Kobi's in high tech for 17 years, he knows firms and investors, reveals who has plans for Serbia

Photo: Promo/Gold Ventures Investment

Almost everyone today talks about startups and their development. About what the state should do, what startups should do to become successful, what young people should do to create them... However, what is much less talked about is how to help those who would like to become investors, how to engage foreign, so-called angel investors, that is, how to develop the investment part of the IT community.

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Kobi Calderon, founder and CEO of GVI (Global Venture Investment) works with the largest corporate accelerators of today who invest in the early stages of startup development.

In an exclusive interview for Telegraf Biznis, Kobi, who has been an entrepreneur in the high-tech industry for the last 17 years, reveals what a startup should have in order to get investment, and what the GVI plans for Serbia.

• You have a rich career, but can you say what you like to do the most today?

I like very much to take part in the innovation ecosystem and to help startups to take their venture from a dream to reality, it gives me a lot of motivation to contribute from our knowledge to help startups to growth and to solve global problems and create a better world that all of us can live in.

• Can you tell our readers something more about GVI?

Yes, of course,  GVI is a global investment banking company based in Israel and Europe( Austria ), running an Incubator in Israel, cooperating with strategic accelerators across the border.

In the last 2 years we signed strategic partnership with GVI's international partners in 16 countries (Israel, Europe, LATAM, USA, Asia, Africa) that is managing 6,000 Investors.

In addition, I represent personally venture funds from Israel and Europe for help their startups to expand their business globally, especially to Europe.

Based on our global network, GVI helps startups to expand their business globally by opening subsidiaries, obtaining grants from a private and public institution, collaboration with potential clients/partners, integrators/distributors.

We build a unique concept that help investors to minimize their risk raising the valuation of the startup and help the corporates to reach out to promising startups that can give them added value.

We are specializing in building a global accelerator that can be the national innovation center that can attract investors and startups from our network to open their operation in countries that would like to enhance the innovation ecosystem.

We are ready to that in any country in Europe and in Serbia as well!

Photo: Shutterstock

• From your point of view, what does the Serbian startup scene look like - do you have plans in that sense?

Yes, we had some discussion with decision makers to help Serbian startups to get our knowledge , vast experience from our global mentors for helping them to be more prepare to fundraising from our global investors network.

We are open minded to collaborate with any strategic partner including with the Serbian government to help in building a global accelerator that can help the startups to growth globally based on our global network.

• Our startups lack investments, and when they get them, they will be low - how to change that?

As I mention above GVI managing groups of investors in 16 countries that can get decision to invest Serbian startup once they can get impression that they are in the right position and this is exactly GVI role to help the startups to raise the capital from our investor and in parallel to build investment strategy with the Serbian investors to co-invest with our investors and leverage their private capital by matching the public fund that is available in Europe with private capital.

How important is the strategic approach to the development of startups, as you do in Israel?

The innovation ecosystem is the right environment that can help startups to build their companies and, in that way, to create jobs help enterprises and to create sustainable business and in general it contribute to the economy in the country and place the country with all the advanced and strong countries from the aspect of technology and IP that is very important for the citizens' life.

• Where, in your opinion, is the startup ecosystem currently the most advanced?

I think that the startups in Israel ("Startup Nation ") are advanced because a lot of reasons and as you know we have more than 10,000 startups and Israel and per capital we are ranked in the first in the world and now GVI vision is to duplicate the Israeli success story to other countries.

• When we talk about high technology, what is the current trend in the world? In which area do businesses have a chance? Is it IoT, is it technology, telcoms, startups, robotics?

We can say that today more than ever every sector is relevant for innovation energy, education health care fintech, industry. The Covid pandemic forced all the sector to be much more efficient and productive and I assume that every enterprise should take into consideration how to be more innovative and adapt new technologies that can improve their sustainability and profitability

• Will robots take people's jobs? Alibaba, for example, claims that its robots are better than humans when it comes to logistics and the delivery industry.

No, I don’t believe that a robot will replace people's jobs we always need the human behind any technology we can't replace the mind of human being the robots would be part and contribute to people's jobs and I'm sure that this trend will open new opportunities to create new jobs and roles and we should plan how to be ready to the high demands that will come from the labor market.

• What is it like to be a worker in this hybrid model today, after coronavirus, how do you look at it?

As I mention above the worker should combine his technology skills with design thinking they can build new and innovative solution that can fit to the industries challenges and in that way to much more efficient and profitable.

• What does it mean to be digitally healthy?

One of the most important trends during the COVID pandemic is to digitize all the interaction between the health institution and the patients for improving the health process and the quality of life.

We should encourage every medical center hospital to think out of the box for lunching new products and smart system that can motivate startups to bring the right digital solution that can develop the digital health ecosystem in a country.

(Telegraf Biznis)