Mobility Innovators

Jaspal Singh [00:04]:

Welcome to the mobility innovators podcast.

Jaspal Singh [00:10]:

Hello, everyone. I’m so happy to welcome all listeners from around the world to the Mobility Innovators Podcast. I’m your host, Jaspal Singh. Mobility Innovators Podcast invites key innovators in the transportation and logistics sector to share their thought about the key changes in the sector, about their work and what is their forecast for the future.

Today, I’ll be speaking with an amazing venture capitalist who started a mobility-focus fund long back. He’s the Founder and General Partner of Maniv Mobility, based out of Tel Aviv.

Tel Aviv is emerging as a capital of mobility startup in the world. Maniv mobility has raised around $160 million so far and has invested in more than 37 startups. Some of the notable investments include Otonomo, bipi, Aurora labs, Revel, Turo, Upstream Security, Ridecell, etc. He has already exited 4 of them and more to follow.

His involvement at the intersection of transportation, technology and policy dates back to early 2000, when he helped establish Washington-DC based energy security policy and advocacy group, Securing America’s Future Energy SAFE on whose board he continues to serve. He is a director and advisor at many other mobility startups within the Maniv portfolio and his broader network.

I’m so happy to welcome Michael Granoff, General Partner and Founder of Maniv Mobility. It’s now time to listen and learn.

 

Hello, Michael, thank you so much for joining us on the show. I’m really looking forward to our conversation today.

Michael Granoff [01:43]:

It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Jaspal Singh [01:46]:

Great. so today I’ll be spending time getting to know more about you, your professional journey and your thought on innovation and technology trend and the mobility sector.

To begin with, I would like you to share some fun fact about yourself with our listeners and also, are there any interesting facts about your career that are not on LinkedIn?

Michael Granoff [02:07]:

Okay, so there’s a lot, that’s not on LinkedIn, I guess. I have a broad range of interests. I’ve been lucky to be exposed to a lot of amazing things in my life including having been a friend and a fan of the late composer, Stephen Sondheim, and raced harness horses and, ran a lot of marathons. So, there’s a lot that I’ve done. These days, I feel a little bit unusually singularly focused on the task at hand, which is finding the most impactful companies around new mobility for the benefit of the planet and the people on it.

Jaspal Singh [02:56]:

Oh, great. Good to know that you’re a marathon runner. That’s why you maintain your physics.

So well now coming to my second question, you completed your bachelor from Tufts university and later did your MBA and JD from Kellogg’s Northwestern University. And you’re also credited with the creation of Washington-based policy and advocacy group, Securing America’s Future Energy SAFE, which is quite interesting. What is a story behind that move? And I read some article, which mentioned that 9-11 had a big influence on your career move.

And if I add later you moved to Tel Aviv and launched Maniv Mobility fund in 2015. So I’m curious to learn why you decided to become a venture capitalist and focus on area of mobility and transportation. How did your interest shift from policy advocate to innovation? It’s quite a big move.

Michael Granoff [03:51]:

It’s quite a big question. But I should begin by clarifying that the person who is singularly responsible for the impact and success of that organization in Washington that you mentioned SAFE which used to be Securing America’s Future Energy. That person is founder and, still CEO – my friend Robbie Diamond. I’m honored to still serve on the board. He and I began having conversations as you say, in the wake of 9-11 around the fact that there was a real distortion in that oil has a monopoly on global transportation. The entire lifeblood of the global economy is transportation. And it is almost exclusively powered by oil. And in addition to that oil, you know, it does not exist in a free market like for example, electricity of which there are variety of ways to generate electricity that compete against each other.

Michael Granoff [04:54]:

You know oil is the, that the price is based on obviously supply and demand and that supply is manipulated by the OPEC cartel. And so it’s effectively a tax on every person on the planet, and that’s a huge distortion on the global economy and on global security. And I think we’ve seen in the last several months with the situation with Russian Ukraine yeah. That every geopolitical issue has an Achilles heel, which is energy. And so that was the impetus of us starting that organization. And through that organization I got educated as to the fact that if you really wanted to break the monopoly oil transportation, only one way to do it and that’s electricity. And then furthermore, I came to the conclusion with the help of some folks that I spoke to at MIT in the mid 2000s that cause of the trajectory of the price of energy storage.

Michael Granoff [06:02]:

Yeah. That actually electric transportation, at least in light duty ground transportation was actually inevitable because at a certain point, the price of energy storage would drop below that of oil. Frankly, I thought that would happen much sooner than it has. And the reason for that is I didn’t expect the US to reverse a 40-year decline oil production as rapidly as it did with the advent of extraction technologies in the early 2010s. I don’t be grudge at the fact, it was good for America for economy and jobs and trade balance, but it did take away a lot of the urgency around diversifying our transportation fuel. Yeah. And actually gave a big leg up, I think, to China, which at that time was adding vehicles at a furious rate.

Michael Granoff [06:58]:

Didn’t want to become on imported oil as the US had, and also saw an opportunity frankly, to leapfrog and become a leader in electric vehicle technology and the supply chain for batteries. And, and they done a very good job at that. And I think the US has a lot of catching up to do as a result of that. Yeah. So there was a lot more to your question, but maybe we’ll get into the rest of it as we continue the conversation.

Jaspal Singh [07:26]:

Great. Thank you so much for sharing this fact. And in fact, I traveled to China in 2008 and 2010, and I saw at that time they have a big fleet of electric vehicles, so they really have done a good job. I fully agree with you.

Now, little bit about your portfolio. So you have invested in more than 64 companies so far as for our last count. I don’t know, probably it’s more because you did a lot of angel investment too, and you already exit four of them. And you invested in quite a wide range of companies, including sensor, software simulation, autonomous vehicle, cyber security, micro mobility and also some new mobility business models. So it’ll be great if you can share more about your investment thesis and geography focus and what are your investment strategies?

Michael Granoff [08:18]:

Yeah, I should probably fill in the most important chapter between the success that we had with SAFE in passing and energy building in Washington in 2006 that had among other things, first in a world of electric vehicle incentives and the venture capital fund that you all alluded to. So after I became convinced that electrification was inevitable, I went out try to figure out how to make a business of that or how to invest in that thesis. And happened upon two gentlemen, early 2007. And quite honestly, I probably made the wrong choice, maybe the signal, biggest binary mistake in business investing history, as I picked a company that ended up going to zero and passed up the company that ended up going to a trillion, although I guess it’s a little down from that.

Michael Granoff [09:10]:

And that was when I chose BetterPlace over Tesla. Yeah. But I’ll say that I did that, I think for it was an honest mistake which is to say that I think the model of a BetterPlace, which was a company that was founded in early 2008, the model was I think potentially one of the most powerful business models ever conceived as it was conceived by its founder Shai. And I think had the execution been up to the imagination of the model that actually better place would have had a bigger impact than Tesla because the idea really was to make EVs affordable to the masses much earlier than. It turns out that they have become through a model that I won’t go into depth in, except to say that it really separated the car from the battery and made the battery kind of part of the energy infrastructure owned by the operator in this case BetterPlace.

Michael Granoff [10:06]:

And then you buy the car without the premium of the battery. And you pay for the miles that you use similar to the, what you pay for data on your cell phone any event when that did come to an end in 2013. We ended up moving to Israel. It was supposed to been a temporary move, became permanent, but it was right in a moment earlier, where is Israel was experiencing a real Renaissance and innovation around automotive and mobility. And I started based on the experience, I had during BetterPlace, started helping out a bunch of these companies. And I started doing some angel investing myself. And that’s what led to the fund that you alluded to. I’m not sure where you got the number of portfolio companies. We have, I think right now, 37 portfolio companies. Okay. In eight countries, we’ve raised two funds totally about $160 million and almost fully invested both them at this point into those 37 companies that are across eight countries, but most of the early investments were in deep tech around automotive that came out of Israel.

Jaspal Singh [11:11]:

Okay. And you have any specific thesis like investing only in mobility or you’re now expanding outside also mobility?

Michael Granoff [11:19]:

No, our we’re one of the few venture capital funds you’ll meet that does not have the word venture or capital in our name because our name is Maniv Mobility because mobility is what we do. It’s all we know. We don’t really know how to do anything else. And but it’s a pretty broad sector. It is about the movement of people and goods. And it’s about making that movement cleaner and safer and less expensive, more accessible more convenient for people because mobility is really fundamental. And in fact, upward economic mobility is tied very closely to physical mobility. And it’s undergoing enormous change. It’s undergoing a digital revolution very similar to that of which we have seen in the last decades around information and communication. And it’s very exciting because even as we’re living more densely in cities that we are, it is unrealistic and impossible for everyone to have their own individual five passengers ICE Internal Combustion Engine car. The opportunities that electrification and digitization and really the diversification of form factors and business models really I think are in this decade going to open opportunities to billions of people, to be able to get around in less expensive, safer cleaner and more efficient ways.

Michael Granoff [12:57]:

And I think the impact that we’ll have on the global economy will be phenomenal.

Jaspal Singh [13:02]:

Thanks for sharing. I fully aligned with the vision. It’s like how to make mobility more affordable and safe because for any economic activity you need to move people and, people who are at the bottom of pyramid are always suffered because they don’t have the safe and affordable choice to move.

So now you mentioned that you move to Tel Aviv for temporary reason, and then it became permanent. And, and I must say that it’s one of my favorite city too. Even though I haven’t gotten the chance to visit it yet, probably later this year I’ll be visiting Tel Aviv. One thing I love about the city is, it’s emerging as a capital of mobility startup in the world. There are so many mobility startups, which are emerging from Tel Aviv, but there was EcoMotion happen last month. And it was great to see so many companies.

