On this episode of Invested, Michael sits down with Dr. Jacques Benkoski, a seasoned technologist, operator, and venture capitalist with a career spanning research, corporate, startups, and international investing.

As a partner at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), Jacques brings decades of experience investing in the U.S. and Israel across cloud infrastructure, enterprise software, and cybersecurity. A speaker and mentor, he has taught his Market Entry Strategy seminar to over 5,000 entrepreneurs and released an expanded version of these materials in the eponymous book to help entrepreneurs turn vision into execution, and scale with purpose.

Please rate this episode 5 stars wherever you stream your podcasts!

KEY TOPICS

00:00 - Intro

03:59 - Riding the Dot-Com Wave

08:09 - Joining USVP & the Israel Strategy

12:06 - Bubbles Are Good

14:50 - AI Adoption Will Follow Workflows, Not Replace Them

17:44 - 95% of AI Projects Fail - and That’s Normal

19:21 - Israel’s Biggest Founder Weakness

20:45 - Why Being Founder-Friendly isn’t Helpful

24:16 - The Wiz Effect

31:20 - Jacques’s Market Entry Strategy

38:49 - Why ‘Crossing the Chasm’ Is Obsolete

47:19 - War Doesn’t Affect Investment in Israel

52:00 - Israeli Trait That Hurts Sales

56:16 - The Galapagos Syndrome

RESOURCES

Follow Jacques on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacques-benkoski-ab9133

“The Market Entry Strategy” Book: https://a.co/d/etw96SX

Subscribe to Invested here: https://content.aleph.vc/invested

Learn more about Aleph: aleph.vc

Sign up for Aleph’s monthly email newsletter: https://newsletter.aleph.vc/

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@aleph-vc/

Follow Michael on Twitter: twitter.com/mikeeisenberg

Follow Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mieisenberg/

Follow Aleph on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mikeeisenberg

‍Follow Aleph on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aleph-vc/

‍Follow Aleph on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aleph.vc/

CREDITS

Executive Producer: Erica Marom

Producer: Myron Shneider, Sofi Levak

Video and Editing: Ron Baranov

Music and Creative Direction: Uri Ar

Content and Editorial: Kira Goldring

Design: Rony Karadi

#119 - BONUS - MERCI pour les 100 000 Abonnés Youtube ! 🥳 (Ce que je vais faire avec le trophée pour lui donner de bonnes énergies sexuelles 😈)