From right to left: Prof. Varda Shalu, Dimitrios Kouzaks, Assaf Commercial, Dr. Kinneret Livnet Soitsky. Photo: Team8
The Team8 project announces today (Wednesday) the launch of a new investment arm in the fields of digital health, which will join the company’s existing cyber and fintech investment activities and operate in the same unique model.
From cyber and fintech to digital health
What started as a unique Israeli cyber venture in 2015 later expanded into a venture capital fund, continued in 2020 into a fintech fund that operated in the same model of the cyber field and is now expanding into the fields of digital health. As part of Tim8’s activity model, she connects with entrepreneurs, researches and locates opportunities together with them in the market in which they specialize, and subsequently develops alongside them the ideas for establishing technology companies. Throughout the process, the group is assisted by an internal team of several dozen people and a wide network of partners. So far, Team8 has founded about 15 companies including 2 unicorns and has enjoyed 2 exits.
Team8’s digital health arm is planned to operate in a similar model and establish between 6 and 8 companies in the field over the next five years – with a total investment of up to 10 million dollars in each company. According to the company’s announcement, this amount will consist of raising initial capital, resources and various services. The person who will participate in the establishment of the new activity is Dimitrios Kouzaks, a former executive in the American health system, who previously managed Medicare, a program of the American government health system, and will operate from the Team8 headquarters in New York. Kozoks will be joined by Dr. Kinneret Levant Soitsky, one of the pioneer researchers in the field of computational biology, who grew and led companies in the pharmaceutical sector; Assaf Kamerik, a former executive in the 8200 unit and one of the founders of the Team8 group; and Professor Verda Shalov, a family physician, entrepreneur and former head of the Research and Development Institute of Maccabi Health Services .
According to Team8, Team8 Health will focus on the launch points between cyber, fintech, data and health in areas such as data sharing, explainable AI and secure computing.
In a conversation with Gigtime Asaf Hammarik, managing partner of the Team8 group, explains that Team8 is not a classic venture capital fund, which is based on deal flow and ideas from entrepreneurs who have already started: “We start the journey to build the companies from in-depth research and significant interaction with parties in the industry, academia, etc. We identify problems Big ones that don’t have solutions, an ideation process and also in-depth validation and then join leading entrepreneurs, with whom we set out.”
Commercial says that the company establishment process is based on data and data tools: “The unique data analysis tools developed by us drive every step of our conceptualization and validation methodology – from tools that analyze the flow of money in Medicare, to tools that analyze market trends, size and competition. Our deep expertise in machine learning (ML) and data science expresses the types of companies we build.”
You started as a cyber, and leveraged the knowledge and experience of the 3 pounders of the fund. Then you expanded into fintech and now health. Aren’t you becoming another traditional fund? How is your uniqueness manifested?
“We are not turning into a normal fund, but preserving the existing method of establishing and building companies. As in Foundry Cyber we were based on the in-depth knowledge brought by the first founders of Team8, in fintech we included industry leaders such as Rakfat Rusk Aminach, Yuval Tal, Ronan Asia and Galia Beer Gebal , and in the same way we bring the leaders from the health world to the Digital Health team.”