Horizon Capital (Israel) Research
Investment Thesis
Horizon Capital is a Tel Aviv early-stage venture firm founded in 2012 (formerly Oryzn Capital) by childhood friends Yaniv Jacobi and Lior Segal. It describes itself as an operational fund whose mission is to help Israeli founders "master uncertainty" and get from Seed to Series A as fast as possible. It invests exclusively in Israeli-founded startups, is sector-agnostic in principle, and leans toward B2B SaaS and AI. Its stated filters are global scalability, large market potential, a clear path to category leadership, strong founding teams with deep domain expertise, and a unique market insight or unfair advantage. In a 2025 Calcalist interview the partners described a "founder-market fit" lens and an expectation that $1M of pre-seed capital can produce $1M in ARR within 12 to 18 months in the AI era.
Stage Focus
Pre-Seed and Seed. Horizon is typically the first institutional check, either at pre-seed or right after angel, family and friends funding. It continues to invest in follow-ons for its own companies but says it does not lead post-seed rounds or invest in growth phases of other companies. It backs pre-revenue companies, though it increasingly expects an MVP or early users even at pre-seed.
Check Size
Pre-seed checks are typically $500K to $2M, and Horizon usually leads. At seed it leads rounds of up to $5M. Follow-on reserves are used to lead, co-lead or take significant positions in later rounds of portfolio companies.
Lead Tendency
The firm says it typically leads the rounds it joins and often syndicates with other early-stage investors. Co-investors shown on its site include Osage Venture Partners, Qumra Capital, Sapphire Ventures, SOMV, Square Peg, Stripes, Surround, Tiger Global, Vintage, Viola, Zeev Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Entree Capital, Vertex Ventures Israel, Innovation Endeavors, Axon, B Capital, Bosch Ventures, General Catalyst, HV Capital, iAngels, Insight Partners, JAL Ventures and Lool.
Recent Activity
- October 2026: Participated in Bites' $40M Series A led by PeakSpan Capital.
- July 2026: Portfolio company Aiode acquired by BandLab Technologies.
- June 2026: Portfolio company Identiq acquired by Incode Technologies.
- November 2024: OWN (formerly OwnBackup) acquired by Salesforce at a reported $2.1B.
- The firm says it is currently raising its fourth early-stage fund, dedicated to Israeli founders from pre-seed through scale. Earlier third-party material cites roughly $55M managed across three funds; this figure is unverified.
- Recognized as one of Israel's most active early-stage funds in 2023 and a leading follow-on investor in 2024.
Portfolio Highlights
The site claims 21 startups to date, 1 unicorn, 7 acquisitions and about $5B in combined portfolio valuation. Notable names: Datarails (AI FP&A), OWN (cloud backup, acquired by Salesforce), Verbit (transcription, unicorn), Spikerz (social media security), Vee (AI team for nonprofits), Siteaware (digital construction verification), Aiode (music AI, acquired by BandLab), Rep AI (AI ecommerce sales rep), Wider (AI ad creative), Bites (frontline training), Session42/HitCraft (music AI), Identiq (identity network, acquired by Incode), Orbb (relationship AI) and Feedvisor (Amazon optimization). Earlier exits include NanoRep (LogMeIn, 2017, about $50M), BlueRibbon (DraftKings, 2021, about $30M), Ondigo (Gong, 2018) and Appoxee (Teradata, 2015, about $20M).
Team
- Yaniv Jacobi, Co-founder and Managing Partner
- Lior Segal, Co-founder and Managing Partner
- Tom Kaverman, Investment & Value Creation
- Ortal Litvak, Director of Finance
- Hila Hillary Katz, VC Platform & Marketing
The two managing partners' bios on the site include a former VP of Product and Business Development at LivePerson who has sat on about 15 boards (Verbit, Datarails, OwnBackup, Identiq and others), and a former CEO of DMS (acquired by SafeCharge). The page does not map each bio to a name, so they are not attributed individually here.
Decision Process
A two-partner partnership. The application process runs up to about three weeks to a Go/No-Go, and the FAQ cites 6 to 8 weeks from first introduction to signed term sheet. Pitches come through the website form or a warm introduction. The firm reviewed over 400 opportunities in the last year.
Founder Preferences
Israeli founders with deep domain expertise, validated ideas, resilience and vision, including first-time founders and repeat founders from elite military units and top accelerators. Post-investment support is the 12-month 1:1 Evolver coaching program, a founders-only community (Forge Ahead), portfolio perks and US expansion help.
Geographic Focus
Israel only. The firm states it does not invest outside Israeli-founded startups. Office: Sarona, Tel Aviv.
Gaps
The captioned portfolio read returned a bot-check page, so the portfolio list comes from the plain page read of horizoncap.vc/portfolio/. Per-company investment stages and dates are not stated on the site and are left blank. AUM is from a third-party snippet.