CTalk
"Investors aren't choosing between profitability or efficiency and growth"
Danielle Ardon Baratz from Red Dot Capital explains what investors are looking for today, and how AI has changed these criteria.
Danielle Ardon Baratz - Summer Cocktail by Fusion VC 2026.
(Video: Orel Cohen)
“Investors are actually not choosing between profitability or efficiency and growth,” said Danielle Ardon Baratz, Partner at Tel-Aviv based venture firm Red Dot Capital. When asked whether the market is swinging back to aggressive growth after years of prioritising capital efficiency, she expressed: “We're actually wanting to see both at the same time, and the bar on both of them is just much higher simultaneously.”
Ardon Baratz spoke with CTech’s Amy Shapiro during the Summer Cocktail event in Tel Aviv hosted by Fusion VC, a gathering that brought together some of the biggest and best venture investors in Israel.
Ardon Baratz explained that the rise of AI has fundamentally changed the traits investors value. Now, she noted, it is "much easier to replicate products, to develop products, [and] to replicate features,” meaning qualities like building customer trust, establishing proprietary data, and securing distribution networks are becoming the differentiators, and all the more sought after. As a result, Red Dot is increasingly focused on backing founders who possess "exceptional judgments and that are adapting very quickly to the new market dynamics.”
You can watch the full conversation in the video above.
