JVP Media Studio, the incubator fund of Jerusalem Venture Partners, has announced an undisclosed seed round in Navajo Systems. The Israeli start up develops unique data encryption systems for cloud computing and SaaS applications. Navajo targets organizations who are looking to protect their data privacy and comply with regulatory requirements, by avoiding the exposure of confidential company information on SaaS application. This is a nascent problem that will only grow with the penetration of cloud applications to the enterprise.
Uri Adoni, Partner at JVP Studio said:
“The investment in Navajo Systems is another example of JVP Studio’s commitment to promising young companies. We have a pipeline of very interesting seed-stage companies and are happy to see more companies these days, as we intend to make more investments in the near future. We are also very happy to join forces again with Dr. David Movshovitz, who we successfully partnered with while at Magnifier (later sold to F5).”
While JVP is one of the leading venture capital funds in Israel with $780 million under management, start ups choosing to raise their seed rounds from large VCs should be aware of the risks. As highlighted in the excellent SAI article by Chris Dixon, “The Problem With Taking Seed Money From Big VCs“:
when you take any money at all from a big VC in a seed round, you are effectively giving them an option on the next round, even though that option isn’t contractual.
Navajo Systems is headquartered in Israel and was founded by Dan Gross, Dr. David Movshovitz and Doron Abram.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
