Asaf Horesh, GP of Vintage Investment Partners, joins as guest speaker on Capital Calls podcast

Chris (0:05)

Hello, listeners, it's Chris here from Palico. Thank you for joining our podcast, Capital Calls, the show where we sit down with thought leaders from private equity. We chat with institutional investors, fund managers and advisors in the space to discuss the industry and to get their take on what really matters.

On this episode, we talk to Asaf Horesh, General Partner at Vintage Investment Partners, which is a well regarded global venture platform invested in many of the world's leading venture funds and start-ups across Israel, Europe and the US.

It is Israel's only integrated venture platform combining secondary funds, direct co-investment funds and fund-a-funds. Previous to that, he was a principal at Greylock IL, now known as 83 North, where he worked on enterprise software and consumer deals across Israel and Europe. Before Greylock, he was a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group as a member of the corporate development team. Asaf was also a manager at an enterprise software startup and an engineer at Elbit Systems. In this episode, we enjoy a great conversation with Asaf, who shares the importance of having a presence and understanding of the local ecosystem in order to succeed MVC. And we discover what makes the Israeli startup ecosystem so special amongst many other interesting topics.

Claire (1:23)

Asaf, welcome. Thank you for joining Capital Calls.

Asaf Horesh (1:27)

My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

Claire (1:29)

Well, let's start with your background.

How you got into investing. We were just chatting before that you started like many people in Israel with your career in the Air Force. And then that was somewhat what led you to the Israeli Startup Nation approach, and then had another journey beyond that. So maybe why don't we start from the beginning of how you first got interested in investing.

Asaf Horesh (1:53)

So getting from where I was born in the north part of Israel through the Air Force to investing wasn't like a straight line, right? I spent actually eight years in the Air Force, graduated as a helicopter pilot, spent a bunch of time there and studied a ton. When I finished my service, I sort of realized tech is pretty big in Israel, and I should at least understand what computers are doing and how they are interacting with each other. So I went to study computer science in Tel Aviv University.

Many people know the 8200 sort of unit in the Israeli intelligence. So I was surrounded by these folks when I studied, and I'm still surrounded by them today because they could be part in the ecosystem. But all of them knew how to code, except for me.

But I did go through this pretty successful, actually, and loved it, and then spent a couple of years, few years in the startups in Israel.

Claire (2:47)

What companies were you involved in in the beginning?

Asaf Horesh (2:50)

So yeah, so I worked for Elbit, which is a traded company. They're doing military type of equipment, and I started there as an algorithmic engineer, and then sort of grew to a project manager, and wrote some code and managed some projects, some of them communication, some of them more algorithmic type of stuff, and then went on to work for a startup that actually did mostly enterprise business sort of application for manufacturing, for show floor kind of customization and optimization, and managed a small team there at a client sites. And that kind of led me to understand that I'm interested in both like the technical part, but also the business part of this. So left Israel, back then I already had two kids, left Israel to do my MBA at Wharton in the University of Pennsylvania, where I met your colleague and the CEO in my class, and had a fantastic time there, spent then a couple more years in BCG, the Boston Consulting Group. But that time, back to your question, I think I already knew that I want to be an investor, and all this kind of gathering, all these experiences will hopefully help me be a better investor in the future. And then when I moved back to Israel, I was actually planning to move back with BCG and work in the Israeli office, but already had some relationships with some of the venture capital funds in Israel and got an offer to join what was back then Greylock Partners in Israel and in Europe. It felt like an easy decision because it seems like I'm going to like the guys and also kind of sort of finally do what I wanted to do, which is sort of the combination of tech and investing.

Back then, there were four partners, three guys in Israel and Loro in London, and I was the only non-partner going back and forth between Europe and Israel. And it felt like a good lending spot for me. Then after a couple of years, I actually joined where I'm at today, Vintage, which we will talk about more, I assume.