Dov Moran
Dov Moran (Hebrew: דב מורן; born 1955) is an Israeli entrepreneur, inventor, and investor, best known as the inventor of the USB memory stick.
Biography
Born in Ramat Gan, Israel, a town near Tel Aviv, Moran obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering (with honors) at the Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa. He served in the Israeli Navy for seven years and was commander of its advanced microprocessor department. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Moran was an independent consultant in the computer industry.
Entrepreneurship
Moran formed M-Systems in 1989, a pioneer in the flash data storage market. The company invented the USB Flash Drive (DiskOnKey), the FlashDisk (DiskOnChip) as well as several 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 the third largest acquisition in Israel's history.
After the sale of M-Systems, Moran founded Modu, an innovative company with a revolutionary modular phone concept, which eventually sold its patents to Google in 2011. These patents are the basis for Google's modular phone project, called Project Ara .
During his time at Modu, Dov was also the chairman of Tower Semiconductor, a developer and manufacturer of semiconductors and integrated circuits. During his tenure, he turned the struggling company around towards profitability. Moran was also chairman of Biomas, a developer of innovative pharmaceuticals.
In 2011, Moran founded Comigo, a company with a vision of revolutionizing the TV viewing experience. The company developed a multi-screen platform for Pay TV operators, redefining personalization, social viewing and engagement. Moran is acting as the chairman of the company.
In the course of his entrepreneurial work, Moran has filed more than 40 patents.
Investments
After several years of successful angel investing, Moran founded Grove ventures, a $100M venture capital fund primarily investing in Cloud, Big Data, and IoT. His portfolio companies include:
- Consumer Physics, A thumb-sized spectrometer which acts as "digital materials analyzer", enabling the user, with a click of a button, to identify the product’s source, freshness, ingredients or the mix of materials, and its nutrition value.
- Sensible Medical Innovation Ltd., Absolute Lung Fluid Monitoring based on breakthrough sensing and monitoring technology providing accurate data for the management and treatment of several chronic medical conditions.
- GlucoMe, develops a unique blood glucose meter that provides a unique, reliable and low cost interface to the cloud through a phone or tablet to allow data gathering and analysis, alerts and better patient monitoring.
- Geneformics, a pioneer in the disrupting world of computing for genomics (DNA sequencing).[1] Geneformics provides dramatic savings in the storage, communications and cloud processing of DNA sequencing.
- Jovie, disrupts the mobile-based video footage. As Instagram revolutionized stills photos, Jovie sets a new way to create short, funny and viral videos, using daily generated video templates.
- Kidoz, Walled garden user experience and safe environment for young kids using tablets and smartphones.
- Learni, a cutting edge and an exciting learning environment, based on digital books and self- created eBooks with an interactive social layer. The platform enables the teacher to manage the class as well as cater to the needs of the individual within the class.
- Poliphone, revolutionary outbound campaign system that turns smartphones into a professional decentralized virtual call center, optimizing campaign resources.
Awards
Moran is the recipient of multiple industry awards:
In 2003 he was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young - (enter "Moran"), and "CEO of the Year" by the IMC.
In 2007, the IVA (Israel Venture Association) awarded Dov Moran the Israeli Hi-Tech award as Entrepreneur of the Year.
In 2012 Moran was awarded the prestigious Edward Rheine Award for inventing the USB Flash Drive and in 2013, he was named "Doctor Honoris Causa" from Moscow State Technical University of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation.
In the same year he had the title Honoris Causa conferred on him by Israel’s Academic Center of Law and Science, in the company of other notable leaders such as former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Minister of Education Rabbi Shai Piron and Canada’s Former Minister of Justice and State Attorney, Prof. Irwin Cotler.
Again in 2013, he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by Geektime. Its "Geek Awards" are an annual competition to recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, entrepreneurs and investors of the year in Israel.
In 2015, he received the IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award for pioneering contributions to storage systems based on Flash memory.
Public Sector and Community Involvement
Dov Moran perceives education as the grounding for innovation. As such, he mentors Israeli entrepreneurs, assisting in converting research and innovation to business. He lectures extensively in universities and schools and sits on the advisory board of Tel Aviv University Momentum Fund. In addition, Moran has invested in Learni, which brings technology into everyday learning system, and enables rich digital textbooks, in a managed interactive classroom environment.
He is an active member of the Korean Israel Business Forum, having spoken at a number of conferences, and in 2014, was asked by the Korean government to spearhead a project aimed at growing innovation in Seoul, the capital of Korea.
External links
• Comigo Website • modu Website • Geneformics's website • Dov Moran, CrunchBase • Dov Moran's world of total connectivity, Haaretz, Feb 13, 2008 • Dov Moran's Thoughts On Success, Startups And Working Until The Very End, NoCamels, Mar 11, 2013 • Korea Israel Business Forum Facebook Video • Korea-Israel Business Forum