Tachles Ventures has two named co-founders, an investment thesis, a check size, and a stated focus on AI infrastructure and cloud. Its website is listed as “planned.”

We went looking for it. It isn’t in Crunchbase, PitchBook, Tracxn, IVC, or Startup Nation Central. Neither named founder appears anywhere in Israeli venture. The closest match anywhere on earth is a dormant London management-consultancy shell registered at Companies House in 2021.

Tachles, in Hebrew slang borrowed from Yiddish, means let’s get to the point. Fine. The point is that a fund that doesn’t exist was sitting on a list of Tel Aviv micro VCs, alongside real ones, being circulated to founders.

It wasn’t alone. We ran verification on 35 candidate funds for this piece. Thirteen survived.

This is that list — and, more usefully, the story of what fell off it.

Answer First: The 13 Funds

If you’re mid-raise and skimming, here is the whole thing in one table. Everything below it is the reasoning.

Why This Category Suddenly Matters

The Israeli seed round has inflated past the point where “seed” means early.

Look at what the grown-ups are doing. Hetz Ventures closed a $140M fourth fund in January 2026 and leads seed rounds with average investments of $5–7 million. Red Dot’s first checks run $10–20M. 10D manages $355M and writes $500K to $5M. Grove Ventures runs a $185M fund with $1–10M initial checks. CTech has taken to running explainers on the logic behind today’s oversized Israeli seed rounds, which is the sort of headline that only exists when a definition has quietly broken.

None of these are bad funds. Several are excellent. But if you are two people with a Notion doc and a demo, none of them are your first call either.

That gap — between seed as it is now priced and first money as it is actually needed — is where micro VCs live. And the Israeli version of this category has a specific texture worth naming: almost every fund on our list is run by ex-founders or ex-operators, not career investors. Fusion’s partners are Unit 8200 alumni who were rejected 200 times raising their own fund. Mensch was built by a cyber founder and counts the founders of Wiz and Hippo as backers. Remagine’s Eze Vidra was a GP at Google Ventures. Iron Nation’s partners came out of the Calyx venture studio. Savyon’s Eran Savir ran two funds and founded three companies before this one.

That isn’t a coincidence, and it isn’t marketing. It’s the only credible product a $20M fund can sell against a $500M one.

The Thirteen

Fusion VC — the $150,000 standard

Guy Katsovich and Yair Vardi run what is, by IVC’s count, Israel’s most active pre-seed fund three years running. The model is deliberately unromantic: a fixed $150K check for a program slot, fewer than 20 places from roughly 1,200 annual applications, a decision in about three weeks. ~$30M AUM. LPs include Insight Partners, Gigi Levy-Weiss and Ofer Ben-Noon. If your plan involves the US market and you want structure rather than a hands-off wire, start here.

Fresh Fund — the one that actually leads

$70M across two funds and SPVs, checks of $500–750K and up to $1M, and — rare at this size — it leads or co-leads most of its rounds. Sector-agnostic, day-zero, requires at least one Israeli founder. Fresh has backed Remilk, Acsense and CarbonBlue, with exits in Firmus and Slauth.io. Co-founder Zaki Djemal, who built the fund from a university dorm-room vehicle in 2016 into one of Israel’s most active pre-seed investors, died suddenly in March 2026 at 38. The team, led by founding partner Hidai Goldsmith, has said publicly it intends to continue on the same strategy.

Secret Chord Ventures — three people, no committee

Omri Krigel’s fund writes $500K–$1.5M at pre-seed and seed with a stated preference for being among the first investors. Every decision runs through three people, which means no investment committee to survive. Portfolio includes Tamnoon, Botika and Matia, whose Series A it joined in February 2026. Fund size undisclosed, and there is no public evidence of follow-on reserves — ask about both.

Mensch Capital Partners — the fairy co-founder

Boaz Shedletsky raised a $30M debut fund with Harel Insurance as anchor and is raising a second toward $50M. Large pre-seed checks up to ~$1M, always first money, in cyber, fintech, enterprise and AI. The unfair advantage is the LP base: Assaf Rappaport of Wiz and Assaf Wand of Hippo. Exits already: Statement, Evermile. Mensch will help you assemble a founding team, which at day zero is worth more than the check.

Remagine Ventures — where people spend time and money

Eze Vidra and Kevin Baxpehler quietly raised and deployed a $25M Fund II during the war, announcing it only in November 2025 after twelve investments were already made. Pre-seed first checks into AI agents and infrastructure, consumer, gaming and commerce. Vidra also runs VC Cafe and the IsraelVC directory, which makes him one of the most reachable GPs in the country — a fact worth using.

Jibe Ventures — the LP crew

Assaf Jacobi and Danny Hadar built a fund around what they call real human connection, with an LP base of active founders who work on GTM and hiring. $250–750K at pre-seed, $500K–$2M at seed. Portfolio: Exodigo, Groundcover, Finout, Blockaid, and illumex — acquired by Nvidia. Still deploying into 2026. Fund size undisclosed.