Do you want to share, what is the secret sauce? Why the Tel Aviv is emerging as a mobility startup hub in the world. And also, I think you mentioned somewhere in the past about the Mobileye, like how that company has emerged and, was the first one to go out of Israel. So is it because of Mobileye Mafia or is it because of the policy structure or government support or education system? What is the secret of the city?

Michael Granoff [14:13]:

Well, I honestly, I don’t think that in this case that you can separate mobility from Israel’s startup innovation sector, you know, the book “Startup Nation” written by my good friends, Dan Senor and Saul Singer. Now I think about 12 years old. And they wrote that book because everyone wants to understand exactly what you’re asking, what makes Israel so inherently innovative. Yeah. And try to answer it. And what’s amazing is that in the years that have passed since I think that innovation has only accelerated in the volume and, and the quality, and that goes across sectors and, you know, everything from cybersecurity to FinTech assess to every everything under the sun and mobility has certainly been a part of that. You know, Mobileye definitely deserves a tremendous amount of credit for inspiring, I think an enormous wave of mobility startups in Israel.

Michael Granoff [15:13]:

But I wouldn’t describe it really as Mobileye apathy because another thing, Mobileye and their CEO, I’m not sure. I think one of the most talented men in Israel, one of the things they really have done is retained their talent quite well. Wow. I had thought, especially after the acquisition Intel, you know, we would see exactly. We described that a lot of the refugees from Mobileye out start, our companies, you know, that’s normal in the tech world, it’s normal in Israel, but in the case of Mobileye, they really, I think have retained their talent to a tremendous degree. That’s very, very admirable, but they have been a source inspiration. And that’s why we see something like 600 mobility startups over the last decade here in Israel. And many of them in our portfolio, as you say, everything from sensors like the micromobility, robotics, and our portfolio that does high-definition radar to automotive, cyber security.

Michael Granoff [16:12]:

We have in our portfolio, two such companies, C2A and Upstream Security to monetization of the vehicle data like autonomy to simulation, and then there’s even tele-operation PMO is a company based in California but having their R&D here in Israel. And those are just a few from our portfolio. There’s like I said, hundred hundreds more, and you know, it’s been, you know, a very exciting thing to watch all these emerge and to get to see these incredible talented founders.

Jaspal Singh [16:52]:

Great. Thanks for sharing. 600 mobility startups in one decade, that’s amazing and especially in only in mobility, it’s quite impressive. And I know many of these founders especially Optibus and Moovit and all, and I know what the work they’re doing. It’s quite global.

Now, shifting gear a bit, you must be meeting with hundreds of industry experts, founders, and ecosystem partners, who must be sharing a lot of ideas about future of mobility. They must be coming with you talking about how the future of mobility will change. So I would like to ask you which technological innovation, you are more bullish about as a VC, as a person, as an expert in mobility. And what’s your views?

Another, because there is a lot of talk about

• Autonomous mobility
• Mobility as a Service
• Urban Air Mobility attracting a lot of money
• Electric Vehicle, which you mentioned you were, you were very bullish earlier to
• Micro Mobility you invested in that space and any other area

Where you feel that’s the future should look?

Michael Granoff [17:48]:

For Sure. That’s again, a broad question. I’ll say that look, as we’ve said, I think on electrification, we now have consensus. Everybody agrees, every car, company’s got a target data, every country cities, everybody’s got a target at 2030 or 2035, all electric vehicles. It’s a fantastic thing. But one of the things I think people tend to lose sight of is electric vehicles don’t necessarily have to come in conventional vehicle format. Yeah. And one of the implications of digitizing mobility is having a diversity of format factors. And in fact, if you look outside my office window here, you’ll see hundreds of kick scooters on the streets. They’re now four operators of kick scooters in Tel Aviv. I think they’re all profitable in the city. And why is that’s because well, Tel Aviv is a very crowded congested city.

Michael Granoff [18:47]:

Nobody, nobody wants to drive through Tel Aviv. I don’t even want to get in a cab to go across Tel Aviv because, you know, it’s aggravating sit in traffic. And but the city also is flat. The weather is good 350 days a year. And it’s obviously a very as we’ve said, a very tech savvy city. So the best way to get around is scooters. A lot of people figure that out. Even in my own demographic, I think, which is not quite the same, a demographic as, as most cities considerably younger. And you know, I think we see that in some other major cities around the world as well.

So you know, as far as autonomy as you mentioned, is concerned, you know, I think most people, I get asked a lot as I think everyone around the business says, when are we going to see the driverless cars?

