Omry Ben David, General Partner at Viola Ventures — Uncovering Top Entrepreneurs and Guiding Them To Build Generational Enterprises
In today’s episode, Josh Benadiva sits down with Omry Ben David, General Partner at Viola Ventures, to discuss how Omry identifies top entrepreneurs and how to think about investing in early-stage FinTech companies. They also explore the future of embedded FinTech, the next generation of InsurTech, and so much more.
Omry Ben David has a wealth of experience in technology-focused fields, having spent 15 years working in investment banking, startup operations, and both institutional and private venture investments. At Viola Ventures, Omry’s areas of investment include FinTech, Enterprise/SMB Software, and Vertical AI. A former Captain and Company Commander in an elite combat unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Omry holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Management from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Viola Ventures is a leading Israel-based fund focused on early-stage investments. With a portfolio of over 90 companies, Viola Ventures has backed a substantial share of Israel’s exits to date, including Actimize, RedBend, ECI, Optimal+, Samanage, and more.
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In this insightful episode, Josh and Omry discuss:
Omry’s journey into the world of venture capital after a lengthy career at Goldman Sachs
“We use the term FinTech revolution. And we really believe in that in that term, it goes back to 2008 during the financial crisis, which really started this FinTech revolution. Back in 2008, nearly all of financial services and insurance companies were these old-school incumbents. [Over the years] through the different revolutions, FinTech moved from a legacy, incumbent type of era into really kind of eating the world and getting into different verticals and different applications in our day to day lives, disrupting much more than just plain vanilla financial services.”
Omry’s advice for aspiring FinTech investors
“Yeah, so first, I would say there isn’t a one-size fits all. I think every person that wants to go into investing and has the passion for it needs to build their own story, and find the right home to pursue that passion… I felt like my own story had four legs to it. I started with the infrastructure, being a computer science undergrad at Tel Aviv University. This gave me a solid background, footing and credibility with entrepreneurs. The second one is the operating experience. I led a GTM organization including sales, marketing, and business development, for a company where we started from zero and got to around $10 million revenue, and really being in the trenches. The third one is my experience in banking. The banking experience is an opportunity to see hundreds, if not 1000s, of companies, how they scale, what makes them successful, what sort of business models work, and how to think about valuation. It teaches you how to even understand the concept that not every dollar of revenue is equal, such as subscription vs services vs transactional, etc. And I think being able to sit and advise on transactions or in boardrooms really gives you great perspective, and I think has helped me. And the fourth one is, of course, investing. At Goldman we did some later stage investments out of the balance sheet. But I was also an investor at Y Combinator demo days and invested in some of the batches. And I think that also helps build credibility for your own passion, and also a little bit of a validation with great founders accepting your angel money and understanding that they see the value beyond your money in terms of helping them in that journey.
How Omry identifies top entrepreneurs and what qualities he looks for when investing in early-stage FinTech companies
“[Viola Ventures] is an early stage fund, so we invest mostly in seed-stage companies. When you’re a seed investor, there are two or three people, and basically a PowerPoint presentation. It sounds like a cliche, but 70-80% of the decision is really about the team. And then the other 20-30% is what we called the vector. It’s very hard to understand or estimate what category and what are the real moats that are going to be built. You have to take a bet that the team will figure it out as we go, as long as the vector is the right one, even if you go 20 or 30 degrees in each direction. And so when we’re looking at a team, we are trying to find a team that is complementary to one another. A classic example is that one is more technical, and the other is more go-to-market oriented. And maybe there’s a third that has more product expertise. You want them to have some domain expertise or be very convincing why they’ve kind of worked in a different domain, but now they want to solve a problem that they’ve never faced. Then you want to look into their experience, not just in the vertical, but also B2B experience or B2C? You want to understand whether they’ve experienced the persona or the type of market or segment they’re going after. And we want them to be aggressive and fundable and we want them to be big dreamers and hungry, and demonstrate along the way some professionalism and integrity.
The most critical is the ability to spend time together. If you look at some of the industry’s investment in the high days of 2020 and 2021, rounds were happening so fast that it was nearly impossible to really spend quality time together. And I think that’s equally important for the investor as it is for the entrepreneurs. If you think about the pre-investment period, it is much shorter duration than the post investment period and if you want to use this analogy of of a marriage, you have to make sure that the founders and the investors choose to walk this journey together through its ups and downs.
So, ultimately, you have to feel very comfortable with the team, and they need to feel very comfortable with you. And the ability to really work together and nurture one another, and help out where you can.”
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About Omry Ben David
Omry Ben David is a General Partner at Viola Ventures, where he focuses on investments in FinTech, Enterprise/SMB Software, and Vertical AI. Omry joined the fund in 2017, bringing 15 years of technology-focused experience across investment banking, startup operations, and both institutional and private venture investments. He was a Captain and Company Commander in an elite combat unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Management from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
About Viola Ventures
Viola Ventures is one of the leading Israel-based funds focused on early-stage investments. With a portfolio of over 90 companies, Viola Ventures has backed a substantial share of Israel’s exits to date, including Actimize, RedBend, ECI, Optimal+, Samanage, and more.
About the Author
Joshua Benadiva is a first-year MBA Candidate at The Wharton School and Master’s in Computer and Information Technology Candidate at Penn Engineering. He is part of the Wharton FinTech Podcast team and has a passion for building fintech products, solving critical financial problems, and exploring niche financial software.
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