Yoav Samet Joins Israel's StageOne Ventures as Silicon Valley Based Partner

HERZLIYA, Israel, October 27, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

StageOne Ventures, an early-stage investor in Israeli IT infrastructure technology startups, announced Yoav Samet has joined the firm as Partner. Yoav will be based in Palo Alto, California. In his new role, Yoav will both lead investments in companies and provide strategic and operational support to existing portfolio companies establishing presence in the Silicon Valley.

Yoav was previously the Vice President of Corporate Development at Cisco, leading the company's M&A and venture investment activities related to one third of Cisco's business. He was responsible for Cisco's corporate development coverage for Europe, Israel, Canada, and Emerging Markets, and led close to 20 company acquisitions for Cisco valued at just over $7 billion. His team managed a $1 billion portfolio of investments including over 40 direct investments, as well as LP positions with 20 venture capital funds worldwide. Prior to joining Cisco, Yoav was a principal at Pitango Venture Capital.

Yoav also held engineering positions at Colordesk and Electronics for Imaging (NASDAQ:EFII). He is a graduate of the Israeli Defense Force's elite intelligence technology unit, and holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, as well as a BS and MS in Computer Science from the Hebrew University.

"StageOne Ventures has successfully established a strong bearing on the Israeli early-stage technology landscape with an exceptional eye for identifying the most promising companies," says Yoav Samet. "I look forward to leveraging my expertise to generate value for StageOne's portfolio companies and investors alike."

"Yoav embodies a rare combination of deep entrepreneurial spirit and corporate savviness that make for an effective venture capitalist. This, coupled with a robust network, a strong investment track record and deep familiarity with both the Israeli and US start-up ecosystems, gives rise to a tremendous opportunity for our portfolio companies," says Yuval Cohen, Founding Partner of StageOne Ventures.

About StageOne Ventures 

StageOne Ventures invests in exceptional founders of IT infrastructure startups at their initial phases. Our mantra is to back entrepreneurs with transformative ideas that can affect the technology enterprise ecosystem and greater economy as a whole. We believe that by leveraging our global networks, operational experience, technical backgrounds and presence in both Israel and the Silicon Valley, we can provide invaluable benefit to our entrepreneurs.

For more inquiries please contact Talia Rafaeli at [email protected] or +972-545400845.

SOURCE StageOne Ventures