Ask where Hanaco Ventures is headquartered and you get seven answers.

Wikipedia says Herzliya. Crunchbase says Tel Aviv. Startup Nation Finder says New York City and Tel Aviv. Private Equity International says New York and Herzliya. Three more sources give three more answers.

None of them is reading a filing. They’re reading each other.

That’s the raw material almost every “top New York VCs for Israeli founders” list is assembled from — a country field in a database, copied into a spreadsheet, published as research. Nobody pulls the paperwork. Nobody checks whether the firm’s own website puts Israel first. Hanaco’s does.

What we do here is the boring version. Every Friday we take the list that’s circulating, check each line against a primary source — the SEC Form D business address, then the firm’s own site, then direct press — and publish what survives next to what didn’t. Tel Aviv’s micro VCs two weeks ago, the defense money map last week, New York today.

You can run the same check yourself in ninety seconds: sec.gov/edgar/search.

The screen for this one: headquarters in the New York metro area, plus either a verifiable Israeli investment or an Israel thesis the firm states in its own words, plus activity in 2024–2026, plus partners we can name.

Thirteen clear it. One has $90 billion under management and one has never made an investment, and we’ll tell you which is which.

Hanaco isn’t among them. We’ll get to why.

Answer First: The 13

Tiered by evidence, not by size. That distinction is the whole point.

Why This Is a First-Order Question Now

Roughly 45% of the approximately 460 Israeli startups founded in 2025 incorporated abroad — against 20% in 2022, per IATI via Calcalist. Fusion VC’s Guy Katsovich has been pointing at the same shift for years: one in four Israeli-founded startups registering in Delaware, with the Israeli entity holding only the IP.

When half your cohort is a US company with an Israeli R&D team, “which American funds actually write to Israelis” stops being a nice-to-know and becomes the second question of your raise.

New York is where that migration lands. But notice how fast the ground gets soft. 97212 Ventures counts around 560 Israeli-founded startups in the city, up from roughly 450 a year earlier, with 27 unicorns against about 5 in 2019. Guy Franklin’s Israeli Mapped in NY, which has tracked this longer than anyone, counted over 470 in May 2026.

Ninety companies apart, both credible, neither publishing its inclusion rule. Is a company Israeli because the founder is, because it incorporated in Tel Aviv, or because it still has engineers there? Nobody says. We covered the human end of this migration through Rachel Fiegler’s relocation practice on Monday. This is the capital end of the same crossing.

One disclosure before the list: nine of these thirteen surfaced through a single source — CTech’s IL Tech in NY series, run with Franklin’s project. Go read it directly; we’re adding the verification layer. It’s also a known bias: a fund that never sat for a CTech interview is underrepresented here no matter how many Israeli cheques it has written.

Tier 1: Israel Is in the Mandate

1. Insight Partners — the one that doesn’t need this list

Over $90B in regulatory AUM, Fund XII closed above $20B in 2022. The relevant fact isn’t the size, it’s the sequencing: Insight’s first office outside New York was Tel Aviv, opened 2019. Not London, not San Francisco. Daniel Aronovitz relocated from New York to run it.

100+ Israeli portfolio companies — Wiz, Monday.com (43% at IPO), Wix, Armis, SentinelOne, Papaya Global, Run:ai, Aqua Security. Israel is described internally as its highest-density geography, and Insight is an LP in Fusion VC, which puts it quietly upstream of Israeli pre-seed too.

You don’t pitch Insight at pre-seed. It’s here because any honest map of American capital into Israel has it as the largest single line.

2. Maccabee Ventures — the one built out of a classroom

335 Madison Avenue. Founded 2019 by Moshe Bellows and Bruce Taragin, Yeshiva University alumni who have taught a year-long venture curriculum at YU’s Sy Syms School of Business for seven years. The mandate names North America and Israel; the network is the product, at 70,000+ YU alumni.

Their statement of the problem is the clearest description of the gap this article sits in: Israeli founders are technological geniuses out of the elite IDF units, and 6,000 miles from the New York ecosystem.

Cheques $100K–$500K including reserves. Does not lead. 51 investments, 1 exit per CB Insights. Deploying Fund II (CIK 0002009219). Israeli portfolio: Eleos Health, FundGuard, Cyabra, Agora, Jiga, plus GlossAi’s $8M seed. Most natural first call here if you’re pre-seed — just plan the syndicate around them.

3. SilverTech Ventures — the most literal mandate here

7 World Trade Center. Founded 2016. Partners Charlie Federman, Larry Wagenberg and Tal Kerret — Kerret is Israeli and president of Silverstein Properties, and the Silverstein family backs the fund.

