Our Team
Jack Elaad, Chairman
During nearly 35 years of professional experience, Mr. Elaad has acquired extensive
expertise in all functional skills and a broad view of the Israeli market as required
to run an investment company focused on Israel. This includes: selecting a portfolio
of investments and controlling their analysis, supervising companies in a portfolio,
managing financial activities, serving as a director and mentoring the management,
developing and executing exit strategies, maintaining extensive contacts in the
business community, and operating as a senior executive in the Israeli and London
banking communities. All ensure the addition of significant value to companies and
shareholders. From 1996 to 2002, Mr. Elaad ran and chaired a publicly quoted venture
capital fund, managing $50M with a portfolio of 25 companies, mainly at early stage.
During his term Mr. Elaad gained experience in capital raising from private investors,
as well as from the public, through initial and secondary offerings in Israel, the
US and the UK. Mr. Elaad also serves as the Chairman of the Board at the First International
Bank of Israel.
Hanan Lifshitz, Co-Founder & CEO
Hanan has a wealth of experience, spanning over twelve years of leadership in the hi-tech and venture capital industries.
As CEO of Palore, he oversees all aspects of operations and strategy, including technology, product development
and sales & marketing. Hanan is a regular speaker at local search conferences and a frequent contributor to prominent
search-related blogs and online publications such as
Search Engine Land.
Prior to co-founding Palore, Hanan held the position of Investment Manager at Sadot, a venture capital fund, performing
comprehensive due diligence for companies seeking funding. Before that, Hanan spent two years at Flash Networks, where,
as a product manager, he engaged in defining new network products and managing their development; and
later, as a Marketing Manager, researched new markets and helped redefine the company's product line. Previously,
as a project manager for HyperBanner, he was responsible for the design, development and testing of a new Internet product.
Hanan began his professional career in the Israeli Intelligence Corps, where he served for three years as a systems
designer and team leader.
Hanan graduated from Tel-Aviv University's top honors program, The Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding
Students, where he studied Computer Science, Psychology and Management; he also holds an M.A. in Philosophy, Magna Cum Laude.
Nave Ronen, VP R&D
With over 13 years of experience in the hi-tech industry, Nave has held a spectrum
of leading positions in R&D Management. He brings a wealth of experience in technical,
architectural and managerial aspects of the industry. Nave started his hi-tech career
at the age of sixteen as a freelance software developer in the civil engineering
and infrastructure design industry, developing utilities and systems to aid designers
and planners with their work. Starting at age 18, Nave served for more than six
years as an officer in the Israeli Intelligence Corps. He served in the Corps'
main software unit, where he filled various positions starting from programming
and quickly advancing to team and project leaderships. His last project in the service
involved the design and development of a distributed multi site mission critical
GIS application, which won several GIS awards (ESRI Best GIS system for the year
2000). In 2000 Nave joined a (then just established) start-up company, Celebros
(www.celebros.com), where he managed teams of software and algorithm developers.
Celebros is currently the market leader in the e-commerce search industry, with
clients in the United States, Europe and the Far East. Nave has vast experience
with search engine technology, including data mining, text analysis, NLP and machine
learning.
Nave holds a B.A in Computer Science and an MBA from Tel Aviv University.