StageOne Ventures Newsletter — A Brighter Future to Look Forward To…

As Israel continues to face challenging times due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas War since the beginning of October, we continue to witness the resilience of the Israeli high-tech sector. Despite these challenges, the sector highlights its robust global connections, pivotal role in the global tech ecosystem, and commitment to business continuity, supported by measures provided by the state of Israel. These efforts contribute to enhancing the certainty and availability of funding. The Israeli people and Israel’s tech sector have demonstrated remarkable resilience. Although the Israeli tech sector experienced a decline in investments in 2023 compared to 2022 and 2021, we firmly believe that drawing from the country’s past experiences, the Israeli high-tech industry will rebound and maintain its agility and innovation in the years ahead, and we already see early signs to it in the local fast-growing emerging trends such as Generative AI, SOC automation, and others in the market.

It has been an intriguing few months, marked by continuous support for our portfolio and ecosystem. Now, let’s delve into the exciting updates and developments at StageOne.

*All images were made with AI

Welcome to the Family!

It’s time to meet StageOne’s latest portfolio company, definity.
definity is on a mission to reinvent how data teams develop and maintain data pipelines. In today’s data-heavy environment data pipelines are more mission-critical than ever, but it’s increasingly challenging to maintain data/pipeline reliability at-scale. definity’s data pipelines observability solution enables enterprise data teams to automatically monitor, protect, debug, and optimize their pipelines, increasing data uptime and minimizing time to detect & resolve issues. Meet definity’s co-founders: Roy Daniel (CEO), Ohad Raviv (CTO), and Tom Bar-Yacov (VP R&D).

Exciting News from Silverfort

Silverfort raises $116M for its holistic approach to identity security.
In January 2024, Silverfort announced a successful fundraising round of $116M. Silverfort is solving one of the hardest problems in security: How to successfully secure ALL your identities — across cloud, on-prem, human, or machine — to unify identity protection into a single layer. By unifying all the silos of identity infrastructure and extending protection to areas that were once considered “unprotectable”, they make more resilient and secure environments. Hundreds of enterprises see how Silverfort uniquely solves this problem and choose it to be their unified identity protection platform. The Silverfort team has transformed the identity security market, by taking identity protection to places it’s never gone before. This team has experienced record growth over the past three years — growing ARR by 100% each year, adding tens of millions in revenue in 2023 alone. Silverfort is on the next phase of its journey to reshape the identity security market and lead it.

Meet Our Newest Finance Leaders
at StageOne Ventures

Meet our new CFO! StageOne welcomes Meital Gazit-Tal as our new CFO! Meital brings a wealth of experience and expertise in managing finances, steering operations, and nurturing the growth of ventures. With her impressive background in financial analysis, accounting, and regulatory compliance, Meital is poised to elevate our funds’ financial strategies and support our portfolio companies to new heights. Her journey includes pivotal roles at Evergreen Venture Partners and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC Israel), where she honed her skills in financial management and led audit teams. Meital received B.A. in Accounting and Economics from Tel Aviv University, graduating cum laude, and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in Israel. Join us in extending a warm welcome to Meital!

Congratulations Shiran!

We also want to congratulate Shiran Alon, who has been promoted to Director of Finance at StageOne Ventures! We are excited to see Shiran lead and contribute to the growth and success of our organization!

Portfolio Spotlight

We’re excited to share some noteworthy updates about our portfolio companies, recent awards, and media mentions.

• Entro has been announced a winner in the 20th Annual Globee Awards for Cybersecurity- Startup Achievement Award!
• Qwak — The Israeli startups to watch out for in 2024
• TheGist — 8 Best AI Tools For Work In 2024
• Entro Security Newest Competitor in 2024 ‘ASTORS’ Awards Program
• Silverfort are the #1 Best Startup (100+ employees) on the duns100 list
• Coralogix are the #10 Best Startup (100+ employees) on the duns100 list
• Theator are the #1 Best Startup (up to 100 employees) on the duns100 list
• DoControl Identified as Representative Vendor in the 2023 Gartner® Market Guide for Insider Risk Management Solutions
• Kovrr — The Top 7 Cyber Risk Management Trends for 2024 | Kovrr blog
• Staircase AI launches the State of Customer Churn Research in 2023 Report, as they analyzed 100k+ data points to uncover the true customer churn drivers.
• vHive Earns Frost & Sullivan’s 2023 Enabling Technology Leadership Award for its Best-in-Class Asset Digitization Software Platform
• Quantum Art research paper — Scalable architecture for trapped-ion quantum computing using RF traps and dynamic optical potentials
• NeuroBlade aims to be ‘the Nvidia of data analytics’
• Kovrr Mentioned in Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ) Category in Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Cyber Risk Management, 2023
• DoControl — Top 10 Best SaaS Security Tools — 2023
• Theator — LinkedIn Top Startups 2023: The 10 Israeli companies on the rise
• theGist — 21 top Israeli Startups N12 & IVC
• DoControl Named a Representative Vendor in the 2023 Gartner® Market Guide for Data Loss Prevention
• Entro Security has officially been announced as a Gartner “Cool Vendor” for 2023
• BeamUP has been honored by Fast Company as a part of its 2023 Innovation by Design Awards
• How StageOne Ventures supports entrepreneurs in achieving their vision ft. Tal Slobodkin
• CTech 2024 VC Survey series with Yuval Cohen. Shares share how he sees the relationship between Startup Nation and the United States amid times of war.