Nobody else states it this plainly: the fund exists to support startups primarily started by Israelis living in New York, or planning to relocate here. Haaretz reported 17 of 21 companies in its hub were Israeli. That’s not a thesis, that’s a demographic.

$45M AUM, median cheque ~$500K. Israeli portfolio: SQream, Apono, Onyxia. The hub comes with physical space attached, which for a founder in exactly Fiegler’s client position is worth more than the cheque in month one.

4. Vesey Ventures — three Amex MDs and a Tel Aviv office

Founded 2022 by Dana Eli-Lorch, Lindsay Fitzgerald and Julia Huang, all former Amex Ventures Managing Directors, named for the street where they met at American Express. Eli-Lorch is Israeli, served in Unit 8200, opened Amex’s Israel practice, and is based in Israel.

$78M debut fund, closed April 2023, initial cheques $1.5M–$3M, roughly 18 portfolio companies. TechCrunch noted Vesey raised more in 2023 than all female-led US venture firms combined — a statistic that says as much about 2023 as about Vesey.

Israeli portfolio: Cyrus and Grain, on top of the team’s Israeli-founder track at Amex: BioCatch, Melio, Next Insurance. If you’re fintech, this is the highest-conviction door here.

5. Six Point Ventures — the newest, thinnest, and most honest

The fund from the cold open. We’re putting it in Tier 1 on a declared mandate while telling you plainly it has no recorded investments.

3 Grace Ave, Great Neck on the filing — Long Island, not Manhattan. CIK 0002033560, Form D filed 27 March 2025. That filing is the hardest documentary anchor on this entire list, which is awkward to say about the entry with the least to show.

Brian S. Cohen chaired New York Angels for over a decade across 150+ investor members. Trace Cohen founded BrandYourself and has made 65+ angel investments, mostly alongside his father — Pinterest, comiXology, Fi. Zach Firestone came out of Tiferes and Shadow Ventures.

The thesis, from Trace Cohen’s own launch letter in January 2025: early-stage US and Israel, centred on Vertical AI digitising a still largely analog world. Then, verbatim:

Why Israel? If you have to ask… I’ll write more on that in the coming weeks.

We looked. As far as we can find, the follow-up never appeared.

Which is the entry in one line. Real people, real filing, real declared commitment, nothing yet on the other side of it.

Tier 2: Proven Cheques, No Israel Mandate

These funds don’t market themselves as Israel investors. They’ve simply written the cheques, which is often the better signal.

6. Work-Bench — enterprise seed that leads

Founded 2013 by Jonathan Lehr and Jessica Lin. Fund IV closed May 2025 at $160M, cheques $2M–$4M, targeting 23–25 companies. In January 2026 it led the $10M seed for Chamelio, an AI legal-intelligence platform with Israeli founders whose customers read like an Israeli roll-call: Wiz, Lightricks, Global-e, Cellebrite, Fiverr.

Lehr’s framing — Israeli startup DNA blended with New York’s enterprise customer base — is the most accurate one-line description of why this list exists. New York’s advantage over Silicon Valley for an Israeli B2B founder isn’t capital. The buyers are in the same city.

7. TQ Ventures — Scooter Braun’s fund, and yes, it leads Israeli rounds

408 West 14th Street, plus San Francisco. Co-Managing Partners Schuster Tanger and Andrew Marks; Scooter Braun co-founded it. AUM disputed at source: “over $1B” per Crunchbase, “over $2B” on its own site.

The Israeli record is the real thing. TQ led Verax AI’s $7.6M seed in October 2024 — founder Leonid Feinberg is ex-Unit 8200 — and joined Tel Aviv-based MetalBear’s $12.5M seed in September 2025.

8. FirstMark Capital — the one that followed on

$3.5B committed across 10 funds, founded 2008 out of the Pequot spin-out. David Waltcher is the partner active in Israeli Mapped in NY.

FirstMark led Parametrix’s $17.5M Series A in May 2021 — CTech called it the firm’s first Israeli investment — then followed into the $27M Series B in December 2025. The follow-on is the signal. One Israeli deal can be a partner’s friend-of-a-friend. Two rounds four years apart is conviction.

Correction while we’re here: Justt, Frontegg and Bringg are not FirstMark holdings, despite appearing on lists that say so. Justt is Zeev/Oak HC-FT/F2. Frontegg is Insight/Pitango/Stripes. Bringg is Insight/Salesforce/Viola.

9. Primary Venture Partners — the best quote on the list

Roughly $1B AUM, self-described as New York’s largest seed-focused VC. K Health is the anchor — early seed and Series A backer, still on the cap table through the ~$50M round of July 2024 at roughly $900M.

