He Cofounded A $100 Million AUM Hedge Fund And Has Now Raised $50 Million To Build A Diversified Immersive Technology Platform
Lyron Bentovim’s entrepreneurial career is anything but linear. His journey spans continents, cycles, and sectors. He started as an ice cream shop operator in Israel, a tech entrepreneur in the dot-com era, a hedge fund manager during the bust, and became a public company turnaround executive.
Lyron is now the founder of a publicly traded immersive-tech platform. His story isn’t merely about navigating ups and downs; it’s about applying lessons across industries, leveraging timing, and learning to build companies differently at different stages of life.
This is the business and life philosophy behind Glimpse, a trailblazing platform that Lyron has been building for nearly a decade. In an interview on the Dealmakers Podcast, he talks about his experiences getting companies off the ground, raising funding, and taking them public.
Born in Startup Nation, Raised With Risk in His Blood
Growing up in Israel, entrepreneurship isn’t a career choice; it’s cultural DNA. “Starting things and taking risks is part of the environment,” Lyron said. “That mindset has driven everything I’ve done.”
Moving later to the UK and then the U.S. expanded that outlook.
Experiencing business environments across multiple countries helped Lyron see problems and gain perspectives from “the outside” and from different angles. That, in his opinion, makes a huge difference. He also developed flexibility and tolerance for change and moving around.
Lyron learned not to be afraid of taking risks and to be open to doing things differently. These lessons enabled him to be successful wherever he went.
The First Company: An Ice Cream Shop That Became a Masterclass
Lyron’s first company was in the food space. He and a friend acquired a mediocre ice cream shop in a great location. The duo saw that the place had great potential, so they redesigned it, revamped the menu, and repositioned it. And it flourished.
The original owners had a factory where they manufactured the ice cream and continued supplying it for sale in the store. But what mattered wasn’t the profit. It was the education. Lyron learned valuable lessons in how a business works and in balancing payables and receivables.
He also learned to acquire and manage customers, and gained other insights that he would later translate into corporate leadership, venture building, and IPO navigation. He eventually sold his share to his cofounder, learning when to turn the page; a lesson he revisited twice during his career.
Starting Young vs. Starting Mature: Two Different Games
Lyron has built companies both as a young founder and as a seasoned operator. He sees the distinction clearly, saying, “When you're young, you run on energy and enthusiasm.” The lack of experience with the world prompts you to push forward at an entirely different pace.
In your 40s or 50s, maturity makes you respond to setbacks analytically rather than emotionally. You view obstacles as hurdles to navigate, not life-altering catastrophes. Thought processes change, and the word “no” triggers the willingness to pivot and work around it.
In Lyron’s opinion, younger founders are more determined to follow their dreams and build on them. They lack the willingness and ability to view the dream through a different lens. Thus, they are not willing to pivot and align their vision with what the audience is telling them.
Maturity brings flexibility and creativity in resolving challenges. Lyron is now not afraid to dive into the unknown and try something different when needed. Looking back, he talks about moving to the US to pursue an MBA at Yale.
As Lyron views immigrants, they have one of two philosophies. One--they stay within their community and continue living with their people. He chose the second path — to keep his identity within himself while also connecting with and embracing the land of opportunity.
Tech Cycles Never Die; They Evolve
After Yale, Lyron founded WebBrix, that startup that enabled him to experience the complete company cycle, including, in this case, the dot-com bust. His take on tech cycles is unusually structured. He says, “Technology cycles are 30 to 35 years.”
The digital cycle began in the early 1980s, surged with the internet boom, crashed in 2000, and matured around 2015. Lyron recalls his first exposure to technology in the 80s, when he saw an ad for the ZX81, one of the first computers with 1K of memory.
By the time Lyron successfully convinced his parents to buy one for him, 12 months had passed, and he purchased an advanced version of the computer. In retrospect, he considers the dot-com bust to be the two-thirds point of the tech cycle.
The Dot-Com Bust and Lessons Learned
As Lyron points out, crashes are not the end; they’re a midpoint, and the companies that endure them (Amazon being the best case study) become giants. This leads to the most expensive lesson Lyron learned at WebBrix: “Never say no to capital when it’s available.”
At the height of the internet boom, Lyron turned down money at a $10M valuation. Months later, when the crash came, capital evaporated. The markets crashed, and people didn’t want to touch the internet, even though it wasn't the end of the cycle, merely a blip.
Don’t view hurdles and setbacks as the end of the world, but as a part of the cycle. · Focus on surviving the setback and position yourself for further success as the cycle progresses.
