Oren Zeev is an Israeli-American

venture capitalist Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which hav ...

and head of Zeev Ventures, a

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

-based

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

firm with early-round investments in technology companies. Zeev has had notable investments in

Houzz Houzz is an American website, online community and software for architecture; interior design and decorating; landscape design and home improvement. It was founded in 2009 and is based in Palo Alto, California. History Houzz was founded as an onl ...

Audible Audible may refer to: * Audible (service), an online audiobook store * Audible (American football), a tactic used by quarterbacks * ''Audible'' (film), a short documentary film featuring a deaf high school football player * Audible finish or rush ...

Chegg Chegg, Inc., is an American education technology company based in Santa Clara, California. It provides homework help, digital and physical textbook rentals, textbooks, online tutoring, and other student services. The company was launched in 2005 ...

TripActions TripActions is a travel management, corporate card and expense management company for businesses. Booking and managing travel and expenses can be done on the web or via a smartphone app. History The Palo Alto, California-based travel company, T ...

, and Tipalti. He is co-founder and co-chairman of ICON, a non-profit organization focused on bridging Israeli and

technology and business.

Engineering career

Zeev graduated BsC Cum Laude, EE from Technion-Machon Technologi Le’ Israel, and earned an MBA with Distinction in Business from

INSEAD INSEAD, a contraction of "Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires" () is a non-profit business school that maintains campuses in Europe ( Fontainebleau, France), Asia (Singapore), the Middle East (Abu Dhabi, UAE), and North America (San ...

in France. Zeev developed and implemented image and signal processing algorithms prior to his career as a venture capitalist. He was a Research staff member at IBM and part of the founding team of IBM's chip design group in Haifa, Israel.

Investment career

Following his time at IBM, Zeev spent 12 years at

Apax Partners Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of six other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Munich and Shanghai. As of December 2017, the firm, including its ...

as a

General Partner General partner is a person who joins with at least one other person to form a business. A general partner has responsibility for the actions of the business, can legally bind the business and is personally liable for all the partnership's debts an ...

. He joined in January 1995 as part of the founding team of Apax Israel. In 2002, Zeev moved to the US and co-headed, and later headed, the Technology Practice of Apax and its Silicon Valley office. His first investment was

where he was also a board member.

Zeev Ventures

In 2007, Zeev established Zeev Ventures in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

to focus on early-stage companies. At Zeev Ventures, he has been an early investor and has held board and chairmanships at various companies including Houzz, Chegg, Homelight, Tipalti, TripActions, and NEXT Insurance. For Houzz, Zeev led the Series A round in the company in 2010, and then invested another $20 million from his fund, Zeev Ventures, expanding on the 8% of the company he already owned.

Tipalti

In 2010, Zeev Co-founded Tipalti when another one of Zeev's portfolio companies approached him with a major challenge they were facing around processing payouts to their global partners. To explore and address this problem, Zeev recruited Chen Amit, who he had studied and gotten his MBA with while at

, to create and run the company. Tipalti now processes over $11 billion in annual transaction for over 1,000 clients and over 4 million suppliers around the world. In 2014, Zeev was featured in

Techcrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

on his investment approach that has achieved an annual 100 percent IRR. In 2017,

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

wrote an article about Zeev's unique investment approach that had led to such a high portfolio success rate. In 2019, Zeev was profiled by

CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk sho ...

on how he chooses start-ups for investment.

Personal life

Zeev was born in Haifa, Israel in 1964. He moved to California with his wife, Hagit Zeev, and 2 children in 2002. Zeev currently lives in

Los Altos Hills Los Altos Hills (; ''Los Altos'', Spanish language, Spanish for "The Heights") is an List of municipalities in California, incorporated town in Santa Clara County, California, Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 8,4 ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

List of startup investments

* Tipalti * Homelight * Duda * Crossrider *

Wibiya Wibiya was an online toolbar platform that offered web publishers the option to add web applications to their respective websites at no cost. With these web apps, the company aims to provide publishers with services and features that are designed ...

* Next Insurance * Loop Commerce * AngelSense * Redkix * vFunction * Reali * Seal * Domestika *

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), package ...

Freight * Hippo Insurance * Stackbit * ProteanTecs * UpNine * Explorium * Fieldin * Veev * Sunbit * Firebolt * Uniper * Treeverse * dLocal

References

External links

Zeev Ventures
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zeev, Oren 1964 births American business executives Angel investors American people of Israeli descent Israeli financial businesspeople Living people