Partner Brian Schechter says the quiet part at full volume: Israeli founders make great cyber and infrastructure founders because of the military’s technical training, and in the context of cyber investing, Israel is the most important market to be active in.

An American seed fund with no Israel mandate calling Israel the market for its highest-conviction vertical. That’s the sentence for an LP asking why an Israeli founder should raise in New York.

10. Contour Venture Partners — the longest relationship here

Founded 2005. Managing Partner Bob Greene backed Pitango in 1996 from Chase Capital — a thirty-year relationship with the Israeli ecosystem, longer than most funds here have existed.

~$145M AUM across what the firm now calls seven funds and 105 companies. The fifth fund raised $42M against a $90M target per its May 2024 Form D — a downward revision it didn’t publicise, and worth knowing before planning a round around them. The line on its own site that matters most to a founder: typical revenue at entry, $0. They genuinely write pre-revenue.

WaveBL is the Israeli holding we can date; Startup Nation Finder tracks three, only one could be named.

11. Eden Global Partners — patient capital, one big Israeli lead

445 Park Avenue, founded 2021, about 13 people. Aviram Kalev is the Israeli MD, ex-Morgan Stanley and Clal Finance. Fund size not disclosed — the firm declined, and we’re leaving it blank rather than estimating.

The credential is a real lead cheque: Eden led UBQ Materials’ $70M round in September 2023. The rest of the disclosed portfolio is US-founded. Growth stage, long horizon, not your seed round — but they show up at Israel Tech Week and DefenseTech events, so they’re reachable in person.

Tier 3: Thesis Without a Deal We Could Verify

Two entries where the evidence sits one step removed. The pipeline is real; you’re entitled to know how thin the file is.

12. Amex Ventures — the desk that produced Vesey

Melio and BioCatch, both confirmed through the Vesey team’s account of their Amex tenure. The strongest evidence of a live Israeli pipeline here is that three of its MDs left to build an Israel-focused fintech fund (see #4) — a real signal, and structurally a signal about people who no longer work there. Matt Sueoka now runs it as SVP and Global Head.

One published figure explains what this door actually is: roughly two-thirds of Amex Ventures’ investments have had partnerships with American Express business units. You’re not raising from a fund here. You’re raising from a customer.

The gap: we could not verify a named, dated Israeli investment under the Amex Ventures banner since 2022. If one exists, we’d like to name it. Footnote on the same building: Six Point’s Trace Cohen also spent time at American Express from 2022, on the B2B product side. Three of these thirteen run through one org chart.

13. IBM Ventures — Armonk, and a stated view

The only entry outside the city proper. Founded 2020, co-invests with VCs into early-stage enterprise startups. Its declared position, from its CTech interview: New York startups and their Israeli counterparts are quite similar, both tending toward hustle and a no-nonsense attitude.

Named Israeli portfolio companies: not independently verified. Field left blank. Better two honest lines than padding it to look like the entries above.

The Ones That Didn’t Make It

Hanaco Ventures — the reason this article opens the way it does

Here’s the why. Hanaco is a serious firm with a real New York office at 15 West 26th Street. It is not a New York fund: the legal entity is Hanaco Ventures Ltd., an Israeli corporate form, and its own site lists Herzliya first, New York second.

Now count all seven published headquarters:

• Wikipedia — Herzliya
• Crunchbase — Tel Aviv
• Startup Nation Finder — New York City and Tel Aviv
• Private Equity International — New York and Herzliya
• Dealroom — “NY and TLV-based,” HQ field says Tel Aviv-Yafo
• StartupHub.ai — “based in Israel”
• CB Insights — Rav Aluf David Elazar 6, Tel-Aviv on one page; Hahoshlim Street 5 on another

That last one deserves a second read. CB Insights lists the Herzliya street address under the city name Tel-Aviv. The building doesn’t move. The label does. AUM is no better: Wikipedia says over $2B across six funds, other trackers roughly $400M.

None of this is Hanaco’s fault. It’s what happens when a firm with two real offices meets a data infrastructure that has one country field. But it means every “top New York VCs for Israeli startups” list including Hanaco was assembled from database fields rather than filings — and that’s most of them.

One live thread for readers of our defense map: Hanaco founding partner Alon Lifshitz now runs Aurelius Capital, while Hanaco itself has stopped raising new capital.

Georgian fails for a simpler reason: Toronto. It appears in the IL Tech in NY series, which is exactly how a Canadian firm ends up on New York lists.

How To Actually Use This

Match the tier to your ask. Tier 1 will take the meeting partly because you’re Israeli. Tier 2 will take it because of your metrics, with Israeli neutral-to-positive rather than the reason. Sending a Tier 2 fund the “Israeli founder in New York” narrative wastes your strongest slide.