Michael Granoff [19:44]:

Well, yeah. You know, depending on how you, depending on what you actually mean by the question, the answer could be, they’ve been here for several years already, or it could be, will never be here. So you have to really get specific. And I think that, you know, as far as robo taxis are concerned, as far as like the ubiquity of being able to vehicles without drivers take you around major metropolitan areas it’s still going to be some time because one of the thing you need. You need three things to actually enable that kind of a service. You need the technology to be a hundred percent hiring cloud being better than the average human driver is not nearly good enough really has been near perfect. And there’s so many edge cases and it’s taken a lot longer than a lot of people thought to be able to work that out.

Michael Granoff [20:33]:

So you need that technology, you need a regulatory regime. Yeah. You need policy makers to enable that to be a legal service. And the thing about that is that policy makers tend towards inertia unless you have the third ingredient, which is market pull, which means consumers screaming from the rooftops. We want this as, you know, Uber kind of successfully was able to generate, but Uber without the driver, which is what we’re describing is not something that I think the average consumer feels very passionately about these days. And I think it takes quite a while for the economic argument to become a plane to people, to the point where the demand is palpable enough, policy makers then kick into gear plus the fact on that first point that as I technology and all the edge case not clearly worked out.

Michael Granoff [21:40]:

So all those three things have to come together. I think it’s still several more years before that becomes something ubiquitous. In any sense, although, you know, Cruise did just get its license to offer paid commercial drives in driverless cars in San Francisco. Wamyo, obviously operating in Chandler, Arizona now for quite a while. So it’s on its way. It’s going to take a long time.

On the other hand, we talk about automating vehicles like trucks, which operate mostly on highways and where there are a lot fewer edge cases and where there, the technology really is I think much closer to being as iron clouds. It needs to be plus the fact that we all are aware of the supply chain crisis that we’ve undergone globally over the last couple of years. Even my mom asks me about the truck drivers shortage and that’s the stuff from page news.

Michael Granoff [22:38]:

So what are we getting there? We’re getting that market poll. And I think that market poll is starting to first of all, weaken a little bit the opposition to this idea that comes mainly from the unions, which I think are misguided in their fears. Yeah. And all of a sudden, the policy makers now say, Hey, you know, this is something we got to pay attention to. We have to look into enabling good friend of autonomous delivery vehicles is a state Senator in Florida named Jeff Brandes. Who’s been a leader in this. I think we’re going to see in the US and in enough states the policy moves to the point where autonomous trucks become a reality really in the next few years. So, I think it’s a premise on which we’re basing a lot of investment and that I think will be tremendously impactful economically.

Jaspal Singh [23:34]:

Thanks for sharing, Michael. I fully agree with you in, in fact, I know that you also cycle to work, so you don’t drive in Tel Aviv. So what you mentioned about it’s too congested and everybody love to cycle and I agree with your point about autonomous mobility. It’s not just the technology, the regulatory regime, as well as the market pull is very important. I work with Uber, so I know it was a different story altogether when Uber launched and autonomous mobility, not, everybody’s really fond of.

Now following up to this question in autonomous mobility, there are two different kind of technologies which are going on, and there is a lot of discussion about LiDAR versus Camera based sensing approach, on decision making approach. You invested in couple of company in LiDAR space and all. As a VC, which one you are more bullish about and why?

Michael Granoff [24:22]:

You know, this is a very technical argument. There are lot of interests on all sides. We’ve invested in a lighter company that made a run of it, but decided after a couple years that actually when we invited, invested in a company called ORX, which had a tremendously talented the team but also very down earth and, and rational team. And at the time that they got started, there were really, I’d say less than five, well-funded, lighter startups in the world. They had a very unique proposition. But then two things happened. It turned out that as we’ve said, the market for autonomous cars for at least for Robo taxis and volume turned out to be a lot further away than we expected it to be. And a lot of competitors showed up within a year or two of their founding. There was, you know, 40 or 50 companies that had received significant funding to LiDAR.

Michael Granoff [25:16]:

So we all, you know, kind of looked at each other and said, you know, is it worth pursuing this? And concluded that, you know, we still have a lot of money left there. And probably there were better things that we could do with it. And that was, I think, a very adult decision by the management board of directors, but you know, meanwhile across town our friends at Innoviz have made a tremendous amount of progress now, public company, and have contracts with real OEMs to have their LiDAR on actual commercial vehicles. Very exciting. And then we’ll see more of that look you know, obviously the biggest proponent of camera only has been – Tesla. They also happen to have several million cars with that lighter already on the roads, which they promise will be full autonomous.

Michael Granoff [26:04]:

So, you know whether that is a position taken from engineering prowess or from being realistic about business is unknowable. And they certainly could be correct that it’s not a frivolous argument, but my own instinct is that you know cost of LiDAR is declining. And redundancy is important. As I said, it’s not enough for an autonomous vehicle to be just better than the average human driver, they have to be near perfect. So I think all, we’ll see all flavors but I think ultimately people will take the position of the more sensors and the more redundancy the better.

