At Intel Israel's annual conference in Tel Aviv on Sunday, President Mooly Eden warned that start-up nation isn't forever.
“This isn’t forever,” he said at the company’s annual
conference in Tel Aviv, against a backdrop of convertible touch-screen laptops,
tablets, smartphones and other highpowered gadgets. “Are we investing enough in
Israel on a national level, so that in the future we will a have ‘Israel: The
Start-up Nation, Part Two,’ or will this be a history book?” Eden raised the
question after announcing a banner year for Intel Israel. The company more than
doubled its exports, from $2.2 billion in 2011 to $4.6b. in 2012. That figure
represents 10 percent of Israel’s total exports (excluding diamonds) and 20% of
the country’s $21.5b. in hi-tech exports.
“This should be a flashing red
light,” said Eden, looking like a European Steve Jobs with his backward Kangel
beret matching his all-black attire. Although the company’s remarkable success
in Israel gave him great pride, he said, there were plenty of other tech-savvy
nations that will outpace Israel if it doesn’t make the right
investments.
“We aren’t the only start-up nation in the world. There’s a
start-up nation in India and a start-up nation in China and a start-up nation in
Brazil,” he said, attributing the current Israeli hi-tech boom, in part, to the
influx of relatively educated immigrants from the Soviet Union in the
1990s.
But far from endorsing specific policies, Eden simply paid lip
service to the fields of taxation, export law and education.
The brain drain from high tax rates is a huge problem, and it's the one I see the government doing the least to stop. Out government is addicted to spending, and our older industries are still dominated in many case by the national labor union, which continues to extort exorbitant salaries for little work (see, for example, the ports, including the airport, and the Electric Company).
Google to open an incubator for Israeli companies (and it's free)
Google Israel has announced that it will open an incubator in its Tel Aviv offices in August 2012. The incubator will be free, and will allow start-up companies to stay for several months during which their personnel will be exposed to Google. Google will not take equity in the start-ups (Hat Tip: Lance K).
A Google research director made the announcement Sunday at the company’s annual conference for developers in Israel, saying that the incubator will open in August of next year in the same building as Google’s office in Tel Aviv.
Initially, Google’s incubator will host roughly 20 “pre-seed” start ups, or about 80 people, for a period of a few months, after which new companies will come into the incubator to replace them, and the project will be open to many types of start-ups but has an emphasis on open-source technologies.
Google, which isn’t expected to take equity in any of the participating start-ups, hasn’t yet announced how entrepreneurs can apply to the free program.
Google’s move is “very significant,” said Shuly Galili, executive director of the California-Israel Chamber of Commerce. “Google will have more accessibility to the talent and the know-how and what’s going on in that community,” she said, adding that she expects more U.S. tech companies to make similar moves in the future.
Galili is involved in a new “accelerator” for Israeli startups called Upwest Labs that will be based in Silicon Valley, providing a chance for Israeli entrepreneurs to work on their projects and meet with investors and technology companies based in the U.S. Google is one of Upwest’s sponsors, she said.
The Israeli incubator won’t be the first of its kind for Google, which earlier this year launched a similar program in Cape Town, South Africa.
If you want to take your company to the incubator and you need a lawyer, please feel free to call me.
Caesaria-based Emefcy Ltd., a wastewater treatment company, was named Early Stage Company of the Year and selected to the Global Cleantech 100 list for the second year in a row at the Global Cleantech 100 Summit and Gala held in Washington, DC, on Monday and Tuesday.
Founded in 2008, Emefcy develops different technologies that treat wastewater, with the goal of being as economically efficient and energy-efficient as possible, the company said. Two of its major technologies, the Electrogenic Bio- Reactor and the Spiral Aerobic Bio-Reactor, allow the wastewater treatment mechanism to simultaneously generate renewable energy that can be funneled into national grids.
“Being given the Early Stage Company of the Year Award is a vote of confidence in Emefcy’s vision of changing the economics of wastewater treatment,” said its co-founder and CEO, Eytan Levy, in the statement.
“We are also excited by the recognition Emefcy has gained among corporate community and regulators to be named as one of the Global Cleantech 100.”
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
