Lessons from My Friend Gerry Frigon Dear Daily Prophecy Reader, As a gauge and guide to the financial fate of Gilder paradigms over the years, from Microcosm and Telecosm to the Israel Test, nearly all my California trips include a visit to the hillside home of Gerry and Karen Frigon in the rolling wine country in Paso Robles. Hey, I get to drink exquisite local Zinfandels, enjoy simpatico views of politics and technology, and do long runs down dirt roads along Dover Canyon — through farms and vineyards. And the Roman Catholic Frigon family is as close as I can get to Israel in the United States. Halfway between my usual West Coast stops in Hollywood and Silicon Valley in San Luis Obispo, Frigon runs the extraordinary mutual fund Taylor-Frigon (TFCGX). Thirty percent of the fund pursues his lucrative Israeli Innovation Strategy. So far this year, while the S&P languishes at 0.89%, TFCGX is up 33.5% and his unique Israeli Strategy is up 49%, pushing the performance of his small but savvy fund into the top 1% of all US mutual funds. Among his leading performers is Israel-based Audiocodes (AUDC), the source of much of the unified communications software that makes such applications as Microsoft Teams and Zoom so seductive. As Shabtai Adlesberg reported in his conference call on Tuesday: “Between February 17 to June 14 this year, Microsoft Teams use grew almost 900% while Zoom has grown 680%. “More data points from a Globus study of more than 545 organization found that 91% of the organizations now support work from home up from 63% prior to the pandemic, and at the level of workforce 72% are now home based compared to just 34% before the pandemic.” Developing voice over IP technology and now Unified Communications as a service tools for decades, the nimble Israeli company was clearly in the right spot for the viral new mania. But the move toward many-faceted ubiquitous business communications is unlikely to end soon. Ascendant too in the Taylor Frigon Israeli strategy is Compugen (CGEN), with its unique exploitation of the information theory of biology to design pharmaceuticals. Less resplendent at the moment — but positioned for the future as the leading analog and mixed signal wafer fabrication and design company — is TowerJazz semiconductor (TSEM), which commands a portfolio of foundries from Texas and Newport Beach, CA, to Japan and Migdal Haemek, Israel. Although it does not compete in the leading edge 5 nanometer processes pioneered by TSMC in Taiwan, TSEM is a virtuoso of complex silicon germanium and other exotic chips that will play key roles in advanced wireless networks and internet of things applications. Frigon also makes personal investments in such private companies as Otoy in Los Angeles, a collaborator with Ari Emanuel in Hollywood special effects and three-dimensional Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) with companies such as Facebook and Apple. Its OCTANE rendering technology is becoming an industry standard. You can read about Otoy in Life After Google. In Israel, Gerry serves on the board of ASOCS, a private pioneer of enterprise 5G wireless systems for campuses, malls, stadia, hospitals, factories, and other defined domains. It is collaborating with Inventec in Taiwan to build the first industrial 5G network. (I led the founder-funding of both Otoy and the second coming of ASOCS and am Chairman of ASOCS Advisory Board.) But his rapport doesn’t stop there… |
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