Jaspal Singh [26:57]:

So, your position only is, I would say.

Michael Granoff [27:01]:

I think LIDAR has a future, like I said, it’s complicated future.

Michael Granoff [27:08]:

Because when will we have vehicles produced in volume of at least for Level-4, although, you know, now they’re selling to Level-3 systems and LiDAR has other applications, but LiDAR is here today to the degree to which it’s going to be ubiquitous is what’s in question. I’m not really the most qualified person to answer what that will be. I don’t think anybody knows for sure. But it’s obviously not as they say a blue ocean anymore.

Jaspal Singh [27:41]:

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And I agree what you mentioned is that different technologies will survive. So it’s not only the one technology which will be there, so we will see different technologies, and one of them will be stronger. And one of them will be also running in different part of the world. So not one technology will work everywhere.

Now, you were very bullish about electric vehicle. In fact, like you mentioned, you invested in BetterPlace, and you were thinking it’ll change the business model, not only the buying cars. How bullish you are on hydrogen and fuel cell vehicle because China has already started investing in that technology. So, you think we will see kind of a leapfrog, like some country will not have electric and go ahead with hydrogen, or you think that it’s still far away?

Michael Granoff [28:26]:

So I’ve heard about hydrogen as long as I’ve been around this business. And even before, in fact I remember the speech which I went back and looked up given by President George W. Bush turned out it was in early 2003 in which, he said that a child born at that time their first car might be a hydrogen car. In fact, my daughter was born shortly thereafter and she drives an electric car. But you know, I have to say a little jaded on hydrogen as a mass adopted application for transportation. But always open-minded as it’s important to be in our business. And there’s a startup here in Israel, H2Pro that’s track, lot of funding, a lot of attention, and that you know, we’re going to continue to learn from, but you know, I think I think people have to some extent underestimated the capacity of EVs to evolve or batteries to become more energy dense and less expensive.

Michael Granoff [29:38]:

And so, whether there’s a role for hydrogen and heavy duty or, more is an open question. But I’m still in the skeptic camp on that.

Jaspal Singh [29:51]:

Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I would say it’s a very early day because China recently start investing big way in hydrogen, but still, it’s not fully commercial, like electric vehicles. And I think it will take more time, especially for the smaller vehicle. So probably the heavy-duty vehicle will come first, but the smaller vehicle like the cars, and all will take its sometime.

Now I want to discuss about this battery and rare-earth material. So you mentioned that oil was not good because of this OPEC cartel, and there was a control, but I think the battery is also going through now the same phase with the rare earth minerals becoming like a new oil, and some companies are controlling it.

Venture capital farm invested more than $30 billion in last two year alone in the battery technology. There are a lot of discussion about different chemistries and solid-state batteries and, and others.

How do you think this space will evolve the battery technology and all? and I think you have invested in a couple of startups in this space. And how are you betting on different battery technologies? Are you bullish about one particular kind of chemistry or are you are putting money in all kind of different startups?

Michael Granoff [30:58]:

We’re actually. When it comes to the actual design manufacturer batteries themselves, we’re pretty agnostic and we’re pretty much staying away. I’ve seen since I started paying attention to price of energy storage go from over a thousand dollars a kilowatt hour to very close, depending on who you listen to, very close to a hundred dollars kilowatt hour. And most of that has come through incremental improvements over year after year. Not through huge breakthroughs in chemistry. You know, solid state is obviously very interesting, a lot of attention, a lot of money. And I hope that it becomes a major player in the industry. There are other approaches and a degree to which we can minimize the need for rare earth minerals, the need for extraction and mining of some of these things that are you know have, have adverse impact in their development the better but at the same time, you know, the battery research is similar in my mind too.

Michael Granoff [32:11]:

I often analogize it to drug discovery, you know, costs a whole lot of money and your odds are not that strong as you, as you invest that money, obviously she’s successful. It’s an enormous return, but that’s one area in which we have played at a little bit safe and looked more towards the applications of electric rather than the development of the underlying of battery technologies.

Jaspal Singh [32:40]:

Ah, I love your analogy about the battery technology, like a drug discovery. So, there are more misses than hits, and it’s more about incremental growth rather than radical innovation and I fully agree with you. It’s still kind of a space where nobody can predict.

I remember sometime back, you mentioned about that if you know, which technology will work, probably you’ll put more money in that area and make billions but it’s hard to predict how that space will evolve.

