J-Ventures
J-Ventures is a community-driven Silicon Valley venture capital fund, structured as a 'capitalist kibbutz' where roughly 470 investors, serial founders, and Fortune 500 executives source and back startups together across healthcare, software, climate, and consumer. As of 2026 it has made a single water investment, in onsite-reuse company Epic Cleantec.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
J-Ventures runs on an unusual idea: a venture fund built like a capitalist kibbutz. Rather than a handful of partners writing the cheques, J-Ventures pools roughly 470 members (over 100 current and former VCs, 140 serial founders, and 170 Fortune 500 executives) who source deals, vet them together, and invest as a collective. Co-founder Oded Hermoni, a Jerusalem-born former tech journalist who moved to the Bay Area in 2011, built it to knit Israeli and Jewish business networks into one investing community.
J-Ventures invests as a generalist. Across Fund I and Fund II it has backed 42 companies in healthcare, enterprise software, climate tech, and consumer, with names like BeeHero, Eclypsium, and Veev. Water is the newest and thinnest thread: in the Leviathan database J-Ventures shows a single water company backed across two rounds, which is why (don't) Waste Water rates its water commitment 'Occasional' rather than core.
J-Ventures' one water bet says a lot about how the fund thinks. Epic Cleantec takes the wastewater from inside a building and recycles it on site, turning a San Francisco high-rise into its own miniature treatment plant, the kind of decentralised, climate-adjacent infrastructure that suits a tech investor's appetite for onsite water reuse. Whether J-Ventures widens that single thread into a real water thesis, or leaves it as one climate-tech outlier, is the open question its next fund will answer.
Water Commitment Score
Compiled from official filings, third-party records, and direct intelligence from investors and founders, in Leviathan · recomputed monthly · as of Jun 2026.
How they invest
Portfolio · 1 water companies
Invests alongside
Highlighted = profiled on (don't) Waste Water.
Frequently asked
- What does J-Ventures invest in?
- J-Ventures invests across healthcare, enterprise software, climate tech, and consumer, backing early-stage startups that its member community sources and vets. Its portfolio spans 42 companies across Fund I and Fund II. Water is a small, recent part of that mix, represented so far by a single onsite-reuse company.
- Who runs J-Ventures?
- J-Ventures was co-founded by Oded Hermoni, its Managing Partner, and Jim Koshland, a longtime Silicon Valley corporate lawyer who serves as Chairman. Its General Partners include David Wagonfeld and Gil Frostig, a former Qualcomm and Intel executive. The fund is based in Palo Alto, California.
- What is the J-Ventures 'capitalist kibbutz' model?
- J-Ventures calls itself a 'capitalist kibbutz' because its roughly 470 members, from investors to serial founders to Fortune 500 executives, do much of the deal sourcing and diligence together as a collective, rather than leaving it to a small partnership. The model draws on Israeli and Jewish business networks worldwide.
- How many water deals has J-Ventures done?
- J-Ventures has backed one water company in the Leviathan database, across two funding rounds, with its most recent water deal recorded in 2024. That single bet is why (don't) Waste Water scores its water commitment as 'Occasional' rather than a core focus of the fund.
- Is this the same as other firms called J Ventures?
- This J-Ventures is the Palo Alto community venture fund, also known for its J-Angels and J-Impact arms, co-founded by Oded Hermoni and Jim Koshland. Several unrelated firms share the 'J Ventures' name; this profile covers only the Silicon Valley 'capitalist kibbutz' fund.