One can clearly see a close and compelling partnership between Britain and Israel, specifically in business and trade, where both countries recognising their partner’s strengths, seek to use it to encourage and enhance their own potential.
Corporate accelerators are a recent phenomenon, both in Israel and globally. Microsoft selected Israel last year to launch its very first accelerator program. The company takes no equity, with the emphasis on business and technical mentoring.
Bloomberg’s World Healthcare Efficiency Index, released last month, makes for very interesting reading. Among 48 countries worldwide, the US ranked 46th. The top four (Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Israel), emphasize the role of Government in the efficiency of healthcare.
It’s no secret that the London startup ecosystem is booming. It’s incredible to see it from the vantage point of Campus – new startups are created every day, and the slightly more mature international startups from the US and the…
The Economist published "If in doubt, innovate" a special report on The Nordic Region (Sweden, Denmark, Finland) as a hotbed for entrepreneurship we can all learn from. The article mentions some of the characteristics that make the Nordic Cluster successful. With a bit of a wiggle, I've transformed it to a blue print for Successful Startup Hubs.
Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Cities Summit Tel Aviv, in a session moderated by Mr Yossi Vardi. The topic was the "Innovative code" of cities. My talk focused on London and its ability to become a startup center in Europe. In a nutshell, London has all the components it needs to succeed.
SingTel is the world’s second largest wireless group, owning all or part of 8 APAC wireless carriers and 462 million subscribers. In April, the company restructured into three business units- Consumer, ICT and Digital- naming Allen Lew to transform SingTel into a multimedia market leader. At the HTIA conference in Jerusalem last week, Allen discussed reinvention, Asian markets and areas of strategic opportunity.
On a macro level, VC funding for the most part hasn’t really changed. We’ve seen some pretty good years recently, with VC funding in Israel reaching an all-time high in 2011 at a record $2.2 billion in VC investment. While overall this is quite impressive, only 24% of VC investment in Israel actually came from Israeli VCs.
International visitors at the HTIA 2012 conference got much more than what they came for. It wasn’t just your typical roundtable sessions and panel discussions – it was a showcase of some of the finest innovation and human ingenuity in the world, and enough to inspire the entrepreneur in all of us.
As every month, VC Cafe is re-posting the “Invest in Israel” Newsletter, published by the investment promotion center of Israel’s Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, which offers many helpful tools for prospecting investors. For the Invest in Israel archive, click here
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