New Era Capital Partners is a good fit for founders who wish to collaborate with like-minded people. Before joining New Era, Gideon Argov, Ran Simha, and Ziv Conen were all running their own enterprises. Simha is a trained engineer who worked in finance at Lehman Brothers and a hedge fund before becoming the former Israeli president Shimon Peres’ economic and technical advisor. Conen works in technology in fields such as military, whereas Argov has led a number of technological enterprises.
The firm’s major goal, according to Argov, is to push Israeli enterprises to the next level – and then the one after that. Other Era intends to specialize on scaling early-stage firms outside of Israel, assisting them in finding and hiring good people, establishing their organizations in new parts of the world, and forming strategic and investment partnerships. “We all believe in assisting Israeli startups in their early stages of development,” he continued. “We assist them in expanding outside Israel and become global citizens.” We’ve been ESG-focused since the beginning, and we’re the first Israeli venture capital firm to embrace the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment.”
Conen also mentioned that, with the competition for talent now expanding beyond engineers to product managers, New Era is one of the few firms that offers strategic problem-solving sessions with founders to address their problems. Fintech, HR tech, mobility, cybersecurity, and development tools are some of the industries that the organization is interested in. Artificial intelligence is present in all of these businesses, according to Conen, and the firm views it as a “tech moat” that would provide corporations an advantage over their competitors.
New Era secured $60 million for its initial fund, with limited partners consisting mostly of high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and founders of significant private equity and hedge funds in the United States, as well as large American firms interested in investing in Israel’s ecosystem. From that fund, it invested in ten startups, including unicorn Papaya Global and Workiz. The business raised $140 million for its second fund, with half of the LPs coming from the United States and Israel (pension funds and insurance firms), and the other half coming from the previous fund.
New Era is also allowing businesses to directly co-invest with them through a special purpose entity. The business intends to write typical check amounts of $5 million to $8 million from the second fund. It has already invested in nine firms and plans to invest in a total of 20 additional businesses. Neosec, a cybersecurity firm, and Assured Allies, a company for aging adults, are among the companies that have received funding.
