I Met 'The Great One' - Wayne Gretzky ...and Etoro Went Public!!!!

May 14th, 2025…what a day!.

I am in New York with my partner Tom to celebrate the IPO of Etoro, which went incredibly well. The IPO was priced at $52 and closed the day at $67 (a $6.7 billion valuation) - ticker $ETOR ( ▼ 0.97% ) . We are off the The Nasdaq in a bit for the opening bell ceremony with the team.

While I am here for Etoro, something even cooler happened…

Yesterday, while I was waiting for Tom at Cipriani’s on 5th Avenue, I decided to grab a quick bite at the bar. When I pulled up and grabbed a seat, ‘the great one’ Wayne Gretzky happened to be sitting next to me minding his own business.

I quickly texted Tom the address, but because I was not wearing my readers, I sent Tom an address in Harlem or Budapest. I’m sure he will be fine when he eventually turns up. What is important though, is that I had a great conversation with Wayne about hockey, kids, golf and life in Toronto and Jupiter, Florida. It was an incredible thrill and Wayne was fantastic. He spent three years living on the Upper East when he played for The Rangers and so was often esating at Cipriani’s.

Back to the Etoro IPO.

Tom and I invested in Etoro way back in 2010. We had not yet started our funds (our first fund was 2013 and today we are investing out of our fifth fund) and were making personal investments at the time. I was over in Israel in 2009 with Ellen invited by Ben Weiss and others in the venture community to talk fintech and meet fintech founders. When we landed in Israel, I was met at the gate by Yaron Samid, a now friend and incredible founder and investor himself, who became our guide for a few days. He hustled off to get pitched 🙂 .

The very first pitch was Yoni and his brother Ronen. I remember asking Ellen for my checkbook and offering the guys a $250,000 check. Yoni, thought I should also buy Bitcoin at 11 cents, but obviously did not push hard enough! We invested in Etoro and put a syndicate together when we got back to Phoenix for another $1 million. I thought it would be easy to get US venture capitalists excited (I did not meet Vlad and Baiju at Robinhood for another 3 years), and I must have made 100 introductions before getting Santo from Spark to take a call. Santo dug in, pulled Spark in for a big lead investment and off Etoro went.

Today, they are on a $1 billion run rate and very profitable. Most importantly, we have become great friends with Yoni, Ronen, their families and many of the long time execs at the company. Today was both electric and surreal watching the founders and team enjoy the moment.

Here is one great story from a list of twenty that I could share today…

Yoni and Ronen’s father David founded magic Software back in the 1990’s and has the distinction of being THE FIRST Israeli software company to be listed on the Nasdaq.

With the Etoro IPO, Yoni and his dad are the very first father and son founder and CEO’s of Nasdaq listed companies. I don’t need to remind you the size of Israel in relation to the amount of public companies and global markets.

I chatted briefly with David about the journey. He is such a legend. I remember him letting my daughter Rachel and nephew Reuben stay at their home in Tel Aviv one summer as they toured Israel.

I am so grateful to have made that flight to Israel back in 2009. I had not been to Israel in twenty years, we had two young kids at home, I was in the middle of starting Stocktwits and was not looking to make Israeli investments.

Since that trip, I have visited yearly, and invested mostly indirectly in over 100 companies through funds including Tech Aviv (Yaron Samid) TBD and Sheva. I can’t wait for my next trip in November.

I appreciate all the kind notes people have been sending me as well.

I started seed investing as a career in my 40’s and have incredible good fortune with timing, my partners, with the internet, web 2.0, great mentorship and just staying in the game letting great companies bake.

Etoro is our fifth company that we have seeded that has made it all the way to IPO and well beyond. The others are Lifelock (acquired by Norton), Tubrmogul (acquired by $ADBE ( ▲ 1.28% ) ) Robinhood and Life 360 ( $LIF ( ▲ 1.48% ) ).

Some days I feel old, but on days like today it feels like we are just getting started.

Have a great day.