Leveraging the Advantage of Switching Between Industries
Asked whether switching industries gives one an advantage, Lyron considers it a significant edge. The switch enables knowledge transfer, he says. He was able to apply some of the lessons he learned to a different segment he wanted to tackle, much like Elon Musk’s switch from payments to cars.
Similarly, Lyron successfully jumped from food to the web, to hedge funds, and then back to tech and the VR space. The ability to innovate within different environments, take the lessons learned, and apply them to other sectors was a considerable advantage.
Lyron views everything he does as a learning experience. He dives into a new industry without hesitation, understanding the need to get up to speed quickly. When he started Glimpse, he concedes he knew nothing about the virtual reality space, but now he knows as much as anyone in it.
As Lyron points out, entrepreneurs should not restrict themselves to their comfort zones in terms of technology or industry. Instead, they should expand their horizons and explore different pathways.
Reinvention: From Dot-Com Meltdown to Hedge Fund Innovator
After unwinding WebBrix, Lyron found himself surrounded by bankrupt startup shells with valuable IP. He himself carried around boxes of his company’s materials, hoping to resuscitate it at some point. This was before everything became digital.
Lyron tried to stitch together the technologies of broken companies into something new, but private markets were impossible because investors wouldn’t let go of “dead” assets. They were looking for high returns to recover some of their losses.
So in 2001, Lyron pivoted toward public markets. He was introduced to Russell Silvestri, who became his partner in starting Skiritai Capital. At the time, 550 technology companies within 100 miles of San Francisco were trading below cash value, though they had the technology, business, and other assets.
Lyron and his partner got in a car and physically visited companies. They spent time meeting with the management and invested in them to help position them for success. The duo recognized the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and went on to build a successful hedge fund.
Lyron leveraged lessons learned from building his startup, which included understanding technology, management consulting, and working with C-level executives in large companies.
The Itch to Operate: Leaving the Fund to Fix Companies
Investing wasn’t enough. Lyron wanted to start a new chapter. He wanted to build and execute. By this time, he had around $100M in assets under management (AUM). As the fund evolved, Lyron started taking on more of an operating partner role.
Although Lyron continued working with the investments and their management teams, he took on a more advisory role or served as a board member. He stepped in to turn around public companies like Sunrise Telecom and Top Image, after selling his stake to his partner.
The lesson from turnarounds? As Lyron says, “Until you understand the real problem, you haven’t done enough research.” Turnarounds fail when leaders chase symptoms instead of root causes, which could be issues with the business, customer fit, product, or cash flow.
Lyron would work with his analysts, who were analyzing companies with poorly-performing stock. As the investor, he would ask questions like: “Does the management know how to solve the problem?” But when he turned it around, he would ask: “How to address the problem?”
Lyron’s experience sharpened the diagnostic instincts that later helped him build Glimpse.
The Birth of Glimpse: Timing Meets Pattern Recognition
Having completed his roles at Sunrise Telecom and Top Image, Lyron was ready for the next phase of his career. Immersive tech (VR, AR, AI, blockchain) had been around since the 1990s, but it only became commercially viable in 2015.
When Lyron started researching, he realized he could get into the tech cycle early. This was unlike his previous experience with WebBrix, when he had entered the sector at its midpoint. This time, he wanted to be there from the beginning, not chasing from behind.
Lyron recognized early that virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain would form an immersive world. It was the next transition from a digital world at the end of the previous tech cycle. This was the opportune time to leverage all the lessons he had learned.
A serendipitous search for “NYVR” led him to DJ Smith, his future co-founder, just one hour before DJ’s meetup. The timing was interesting, as the duo would meet on the last or third Thursday at 6:00 pm in Manhattan.
They met for lunch, and walking toward the restaurant, the Glimpse model came to Lyron in a flash:
Roll up best-of-breed VR/AR startups under a unified platform. That idea became Glimpse Group.
At the time, DJ was running the largest meetup in the city for immersive technologies, which was also the second largest in the world. He was connected to several startups in the scene and began bringing them in to evaluate their fit and interest in collaborating.
Simultaneously, Lyron and DJ worked to secure seed funding to launch the company.
Glimpse: The Platform Approach to Immersive Tech
Explaining the Glimpse business model, Lyron reveals that it is essentially a software platform that brings together multiple “best of breed” software companies selling immersive technologies to enterprise customers.
