Poland – Israel cooperation

Tomasz Domogała, who manages TDJ holding founded by his father, made an agreement with Pitango (one of the biggest venture capital funds in Israel) and National Centre for Research and Development. The cooperation will lead to the creation of TDJ Pitango Ventures fund with the base in the form Israeli know-how, 210 million PLN in the pocket and focused on the Polish start-up market.

The Management Board of TDJ Pitango Ventures is to be made of two people – Daniel Star with knowledge of Israeli start-up sector, who gained experience in Inter Capital fund, and Wojciech Fedorowicz, a graduate of Stanford University known for developing his own start-ups in Poland. The investment committee is to include three experienced Pitango managers.

As professor Maciej Chorowski, director of National Centre for Research and Development highlights, launching a new fund is another element of support system for entrepreneurs focused on innovations.

Israeli start-up sector is mammoth, and all this thanks to the state investing large amounts in the sector in the ‘90s. Thanks to the policy, there is much more venture capital flowing to Israel than to any other country. What is more, international giants such as Microsoft, Google or Intel are forcefully reaching out for Israeli technologies and investing in research centres in the country.

Rami Kalish, co-founder of Pitango, started thinking about entering Poland in 2008, but as he claims, the start-up market in Poland was only starting evolving. Another attempt at talks was made by him in 2014, yet again nothing came out of it. Finally, with TDJ, they managed to work out satisfactory cooperation terms.

Polish start-ups cannot complain about lack of attention from investors. A few days ago, Sebastian Kulczyk announced launching his own fund that aim to back up new companies. His fund will have 60 million USD. Tomacz Domogała points out that funds are competing with each other, but there are more and more ingenious people, therefore the number of projects worth investing in is also growing. TDJ Pitango Ventures aims to invest in big data, artificial intelligence, SaaS and digital medicine.