Now one topic you mentioned earlier is the cybersecurity, and I think it’s emerging as a very big challenge for every industry – also for mobility industry. In fact, there was a survey done by a status, and they found that 45.5% of survey respondent claimed that they faced one to five successful cyberattacks during past year. And I think it will increase. Tel Aviv is emerging as a hub for best cybersecurity companies in the world. So, what do you think about future cyberattacks look like, and what is your assessment? How strong or weak mobility players are in this area, because sometimes they feel it’s not, it’s more the technology company, which can be affected. But how you think it can affect in fact, the mobility company as well?

Michael Granoff [33:53]:

Cyber security is a permanent feature of landscape within mobility and within every other sector. And that is just going to be the case going forward. And Israel is enormous even more than mobility, an enormous hub for cybersecurity. It’s you know, going to be essential to every industry. And I ultimate to every individual as we see it. There’s a dilemma, which is that until there is some event which really galvanizes public sentiment, it’s hard to it’s hard for car makers, for example, to invest a lot of money. They’re looking to really reduce costs in every area. And here you’re never able to prove that this investment had a high IRR. Yeah. But I think the regulations are moving in the direction of requiring more and more security around vehicles, particularly as we get to greater autonomy, greater automation.

Michael Granoff [35:15]:

Yeah. And as I said, we’ve I think we’ve looked at close to 20 automotive cybersecurity companies over the years. Some of them, you may have heard of. Some of them have been acquired. Many of them are still operating two of them in a portfolio. I mentioned earlier Upstream Security that’s cloud based and Seaway, which is vehicle based. But you know, I think that this is obviously a sector not limited to mobility, but external mobility is going to be an area that it’s just going to be baseline to have a solid protection against the potential for invasion over the internet.

Jaspal Singh [36:05]:

Well, thanks for sharing that. I agree with you, it’s hard to justify until unless you have, you are under attack. So a lot of these transit company, as well, especially in North America, they were under track recently. And now they’re thinking to hire a Chief Security Officer or Chief Cybersecurity Officer within the organization. Earlier, they never had that kind of a role, but now, like you rightly mentioned, now, the regulation is becoming more and more string in that space now. Thanks for sharing that, Michael. I mean, it’s a lot of learning point from you now.

I want to discuss a little more about the investment side and basically my question is that you and your team must be receiving hundreds of decks every week from the founders and must be meeting thousands of founders every year. Even though last couple of year were very different. You know, the due diligence was happening in hours. People were closing deals in days and things were very in rush, but now things are getting back to normal.

So, I’m curious to learn how do you evaluate pitch decks and what are the top five traits, which are must in a good founder? So when you evaluate your meet a founder, what are the things you look that if he qualify or don’t qualify for investment?

Michael Granoff [37:17]:

Another big question you ask. So we do, we are lucky enough to see many hundreds of deals every year, and we can only do a handful. And so we are forced to be a very picky. And in fact we have the constraints of the thesis world of venture economics, which is to say that when you’re in the business, we’re in the picking companies at their earliest stage you go into every deal knowing that the odds are against you to be able to go from an idea to a highly profitable, valuable product or service. And as a result you, you need to have a starting point that if you are successful in getting the market and getting to sales, that this company can become valuable enough to pay for all the other ones that don’t end up being successful.

Michael Granoff [38:18]:

So that puts a very peculiar constraint on. In that I’ve had to get used to as I transitioned from individual investing to venture investing. But as you referenced, everything starts from the founder and in my experience in its heads and shoulders more important than anything else, including the idea, including the market including the technology, because all those things are subject to to, to change and adjust as the world changes around us. The founder is, is, is central. And we are extremely lucky to be working with an unbelievable roster of founders in all over the world. It’s been a privilege to get to know these people over the last number of years those in our portfolio and many of those where we couldn’t make it work, but we’ve stayed in touch and we tried to be helpful.

Michael Granoff [39:18]:

And we’ve learned a lot from those as well. If you’re asking me for five particular attributes you know, integrity is obviously at the top of the list and you know, for the most part, I don’t think that’s ever really been an issue in the companies that we’ve seen. For me humility is central. Yeah. I have seen many companies that failed really on account of hubris. And you have to understand that there’s a lot more that you don’t know than, you know, you have to be willing to learn from everyone at every turn. And so that humility is a essential characteristic without which we don’t invest and people will point to some outliers.

Michael Granoff [40:06]:

Some people that we may all know their personalities and don’t necessarily check that box. And the matter is that there are exceptions, every rule, I don’t know which comes first chicken or the egg in that regard, but I’m perfectly happy to miss a good deal or two. Not saying life’s too short to work with folks that are not down to earth in that way. Obviously, creativity, determination and humanity, these are all things that I think we are essential to being successful in the very challenging world of trying to birth new ways of looking at the world in our case, new ways of moving people and, goods around.

