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Benhamou Global Ventures, a Palo Alto, California-based early-stage venture capital firm, last week announced the first close of funding for BGV II LP and expects to open an office in Israel. The fund is focused on seed and early stage investing in enterprise technology including security, cloud-based services, web scale infrastructure, mobility and the emerging Internet of Things.
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Benhamou Global Ventures has already made its first investment from BGV II in Qubell, a company providing application deployment and configuration management for web-scale applications. Founded by repeat entrepreneur and enterprise cloud pioneer, Victoria Livschitz, Qubell brings true agility and speed to enterprises online commerce operations.
“As the transformation of the enterprise continues at an aggressive pace, so do the opportunities to invest in and build new global businesses, ” said Eric Benhamou, founder Chairman and CEO of Benhamou Global Ventures. He is also General partner of the new fund. “To leverage these opportunities, we have expanded our team to include Marina Levinson, Barak Ben-Avinoam and Janice Roberts. These are veteran operating executives, technologists and investment professionals who share our passion for working with entrepreneurs to build innovative technology businesses. I’m excited to welcome them to the team.”
BGVII has also formed a Technology Advisory Council comprised of enterprise IT experts to assist with technology diligence and customer validation. The BGVII team is augmented by a network of global industry C-level executives to support its portfolio of companies; many of whom are investing in the new Fund.
Benhamou Global Ventures expects at least one third of its second fund in Israeli companies, and will set up an office in Israel for this purpose, Eric Benhamou has said to Globes. The Israeli office will be headed by Dr. Barak Ben-Avinoam, one of the partners in the firm.
“Benhamou Global Ventures’ first fund made five investments in Israel, but did not make an issue of this, in contrast to the second fund, for which Israel will have a more dominant role. I hope that we’ll invest in at least one Israeli company by the end of the year, ” Benhamou added.
About Eric Benhamou
Benhamou Global Venture was founded in 2003 by Eric Benhamou, formerly Chairman and CEO of 3Com, Palm and co-founder of Bridge Communications.
Since 1993, Eric Benhamou has also served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Cypress Semiconductor, a public semiconductor company. Mr. Benhamou has also served on the Board of Directors of RealNetworks, Inc., a public company creator of digital media services and software, since 2003. He sits on the Board of Directors of several private companies as well.
Eric Benhamou is a member of the Executive Committees of TechNet, at Stanford University School of Engineering and of Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He is also a visiting professor at the INSEAD Business School and the Chairman of the Israel Venture Network, a venture philanthropy organization for a stronger Israeli society. Mr.
In 2003, Mr. Benhamou was appointed to the United States-Israel Science and Technology Commission by the then U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans. Mr. Benhamou holds a diplome d’Ingénieur from l’École Nationale Superieure d’Arts et Métiers in Paris, a Masters degree in Science from the School of Engineering at Stanford University and several honorary doctorates.
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