💵 Elad Shmilovich

Operations vs Strategy - which is more important? My answer has always been operations. Strategy is simply a smart operational process to figure out the right strategy. When we started the Israel Tech Mission nearly 1.5 years ago our focus was on action, operations and impact. And see impact to date: https://lnkd.in/e95Z92wZ

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Our posts about ivrit.ai are usually (surprise surprise) written in Hebrew. Today, we're making an exception to accomodate our global viewers as we share our experience with the ElevenLabs' scribe-v1 Speech-to-Text model. As most of you know, we maintain a Hebrew Transcription leaderboard on Huggingface (link in first comment). This was needed as fleurs and common-voice are low-quality datasets with regards to Hebrew. When ElevenLabs launched scribe_v1, we were eager to try it out. The initial results were a mixed bag: some benchmarks where scribe_v1 provides best-in-class results, others where it fumbles significantly. Our analysis mostly hints at issues with long-form transcriptions, where it simply "drops" large parts of the text after 1-2 minutes. We had a quick discussion about this with ElevenLabs support, but the end result is still subpar performance on Hebrew transcription, and we suspect this may be true for other low-resource languages. We think scribe_v1's technology is best-in-class, and are hoping to work together with the ElevenLabs team to fix this. So, if anyone at EL wants to chime in and make this happen (Mati Staniszewski Piotr Dabkowski :)), please reach out to us. We believe this might make scribe_v1 much better at not just Hebrew, so it might be worth your time. Our benchmarks are open, we're a non-profit, and in the last few weeks we open-sourced >5000 hours of speech with high-quality transcriptions. If anyone here has friends at EL and wants to help, please tag them! Kinneret Misgav, PhD Yoad Snapir Yanir Marmor

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Excited to share my partner Raz Mangel’s interview with CTech by Calcalist on Greenfield Partners’ outlook for 2025! The Israeli tech ecosystem continues to prioritize AI-enabled applications and vertical AI solutions, focusing on infrastructure and deep tech—true to its innovative DNA. Raz covers multiple topics over the course of this interview. Some key insights include: - Israeli innovation continues to attract global attention - 2025 presents unique opportunities for both early-stage startups and mature companies - Vertical AI solutions are gaining significant momentum Read the full interview below to discover Raz's take on market dynamics, emerging technologies, and what makes the Israeli ecosystem uniquely positioned for success in 2025.

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Israeli startup Onfire AI has raised $20 million in seed funding. The round was led by TLV Partners and Grove Ventures, with additional investment from IN Venture and Leumi Tech 77, the new investment branch of Bank Leumi. The funding happened in two parts — it started in 2023 and continued into this year. The company has built a contextual intelligence platform that studies online activity on forums, blogs, social networks, and developer communities. It helps software and cloud companies find potential customers and understand what they need in real time. Tal Peretz 🔥 | Shahar Shavit 🔥 | Nitzan H.  🔗 Read full article link in comment #onfireAI #startupnews #funding #businessupdate #AI #businessnews

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How are early-stage investors thinking about 2025? We partnered with Meitar | Law Offices to survey 25 fellow early-stage VCs in Israel, offering an unfiltered look at where investor sentiment stands after 2024 and expectations for 2025. Key Insights: 🔹 AI is now table stakes. The majority of pre-seed and seed investments are in AI-driven startups, making differentiation the focus for founders. Investors are looking for compelling use cases, strong unit economics, and execution potential. 🔹 Pre-Seed is gaining importance. With higher expectations at seed, more founders are raising pre-seed rounds to validate their product and gain early traction. 🔹 Raising a seed round now comes with greater scrutiny. While capital is available, the rapid evolution of AI and market shifts mean investors are more selective. 🔹 Cyber and defense remain dominant, but some investors see signs of saturation. Meanwhile, fintech, supply chain, and DevOps are seen as undervalued opportunities for Israeli tech. 📖 Read the full report for more investor insights: https://lnkd.in/dr7YMsqZ Barak Rabinowitz shared more thoughts with Ofir Dor at TheMarker here: https://lnkd.in/dMuTMXgT Thank you to all the early-stage VCs who contributed their insights to this report: NFX | Bessemer Venture Partners | Blumberg Capital | Vertex Ventures Israel | Viola Ventures | Cardumen Capital | Elron Ventures | Random Forest VC | StageOne Ventures | PICO Venture Partners | Symbol | AnD Ventures | Emerge Ventures | Fusion VC | TPY Capital | Good Company VC | The Garage | UpWest | Crescendo Venture Partners | Grove Ventures | lool ventures | Amiti | Remagine Ventures | Ibex Investors | #startups #VC #fundraising #AI #cybersecurity #IsraelTech #venturecapital

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🚀 Women Funding Women: A Call to Action As AI reshapes the future, women must be at the forefront of this revolution. Yet, the data is concerning: while investments in AI startups soar, the share going to women-led companies is shrinking. This is a wake-up call for us all. Today, on this emotional day when more women hostages were released, we are reminded of the resilience and strength of women. To uplift women in the transformative world of AI, we’ve launched the Women Funding Women initiative — a collaboration between ICI Fund, RUNI Ventures, VCAcademy, and Calcalist כלכליסט. One Israeli female entrepreneur will receive a $1M investment to scale her AI-driven startup. With over 70 projects already registered, we encourage more women to apply. The deadline is February 4, 2025. Apply here: https://lnkd.in/dnJaep8U By supporting women entrepreneurs, we hope to see more women shaping the industry in the years to come. Read here in English: https://lnkd.in/dEvg2zKP https://lnkd.in/dQJ6kPa3 #WomenInTech #AI #WomenEntrepreneurs #WomenFundingWomen #VC #Innovation #WomenInLeadership #BRINGTHEMHOMENOW!

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