What’s Next for Samsung NEXT (TLV)

Samsung NEXT has been active in the Israeli tech ecosystem for a few years, but it’s worth a refresher as the ecosystem has evolved quite a bit since we opened the Tel Aviv office in 2015. We’ve grown from 3 employees to over 50, and as such, now is a good time to share more about what we do at our beautiful Templar building in Sarona.

Samsung NEXT’s Global Mission

Samsung NEXT is an international innovation arm with offices in Silicon Valley, New York, Berlin, Tel Aviv, and Korea. We seek to create an impact within Samsung (and the broader tech ecosystem) through research and innovation, internal product development, and venture investment. I have the privilege to be Managing Director of the Tel Aviv office.

Some background

Samsung Electronics is a global corporation with more than 300,000 employees and $200 billion in yearly revenue. However, one enduring paradox of corporate life is that even very successful companies must keep looking ahead and continue evolving ahead of market trends. All too often, present success can blind those in management positions from seeing and understanding what’s coming right around the bend. We too need to continue to innovate and seek new growth engines, because standing still inevitably means falling behind.

Foundational Principles

We work to help Samsung avoid the Innovator’s Dilemma. To do so, we were established with the purpose of creating a new model of corporate innovation based on the following principles:

• We champion builders and founders who are inventing and creating our future. We have a specific focus on software and services and can work with these innovators regardless of the stage they are at through funding, partnerships, or M&A opportunities. In doing so, we accelerate Samsung’s vision to inspire the world and create the future.

• On the product side, we are uniquely structured to empower independently functioning teams to build, validate, and bring strategic software and services products to market. Along the way, we provide the support and resources they need to reach meaningful success faster.

A bi-directional approach to innovation: External (Ventures and M&A ) + Internal (Product)

In Tel Aviv office, we support Samsung NEXT’s ventures (and M&A) and product initiatives.

Our Ventures team focuses on early-stage software and services companies, and we look for companies developing solutions that have the potential to become huge businesses, but also could be strategic or complementary to current or future Samsung products.

Over the last five years, we have made over 15 investments out of the Tel Aviv office (and more than 150 globally), including Brodmann17, Intezer, Healthy.io, and StreamElements. We have invested in companies from pre-seed to Series B, and in categories that include Cyber, Privacy, Digital Health, AI and Edge Computing.

In addition to our investment team, we support a product team of about 50 engineers, designers, and product managers developing stand-alone products that align with Samsung’s long-term strategy.

In Tel Aviv, those teams are working on two products that are already in the market:

● Dis.co is a serverless computing platform to easily parallelize and optimize jobs on any CPU/GPU

● Whisk is a platform designed to improve our food experience by simplifying everything from recipe discovery to meal planning to grocery shopping.

Giving back to the community

Last but certainly not least, community is a core value for us. Over the years we have received so much from the Tel Aviv ecosystem, we believe it is our obligation to also give back. We do this by mentoring and advising startup founders and executives and by partnering with tech communities that promote topics important to us.

We also work with underserved groups to help them integrate into the tech sector and invite podcasters to record in our podcast studio. We are looking to continue to expand our community reach and to engage with additional tech communities outside our immediate network.

If you are an entrepreneur working on new technologies, a tech community leader, or a developer who is interested in working with a startup-minded team that is backed by a strong corporation, we would love to hear from you and see what we can do together.

*To contact us, reach out on Facebook