Tom Livna, CEO of Verbit, to Retire and Join Venture Capital Fund Horizon Capital 4

2024-02-04 07:46:39

Livna is expected to retire by the end of the year from the position of CEO and be appointed chairman of Verbit. During the heyday of the high-tech bubble, Verbit managed to raise about 600 million dollars

Tom Livna, one of the founders of Unicorn Verbit, is expected to retire by the end of the year from the position of CEO and be appointed chairman of the company. At the same time Livna will join the venture capital fund Horizon Capital 4 of the investor Yaniv Yacovi, after being a limited partner in funds 2,3. Livna is simultaneously working on several new technological initiatives. He founded Verbit in 2017 together with Dr. Eric Shelf and Kobi Ben Zvi, both of whom are no longer part of the company.

During the heyday of the high-tech bubble, Verbit managed to raise about $600 million, of which $250 million was in secondary transactions, a sum that went into the pockets of early investors, entrepreneurs and employees. Livna himself became tens of millions of dollars richer and at the same time as continuing his role as CEO, he also started investing. He invested, among other things, in the funds that financed him at the beginning of his career, including the Viola Fund and the Horizon Fund and more. Later on, he also invested in companies such as Wix, Jfrog, Walkme, Kaltura, Hippo, Similarweb, Iron Source and Data Dog.

According to Livne, “Once an entrepreneur meets with significant capital, it is a heavy responsibility that requires attention and careful management. Over the past two years, I have been able to double my liquid capital together with extensive philanthropic work. I founded the Livne foundation together with an organization called Keshet Donor Management by Maya Natan, with This body includes Israeli high-tech executives such as Alan Feld and others. In my will I have already defined that I expect to give a significant portion of my capital to charity in secret as written in the Torah and as the best entrepreneurs in the world such as Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates do. I am proud to donate millions of shekels to organizations such as Reichman University (of which I am also a graduate and in the General Assembly) and the orphan fund which I founded after the war and was honored to be the first donor.”

In an interview from 2022, Livna stated regarding Verbit that “we crossed the $100 million mark this year in annual revenue, and we aim to continue growing rapidly next year as well. The need for transcription is always rigid, it’s not like Hype, which comes and goes. One of the questions that is always asked, certainly in light of the global slowdown, is whether we are a service that is mandatory for our customers. In times of recession I sleep better because I know that our product is required by law to make verbal information accessible to people with disabilities and that our market will not disappear – maybe it will shrink a little from 30 billion dollars a year to a few billions as part of the automation process that artificial intelligence makes possible.”