Catalyst Investors’ Club aims to democratize the field of private investment and touts itself as “the Netflix of private investment.”
It operates much like the media streaming giant, serving private investors video on demand (VOD) from a wide array of companies, whose short-pitch videos give a quick and comprehensive understanding of their investment potential.
Hundreds of investors attend launch
The platform’s launch was announced on Wednesday by its parent company, Catalyst Funds, a leading Israeli private-equity fund, during the 30th annual International Investment Conference GoForIsrael in Tel Aviv. The event was organized by Catalyst Funds and Cukierman Investment House. It was attended by more than 1,000 people, including hundreds of investors from Europe, the US, Latin America and Asia.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Edouard Cukierman, chairman of Cukierman & Co. Investment House and managing partner of Catalyst Funds, elaborated on how the recent boom in artificial intelligence (AI) has enabled the platform to best serve investors looking to boost their portfolios.
“We’ve seen AI used in many various sectors,” he said, adding that its versatility makes it somewhat unique among other hot technology advancements. “We have invested in those different sectors, but for the first time, we decided to invest in a new start-up of our own, where we focus on AI application for core activity, which is investment banking and venture capital. That’s why we created this new platform that was announced today.”
Cukierman said he hopes the platform will enable more democratization within the investment industry by allowing wider access of information to more investors of varying sizes.
“We will eventually have hundreds of companies that are presenting elevator pitches, and investors can select companies that they would like to invest in,” he said. “So, it’s a very different model than the crowd investing model that we see where you have a lead venture fund, and that’s something that we are now starting to offer to accredited investors from all over the world. They don’t need to come to the conference to see a company; they can view these movies on the platform.”
Catalyst Funds also announced the closing of its fourth fund, Catalyst IV, which will amount to $150 million, bringing the firm’s total managed assets to $450m. The fund has already made three first investments in CuraLife Addionics and Nexar.
After opening remarks by President Isaac Herzog to the foreign investors, who arrived in Israel during a challenging time, the GoforIsrael award was presented to Prof. Amnon Shashua and to Mobileye, the company he founded. Catalyst was the only fund to invest in Mobileye during its early days.