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Journey Ventures: Venture capital firm investing in early-stage startups across tech, software, hardware, and consumer sectors, focused on seed investments.
Key people at Journey Ventures.
Long Journey Ventures is a San Francisco, California-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage startups across diverse sectors including tech, software, hardware, and consumer. The firm operates as a federation of angel investors and operators, focusing on pre-seed and seed investments with check sizes typically ranging up to $1 million. It raised $35 million for its inaugural fund in 2019 and recently closed its fourth fund, Long Journey IV, at $181.8 million in March 2025. Notable early investments include companies such as Uber, Affirm, Notion, and Loom, demonstrating its focus on innovative technology and consumer-facing solutions. Partners Cyan Banister, Arielle Zuckerberg, and Lee Jacobs lead the firm, which was founded in 2019. Its business model centers on raises venture capital funds from limited partners to invest in early-stage companies, operates multiple funds with check sizes from $0-$1M in pre-seed and seed rounds.
Key people at Journey Ventures.
Journey Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on building a portfolio of Israeli and international technology companies operating in tourism, travel tech, and the hotel industry. The firm targets companies that have already achieved an advanced stage of technological development, investing across pre-seed and seed stages with a thematic emphasis on innovation at the intersection of travel, hospitality, and digital platforms. Its core mission is to generate long-term capital appreciation by backing disruptive startups in travel-related tech, fintech, media, entertainment, AI, and internet-enabled services.
The firm plays a niche but strategic role in the startup ecosystem by bridging Israeli innovation with global travel and hospitality markets. By concentrating on travel tech—a sector historically underserved by generalist VCs—Journey Ventures helps scale startups that are redefining how people book, experience, and manage travel and accommodations. Its portfolio includes companies like Guesty (a leading short-term rental operations platform), positioning it as a key player in the future of digital hospitality infrastructure.
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Journey Ventures was founded in 2019 by Aviv Refuah and Nadav Fattal, two entrepreneurs with deep roots in Israel’s tech and travel ecosystems. The firm emerged from firsthand experience in building and exiting online commerce and travel-related ventures, including a notable exit in Israel’s largest e-commerce transaction at the time—when their online commerce activities were acquired by the Azrieli Group for ILS 80 million (~$22M) in May 2016.
From the outset, the firm adopted a thematic approach, centering its strategy on travel, tourism, and hospitality technology. While headquartered in Tel Aviv, Journey Ventures operates with a global outlook, investing in both Israeli startups and select international companies that align with its vertical focus. Over time, it has evolved from a regional travel-tech investor into a multi-stage VC with a growing footprint in software, SaaS, and adjacent sectors like fintech and AI, all while maintaining its core thesis around the digitization of travel and hospitality.
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- Israel-Centric with Global Reach: The fund is deeply embedded in Israel’s vibrant tech ecosystem, where it sources many of its deals, while also backing select U.S. and Canadian startups that fit its thesis.
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Journey Ventures is riding the long-term trend of the digital transformation of travel and hospitality—a sector undergoing massive disruption from platforms, SaaS tools, AI-driven personalization, and new booking behaviors. As short-term rentals, alternative accommodations, and digital concierge services become mainstream, companies in Journey’s wheelhouse (like Guesty) are becoming critical infrastructure for the modern travel economy.
The timing is particularly favorable: post-pandemic travel demand has surged, and operators are increasingly reliant on software to manage inventory, pricing, guest experience, and compliance. At the same time, fintech and AI innovations are being layered into travel platforms—payments, dynamic pricing, customer service automation, and loyalty systems—creating fertile ground for Journey’s cross-sector bets in fintech, SaaS, and AI within the travel context.
By concentrating capital and expertise in this vertical, Journey Ventures helps consolidate and professionalize a fragmented but high-value segment of the global economy. Its influence extends beyond check-writing: it’s shaping how travel tech is built, scaled, and monetized, particularly by proving that Israel can be a powerhouse for B2B travel and hospitality software, not just consumer apps.
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Looking ahead, Journey Ventures is well-positioned to deepen its leadership in travel tech while expanding its footprint in adjacent sectors like vertical SaaS, fintech for travel, and AI-powered guest experience platforms. As the line between travel, hospitality, and broader consumer internet continues to blur, the firm’s thematic focus could become even more valuable—especially if it leans into platform plays that connect supply, demand, and financial services across the travel value chain.
The fund will likely continue to back Israeli startups with global ambitions, while selectively doubling down on international winners that can scale across regions. With travel spending expected to keep growing and digitization accelerating, Journey Ventures’ niche strategy may increasingly look like a blueprint for how specialized VCs can outperform generalists in complex, asset-light verticals.
In a world where every industry is becoming software-defined, Journey Ventures is betting that the next generation of travel and hospitality will be built not by legacy players, but by the startups it backs—making it a quiet but consequential architect of how we’ll travel, stay, and experience the world in the years to come.
