Yoni Cheifetz

Bio

Yoni is based in Lightspeed's Israel office and leads the firm's investment activity in Israel, with areas of interest that include Internet, digital media, mobile, communications, software, semiconductors and cleantech. He has six years of venture capital experience and sixteen years of operating experience. Yoni is also involved with the Lightspeed-Gemini Internet Lab, which provides funding to early-stage Israeli Internet companies. Previously, Yoni was a partner with Star Ventures, a leading Israeli venture capital fund. At Star Ventures, Yoni led investments into AeroScout (WiFi real-time location systems), Kabira (high-performance transaction processing software), Mercado (search and merchandising solutions), Sandlinks (active RFID networks based on UWB), Sheer Networks (acquired by Cisco) and Teneros (application continuity appliances). Before joining Star Ventures, Yoni was a serial entrepreneur for many years, serving as the founder, CEO, Chairman or investor in several software companies, including Agentics (acquired by Mercado), Earnix and Traiana. Yoni was one of the co-founders of Demantra, serving as CEO for over 5 years and helping grow the company into a best-in-class provider of demand management, sales and operations planning and trade promotions solutions. These products now serve as the core of Oracle's supply chain suite of applications. Yoni serves as the Chairman of Earnix, a company he co-founded, and helped it become a leading provider of pricing and revenue optimization solutions for the financial services industry. Prior to his career as an entrepreneur, Yoni ran product management and business development for Click Software (CKSW).