Investors

Prof. Dr. h.c. Hasso Plattner

Hasso Plattner co-founded German software giant SAP with four former IBM colleagues. He is chairman of SAP’s supervisory board. In 2005 he set up Hasso Plattner Ventures.

Find out more about Hasso Plattner.

CMEA Ventures

CMEA Ventures is a US-based $1bn venture capital firm with a clear focus on life sciences, high technology, and energy and materials investments. CMEA Ventures was founded in 1989 and maintains offices in San Francisco and Menlo Park. It invests in both early and late stage science-focused ventures and leverages a strong network of corporate, investment, and entrepreneurial relationships on behalf of portfolio companies. The CMEA team is a cohesive group, with the senior team possessing more than 80 years of investing experience, as well as decades of executive-level operations experience. The current portfolio comprises more than 50 companies. In 2007 CMEA was profiled as one of the six most active Cleantech VCs in the US.

CMEA Website

ILB — InvestitionsBank des Landes
Brandenburg

(Brandenburg Investment Bank)

The InvestitionsBank des Landes Brandenburg (ILB) is the main promotional institute supporting the State of Brandenburg and other public authorities in the performance of their tasks. ILB's core business is the promotion of public and private investment projects in trade and industry, the infrastructure and housing construction. Using funds from the State of Brandenburg, the Federal Government, The European Union and our own funds the ILB can offer grants, loans at favourable interest rates, guarantees, venture and equity capital.

ILB Website

Shai Agassi

Shai Agassi is a serial entrepreneur in the software business. He was president of SAP’s product and technology group and was responsible for SAP's overall technology strategy and execution. In this leadership position he - amongst others - oversaw the development of the integration and application platform SAP SAP NetWeaver and SAP Business One. Before his appointment to the SAP Executive Board, Agassi was CEO at SAP Markets and SAP Portals. He was appointed to the SAP Executive Board in 2002. Together with the head of the Application Platform & Architecture (AP&A) group, Peter Zencke, Agassi co-led the Suite Architecture Team, which aligns the software architecture across all SAP solutions.

Being a software entrepreneur Agassi founded TopTier Software, a leading enterprise portal sold to SAP in 2001. Agassi served the company in various capacities including chairman, chief technology officer and CEO. In addition to TopTier Software Agassi co-founded several other companies, including Quicksoft Ltd., a leading multimedia software localization and distribution company in the Israeli market, TopManage, a developer of small business software which became SAP business One after the acquisition in 2002, and Quicksoft Media, a multimedia production company. By early 2008 Agassi managed to get Renault's CEO, Carlos Ghosn, and the Israeli government to endorse his electric-car plan and Project Better Place, and to have Renault develop its electric cars in Israel. He raised USD200m for this project.

Shai Agassi's Blog

Arnon Katz

Arnon has been involved in Internet ventures since 1992, specializing in online media, E-commerce and online marketing. He supports the entrepreneur’s community in Israel. Arnon co-founded Empire Online (today Livermore) in 1998, a public company traded on the AIM in UK and specialized in marketing of online gaming in the past and an investment company today. Arnon is presently involved in the development of the Progressive Education system in deprived neighbourhoods in Israel. He is also involved in a number of Internet ventures such as News Aggregation and Widgets services, Text Enrichment tools and incubator for marketing on social networks platforms and Viral Knowledge distribution. Arnon has combined his knowledge in marketing, communications and technological expertise to build bridges between specialists in online media, online marketing strategy, viral marketing, technology gap analysts and traditional businesses. Arnon's passion is to bring business people, educators and young entrepreneurs together, to promote progressive education and to encourage the entrepreneurial culture in schools around the world.