Mr. Dov Moran / Managing Partner, Grove Ventures

Managing Partner, Grove Ventures

Dov is serving Grove ventures as its managing partner and is involved heavily in most of the companies in the portfolio. Dov is an Israeli entrepreneur, inventor and investor, best-known as the inventor of the USB Flash Drive (DiskOnKey). He served in the Israeli Navy for eight and half years and was commander of its microprocessor department.

Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Moran was an independent consultant in the computer industry. In 1989 he formed M-Systems (NSDQ: FLSH), a pioneer in the flash data storage market. The company invented the USB Flash Drive, the FlashDisk as well as other innovative flash data storage devices. Under Moran's leadership, M-Systems grew to $1B revenue within 18 years, and at the end of 2006, it was acquired by SanDisk Corp (NSDQ: SNDK) for $1.6B. This still ranks as one of the single biggest acquisitions in Israel.

After the sale of M-Systems, Moran founded modu, an innovative company with a revolutionary modular phone concept, whose patents and technology were eventually acquired by Google in 2011. These patents are the basis for Google's modular phone Project Ara.

During his time at modu, Dov was also the chairman of Tower Semiconductor (NASDAQ: TSEM), a developer and manufacturer of semiconductors and integrated circuits for the electronics industry. During his tenure, Tower went from almost reaching bankruptcy to a successful company while redefining its strategy, doubling its revenues from $250M to $500M, restructuring the company’s $400M debt and performing the successful acquisition of US-based Jazz semiconductor. Moran was also chairman of Biomas, a developer of innovative pharmaceuticals and the chairman of Comigo, which offers a unique multi-screen platform for Pay TV operators. He established a few more companies and was the seed investor of few others, until he established Grove Ventures with Lotan and Sigalit.

In the course of his entrepreneurial work, Moran holds over 40 technology related patents and has received multiple industry awards: Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young, and "CEO of the Year" by the IMC. (2003), Entrepreneur of the Year by the IVA (Israel Venture Association) (2007), first Korean “Grammy Award” Winner in Best Engineering Category by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy and the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT) (2012),  the prestigious Edward Rheine Award for inventing the USB Flash Drive (2012), "Doctor Honoris Causa” at Moscow State Technical University of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation (2013),  the IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award for pioneering contributions to storage systems based on Flash memory (2015).  “Doctor Honoris Causa” from the Technion (2016), Life time award from the Flash Memory Summit (2018) and few more.

He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering (with honors) at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa.