TOP NEWS

Interview Behzad Kianmahd, TAU Ventures

Behzad Kianmahd is the co-founder of Los Angeles coworking space Cross Campus, which is one of the major centers of startup activity in Silicon Beach—and also involved as co-founder and lead investor in a brand new, venture capital fund, TAU Ventures (www.ideasimmersion.com/tau-ventures/). TAU Ventures is based in Israel, and is linked with Tel Aviv University—but it hopes to take a lot of what Behzad has learned in Silicon Beach, and apply that to companies coming from Tel Aviv University. We spoke with Behzad last week about the fund, his experience at Cross Campus, and how the two intersect with the local tech community here in Southern California. Behzad's co-investor in TAU Ventures is another Los Angeles local, Daniel Nazarian.

What is TAU Ventures?

Behzad Kianmahd: TAU Ventures is the brainchild of Tel Aviv University President Professor Joseph Klafter . It is a fund established by the University, which is the General Partner for the for-profit fund. The idea, is to make it accessible as a multi-disciplinary part of Tel Aviv University, so that young people, alumni, and students with ideas for a company can join the fund, not only to be funded with seed money, but also so they can be accelerated and potentially incubated before they go out.

Tell us a bit about your involvement with Cross Campus?

Behzad Kianmahd: Cross Campus is one of the companies I invested in, as the first, lead investor, about seven years ago. It's probably the second or third biggest coworking company in Los Angeles, after WeWork, which is the leader in this industry. We have a number of locations, including one in Santa Monica, one in Pasadena, one in Downtown, and one in El Segundo and the South Bay Area. Cross Campus is really a community oriented around coworking. What's most surprising, is it's not just tied into the ecosystem of startups and tech-savvy young people, we also have lots of professionals who uoin our campus and membership, and even larger companies who are doing so. We think we're at the tip of the iceberg in the office-as-a-service concept. We do not concentrate on any specific industries, and we're industry agnostic, and we're not focused on any particular industry, whether that be biomed or entertainment. However, we do adapt each of our locations to the “vibe”, if I may call it that, of the surrounding area and of a particular location. In Silicon Beach, and in Santa Monica, we've adapted to that community as far as staffing and circumstance. That's the same in the South Bay, where we've found there is a bit of a concentration in space technology, because of the location of some of the larger companies in that industry in El Segundo and the South Bay.

How is it that you're investing in a fund out of Israel connected with Tel Aviv University?

Behzad Kianmahd: There's a bit of a history there. Tel Aviv University has an organization, the American Friends of Tel Aviv University (AFTAU), which in Los Angeles is under the leadership of David Dorfman. We started a program, where we have a conference on an annual basis here, and get the alumni of Tel Aviv University to come together, to not only learn about new technology out of Tel Aviv and Israel as a whole, but also to try to connect Los Angeles and Southern California with Tel Aviv University. I met david through a mutual friend of ours, before we started this conference three years ago. It was the Summer of 2016, if I'm not mistaken. I introduced him to our CEO at Cross Campus, because he wanted to understand how to put a conference together. That's been our strength at Cross Campus, events, and it ended up being a very helpful introduction.

Cross Campus and AFTAU became partners in this conference, and we held a couple of the events in Santa Monica. I had the pleasure of going to Israel, and meeting with people at the business school, including the Dean of their business school, and it was wonderful. He was interested in finding a way to connect their business school with Southern California's ecosystem, with startups, and seed investing, and was looking for ideas. One of the ideas, was to potentially send students here, to learn how to start a business, and it later became an immersion program, which introduced them not only to mentors but also those active in startups, to learn how to create presentations, how to clean up their ideas, and also introduce them to potential seed and angel investors. We used Cross Campus as their working headquarters, and subsidized their living expenses here for about three weeks. It became wonderfully successful, and we're now continuing that on an annual basis, and will be doing that twice a year, going forward. Through the immersion program, I met the President, Yossi. They invited me to become one of the lead investors, and we put some other investors together and started this fund. The original aim was $5-6 million, but as we moved along and talked to other individuals, we were able to close at the $20M level.

So you plan to continue the link between Los Angeles and TAU Ventures?

Behzad Kianmahd: Absolutely. That's one of the strengths we can add to TAU Ventures. The fact that it not only started with an immersion program, it's a feeder to TAU Ventures. Plus, for TAU Ventures participants, we can connect them with larger funds and investors that we work with. There's many connections and an immense network we've created at Cross Campus, by both myself and my partners in this particular venture. We want to create an ecosystem where we can easily connect the two geographical areas together, and have a continuous program which invites Israeli entrepreneurs to the LA ecosystem, and also more seriously connect them with investors in this particular area.

Is there anything entrepreneurs here can learn from the ecosystem in Israel?

Behzad Kianmahd: It's a mutual learning, honestly. There's a network we are creating, and a connection between the geographics which is valuable on both sides. TAU is one of the top ten entrepreneurship universities in the world. We'd also love to create a venue where we could also send entrepreneurs from LA to Israel, to study or make connections, and network with their counterparts in Israel. One thing we have found, which is a known fact, is that a company which starts in Israel does not have an easy time attracting capital or attracting customers. The reality, is to be successful, 90 percent of them have to market their company or product in the United States first, outside of Israel. This connection here very much helps this scenario.

What's the biggest lesson you've learned in creating this fund and with Cross Campus?

Behzad Kianmahd: Nothing is easy. Of course, I think the idea here, is to help companies with the learning curve, with presentations, and to understand that the most important element for a company is management and execution of their project. I think, one of the important lessons we have learned, is you have to put a team together before attracting money to go forward. I think the network between Cross Campus and Tel Aviv University will be helpful on both sides, helping them to find the right partners.

Finally, when are you going to start making investments from the fund?

Behzad Kianmahd: We're actually traveling to Israel tomorrow for our grand opening ceremony. I imagine, at the speed we've been moving, it will be sometime in May when we make our first investment.

Thanks, and good luck!