Glimpse sells software solutions in a variety of areas to the military, defense, marketing, healthcare, and education sectors. Although the different companies focus on various industries and offer diverse technologies, they are wholly owned by Glimpse and managed and operated by it.
Each subsidiary has autonomy and its own general manager (GM), but Glimpse provides scale, credibility, shared infrastructure, and market access. It isn’t a siloed startup; it's an ecosystem.
Raising Money Without VC: A Very Conscious Decision
Lyron raised $50M in capital, but not through venture capital. He believes traditional venture capital (VC) incentives and founder incentives are misaligned, especially for companies aiming to go public.
Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that founders worldwide are using to raise millions below.
Lyron had a vision that Glimpse would go public eventually. Thus, he focused on nigh-net-worth individuals and family offices, raising small rounds by carefully vetting their investors. They “kissed a lot of frogs” and found the right long-term partners.
Lyron strongly believed that “You don't raise money when you need it. You raise the money when there is enough interest in your company that would make raising money viable.” He sees it as a totally different skill set and art than raising money for a private company. He learned how to do both.
Going Public: Prepared Years Before It Was Possible
From Day 1, Glimpse was structured to become a public company. Lyron and his cofounders conducted audits while doing just $70K in revenue their first year. That looked crazy until 2021, when the capital markets for immersive tech opened.
Because they were ready, the IPO happened rapidly. “Within six months, we were public on NASDAQ,” Lyron recalls. It was a regular IPO, not a SPAC, not a reverse merger. This was a rare move for such an early company.
As Lyron says, you need to learn to navigate all the pros and cons of situations. Their pro was that they could increase the valuation without any effort. He recalls the time when Facebook rebranded to Meta. Investors wanted pure-play metaverse stocks.
But Glimpse was the only one. When its stock jumped 50% in a single day, Lyron acted instantly. He phoned his bankers at 2:00 pm, negotiated overnight, and by morning, they had $15M more in the bank. That’s what timing and preparedness look like when public markets get excited.
The Future Immersive World and Advice to Founders
In Lyron’s future is a world where we do everything digitally. Zoom calls become immersive virtual offices, support groups meet in virtual shared spaces, and virtual tourism becomes mainstream. That’s just for starters.
Lyron’s message to his younger self? “Don’t give up. Every obstacle is solvable if you stay creative.”
Just assume that every kind of challenge you see is an obstacle to overcome.
Lyron sees entrepreneurship as cultural DNA, leveraging global perspective and risk-taking instincts to build across industries. · Early failures taught him a core rule: never say no to capital when it’s available because timing is everything. · He views tech cycles as lasting 30 to 35 years, and mid-cycle survival creates the giants who shape the future. · Switching sectors created unfair advantages by transferring insights across food, web, hedge funds, turnarounds, and immersive tech. · He structured Glimpse as an ecosystem of VR/AR companies, proving the power of a platform over siloed startups. · Avoiding VC funding allowed alignment with public-company incentives and enabled a rapid, clean IPO. · Preparedness and decisive action—years before needed—let Glimpse seize market timing, raise capital, and lead the immersive-tech cycle.
Original Version
Alejandro Cremades: All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the DealMaker Show. So today we actually have a really amazing you know founder with us, a founder that has done it multiple times. We're going be learning the billing, the scaling, financing, I mean, all of the above, even taking companies public, what it is to to to be part of cycles, different tech cycles.
Alejandro Cremades: the glimpse of really getting companies off the ground, as well as the difference between starting a company in your 20s versus maybe, you know, in your forty s or 50s, which is not the same thing. So brace yourself for quite the inspiring conversation to the end. Without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Liron Ventobim. Welcome to the show.
Lyron Bentovim: Thank you, Alejandro. Pleasure to be here. Looking forward to a great conversation.
Alejandro Cremades: So born in startup land, startup nation, give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you?
Lyron Bentovim: Well, you grew up in Israel. You basically ah have a startup in your vein. So it's ah it's part of the culture, starting things, kind of taking risks and succeeding. And that's kind of what I've been doing all of my career.
Alejandro Cremades: how did you How did you experience life moving a bit around? Because i mean you were in Israel, then in the UK. What kind of perspective and lens did open up for you?
Lyron Bentovim: It gives you an ability to look at wherever you are, whether it's the US or Israel or England or the world, from um almost like from an outside perspective.
Lyron Bentovim: So you're not in and you're looking at things like everybody else. You have that different perspective because you see it from different angles. And I think that makes a big difference. The other is is the ability to kind of not be afraid of change, not be afraid of moving around,
Lyron Bentovim: and not be afraid to kind of take risks and kind of do something different because you've done it before. You've moved between different locations and proven that you can be successful wherever you are. And I think that's a big lesson.
