Israel Seed Partners is winding down days after its biggest exit ever. The firm was the seed investor in Shopping.com Inc., which agreed to be bought for $620 million by eBay Inc. in June. Last month it abandoned plans to raise a fifth fund. The firm's founder, Jonathan Medved, gave few details of his new venture beyond saying it was in the media space.  Michael Eisenberg will leave to join Benchmark Capital Israel while the third partner, Neil Cohen will manage the existing portfolio.

Medved told me at AlwaysOn's AO2005 Innovation Summit that he thinks it's a great time to start a company and added that it's healthy for venture capitalists to go back to entrepreneurialism and vice versa. He's currently in discussions with a few potential colleagues for his startup, but will take some time off this summer on the big island of Hawaii before returning to Jerusalem to build his company.

Israel's venture capital climate is warm right now and Medved noted that just like in the United States, there is plenty of capital available for investment. And there may be even more entrepreneurs on a per dollar/sheckel basis in Israel than the U.S. "It's become the national sport to want to become an entrepreneur. Shopping.com was on the front page of a few of the newspapers. It's the Israeli Horatio Alger story." — Joshua Jaffe

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