Former NBA champion Omri Casspi has launched a new venture capital fund Swish Ventures, which raised $60 Mn in a seed fund designated for early-stage investments.
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Investors in the fund include Sequoia, pension funds, and over 25 serial entrepreneurs.
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The fund will likely participate in approximately 10 start-ups, with deal sizes of roughly $5 to $7 million per transaction.
Swish Ventures also signaled to its operating partner that Dana Alexandrovich would join soon. She last held the position of Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft in Israel in 2021. Before that, she managed business planning and operations at Microsoft’s headquarters in 80 countries in the Middle East and Africa for three years. Dana joined Microsoft Israel in 2016 as the VP of Finance and Operations.
Among the fund’s investors are Sequoia, Israeli and American institutional investors, serial entrepreneurs, and the likes of Ophir Ehrlich (Founder of Eon), Gal Ben-David (Founder of PointFive), Amiram Shachar (who sold a company to Netapp and is a co-founder of Upwind), Asaf Ezra (who sold Granulate to Intel), Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael (Co-founders of Armis), Michael Dolinsky, Zohar Alon, and others.
“We are launching Swish at a time when the importance of the high-tech sector to Israel is maturing. The industry continues to bring foreign investments into the country. We are hands-on working with entrepreneurs on building large and global Israeli companies,” said Casspi.
“The high-tech sector serves as an ambassador for Israel during these challenging times. The network of connections within the industry enabled us to initiate the visit of Elon Musk to Israel, one of the most influential people in the world. We have also partnered with Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Meta and a board member of some of the largest companies in the U.S., to expose facts about Hamas’ crimes that she has shared worldwide. Through the industry’s network, we had the privilege of participating in raising significant donations for the rehabilitation of communities in the Gaza perimeter. The high-tech infrastructure allows us to serve national interests and is more important than ever.”
About Swish Ventures
Swish Ventures focuses on backing exceptional founders in their journey to build generational companies. Swish Ventures fund is backed by Sequoia, institutional investors from Israel and the U.S., and over 25 repeat founders.
