How a bank CEO turned VC investor thinks about AI — and uses ChatGPT to handle emails
Description
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Rakefet Russak-Aminoach transitioned from corporate banking to venture capital at Team8.
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She was CEO of Israel’s largest bank and founded Israel’s first mobile-only bank.
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Russak-Aminoach told BI that dramatic disruption is coming as a result of AI.
Rakefet Russak-Aminoach started her career as an accountant, and today she’s the managing partner of an Israeli startup foundry. Her unconventional path was made even more indirect by multiple stops in C-suites on the way.
She was CEO of KPMG Israel. And then she was the CEO of what is now Israel’s largest bank. At Bank Leumi, she orchestrated a massive, disruptive technological shift, becoming Salesforce’s first customer in Israel and bringing — sometimes dragging — the bank into the digital age.
She also founded Israel’s first mobile-only bank. But now, she’s moved off the corporate ladder and into venture capital as Managing Partner of Team8 — a startup foundry.
Russak-Aminoach spoke to Business Insider about how her corporate career informs her tech investing.
This Q&A has been edited for clarity and length.
How did you get into VC?
When I decided to step down from the bank, I didn’t have the option that many CEOs have — to take on a larger company. Because there wasn’t one.
I decided that I wanted to be in the best industry in Israel, and that was tech.
To transform Bank Leumi, I often didn’t build the technology; many times, I worked with fintechs. As an organization, we always asked ourselves, ‘Should we buy? Or should we build?
This is how I built Israel’s first neobank.
I made Bank Leumi much, much more advanced with digital tools, but I wanted to have an app to attract more youngsters to the bank. This became Israel’s fastest-growing bank.
So I was very much into the high-tech world. And even more than that, at a certain point, I said, ‘How come we don’t have a bank tailored to startups in Israel?’
So I built Leumitech, which is a very successful segment of Bank Leumi today.
Two years into my tenure, I had a cybersecurity event at the bank, and I needed help. I met Nadav Zafrir, the CEO of Check Point Software, a cybersecurity company.
The incident itself was terrible, but they were amazing. And I gained a friend. Eventually, when I decided to leave banking, the only thing that was interesting to me was tech.
So he said, ‘Why don’t you try building Fintech?’. Fast-forward five years, and we lead a group of cyber, fintech, data, enterprise tech, and digital health startups.
Our company, which has 80 employees, 12 partners, has helped build 23 startups and invested in 25 more.
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