Sherpa InnoVentures is a unique innovation-focused investment fund, founded and managed by an experienced team with a proven track record in the high tech industry and complementary fields, and equipped with innovation-specific skills.
Partnership: Building on Israel’s dynamic start-up environment, Sherpa will invest in highly innovative Israeli (and Israeli-related) technology companies, to create a 3-way partnership between investors, companies and the Fund’s team.
Experience: Sherpa will invest mainly in the following sectors: (a) Internet and other Information & Communication Technologies (including FinTech) and (b) non-Pharma life sciences (including agro-tech). Leveraging its experience and knowledge, Sherpa’s management team is committed to personally accompany each portfolio company, and to work closely with each company’s management team according to their specific needs.
Innovation Expertise: While most VCs acknowledge the importance of innovation for their success, Sherpa is unique in employing a structured approach for identifying and implementing innovation, in addition to the intuitive – more conventional – way.
Partnering with SIT – Systematic Inventive Thinking, an Israeli Global Innovation Group and a world leader in this industry, Sherpa deploys specific innovation tools throughout the entire range of the fund’s work: scouting, due-diligence, selecting, investing, accompanying and guiding portfolio companies.
A Novel Approach: Sherpa’s alternative approach to fund management is designed to add value to both investors and portfolio companies, by the combination of these elements:
Applying our unique innovation tools at all stages;
Creating harmonious personal working relationships between all parties involved;
A strict commitment to fairness and transparency;
Operating with an “overhead coverage charge”- a budget based operation model*, as opposed to the percentage-based management fee model, making all parties’ upside based solely on portfolio companies’ success;
Applying a hands-on approach to working with portfolio companies.
Sherpa’s innovative model has been developed by learning from, and building on, best practices in the industry, while breaking with some common dogmas, so as to overcome key drawbacks and disadvantages of the current VC model.
*The yearly “overhead coverage charge” budget will vary according to the fund’s stages and is expected to average, over its life cycle, 1.7% of the managed capital per year