Savyon Ventures — the purest micro check here

Eran Savir writes an average of $250K into seed companies that already have real revenue from real customers. AI, digital and commerce, B2B and B2C. He runs Tel Aviv’s ~4,000-member AI/Digital/Commerce meetup, which is functionally the fund’s front door. He rarely invests alone and says so openly — a small fund writing a small check cannot lead a round by itself, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.

TAU Ventures — the academic pipeline

Nimrod Cohen’s Tel Aviv University–affiliated fund manages $70M across two funds and writes up to $1M as a first investment, with a 1,000 sqm campus hub attached. Fund I reportedly sits in the top decile against US funds of the same size and vintage. Portfolio: Xtend, Swimm, Cyabra, InnerPlant. Cohen told CTech’s 2026 VC Survey that academic deep tech and defense tech are positioned to become the major engines of Israeli tech exports over the coming decade — and he invests accordingly.

Sticker Ventures — the only B2C door in town

Danny Cohen, 25 years at Viola and Gemini backing Lightricks, Outbrain and Minute Media, launched a $50M debut fund with Oren Charnoff in 2025 for Israeli consumer startups only. His thesis is a straight arbitrage argument: roughly 20% of Israeli startups are building for consumers, and almost none of the venture capital follows them. LPs include Eli Barkat of BRM and Ran Reske of Resident. If you’re consumer, this is the shortest path in Israel.

VentureIsrael — frontier or nothing

Rafael Gold and Gadi Isaev have invested exclusively in Israeli deep tech for over a decade: AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, quantum, space, robotics, semiconductors, neuro. Fund II targets $25M with a deliberately short 12–18 month deployment window. Note the drift, though — Gold has said the strategy stays constant while the entry point moves with valuations, and Fund II is aimed at “true” Series A. Confirm what they’re writing today.

Sarona Ventures — the passport

A ~$20M fund grown out of the Bouaziz family office, with Deel founder Alex Bouaziz as a partner and real presence in NY, SF, London, the UAE and Singapore. $500K–$3M, sweet spot around $1.5M, pre-seed through Series B. Pitch them a global expansion story, not a domestic one. Top-end checks run past the micro line.

Iron Nation — no fees, no carry

Gil Friedlander, Chen Linchevski and Jason Wolf built a ~$20M Fund I in 2024 charging no management fees and no carried interest, backing Israeli resilience and dual-use deep tech. Fund I holds 24 companies including illumex, acquired by Nvidia. A ~$60M Fund II is launching in 2026 and moves to seed–Series B, which changes the profile entirely. Ask which vehicle is writing your check.

Kaedan Capital — patient money

Ziv Yanous and Tali Vaknin have been quietly investing since 2001 — early Playtika, plus Bizzabo, Guardio, Voyantis and Loora. ~$100K–$2M, entrepreneur-centric, explicitly comfortable with founders building at their own pace. They run open office hours for pre-traction teams. The structure and size are opaque, so don’t plan a round around them leading it.

The Ones That Didn’t Make It

This is the part that makes the list above worth trusting.

Too big to be micro. Hetz ($500M AUM, $5–7M average checks), Grove ($185M Fund III, $1–10M), 10D ($355M, $500K–$5M), iAngels ($350M+, $2–4M seed checks), Red Dot ($750M, $10–20M first checks), Meron ($70M Fund III), lool (~$200M), LionBird, Stardom, Deep33, and IN Venture — Sumitomo’s corporate arm, running $100M and $70M vehicles.

Wrong stage or gone quiet. Maverick Ventures Israel is real, Tel Aviv, and run by Yaron Carni — but writes $2–5M, mostly at Series A, with one new investment recorded in a twelve-month window. TPY Capital is real and Tel Aviv and interesting on quantum, but Startup Nation Central lists a $1M–$20M range and zero new portfolio companies in twelve months. Firstime we cut on review: $40–60M funds at post-seed is not this category.

Wrong city. Joule Ventures is US-headquartered with one partner in Tel Aviv. Clarim Ventures is real, founded 2024, writing $500K–$1.5M — from Toronto. Two Lanterns writes perfectly micro $100K–$1M checks out of Newton, Massachusetts. Then Ground Up (Philadelphia), 97212 (New York), J-Ventures (Palo Alto), Cerca (Ra’anana), Merlin (Virginia), Cactus (Be’er Sheva).

Adjacent but not a fund. embARC Ventures gives $250K guaranteed to healthtech startups in three-month cohorts of five to ten. Genuinely useful if you’re medtech. It’s an accelerator run by Sheba’s ARC Innovation with Ilex Medical, based at Tel HaShomer, and its CEO is Dan Shwarzman. Not a Tel Aviv micro VC, but worth your inbox.