Alejandro Cremades: And in your case, you know, talk to us about getting started with your first baby, with your first company. You know, it was in the food space. But but how was that?
Lyron Bentovim: So I was kind of very young and kind of basically got together with a friend of mine and we were kind of Basically looking to do something and again kind of had that kind of entrepreneur kind of spirit and we looked for a business and we found this ice cream store that kind of was doing okay but not doing great and we thought that it had great location and great potential and we bought it from the owners and the owners actually had the factory at the time and so they were supplying us with the ice cream and we changed around the whole place.
Lyron Bentovim: We redecorated it, we changed the menu and kind of open it up and it was like a great success. It was a good first chance to understand how a business works, kind of how you balance basically the payables and the receivables, how you deal with customers, how you acquire customers, all of those things that you learn in a big scale later in in life.
Alejandro Cremades: And, you know, in this case, too, I mean, you ended up a selling your portion to your co-founder, and it's something that you've done twice. I think that the question that comes to mind is, at what point do you realize, you know, in the journey of building a company that is perhaps the right time to turn page?
Lyron Bentovim: It's kind of when when you look at kind of what you've built and you say, you know what, I've i've i've gotten it where I wanted to get it.
Lyron Bentovim: And now I'm more interested in kind of challenging myself with something different. And when that time comes, when you feel it, and sometimes you feel it after a couple of years and sometimes ah it takes longer.
Lyron Bentovim: Obviously, I've been running Glimpse now for almost 10 years. So and I haven't had that itch yet.
Alejandro Cremades: And what is what would you say is the main difference now that, they and we'll talk about Glimpse in just a little bit, but what would you say is the main difference of, let's say, starting a company at that such young age versus maybe in your 40s or 50s, like you've been able to experience now with Glimpse?
Lyron Bentovim: It's kind of when you start a company when you're young, you've got a lot of enthusiasm, you've got a lot of energy, you're running around, but you haven't seen a lot of the world. You haven't seen it all play out and you're eager to kind of push things forward at a totally different pace than how you do things where you're more mature.
Lyron Bentovim: You're taking setbacks differently, kind of you're not seeing them as kind of basically life-changing, but more of a hurdle to pass around.
Lyron Bentovim: You're basically taking know differently. When someone says no, you try to figure out how to work around it. You also look at the business differently in terms of your willingness to pivot.
Lyron Bentovim: And I see it lot with younger founders where they they've got kind of what they figure out is their kind of dream of what they want to build. And they set up doing it, and they don't have the willingness or the ability to almost look from a different lens at what they're doing and say, you know what?
Lyron Bentovim: Maybe I should pivot a little bit to kind of adjust and align ah my vision with what the kind of what the world's telling me. So I think when you're more mature, ah you're kind of you're dealing with situations in a different way and getting to ah to be more creative in and in resolving challenges.
Alejandro Cremades: How was it like to for you to come to the U.S.? Because you came here for your MBA program at Yale. But how how was how was that like, you know, of of of coming here to the land of opportunity, to America?
Lyron Bentovim: Yeah, and and I really saw kind of coming to the US kind of as as coming to a larger opportunity where you can do things at a totally different scale. And ah my philosophy kind of, which kind of, when I look at kind of immigrants coming in, there's two philosophies. One, you basically kind of stay within your group and you're just going to live within your people.
Lyron Bentovim: Or you come in and you say, I'm coming into this country and I want to be an American. And for me, from day one, when I kind of arrived at Yale, I wanted to look at things as an American, to act as an American, to focus, i kind of keeping my identity with myself, but kind of really kind of embracing, kind of kind of connecting with this kind of land of opportunities.
Alejandro Cremades: Now, after ah Yale, um you basically went into what the next company that you would do was essentially another one, which was a Whip Bricks. And there you had the opportunity to of experiencing cycles. In this case, it was the dot-com bust, right? So how was it like going through something like that? And and and what kind of lessons, you know, do you think you learned? Because a lot of people are now talking about Another potential correction coming. Markets are behaving in a crazy way.
Alejandro Cremades: ah i guess, what how was that experience with WebRix?
Lyron Bentovim: Yeah, so so it's kind of, obviously it sucked kind of given the timing and I've learned a lot of lessons from it. But when you kind of, and kind of I'd love to talk about some of those because ah it's kind of life lessons learned, but kind of taking the cycle first, just to understand the digital cycle, which the dot-com crash was a part of.
