Company Name: Lightspeed Venture Partners
Founded in Israel: 2006
Israel Location: Herzliya Pituach

I had the chance to interview Yoni Cheifetz, a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, a global VC fund investing in Israeli startups. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Lightspeed has offices in China, India, Israel and the US. Recently Lightspeed raised an $800 million fund and introduced a new partner, David Gussarsky, to their team as a Managing director.

Two years ago Lightspeed partnered with Gemini to create the Internet Lab, a venture designed to give seed funding to early-stage Israeli startups. They have invested in six companies so far as part of the Lab. The first of these companies was Outbrain, creator of a content rating and recommendations widget. Through the Lab they have also backed StyleShake, a do-it-yourself fashion company headquartered in the UK that allows users to design their own clothing and have it sent to them; Vestopia, a resource for investors; and Bahu, a social network for people under 25.

In our interview below, Yoni and I discuss the Israeli startups Lightspeed has invested in as well as what he considers important for startups to be successful.

This post was originally posted July 16th on Mashable.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Blonde 2.0, Events, Venture Capital. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.