Couldn’t verify at all. Tachles Ventures, as covered. “08 Ventures,” which returns nothing in any database. Bullet Ventures, which exists as a hidden Startup Nation Central profile with a single recorded deal from January 2024 and nothing since.

Roughly one in three funds we checked had at least one materially wrong published detail — a partner who doesn’t work there, a website that isn’t theirs, a fund size off by an order of magnitude, a Palo Alto fund with the same name as a Tel Aviv one. TAU Ventures gets routinely confused with a Silicon Valley firm of the same name. 10D gets listed with fabricated partners and a check size roughly 25 times smaller than reality.

None of this is malicious. It’s what happens when investor lists get generated rather than reported. But a founder who emails “Guy Bloshtein at TAU Ventures” has burned their one shot with Nimrod Cohen before the email is opened.

How To Actually Use This

Warm intros still beat cold inbound, by a lot. This ecosystem is small and interconnected — a16z, Insight, NFX and Seedcamp all co-invest into these portfolios. Open each fund’s portfolio page and find the closest founder to you. That path converts. A cold form does not.

Ask about dry powder on the first call. Secret Chord, Jibe, Kaedan, Savyon, Sticker and VentureIsrael don’t publish fund size. That’s normal and not a red flag — but a fund’s remaining capital and reserve policy determines whether it can support your next round, and you’re entitled to ask.

Match the vertical before the stage. These funds are specialists pretending to be generalists roughly never. Consumer goes to Sticker or Remagine. Cyber and fintech to Mensch. Deep tech to VentureIsrael or TAU. Defense to Iron Nation or TAU. Revenue-stage AI commerce to Savyon. B2B infrastructure to Jibe or Fresh.

Know which vehicle is live. Mensch is between funds. Iron Nation’s Fund II is a different animal from Fund I. VentureIsrael’s Fund II moved later-stage. The fund that got announced is not always the fund that’s writing.

Micro VCs are the part of the Israeli capital stack that behaves least like an asset class and most like people. That’s the whole advantage. Use it accordingly. 💜

Fast facts: Tel Aviv micro VCs in 2026

What counts as a micro VC? A fund under roughly $50M in committed capital writing initial checks of $100K–$1M at pre-seed or seed. In Tel Aviv these are typically run by one to three ex-founders or operators, not a full investment team.

How many are there in Tel Aviv? Sherman verified 13 against location, fund size, check size, stage and 2024–2026 deal activity, from 35 candidates screened.

Who writes the smallest check? Fusion VC, at a fixed $150,000. Savyon Ventures averages ~$250K.

Who leads rounds? Fresh Fund leads or co-leads most deals. TAU, Jibe and Sarona lead selectively. Savyon can lead for Israeli founders. Several others explicitly co-invest rather than lead.

Which is the only dedicated consumer fund? Sticker Ventures, launched 2025 with a $50M target, investing exclusively in Israeli-founded B2C companies.

Which fund charges no fees? Iron Nation’s Fund I was structured with no management fees and no carried interest. Fund II, launching 2026 at ~$60M, is a conventional vehicle.

Notes on the numbers

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

1. Fund sizes are frequently undisclosed. Secret Chord, Jibe, Kaedan, Savyon and VentureIsrael do not publish AUM. Where a figure appears above it is sourced to the fund, to Israeli tech press, or to Crunchbase/PitchBook/Tracxn. Where it doesn’t, we wrote “undisclosed” rather than estimating. A widely-circulated $77M figure for Mensch could not be verified; the sourced numbers are Globes’ June 2025 reporting of a $30M first fund and a second raising toward $50M.
2. Check-size ceilings are soft. Secret Chord, Sarona, Jibe and Kaedan can write above $1M. They’re included because their initial checks and stage behaviour are micro, with the overage flagged in each entry.
3. Three funds exceed the strict size definition. Fresh Fund (~$70M AUM) and TAU Ventures ($70M across two funds) are included because their individual first checks are genuinely micro. Sticker sits at the $50M ceiling. Readers applying a hard cap should note this.
4. Location has edge cases. PitchBook lists Savyon Ventures’ HQ as Hod Hasharon, though the fund operates through Tel Aviv. Fresh Fund has Jerusalem roots with Tel Aviv and New York offices. Remagine’s lead GP is London-based with the fund run from Tel Aviv. Iron Nation is expanding to the US with Fund II.
5. The 35-candidate screen is ours. It combined our own research base with a circulating founder-facing list, cross-checked against Crunchbase, PitchBook, Tracxn, Startup Nation Central, IVC, Calcalist/CTech, Globes and each fund’s own site. It is thorough, not exhaustive. If we’ve missed a qualifying Tel Aviv fund — or gotten a detail wrong — tell us and we’ll update this piece.
6. Portfolio and activity data is current to 31 July 2026. Funds move between vehicles, change stage focus and close without announcement. Verify status directly before you build a raise around any entry here.