
Ep131: Shiran Melamdovsky Somech | Program Managing Director at DriveTLV
Shiran’s day job is the program managing director at DRIVE TLV and runs the commercialization program called fastlane. However, in the evenings she propels forward females in various aspects. Shiran was a managing partner of Yazamiyot, Israel’s leading community of over 5,000 members, and a volunteer at Saleet, an organization helping women at risk, working to integrate them into the hi-tech industry.
11 Sep 202021min

Ep100: Laura Lauder | Lauder Family Venture Philanthropy Fund
Laura is a social entrepreneur and venture philanthropist in Silicon Valley, focusing on Signature Initiatives that she has designed and launched with experts and other philanthropists. Her initiatives include the Center for Media and Democracy in Israel: (A ProPublica model in Israel), DeLeT: A Jewish Teach-for-America and a Jewish Teen Philanthropy program worldwide.. She serves on 11 nonprofit and foundation boards, is an avid cyclist and, in 2009, won a bronze medal in the Maccabi Games in Israel!
2 Sep 202023min

Ep99: Shmuel Shottan | SVP Storage Engineering at Hitachi Vantara
Shmuel is the SVP, Storage Engineering at Hitachi Vantara and was previously CTO and SVP Engineering of BlueArc, the leading provider of the most scalable and the highest performing network storage solutions (acquired by Hitachi). He previously led technology and strategy and 3 other startups that were acquired, and joined Quantum Technology Ventures as a general partner. Shmuel is passionate about mentoring, coaching, and advising young entrepreneurs.
2 Sep 202022min

Ep97: Lisandro Brill | Latin America Venture Capitalist
Lisandro is one of the pioneers of the venture capital industry in Latin America (J-Ventures LP for Latin American Community, AxiaVentures, AltaVentures – México & USA -, OIKOS AgriFoodTech. He is focused on creating and investing in companies that improve the lives of people around the world, especially in developing areas, and his investments have amounted to multiple exits and IPOs. He holds a BA in Economics (Cum Laude) from University of Buenos Aires, and a MPA from Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
2 Sep 202021min

Ep96: Gil Frostig | Prev a VP (Intel and Qualcomm), and Strategic Investor
Gil is a veteran high-tech executive with 35 years of management and leadership experience. During his career at Intel (VP), he led several mergers and acquisitions, and managed organizations of up to 2,000 engineers around the world (including developing the solution that kicked off the global WiFi revolution). As VP R&D of Qualcomm, he led the development of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC technologies and products. Currently Gil 's focus is on startups and J-Ventures roles.
2 Sep 202023min

Ep98: Miri Polachek | CEO of Joy Ventures
Miri is the CEO of Joy Ventures, and previously co-founded Israel Brain Technologies (IBT), a non-profit envisioned by late Israeli President Shimon Peres that accelerated brain-related innovation and established Israel as a global brain technology hub. She began her business career as a corporate economist at Teva Pharmaceuticals and later held financial management positions at Pfizer in New York, later VP Finance at IntegraMed. Miri holds a Master of Arts in Health Economics from Boston University and an MBA from NYU.
2 Sep 202031min

Ep94: Cindy Padnos | Founder & Managing Partner at Illuminate Ventures
Cindy is the founder and Managing Partner of Illuminate Ventures, a seed stage firm investing exclusively in Enterprise/B2B software startups. Previously, she was founder/CEO of SaaS startup Vivant (now part of Oracle), CEO of Acumen and VP marketing at Scopus (IPO then acquired by Siebel). Cindy has been recognized as one of the Most Influential Women in Tech (Fast Company), Most Influential Women in Silicon Valley (New York Times) and dubbed ”Queen B2B” (VentureBeat).
1 Sep 202025min

Ep93: David Demarest | Stanford GSB Professor, Prev. White House senior staff
David is a Stanford Business School Professor and has held numerous executive positions in communications and strategy. He was an assistant to President George H. W. Bush and member of the White House senior staff, was head of communications at Bank of America, head of brand management at Visa and most recently Stanford’s senior public affairs official.
1 Sep 202025min