fresh.fund

Fresh.fund is a Jerusalem-based seed fund built around a specific edge: it writes the first institutional checks into student-led and academic-led ventures coming out of Israeli universities, with a particular concentration in digital health and diagnostics. For physician founders, especially those still in residency or on academic faculty, fresh.fund is one of the few investors set up structurally to back you before you have left the institution.

The thesis is narrow and disciplined. Fresh.fund partners with universities and academic medical centers to identify researchers, students, and clinician-investigators with credible commercial ideas, and provides the catalytic capital that turns a research project into a company. Digital health, diagnostic tools, and AI-driven clinical software are the most active categories, with a clear preference for teams that have access to clinical data, validated research, and a path to a regulated product. The fund does not publish a deep portfolio list, but the operating model is consistent: small early checks, hands-on company building, and a willingness to engage with founders who do not yet have a full-time team.

Check sizes sit below 250 thousand dollars, consistent with the pre-seed and seed positioning and the academic-spinout model. Stage focus is firmly at the start: pre-seed and seed, with the expectation that follow-on capital will come from a mix of Israeli seed funds and international Series A investors once the company has matured. Geography is Israel-centric, with a particular density around Jerusalem-area academic institutions.

The team is small and operates close to university technology-transfer offices and clinical departments, which is the structural advantage. Diligence is built around the academic context as much as the commercial pitch.

Approach fresh.fund when you are an Israeli academic clinician or researcher with a research-derived product idea, access to clinical data through your institution, and a willingness to take the leap from academic to founder. Pure software founders without an academic anchor will be a worse fit. The most direct path in is through your university’s technology-transfer office, an academic mentor who has worked with the fund, or another fresh.fund portfolio founder. Avoid approaching with a fully-formed Series A pitch; the fund is built for the messy, early stage when the science is real but the company is still being assembled. Time the conversation when you have a research insight, a co-founder or two, and the institutional support to spin the work out.