Posted on Wednesday, Jun 11th 2025

Nicholas Fok from Erez Capital discusses his firm’s investment thesis.

Hi. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

Yeah, sure. So who are we? We are an early stage venture capital. We do seed to series D, we do SPVs as well. Our sweet spot is $1 million to $20 million valuation, demonstrated revenue growth, product market fit, and a quality founding team. That implies that have a working MVP. Our check size goes up to $2 million.

Our focus is on how companies leverage AI to disrupt traditional  industries like med, property or real estate, finance, or FinTech.

Our target is $50 million and we’re a little less than half committed right now.

Yes, we have. We have six investments. I think I’ll cover some in a little bit, but yes, we have invested already and we have a large focus on FinTech, defense tech, energy tech, and real estate.

Our philosophy is very similar to yours. We are founder friendly. We are partners with the founder’s growth.

So, we have a large venture partner network, and we’re using our huge network to create a network effect. A lot of times founders have a lot of gaps or they’re looking for advice or things that they’re missing. It could be go-to-market negotiation, industry expertise or introductions, chances are they can find it in our network.

Our whole philosophy and approach is founder friendly and being the growth partner. We look for several focus areas – med, real estate, FinTech, and how AI can be used to leverage and disrupt these industries.

We like to invest in the US and MENA. These are the two areas right now.

Nicholas Fok: Yes. We haven’t done anything yet, but yes, we are open to that.

Sramana Mitra: Why is that?

Nicholas Fok: I think because my partner worked for Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs before, so he has an interest in that area.

Sramana Mitra: Okay. So let’s talk about your AI investment thesis. How are you looking at AI? What do you want to invest in? What do you not want to invest in and what are you investing in?

We’ll do some case studies as well.

Nicholas Fok: Sure. For AI, what we’re looking for is identifying startups that leverage AI to significantly disrupt. We’re not just looking for an AI wrapper that just wraps ChatGPT 4o or Gemini into something.

Sramana Mitra: That’s not really an advantage. You cannot build a company on that.

Nicholas Fok: Exactly. You can’t build a company on that, but there’re a lot of startups doing that right now, because it’s hot. However, it’s not defensible and it’s just not a good way to create a business.

This segment is part 1 in the series : 1Mby1M AI Investor Forum: Nicholas Fok, General Partner, Erez Capital
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