Lyron Bentovim: The technology cycles in my view are 30, 35 year cycles.
Lyron Bentovim: So the the digital cycle started in 1980s and that's where I started exposing myself to technology. I remember seeing basically an ad in when I was in the UK for the ZX81, which was one of the first computers with 1K of memory.
Lyron Bentovim: And I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
Lyron Bentovim: And I started a campaign with my parents to basically a kind of let me buy one. And it took me about a year, but eventually ended up with slightly more advanced version as things evolve.
Lyron Bentovim: and if you look at the dot-com bust as part of the lens, it is basically probably two thirds of the cycle. So kind of, so it started in 1980, the dot-com bus was in 99, 2000. And basically the the cycle continued all the way to 2015. And it was basically, basically that it's almost like the market cleared itself up.
Lyron Bentovim: So kind of, if you were kind of basically get caught on it and kind of obviously I was caught on it with Roberts. And one of the lessons I've learned is never say no to money kind of, When we started the company, we had a lot more money that wanted to invest in us than we wanted to at what now I perceive as crazy valuations.
Lyron Bentovim: We raised money at 10 million valuation for basically a business plan and a couple of kids. And we said no to money, if you believe that. And when you look at that, you say you're crazy because kind of when we wanted to raise the money back kind of ah in later in 2000,
Lyron Bentovim: the markets crashed and people didn't want to touch the internet, even though that was not the end of the cycle. it was just a blip. and kind of And if you look at kind of where the companies that won they kind of they were strong enough to go through that cycle, take Amazon as an example, and come out stronger and obviously become dominant in what they're doing.
Lyron Bentovim: So many lessons learned. First of all, kind of basically, don't look at this as the end of the world, but just a kind of a part of the cycle.
Lyron Bentovim: Learn to survive through it. ah which I think a more mature me would have survived that company kind of through that cycle. And then kind of position yourself for further success as the cycle continues to happen.
Alejandro Cremades: Now, one thing that they that I think gives you an advantage, I mean, some people may look at it as a as sort of disadvantage, you know, just jumping from one industry to another. i do see it as an advantage because it gives you knowledge transfer. You're able to apply some of those lessons, you know into a different field. I mean, we've seen that with people like Elon Musk, you know, going from payments to like cars, you know, I mean, you see it. I guess in your case, being able to jump from food to food a web to hedge funds, back into tech, more like the VR space.
Lyron Bentovim: And I called our bankers and said, guys, you've been asking if we want to raise money or not. I think today's the opportunity. It was like around two in the afternoon. Obviously the market opens until four.
Lyron Bentovim: I said, well, check this out. If you think you can do it, let's go raise money tonight. And they worked. By the time I had dinner with my wife, we were already kind of locked to raise money. I stayed up all night working all the legal documents with the bankers and lawyers. And when we woke up in the morning, we had the 15 million more in the bank.
Lyron Bentovim: That's the power where it works of public excitement around the public company.
Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, no kidding. So, Liron, imagine you go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of Glimpse is fully realized. What does that world look like?
Lyron Bentovim: Very immersive, I'll tell you that. It's a world where we do everything we do today digitally. So this conversation, for example — I'm looking at you flat. Imagine if I could see you with me in the same room.
Lyron Bentovim: And that's the power of immersive. So we will do these meetings. All the Zoom calls we're doing will be in virtual offices. We will do support groups virtually. We will kind of have fun and travel virtually. So that's the world that Glimpse and our subsidiary companies are trying to create.
Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Now we're talking about the future. I want to talk about the past, but doing it with a lens of reflection. Imagine if I was able to put you into a time machine and bring you back in time to the moment where you're thinking about launching something of your own — you know, before you started your food business.
Alejandro Cremades: And let's say you're able to give that younger self, that younger Liron, one piece of advice for launching a business. What would that be and why, given what you know now?
Lyron Bentovim: That's an easy one. Don't give up. Just kind of, any challenge you see — just assume it's an obstacle to go around. Be creative and solve around those, and good things will happen.
Alejandro Cremades: I love it. Well, Liron, for the people that are listening and would love to reach out and say hi, what is the best way for them to do so?
Lyron Bentovim: Best way is probably on LinkedIn. Liron Bentovim, kind of pretty easy to find, unique name. And also feel free to email me, Liron at theglimpsegroup.com.
Alejandro Cremades: Thank you so much for being on the DealMaker Show today. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us.
