Hetz Ventures

Judah Taub and Pavel Livshiz are the firm's named general partners and co-investment leads (per CTech, 2021). Taub brings a background as an IDF major and venture-finance lecturer, while Livshiz contributes deep operational experience alongside an angel-investing track record in cybersecurity and infrastructure. The partnership structure is flat, with both principals actively sourcing, diligencing, and sitting on portfolio-company boards.

The firm's sourcing strategy relies heavily on its principals' personal ties to the Israeli military-intelligence diaspora, particularly alumni of Unit 8200 — the IDF signals-intelligence unit that has spawned foundational cybersecurity and enterprise-infrastructure companies. This network provides early visibility into technical founding teams before they formally raise institutional rounds. Hetz supplements this with relationships among serial entrepreneurs and co-investors in the Tel Aviv ecosystem.

Hetz focuses on pre-seed and seed rounds, typically writing initial checks between $500,000 and $2 million with a preference for leading or co-leading. The firm seeks to enter at the earliest institutional moment — often before a startup has full product-market fit — and reserves significant capital for follow-on investments in breakout portfolio companies.

The firm concentrates on enterprise software, AI/ML applications, DevOps and infrastructure tooling, and cybersecurity. This focus reflects the technical profile of its sourcing network — elite Israeli military-intelligence veterans who predominantly start companies in areas where deep technical expertise translates directly into enterprise buying decisions.

Portfolio company Granulate, a real-time continuous-optimization platform for cloud workloads, was acquired by Intel in 2022 for a reported $650 million (per TechCrunch, 2022). The exit occurred roughly four years after Hetz's founding, providing an outsized early return signal for a first-time fund manager.

Hetz regularly syndicates with other Israeli seed and early-stage funds, and has cultivated relationships with US-based follow-on investors who enter at Series A and beyond. Co-investment partners have included Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, which led a round for portfolio company Classiq alongside several Israeli and US funds. The firm is willing to co-lead or lead rounds depending on the syndicate and the founding team's preferences.

Hetz Ventures concentrates almost exclusively on enterprise-facing technical companies — infrastructure, developer tooling, cybersecurity, and applied AI — and has shown no public appetite for consumer internet, fintech, or hardware-heavy startups. The firm's stated investment thesis and its principals' domain expertise exclude sectors where the sourcing network and operational value-add would provide no edge.