The Team

Tzvi Appel Chairman & CEO

Mr. Appel has over 25 years’ experience in technology ventures. He founded his first startup in 1986. From 1988 to 2000, he lived in the UK and South Africa. He co-founded a number of IT companies that acted in various IT fields in Israel, South Africa, UK, Australia and Holland.

In the early years of his career Mr. Appel acted as both CEO and CTO in his companies. After returning to Israel in 2001 he took charge of M&A and investment activities. On behalf of his companies and together with South African Venture Capital funds, he invested in various Israeli and South African startups. He served as director for numerous IT companies in Israel, South Africa, Australia, the UK and Holland. Since 1995, his companies have exclusively represented leading Israeli and American IT companies in South Africa, providing distribution and integration of enterprise products to financial, government, insurance and other markets.

Mr. Appel is currently a private investor, Active Chairman and board member in Israeli and other international companies.
 

Amir Lubashevsky Investor & VP Business Development

Mr. Lubashevsky co-founded and held senior positions in a number of IT companies. His roles include CEO, Technical Director, VP Sales, and Marketing and Business Development.

For over 20 years he has been developed a network of technology and integration companies across global markets. He is well known in the Israeli hi-tech arena for successfully developing new markets and new channels of distribution for start-up companies.

Mr. Lubashevsky has extensive direct sales and business experience and was personally responsible for the successful introduction of new technologies into large organizations in emerging markets. His deep technical understanding of a multitude of technologies assists vendors in developing and repositioning their products to meet market needs. He has authored many articles in the area of business enhancement, governance, and risk management that have been published in professional IT publications.

Mr. Lubashevsky has a diploma in Computer Engineering from Israel’s University of Beer Sheva’s Faculty of Technology.

Dr. Ronen Yochpaz CTO & Co-Founder

Mr. Yochpaz has over two decades of experience leading cutting-edge software projects. Ronen served in a number of positions in an elite technology unit in the IDF, and has ITC experience in various technologies, enterprise systems and management of large IT organizations.

Mr. Yochpaz is responsible for the development of VNTs innovative technology. He serves as a board member in the Israeli Grid and Cloud association and holds a PhD. in Information Systems from Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

Mirit Manor VP Products and R&D

Mirit Manor has over 20 years of experience in leading development organizations for hi-tech companies. Mirit was VP, Research and Development for OpTier, a Business Transaction Management company. Before that, Ms. Manor was VP, Research and Development for Business Layers, an identity management software company (acquired by CA). Prior to that, she served as VP, UNIX products development at Memco Software, a security software provider (acquired by CA). Previously, Ms. Manor held senior engineering positions at Tecnomatix Technologies. Ms. Manor holds a BSc in mathematics and computer science from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an MBA from the University of Tel Aviv. Ms. Manor began her career at one of the Israel Defense Forces Computer Centers where she served in several software engineering and management positions.

Roni Einav Investor & Board Member

In the seventies, when he founded Einav Systems, Mr. Einav was one of the first entrepreneurs in the Israeli high tech industry. Many years later he established Einav Hi Tec Assets, an investment company focused on technology ventures, and currently serves as active Chairman.

Mr. Einav has founded over 25 venture investments during his more than 35 years of activity. These have included Liraz Computers (TASE), New Dimension Software (became public on NASDAQ and was acquired by BMC Software), Jacada (NASDAQ), Axxana, CrediView, CeDimension, ComDa, Einav Computer Systems, Einav Systems, M-Photo, Eurekify (was acquired by CA) and more. He served as Chairman (or Director) of many of these companies.

Mr. Einav has also taught a class in entrepreneurship and venture capital at the Technion, Afeka College. He serves as an advisor to several other companies pro bono. Mr. Einav serves on the board of directors of two public companies: ClickSoftware (NASDAQ) and Advantec (TASE), and in the advisory board of Xenia, an Incubator for high tech ventures, which is also a public company (TASE). Roni and Dr. Miriam Yahil-Wax wrote [in Hebrew] a 350 pages book based upon his life story. the publisher is Kineret-Zmora-Bitan.

Yair Safrai Investor & Board Member

Mr. Safrai is a private investor, Active Chairman and a board member of several corporations.

Mr. Safrai got involved in the Israeli VC industry in the beginning of the 1990’s. He co-founded Concord Ventures and served as Vice President of the Nitzanim Venture Fund. As General Partner at Concord, he specialized in information technologies with emphasis on Internet-related, software and communication companies.

Prior to joining the VC industry, he was in charge of business development at BVR Technologies, a high-tech company specializing in aviation simulation. Prior to BVR, he held key consulting, marketing and business development positions at IGS Inc., a hi-tech start-up, and P.O.C., a leading marketing and strategy consulting firm in Israel.

Mr. Safrai holds a B.Sc. cum laude in Economics and Management from the University of Tel-Aviv, an M.A. in International Studies from the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A from the Wharton Business School.
 

Shaula Yemini-Alexander Investor & Board Member

Dr. Yemini-Alexander is an angel investor and board member of several technology startups. Until 2007, she was a Vice President and General Manager at EMC. She joined EMC 2005 with the acquisition of SMARTS (System Management Arts), a developer of network and system management software that she founded and led as CEO from inception. SMARTS counted among its customers the leading global telecoms, banks, and multi-national enterprises.

Dr. Yemini-Alexander was named as 1 of 10 "Leaders Among Leaders” in Information Technology by Information Week Magazine, and selected as an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year. SMARTS was an INC 500 company, a Deloitte & Touche Fast 50 company, and won other prestigious awards.

Prior to founding SMARTS, she was the Senior Manager for Distributed Systems Software Technology at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, and earlier, an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at NYU's Courant Institute. She has a PhD in Computer Science from UCLA, and an MSc in Applied Mathematics and a BSc in Mathematics and Physics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
 

Advisors

Ron Rymon Investor & Advisory Board Member

Dr. Rymon is a software entrepreneur. Currently, he is co-Founder and Executive Chairman of LetMobile – a mobile email security company, and of White Source – an open source lifecycle management company. He is also an investor and advisor to several other technology companies. Beforehand, Ron founded Eurekify, the pioneering Role Management company (acquired by CA). Previously, he founded CrediView, a developer of payment fraud prevention solutions. Ron holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and has been on the research faculty of the University of Pittsburgh and the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. While in academia, Ron served as a strategic consultant to major corporations and government agencies worldwide.
 

Azi Cohen Investor

Mr. Cohen is an Israeli entrepreneur, with a strong managerial and technology background. He has long experience as a founder and CEO of several startup companies including Eurekify were he also led the acquisition process by CA.

Mr. Cohen has a strong background in strategic planning, fund raising, market analysis, business development, management-team assembly, as well as implementing positive change through straightforward as well as non-conventional means and ideas.