-Safe, a technology company granted by the Israeli Innovation Authority.

Yoav Levy, CEO and Co-Founder, Upstream

Yoav is leading Upstream's strategic direction, culture and business execution, with over 17 years of experience in 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 such as Check Point, Juniper Networks and Broadcom. Yoav is an avid kite boarder and surfer.

Hagai Zyss, CEO, Autotalks

Hagai has spent over 20 years driving cutting edge technologies from definition to profitable business. Before joining Autotalks, Hagai served as VP R&D at EZchip. Previously, Hagai served in various executive positions at Ceragon Networks. In his last role as the Executive VP of Products Business Line, he was responsible for the bottom line success of a complete mobile backhaul business product line, with annual revenues of $350M. During this period Ceragon became the largest independent supplier of wireless backhaul solutions.

Prior to Ceragon, Hagai served 7 years at the Electronic Research Department, a top research and development unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. Hagai holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. (cum laude) in Electrical Engineering from the Tel Aviv University.

Stav Erez, Partner, Labs/02

Prior to joining Labs/02, Stav was an entrepreneur focused on building startup accelerators and helping founders build businesses from scratch. Stav has a knack for taking ideas she is passionate about and bringing them to life. She co-founded SifTech, the first entrepreneurship center and accelerator program in greater Jerusalem and also founded Jnext. In 2016 Stav joined OurCrowd as Director of Business Development. Stav is a graduate of Hebrew University’s prestigious PPE program and was featured in Forbes 30 under 30 in 2015.

Yakir Machluf, Business Development Senior Analyst, OurCrowd

Yakir joined the OurCrowd Business Development team as the Mobility Lead. Taking on OurCrowd’s mobility portfolio and management of mobility related scouting relationships with multi-national corporations. Prior to his role in OurCrowd, Yakir worked for a Tier1 supplier to the automotive industry, where he worked closely with boutique OEMs and Formula1 teams. Other past roles include working for the Israeli Ministry of Interior, creating financial models for municipal development through smart city implementation and automotive journalism for leading Israeli magazines. Yakir holds a BA and an MA from the Hebrew University in Business and Urban Planning.

Michael Dick, CEO and Founder, C2A Security

Michael was a co-founder of NDS, which was acquired by Cisco for $5bn in 2012, and served as VP in Cisco, specializing in Security Delivery. He is a pioneer in embedded, network and content security and managed many global clients. He has global experience working on large scale systems that protected billions of dollars of content for customers including BSkyB, Foxtel, Star TV, Sky Italia, Direct TV, and others.

Michael’s global security experience gives him a unique insight into the challenges faced by car companies with millions of vehicles on the road.

Gabi Ofir, CEO, VizibleZone

Gabi has 20 years of experience in researching and formalizing public safety technologies under his belt working for Motorola Solutions. Gabi is a renowned communications protocols expert and an acknowledged world specialist in direct, Device-To-Device (D2D) digital radio communications protocols. He was also involved in crystallizing the standard of public safety institutions' D2D digital radio communications. Gabi was a "Motorola Solution's Distinguished Innovator" and is credited with 35 patents, 23 of which are fully granted and another 12 are pending grants. Gabi holds a master’s degree in Solid State Physics from Tbilisi State University, Georgia, with honors.