Jaspal Singh [40:57]:

I loved your answer and I fully agree with you that humility is very important. And, and I can see that you are also very humble. Like whenever I write you an email, I always get a response within four to five hours even though wherever you are so busy, but still you manage to reply back. And also, I can imagine that you expect the same treatment from other to stay humble and learn from each other and, ready to share with others. So thanks much

Michael Granoff [41:26]:

Opportunity to be humbled. So

Jaspal Singh [41:28]:

Thank you. Thank you for that. And, and now, you know, my next question is that there is plenty of money available in the market. If you have a good idea, I mean, nowadays there is no dearth of money. People are talking about raising big round, and even though there is a shortage of like, there is this winter is going on in VC market, but still people are raising money. So nowadays founder are not purely looking for money anymore. They’re looking for more strategic value.

What are the other key points that the founders should look while taking investor on board? And in fact, I would say like, how many mobility decide money? What are the other things you offer to the founders so that they can be successful?

Michael Granoff [42:11]:

You know, any early-stage venture fund will tell you that they are value added to their companies. I’m sure many are for us. Being as sector focused as we are. It would be the biggest waste in the world if we weren’t actually adding value to our companies. And, and I think that if you ask them, they’ll tell you that we do in very tangible ways at a very regular basis. The ways that we do that. First of all, we haven’t really talked about our LP base, but we’re blessed to have some sensational companies that are invested in our fund, including many companies from automotive industry from Hyundai and Jaguar Land Rover and BMW and many tier ones, in fact suppliers from Asia, Europe and the US.

Michael Granoff [43:07]:

And we count on these supporters of ours to help us evaluate technologies. And also once we make an investment to help our portfolio with their PMF Product Market Fit with getting to market and fine tuning their ideas. So you know and having been around as long as we’ve been around, as long as I’ve been around, and one of the benefits of age, I guess, is you’ve met a lot of people and you got a network that is out there to be able to be helpful to these companies. And yeah. I can’t tell you how many introductions a day are made on behalf of our portfolio companies, whether it be to later round investors, whether it be to potential customers, whether it be to subject matter experts in particular areas that they, that they need help with.

Michael Granoff [44:07]:

And, our people say, how do you manage a portfolio of that size with the team? Well, first I’ll say that we are building the team, team is growing. But second of all, one of the ways we do it is through really putting an emphasis on the informal communications. So sometimes there will be a WhatsApp group that, you know, might include some members of our team, some members of our companies of our portfolio companies’ team, maybe also, you know one or two of our strategic advisors of which we’re lucky to have a tremendous group. And some of the most value adding and profoundly important things that have happened just inside of those WhatsApp groups on a quick response basis. So we definitely tried really hard to be as helpful as we possibly can to our portfolio. And I think our sector focus enables us to do that more than if we were making generalist investments.

Jaspal Singh [45:15]:

I know, you have, I think you are one of the few funds, which has created that pool of strategic subject matter expert or advisory council. And some of those people are really great getting access to those people by the portfolio company, is a great value addition. And I agree with you providing your extensive connection and your meeting with so many people, so you can always make connection, introduction, and that’s what startups need in the early stage.

So this is my last question and it’s basically about what’s happening in the market right now. So currently a lot of people are talking about that funding winter is coming, and we are seeing big pressure on startup to spend wisely. We are seeing layoff, we are seeing brakes on growth. We are seeing Y-combinator releasing the letter and saying, be careful about next two years and all.

Do you have any view on the same and any advice for the founder? how you are telling your portfolio company to be ready for next couple of years?

Michael Granoff [46:10]:

Well, I can’t pretend to know the macroeconomic picture better than anybody else who you might hear or read. But again, been around long enough to see several these cycles. And the one thing that I I’ve become aware of is I think that the, the cycles actually do accelerate, maybe that’s with the quicker movement of information. But that gives me hope that the real rough quarter that or really, I guess the rough first half of 2022, that financial markets have seen you know let’s hope is going to stabilize and, turn in the right direction sooner than in some of the other events that I can recall, like the dot com crash 2000, financial crisis 2008, but even in those cases if you look even just months after the worst of it really was a period of tremendous company creation.

Michael Granoff [47:14]:

Some of the most important companies that we’re all familiar with were born during one of those crises. So for us, the opportunity is as great now as it was six months ago for our companies, you know. It’s just common sense when sentiment has turned down and, when a lot of the people that you might have gone to, to raise capital are being much more selective about their allocation of that capital. Then you have to look around at what you can do to make your capital go further. And that might mean developing a little bit slower, growing a little bit slower. And I think we’re seeing all the companies do that. A lot of these seasons, you know, said notices out to their companies to that effect. I’ve found that our CEOs don’t need to hear that from me. They read the same papers I do, and adjust accordingly, but it’s obviously a topic conversation. And you know, I’m hopeful that, some number of years from now will turn back to say, Hey, you remember how miserable things looked in early summer 2022. That was exactly when we made this investment and look, where is it now?

