CYVERSE CAPITAL IS A ZURICH-BASED INVESTOR GROUP, WHICH FOCUSES ON PRIVATE, EARLY-STAGE CYBER-SECURITY INVESTMENTS.
CYVERSE CAPITAL IS A ZURICH-BASED INVESTOR GROUP, WHICH FOCUSES ON PRIVATE, EARLY-STAGE CYBER-SECURITY INVESTMENTS.
Management
Shira Kaplan
Founder
Shira is the Founder & CEO of Cyverse AG, a Zurich-based cyber-security firm which provides state-of-the-art cyber-security solutions made in Israel to global and local corporations in Europe. Shira’s technological training dates back to her military service in the Israeli 8200 Elite Technology Unit of the Intelligence, where she was an Intelligence Analyst. She has held business management positions at publicly-traded companies including Teva Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (NASDAQ: TEVA) and Bank Julius Baer & Co. in Zurich (SIX: BAER).
Shira is an alumna of Harvard University (B.A.), where she studied Government and Chinese, and was a Davis Scholar. She holds an MBA from St. Gallen HSG University in Switzerland, where she wrote her thesis on Swiss Venture Capital Investments in Israeli Cyber-Security Startups, and where she was awarded the “Women in Business” Scholarship.
In 2017, Shira was selected as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In 2018, she was selected by the Israeli financial magazine Globes as one of "40 Israeli Business Leaders under 40". In 2020 she was selected as a Digital Shaper by the BILANZ for her contribution to the Swiss cyber-security infrastructue. Shira is also an Advisory Board Member at the Geneva School of Economics and Management (GSEM). She is an active Board Member at the Weizmann Young European Network (WYEN).
Shira has won several other awards, including the “Seeds of Peace” scholarship, the Goldman fellowship and the Milken Fellowship. She has been featured in the Financial Times, the Neue Zuercher Zeitung, Bilanz and other newspapers.
She is an active angel investor in selected Israeli tech & cyber-security startups.
Itay Shlomo
Advisor
Itay is a senior corporate finance Executive. Having launched his career as Manager at KPMG Israel and Senior Manager at KPMG AG in Zurich, Switzerland, he consulted C-level executives across Israel and Europe on multi-billion dollar M&A deals, primarily in the fields of pharmaceuticals, commodity trading and insurance. Among his clients were Roche, Ferring, Wockhardt Bio, Zurich, Swiss Re, Trafigura, Louis Dreyfus Commodities, SIKA, Sulzer and ABB.
Thereafter, Itay joined Israel’s largest Swiss bank, Poalim Switzerland, as Head of the Credit of its head office in Zurich, where he oversaw the Bank's USD 1.5 billion credit lending portfolio.
Later, Itay joined the turnaround of Gategroup Holding, a 43,000 employee Swiss multinational company with USD 4.8 billion in revenues, as Director for Investments & Projects. He was promoted to Global Head for M&A and Investments at Gategroup, and prepared the company for a USD 2 billion IPO and a landmark acquisition, further consolidating the industry.
Itay holds a B.A. from Tel Aviv University in Accounting and East Asian Studies (cum laude), an MBA in Finance from Tel Aviv University (magna cum laude), and a Program in Leadership Development (PLD) from St. Gallen University in Switzerland and ESADE in Spain. He is a certified accountant (CPA) in Israel.
Advisory board
Dr. Sven Lorenz
Head of Group Business Process Management, Volkswagen Group
Dr Sven Lorenz has been responsible for IT as Vice President of Information Technology and CIO at Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG from 2002 until 2017. Lorenz studied Information Technology and Business Administration at the University of Karlsruhe and the University of Oregon in the USA. After winning a scholarship from the IBM Scientific Centre he achieved his doctorate in the field of artificial intelligence, in natural language understanding, and undertook research at the Institute for Natural Language Processing at the University of Stuttgart. Following periods working for IBM in software development and A.T. Kearney in management consulting, at the end of the 1990s Lorenz became Managing Director of an e-business start-up within the Deutsche Post Group, before moving to Porsche AG in 2002. At the awards for “CIO of the Year” 2006, he won second place in the “large company” category. Since 2013 he has been teaching Strategic IT Management at the University of Stuttgart. In October 2018 Lorenz took over a new responsibility in the Volkswagen Group as Head of Group Business Process Management, responsible for harmonizing and integrating business processes across the Group.
Simon Schlumpf
Chief Information Security Officer at Bystronic Group
Simon is a seasoned Security Leader with over 12 years of experience in the field of Cyber-Security. Simon joined Bystronic, a globally leading technology company in the area of sheet metal processing and automation. Before that, he was Head of Group Information Security at Ringier, a multinational media & technology group. Simon previously held several positions as Security Engineer & Consultant, namely at terreActive, an established swiss cyber-security company which has been focusing on designing, integrating, and operating cyber security solution over the last 25 years, and at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss-TPH), an international public health institute working in various disciplines with a particular focus on low- and middle-income countries. Simon studied Business Informatics and Information Systems at kvBL and holds various certifications such as Information Security Manager (CISM), Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC) as well as in Information Security Management Systems (ISMS).
Mr Alain Barthel
Head of Continental Europe at Brandywine Global Investment Management (Europe) Ltd.
Bringing over 25 years of industry experience, Mr Barthel was previously Head of Institutional Client Coverage with UBS Asset Management (Switzerland) (2016-2018), Country Head (Switzerland) Institutional for Goldman Sachs Asset Management (2011-2016). Prior to these roles, he was with Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Credit Agricole Asset Management, Paribas Asset Management and Banque Transatlantique. Alain has earned his M.B.A from Paris XII University.
Mr Hans-Christian Brechbühl
Associate Professor of Practice, Director, Digital Strategies Roundtable and Corporate InfoSe Roundtable, SDA Bocconi School of Management
He was the Executive Director of the Center for Digital Strategies and an Adjunct Professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth from 2000-2018, where, amongst other responsibilities, he led the center’s outreach and partnership-building efforts, building relationships with Global 1000 corporations in the Americas and Europe. He also founded and served as faculty director of executive education courses in Business Engagement and Information Security for ten years. Prior to Tuck, he was engaged in corporate life, serving as a Senior VP, Global Partnerships in a .com and as Group VP of Corporate Development for Metromedia International Telecommunications, Inc. Prior to Metromedia, he was Managing Director of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, and in a previous life, he served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army for ten years, where he led tactical units on the Iron Curtain in Europe.
Hans holds a master’s degree from Harvard University, a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, is an alumnus of the University of Michigan’s Global Leadership Program executive course and a graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Monterrey. Hans has also served on the Board of Directors of two Waldorf schools for a total of 13 years.