Hetz — What’s the Special Sauce?
Authors: Stuart Roden & Andrew Feldman
In a crowded market place, it’s important to define what makes you special. At Hetz, we have a few important ingredients which we believe give our investors and our portfolio companies greater chance of success.
Most important of all are our values. We believe in the importance of honesty, hard work and integrity. This is easy to say, but harder to apply in practice.
Whether we choose to invest or not to invest, we explain our decision to each entrepreneur face to face. We’re supportive, extremely honest and polite at the same time. We’re an unusual mix of British and Israeli cultures, combining the politeness of the former with the straightforwardness of the latter.
We’re also very hardworking. Our portfolio entrepreneurs know firsthand how much time and effort we invest in them and how hands-on we are. We’re there for them not just when they are working out their long-term strategy, but also in the nitty gritty of their tactical decision making. The businesses are very early stage and the entrepreneurs are often very inexperienced in business. We are there when they need us, day in and day out.
And then there is integrity. This means that we choose carefully who and which businesses to back. We want to work with people who share our sense of social responsibility. Of course we want to back success — but not at any price. If we feel uncomfortable with the methods or the aims of the founders we’d rather walk away than risk our reputation. We are not judgmental; but we do have a clear idea of what we care about.
These values have defined us since Day 1. We believe they explain why we have quickly built a powerful level of trust amongst sophisticated investors, brilliant and innovative founders, large corporates in Europe and the United States, and other VCs in the Israeli and wider ecosystem.
Apart from our values, there is also the personal chemistry between the founders. We are an unusual bunch. A highly successful investor who has chaired one of the largest hedge funds in Europe; a lawyer-turned-businessman-turned politician who ran the Conservative Party machine for 11 years; and the young, talented, intelligence officer and technology expert trying his hand as a first time CEO of a VC fund.
As founders we have always been committed to building and shaping an exceptional team that can propel us to the next level. So, we reached out to hire highly capable people in Israel to fill the gaps. What we lack in VC investment experience and in understanding of the Israeli tech ecosystem is more than compensated for by our brilliant team.
Together with our team, in less than three years, we combined our professional skills and business networks to raise two funds totaling over $130 million from some of the most successful investors in Europe, most of whom have never before invested in Israeli technology. We’ve then found some the most exciting companies in Israel to back. And we’ve driven their growth through connecting them with some of the largest companies in Europe as development partners.
So that’s our secret sauce. Maybe it seems a bit plain and not very secret. But so far so good. And we are always looking for like-minded people to join us on our journey.