Jaspal Singh [48:29]:

Yeah, I wish you good luck with that because I agree with your point, it’s like more innovation happen when there are more adversaries and, and there are more tough, difficult times and all. So thank you, Michael, for that, I mean, we discuss about mobility, we discuss about technology and we discuss about latest trend and the investment thesis. Now it’s time to learn more about yourself.

And to that we have this Rapid Fire questions round. We generally ask these five questions to people, and we ask them to answer them quickly, not to think too much, but just whatever comes to your mind. So if you’re ready, I’ll ask you these questions.

Michael Granoff [49:04]:

All right. Go ahead.

Jaspal Singh [49:07]:

So, my first question is if you are not in the policy or investment space, what other profession you would’ve selected?

Michael Granoff [49:13]:

Well, one of my big passions in my teen years that I continue to have fashion about is harness racing, trotting and facing horses. So I did everything in my late teenage years for training and driving even calling races which I really enjoyed. So that’s one thing I might, might be doing if I wasn’t doing this.

Jaspal Singh [49:33]:

Oh, man. That would have been great, but you are still doing a wonderful job. Now, you traveled so much around the world, which is your favorite city in the world.

Michael Granoff [49:42]:

Well, I have to say that Jerusalem is special that will always be first on the list. My home, my home city is New York and I love New York. I would never choose to live very far from either of those cities. And I’m lucky to spend time in both of them. I’ll tell you Tel Aviv which I’ve spent more time in than anywhere else in the last number of years is also a sensational exciting place, but you’re right. I travel a lot and I’m a runner, so I explore the, the city’s running and really love what the individual characteristics of everywhere I go.

Jaspal Singh [50:25]:

Great. Now, you mentioned that you don’t like to drive too much at all, so you must be using the transit system or transit network in the world. So I would say which city has the best transit network in the world as for you?

Michael Granoff [50:39]:

I would say and it’s not such an original answer, but I think New York and London have the best transit cities in the world and the addition of micro mobility in New York. We have our company ‘Revel’ that has electric mopeds also has electric ride share service using Tesla that’s worth trying out if you’re in New York.

And in London, I’ve used e-bikes in the last number of years. But obviously in both cities they’re underground or their subway is a tremendous way to get around. And you’re right. I don’t find most driving enjoyable occasionally in certain situations. It is, but most the time I find it to be distracting and, a waste of time, and I try to avoid it whenever I can.

Jaspal Singh [51:29]:

I can vouch for that because when you really want to see the city, you need to walk and then only you see the city properly. Otherwise if you’re driving, you’ve missed the real soul of the city. So walking and running is the best way to explore the city. Now, the next question may a little bit tricky for you because you know, a lot of startup in the mobility sector and all which is your favorite startup in the mobility sector?

Michael Granoff [51:52]:

Which is my favorite child that’s look. I’m thrilled with obviously I have a lot of passion for the sector and for our portfolio in particular, and really find it you know, amazing to be able to work with these companies and, and, to see all of the creativity that comes across. So not really possible for me to sing single one out.

Jaspal Singh [52:25]:

It’s difficult to pick one, like you can’t pick your one kids. I have twins. So for me, it’s even more difficult choice to say which one is my favorite. Now last question is if you can change one thing in life, what would it be?

Michael Granoff [52:42]:

Well, I think you know, the obvious answer for me would have to be going back to that early 2007 period, to get on board at Tesla rather than BetterPlace.

Michael Granoff [52:52]:

At least from a financial perspective. Would’ve been right decision. Although I have to say that so many of the blessings of my life in the last 15 years have come from the involvement BetterPlace and not a day goes by that I’m not in touch with folks from that experience that I don’t work with them in various regards that BetterPlace to ask has gone on to do unbelievable things of all sorts of companies in mobility, transportation around the world. And that’s been a blessing, but from a financial perspective certainly if I could have participated in the series B or C or whatever it was at the time of Tesla, that would’ve been a nice thing to have done, but you, I think I’d say that from the perspective of founders as we were talking about and, those two companies with, you know, very different types of founders, but with the same creativity and ambition. And the the most important point, I think I’d make two founders out there is you know, not to try to emulate those founders or anyone else because you know, Steven son put it anything, you do let it come from you, then it will. Everybody has to do what comes from deep inside of them. And that’s the, the only way to actual success.

Jaspal Singh [54:17]:

Yeah. And you never know everything happened for a reason. So probably in your portfolio now you have billion dollar companies, so you have so many amazing companies. So now you will be one who will be building some of these trillion-dollar companies. I wish you good luck with that.

Michael Granoff [54:35]:

Thanks for your words.

Jaspal Singh [54:38]:

Thank you so much, Michael, for your great insight. I really love this conversation with you and learn a lot from your experience.

Michael Granoff [54:44]:

It’s been a pleasure. It’s a thank you so much for hosting.