Meet the Investors: Mayaan Keyes, fresh.fund

A Radical Strategy

Mayaan is a Partner and COO of fresh.fund, an investment organization unlike any other in Israel in one very peculiar way; it is run together with university students. Many great startup companies begin in college dorm rooms, so it stands to reason that students would be good candidates to identify startup potential in universities as well. “Not everyone in tech comes out of the 8200 unit in the army,” Mayaan jokes, and fresh.fund is changing that perception by having university students identify university talent.

How it Works

A team of twenty-five students with a diverse array of educational focuses and backgrounds is trained for three months on investment strategy. The team receives hundreds of applications per year, analyzing each one meticulously before making selections for the next round. The students investigate their respective campus startup scenes and are always on the lookout for innovative concepts and motivated founders. Fresh.fund pairs each student with a specific mentor so that he or she can develop investment expertise in particular fields.

Mentors

The student cohort is trained by some of Israel’s investment superstars, including Jonathan Friedman, partner at LionBird, Nimrod Cohen, managing partner at Tau Ventures, Ohad Uliel, managing partner at Quake Capital, Lia Cromwell, Associate at UpWest Labs, Lior Krengel, head of the “startup for startup initiative” at monday.com, and Barr Yaron, data scientist at Facebook and founder of Women of Startup Nation. It is an impressive list of mentors, and the students learn directly from them and their experiences and about strategizing and business model assessment.

The Profile

The investments given to companies generally range from $20,000-$100,000, but can reach up to $500,000. Have a look at some of the companies that fresh.fund has invested in so far:

Frizzl- fresh.fund’s most recent investment, Frizzl is a new app that makes learning computer science easier, showing teenagers the creative results that can result from learning to code.

Mathodix- the company has developed a system of educational mathematics that identifies the user’s specific weak points in math problems, allowing for greater corrective potential.

Nas daily- Nas daily has designed a platform that works as a social media assistant, helping the user discover videos that he or she will want to share.

ScaleAbout- ScaleAbout has developed a new way for small to medium size online influencers to make money by communicating personal messages to their fans.

Gamitee- the company has created a more efficient way to collectively shop online, changing the way the world sees e-commerce.

What They Look For

Fresh.fund works mostly with software companies as opposed to biotech and pharmaceutical ventures. It specializes in identifying student talent, though not exclusively. The student team also looks for diversity in prospective founders, wanting representation from both male and female entrepreneurs.

The Jerusalem Connection

The organization is an offshoot of Siftech, Jerusalem’s first accelerator program. While the program’s first year investments were exclusively dedicated to Jerusalem companies, the program has now expanded beyond the city. Mayaan, as former Director of Education and Partnerships at Siftech, is very familiar with the entire Jerusalem startup ecosystem and says that she “loves the city and believes in the people and talents” within it. “Everyone is together,” she explains about the startup community, and fresh.fund is one branch of the startup nation that engages students with the startup world.

To keep up with fresh.fund, check out their Facebook page.

If you’re a student in Israel interested in investing, be sure to apply to be a part of the new round of student investors. (Applications close July 24!)

(Also, Mayaan was excited to tell me that startJLM is coming back this November, check it out here)