Israel and Silicon Valley – Innovation Alignment

Event Description:

Our panel will compare and contrast the venture capital and startup ecosystems in Israel and Silicon Valley and discuss the participation of Israeli entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. If you have time prior to the event read Start-up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, which explains Israel’s meteoric rise in high tech.

Speakers:

Greg Mathis (panel moderator) is a senior attorney in the Corporate practice at Dorsey Whitney LLP with over 12 years’ experience working with Silicon Valley startups, investors and venture capitalists.

Yoav Leitersdorf is the founder and Managing Partner of YL Ventures, a venture capital fund that he designed based on his own experiences as an entrepreneur, with a unique strategy of achieving short-term, medium-sized exits of technology companies via strategic acquisitions.

Mr. Leitersdorf serves on the board of directors of two YL Ventures portfolio companies: ClickTale and FasterWeb. He cofounded and was Managing Director and CEO of Movota Ltd., an innovative mobile service provider for broadcasters, leading its foundation, strategy and development, and negotiating a multi-million dollar trade sale to Bertelsmann AG. Previously he cofounded and served as CTO of ExchangePath, a credit-card based micro-payment and peer-to-peer online payment system, acquired by internet conglomerate CMGI for over $25 million.

Yoav holds an MBA from Columbia University (beta gamma sigma) and has studied International Business at the International Institute of Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He has three registered international patents.