Innovative Engagements: Ecosystem Events

Over the past few months, we’ve had the privilege of organizing and hosting a series of engaging ecosystem events. These gatherings allowed us to foster meaningful connections and exchange insights that we believe have brought immense value to our community.

• We hosted an intimate breakfast event for founders in collaboration with Discount Tech and Remagine Ventures. Featuring an intimate roundtable, founders and experts engaged in discussions, sharing valuable tips and ideas on navigating, and sustaining growth during these challenging times. Izhar Shay joined us, sharing his invaluable insights and expertise, and guiding founders with advice on how they can best navigate and emerge stronger. It was inspiring to witness everyone engaging in discussions, exchanging valuable tips, and brainstorming ideas for sustaining growth. Izhar also introduced his important initiative “Next October” born from the tragedy of the October 2023 war, aiming to transform grief into progress by creating over 1,400 startups, each commemorating a brave soul we lost. It’s not just about building companies; it’s about building legacies.
• The Good, Bad & Ugly of Building a Startup for 8200 young founders, in collaboration with our portfolio company Coralogix. Joined by Ariel Assaraf, CEO of Coralogix, and Tal Slobodkin, Managing Partner at StageOne Ventures, we explored insights from Coralogix’s journey, gained valuable investor perspectives, and uncovered the secrets of a thriving partnership. We also delved into Ariel’s insights on transitioning into the CEO’s role as a co-founder and discussed various aspects of VC partnerships in an engaging open discussion with many thought-provoking questions.
• We hosted an incredible workshop for our Female Founders program on growing your business with Dafna Rolls Ish-Shalom. As part of our annual tradition, we organize a workshop for all the founders. During this session, we delved into effectively defining your target market, constructing a database tailored to that market, and, most importantly, strategies to engage the right decision-makers for successful closures!

Enriching Insights: StageOne Masterclass Series

We launched our 2024 masterclasses for the portfolio with a GTM hacking workshop led by Nimo Shkedy. Nimo provided us with an insightful and highly practical session covering advanced market analysis, innovative customer acquisition techniques, personalized campaigns, and more. The workshop was tailored for CEOs, business development leaders, sales teams, and marketing professionals eager to elevate their strategies.

The next masterclass focused on Strategic Financial Planning and KPIs, featuring Eran Schindler, Founder & Partner at Schindler. Throughout the session, we explored financial planning for a growing startup under uncertain conditions, the distinction between financial planning and budgeting, integrating KPIs into the planning process, and best practices for preparing for funding rounds, including assembling the financial package.

Over the year, we will host a total of 12 sessions via Zoom, with monthly occurrences centered around topics rated highly or requested by founders. Our commitment is to showcase top-quality speakers delivering insights tailored for CEOs and employees alike. The knowledge imparted is intended to be readily applicable to enhance your company’s strategic initiatives.
In the spirit of sharing knowledge, we’ve made all the masterclass recordings available on our Medium page.

Building Stronger Connections: StageOne Portfolio Communities

As we step into 2024 with over 28 active portfolio companies, our portfolio communities are also growing, with very active founders, HR, Marketing, and CTO forums. The year 2023 presented its fair share of challenges to many companies, so we arranged the following meetups to discuss and explore the latest specifically tailored for startups at all stages of growth.

• StageOne Marketing Forum Meetup: Each company introduced themselves and their marketing strategies, followed by a short lecture with the amazing Tarah Cammett, CMO at Silverfort, and a marketing guru, who shared invaluable insights on how she shaped her company’s marketing for success and built her team.
• StageOne HR Breakfast Forum: We discussed the challenges our country is currently navigating and how we, as HR personas, are tackling them head-on. This gathering presents an opportunity for us to share experiences, discuss coping strategies, and offer valuable advice to one another.

StageOne Founders Dinner with a Twist

StageOne Ventures has been around for over 20+ years, so we decided to host our first CEO networking dinner! It was an exclusive event where we enjoyed amazing food, connected with other founders from current and existing StageOne companies, and heard an inspirational surprise guest lecture from a top Mossad agent! The event marked a special occasion where we felt that visionary minds came together to celebrate entrepreneurship, innovation, and friendship. Event photos through this link.

Empowering Female Entrepreneurs:
Join Our Office Hours Program

Our Female Founders Office Hours program is one of our favorite initiatives as a fund, and we have just started our 6th batch and the continuation of our 4-year Program. We’re committed to supporting female entrepreneurs by offering one-on-one meetings where we listen to pitches, provide concrete advice, and help network. We understand the unique challenges faced by female founders and launched this program to provide support and guidance throughout your journey. Our goal is to create more opportunities by fostering relationships between founders, investors, and customers. We offer mentoring on various topics including product development, strategy, marketing, technology, financing, and more. If you’re a female founder seeking support or know of someone who might find this program helpful, click here to sign up for a meeting!
StageOne Female Founders Program in the Press:

• The gender gap in Israeli high-tech: Women hit a roadblock in 2023
• יום האישה 2024 מה באמת עושים בהייטק כדי לקדם נשים

We are actively seeking new startups to join our portfolio. If you know any Israeli founders in the enterprise tech space who are ready to make an impact, please send them our way!

To learn more about StageOne Ventures and stay up to date with our latest news and initiatives, visit our website at www.stageonevc.com