FoodTech on the Frontline
OurCrowd, Fresh Start FoodTech Incubator and the Israel Innovation Authority had a live discussion of Israel’s FoodTech ecosystem and presentations from nine startup companies at the forefront of innovation for food production.
Speakers:
Cali Chill, Head of Funds, OurCrowd
Noga Sela-Shalev, CEO, & Dr. Tammy Meiron, CTO, Fresh Start: Israeli FoodTech Incubator
Dror Bin, CEO, Israel Innovation Authority
Jeremy Coller, Founder, Chief Investment Officer, and Managing Partner, Coller Capital & Founder, FAIRR (Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return) Initiative
Speakers
Noga Sela Shalev
CEO,
Fresh Start FoodTech Incubator
Noga Sela Shalev
CEO
Fresh Start FoodTech Incubator
Noga has 15 years of experience in product management, marketing, and business development in the food and foodtech industry, closely acquainted with the local and global foodtech scene, supporting early-stage start-ups from vision to scale. She is experienced in business evaluation of innovative technologies with high emphasis on applicable innovation and has initiated and led industry and startups joint development as well as implementation processes according to industry’s needs and requirements.
Beyond her extensive marketing background, as formerly the chief of staff and head of innovation unit in Tnuva, Israel’s biggest food company, she initiated and led corporate level strategic projects in various fields, from operational excellence to corporate strategy, and established the Tnuva group corporate innovation unit and work processes.
Noga holds an MBA degree from the Tel Aviv University.
Dror Bin
CEO,
Israel Innovation Authority
Dror Bin
CEO
Israel Innovation Authority
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Dror Bin is the CEO of the Israel Innovation Authority, an independent public entity that operates for the benefit of the Israeli innovation ecosystem and Israeli economy as a whole. Its role is to nurture and develop Israeli innovation resources, while creating and strengthening the infrastructure and framework needed to support the entire knowledge industry.
Prior to his role at the Authority, Dror served as President and CEO of RAD Data Communications, a leading global telecom network solutions company with hundreds of employees at the company's headquarters in Tel Aviv, a manufacturing center in Jerusalem and development center in Beer Sheva as well as dozens of corporate branches around the world.
Dror also served in a series of positions for close to a decade at Comverse Technology, the last one as a member of the management team and VP of Global Sales. Following this, Dror served as a venture partner at Carmel Ventures and a chairman at several of its portfolio companies. In addition, Dror served as a partner at Shaldor, a leading management consulting firm in Israel, where he led the development and implementation of business and marketing strategies for major organizations in the financial, consumer, retail, high-tech, banking and other industries.
Jeremy Coller
Founder, Chief Investment Officer, and Managing Partner,
Coller Capital
Jeremy Coller
Founder, Chief Investment Officer, and Managing Partner
Coller Capital
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Jeremy Coller is Chief Investment Officer and Managing Partner of Coller Capital, the world’s largest independent firm dedicated to private equity secondaries, which he founded in 1990.
Widely regarded as the “godfather of secondaries”, Jeremy is credited with pioneering and growing the market, transforming secondaries into the multi-billion dollar industry it is today. In 2023 he was named the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) of the secondary market by Secondary Link, the latest of many such accolades from the media.
Jeremy is among the world’s leading investors in the alternative protein industry through his private venture capital arm, CPT Capital.
He is also a noted philanthropist, endowing the Coller School of Management at Tel Aviv University, where he serves as Deputy Chairman of the board of governors.
A passionate advocate for animal welfare and reform of the global food system, in 2015 Jeremy founded Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (FAIRR) – the world’s fastest-growing ESG network, representing investors with more than $70 trillion of assets under management.
Cali Chill
Head of Funds,
OurCrowd
Cali Chill
Head of Funds
OurCrowd
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Cali serves as Head of Investment Funds & Chief Legal Officer. He joins OurCrowd after serving as general counsel for Jerusalem-based, Nasdaq-traded Answers Corporation (Answers.com) between 2005 and 2011; and as general counsel for Saint Louis-based AFCV Holdings, LLC, a private equity backed fund invested in several technology companies, including Answers.com, between 2012 and 2018. His practice has focused mainly on handling general commercial transactions, overseeing public company compliance matters, leading mergers and acquisitions, managing due diligence processes, solving for IP protection, negotiating employment and executive compensation arrangements and general handling of legal and business affairs faced by technology companies. Cali has spent several years practicing corporate law in NYC and Saint-Louis. He completed a four-year LLB/MBA program at Bar Ilan University in 2000 and is licensed to practice law in Israel and New York. He currently lives in Jerusalem with his wife and four children.
Tammy Meiron
CTO,
Fresh Start FoodTech Incubator
Tammy Meiron
CTO
Fresh Start FoodTech Incubator
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Tammy has over 25 years of experience in R&D, production, and technology transfer fields in the life-science, pharmaceuticals, and food industries.
In her last position she led the technology in two leading Israeli FoodTech start-ups, developing plant-based egg substitutes for all egg applications as CTO of Zero Egg; and developing sweet proteins as a non-GMO sugar substitute as the Amai Proteins Director of Food Technology.
Previously, she was involved in numerous startups in the fields of R&D, IP, tech transfer, production Scale-UP, operations, joint ventures with multinational companies, and more.
Since 2013, Tammy teaches a new product development course at the Hebrew University.
Tammy holds a Ph.D. degree from the Hebrew University in Food Science and Technology.
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OurCrowd is the online global venture investing platform that empowers institutions and individual accredited investors to invest and engage in emerging technology companies at an early stage. Acclaimed by PitchBook as the most active venture investor in Israel every year since 2013, OurCrowd vets and selects companies across all sectors and stages, invests its own capital, and provides its global platform of over 225,000 registered members from 195 countries with unparalleled access and freedom to co-invest from as little as $10,000 in the companies of their choice.
Founded by CEO Jon Medved in 2013 with the vision of democratizing world-class venture capital investing, OurCrowd has grown rapidly into the world’s leading online venture investing platform and as of 2023 has over $2.2 billion in commitments, and deployed capital into more than 420 portfolio companies and 50 funds across five continents. To date, OurCrowd’s startups have recorded 63 exits including several public market listings: Beyond Meat (BYND), Lemonade (LMND), Innoviz (INVZ), Arbe (ARBE), Alpha Tau (DRTS), Freightos (CRGO); and numerous high-profile acquisitions: JUMP by Uber, BriefCam by Canon, Argus by Continental, Crosswise by Oracle, Replay by Intel, Corephotonics by Samsung, CyberX by Microsoft, and Kenna Security by Cisco.
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