New York’s advantage is customers, not capital. Every Tier 2 fund backs companies selling to banks, insurers, media and retailers headquartered within four subway stops. If you sell to enterprises, New York beats Silicon Valley on proximity to the buyer.

Only seven of thirteen can lead. Maccabee explicitly doesn’t, Amex and IBM are co-investors by design, and Six Point has led nothing because it has done nothing. Your realistic lead set is Work-Bench, TQ, FirstMark, Primary, Contour, Eden and Insight.

Check the vehicle, then verify it yourself. Contour raised $42M against a $90M target. Work-Bench’s Fund IV targets 23–25 companies, so count how many are in. Insight’s $90B is firm-wide regulatory AUM, not a seed pool. Order of trust: SEC Form D address, the firm’s own site, direct press. We found four published errors in this one screen.

This is the first Passport Funds map, and US money chasing Israeli founders is bigger than one city. 97212 Ventures, Joule, Lerer Hippeau, Vine, Ibex, UpWest, J-Ventures, Two Lanterns, Striker, 202 Ventures, Group 11, Aliya Capital and Ground Up are queued for the next ones.

Next Friday, another thirteen. 💜

Fast facts: New York funds backing Israeli founders in 2026

How many are there? Thirteen New York metro funds pass our screen: New York headquarters, plus either a proven Israeli investment or a declared Israel thesis, plus 2024–2026 activity, plus named partners.

Which ones name Israel in the mandate? Five — Insight Partners, Maccabee Ventures, SilverTech Ventures, Vesey Ventures and Six Point Ventures.

Who writes the smallest first cheque? Maccabee Ventures, at $100K–$500K including reserves. SilverTech’s median is around $500K.

Who leads rounds? Work-Bench, TQ Ventures, FirstMark, Primary, Contour, Eden Global and Insight. The other six can’t or don’t.

Is Hanaco Ventures a New York fund? No. Israeli entity, Herzliya-first on its own site, New York office second. Seven published sources give conflicting headquarters.

Notes on the numbers

We publish what we can verify and label what we can’t. The ledger for this piece:

1. The two New York counts don’t reconcile. 97212 Ventures says ~560 Israeli-founded startups; Israeli Mapped in NY says 470+ as of May 2026. No published definition of “Israeli-founded” from either. We give both rather than average them.
2. Nine of thirteen came through one source — CTech’s IL Tech in NY series. Funds that don’t do press interviews are underrepresented here regardless of their Israeli activity.
3. Entries 12 and 13 are the weakest, and 5 is the thinnest in Tier 1. Amex and IBM rest on declared thesis plus indirect evidence; Six Point on a declared thesis plus a filing. Better to tell you than to tier them silently.
4. Fields deliberately left blank: Eden Global’s fund size (the firm declined), Six Point’s fund size and portfolio, named Israeli deals for Amex and IBM, and Form D addresses for SilverTech and Vesey.
5. Contour’s Israeli count is three; ours is one. Startup Nation Finder tracks three portfolio companies. Only WaveBL could be named and dated from primary sources, so it’s the only one we claim.
6. TQ Ventures’ AUM is disputed at source — “over $1B” per Crunchbase against “over $2B” on its own site. A second Form D/A also sits at a near-identical CIK to the one on file; we haven’t reconciled the two and won’t publish a filing reference we haven’t checked twice.
7. Contour’s fund count moved. Its May 2024 Form D covers a fifth fund; its site now says seven funds under management. We give both rather than assume which is current.
8. Maccabee’s HQ conflicts. CB Insights says 335 Madison Ave; Startup Nation Finder says 305 W 98th St. Founding year is consistent at 2019. We used the CB Insights address.
9. SilverTech’s $45M AUM is single-sourced to its CTech interview, as is its 2016 founding year — which we used over Tracxn’s 2015.
10. Insight’s “$700M invested in Israel” is stale. It dates from 2019 and still circulates as current. Superseded by the 100+ Israeli companies framing.
11. FirstMark’s founding year appears as both 2005 and 2008. Wikipedia’s infobox says 2005; the body and the firm say 2008. The Pequot spin-out is operative and it’s what we used.
12. The Hanaco EDGAR result is a name search, not proof of absence. Nothing surfaced under “Hanaco,” which establishes the name isn’t the anchor — it doesn’t prove no affiliated US entity ever filed under a different LP name. Run it yourself before quoting us.
13. Database country fields are unreliable for this question, full stop. Every HQ verdict above rests on an SEC filing, the firm’s own site, or direct press. Data current to 13 August 2026. If we’ve missed a qualifying New York fund, or gotten a detail wrong, tell us and we’ll update this piece.