We recently had a visit by our CIO Advisory Board, which consists of CIOs of international organizations who we believe are highly innovative. Being in touch with thought leaders helps us at Gemini keep our finger on the pulse of the industry. Their input is instrumental in providing us with a firsthand view into the market, and is highly valuable when shaping our portfolio strategy.

For a VC it is an essential practice. We are dealing on a daily basis with companies that are at  the forefront of innovation, many times depicting how the future may look like and start making headway toward that vision.

From an investor perspective, this can be quite confusing. How do you make sure that a startup vision is aligned with the direction of the market and heading the right way? Or when looking at it from a portfolio management perspective, how do you make sure you have diversified your portfolio to have investments in the various spaces where solutions are needed?

This is very similar to what startup’s management is doing in crafting its strategy: Constantly speaking with customers to make sure the product answers their needs. In many aspects, CIOs are the customers of VCs. They are looking at the needs of their organization at a high level, and can say which are the most acute and painful issues that their companies are facing. As VCs, these are precisely the problems that we want our portfolio companies to solve.

The visit has been an opportunity for us to introduce Israeli innovation to the CIOs: Over the course of several days they met dozens of companies and had one on one meeting with some. We analyzed the changing role of the CIO and some of the new challenges they need to address. For instance, in one of the case studies discussed, a company needed to grow 10 fold within 5 years.

The CIO recognized the urgent need to scale quickly and by using a mixture of off-the-shelf products and in-house developed technology allowed the organization to keep up with their customers’ needs. In a fast growing company like this, regardless of its core business, the ability to scale may well become its main differentiator. The CIO then becomes so crucial that he / she helps forge company strategy.

In a follow-up post, we will summarize insights from the event.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our members of the board for bearing with us during the long hours of the professional agenda and for being good sports when we introduced them to the wonders of the Dead Sea. Mud has never looked so fashionable... :-)

Steve Brown, Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President, Omnicare

Brian Bonner, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Texas Instruments

Chris Corrado, Senior Vice President, Technology Products, Assurion

Steve Peltzman, Chief Information Officer, The Museum of Modern Art

Hagen Hultzsch, Information Technology and Services Professional

Eli Hasson, Managing Partner, NITEO Consulting

Ran Harpaz, Vice President of Technology, 013 Netvision

Danny Bilitski, VP of Sales, Computing Solutions, Bynet Data Communications

David Luzon, Head of Information Technology and Operations, Bank Hapoalim