Gaza Sky Geeks (GSG), previously known as the Arab Developer Network Initiative, is the first and only tech hub and startup accelerator in Gaza in Palestine.[5] It was founded in 2011 with the backing of the global humanitarian organization Mercy Corps and Google, after Google executives, led by then Google.org and Google[X] head Megan Smith, visited Gaza.[6] GSG has since then been supported by other Silicon Valley companies, such as Microsoft, and by international donors such as the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.[7]
The stated purpose of GSG is to create a stage for young talents to grow while improving their skills through receiving professional mentoring and performing hands-on work. It encourages female startup members within the IT community to engage in business and software engineering activities.[8] It provides start-up grants for young IT entrepreneurs to begin their businesses. GSG hosts up to 140 people a day, with almost half of those being women. A second location opened in Hebron in 2018.[9] Representatives from large tech companies like Uber, Google, SoundCloud, Microsoft, 500 Startups, Endeavor Global, Udacity, Hitachi, and more have visited the tech hub.[8][10]
History
In 2008 and 2009 employees of Google tried to enter Gaza as part of their developer outreach program but were unable to do so because of the blockade of the Gaza Strip.[11] In 2011 they gained access thanks to Mercy Corps which carried out humanitarian work in Gaza.[11] Google contributed a one-time seed grant of $900,000 which Mercy Corps used to launch the Arab Developer Network Initiative to stimulate tech and entrepreneurship in the isolated enclave.[5][12] In 2013 the tech hub developed into an accelerator.[5] In 2014, GSG ran a crowdfunding campaign bringing in $279,000.[13][8] In 2017, GSG launched two new programs: the Gaza Code Academy and the Freelancing Academy.[14][15]
A major obstacle for Palestinian freelancers is handling online payments as PayPal is unavailable to Palestinians. In March 2018, MasterCard began researching e-payment solutions for Palestinians.[16]
The Code Academy is a six-month long web development bootcamp with 16 students in each cohort (half female),[18] hosted on campuses in Gaza City and Hebron, launched in partnership with a UK-based bootcamp, Founders & Coders International in 2017.[19][20] The curriculum covers test-driven development, JavaScript, relational databases, UX design, and project management.[21]
GeeXelerator
GeeXelerator is GSG's 16-week pre-seed startup accelerator program. It helps teams build minimum viable products and to validate them with users.[22][23] In 2018, 34 teams participated in the program.[9] Access to co-working space, fiber internet, and other amenities in the GSG's facilities are provided along with $2,000 in grant money per team that is accepted into the program. Participants are expected to already have a strong business case and are selected through interviews.[24]
GSG runs a related, six-weeks long program, called Idea Labs.[24]
SkyLancer Academy
The Skylancer Academy (previously known as the Freelance Academy) is GSG's program for teaching freelancing. It offers two full-time tracks providing mentoring to beginning freelancers. The first track is a ten-week program teaching young people already familiar web development, graphical design, mobile development and social media how to succeed as freelancers.[25]
Impact
According to Damian Radcliffe, GSG has helped create over 100 jobs and $91,000 in revenue.[13] GSG has, according to Yolande Knell, helped nearly 30 startups acquire seed money and investment and its freelancing graduates have earned more than $400,000.[26]
The term "Palestinian territories" has been used to describe the territories of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been militarly occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has referred to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as "the Occupied Palestinian Territory" and this term was used as the legal definition by the ICJ in its advisory opinion of July 2004. The term occupied Palestinian territory was used by the United Nations and other international organizations between October 1999 and December 2012 to refer to areas controlled by the Palestinian National Authority, but from 2012, when Palestine was admitted as one of its non-member observer states, the United Nations started using exclusively the name State of Palestine. The European Union (EU) also adopts the term occupied Palestinian territory, with a parallel term Palestinian Authority territories also occasionally used.
Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a de jure sovereign state in Western Asia. It is officially governed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and claims the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, its claimed territory has been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967; the West Bank is currently split into 165 Palestinian enclaves under partial Palestinian National Authority (PNA) civil rule, and 230 Israeli settlements into which Israeli law is "pipelined", while Gaza is ruled by Hamas and under a long-term blockade by Egypt and Israel since 2007.
Mercy Corps is a global non-governmental, humanitarian aid organization operating in transitional contexts that have undergone, or have been undergoing, various forms of economic, environmental, social and political instabilities. The organization claims to have assisted more than 220 million people survive humanitarian conflicts, seek improvements in livelihoods, and deliver durable development to their communities. In 2019, senior staff resigned following public disclosure of the organization's longtime inaction over its co-founder's sexual abuse of his daughter.
The economy of the State of Palestine refers to the economic activity of the State of Palestine.
Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Stripe, Airbnb, Cruise, PagerDuty, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, Dropbox, Twitch, and Reddit. The combined valuation of the top YC companies was more than $300 billion by January 2021. The company's accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, expanded to San Francisco in 2019, and has been entirely online since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Forbes characterized the company in 2012 as one of the most successful startup accelerators in Silicon Valley.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, & transgender (LGBT) people in Palestine face legal challenges and discrimination not experienced by non-LGBT residents. According to Amnesty International's 2020 report on Palestine, "Section 152 of the Penal Code in Gaza criminalizes [male] consensual same-sex sexual activity and makes it punishable by up to 10 years' imprisonment." In 2019, the Palestinian Authority police banned the activities of queer and feminist rights organization Al Qaws and requested for residents to report 'suspicious' activities.
The Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) is an Africa-wide technology entrepreneur training program, seed fund, and incubator headquartered in Accra, Ghana. The three-phased institution was founded in 2008 to provide training, investment, and mentoring for aspiring technology entrepreneurs with the goal of creating globally successful companies that create wealth and jobs locally in Africa.
500 Global is an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator founded in 2010 by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai. The fund admitted a first "class" of twelve startups to its incubator office in Mountain View, California in February, 2011. They expanded to a second class of 21 in June 2011 and a third class of 34 in October 2011.
SOSV is a venture capital and investment management firm that provides seed, venture and growth stage funding to startup companies in the technology sector. The company's focus is on accelerating startups via their market specific seed accelerator programs located in Europe, Asia and the USA. SOSV is headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, with operations in Cork, Ireland, and offices in San Francisco, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Taipei, New York, Cork, and London.
Israel–Palestine relations refers to the political, security, economical and other relations between the State of Israel and the State of Palestine. Israel and the PLO began to engage in the late 1980s and early 1990s in what became the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, culminated with the Oslo Accords in 1993. Shortly after, the Palestinian National Authority was established and during the next 6 years formed a network of economic and security connections with Israel, being referred to as a fully autonomous region with self-administration. In the year 2000, the relations severely deteriorated with the eruption of the Al-Aqsa Intifada – a rapid escalation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The events calmed down in 2005, with reconciliation and cease fire. The situation became more complicated with the split of the Palestinian Authority in 2007, the violent split of Fatah and Hamas factions, and Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip. The Hamas takeover resulted in a complete rift between Israel and the Palestinian faction in the Gaza Strip, cancelling all relations except limited humanitarian supply.
Entrepreneur First is an international talent investor, which supports individuals in building technology companies. Founded in 2011 by Matthew Clifford and Alice Bentinck, the company has offices in Toronto, London, Berlin, Paris, Singapore, and Bangalore.
Fast Forward is the first startup accelerator to focus solely on nonprofit-based technology enterprises, it was founded by Shannon Farley and Kevin Barenblat in 2014. The accelerator provides support, mentorship, and access to financial capital for emerging companies that aim to improve the world, by focusing on poverty, education access, improving health, and environmental degradation.
M12, formerly Microsoft Ventures, is a corporate venture capital subsidiary of Microsoft. Founded in March 2016, its mission is to be an active, strategic partner during a startup's growth, typically investing between Series A and D. The fund is managed by Nagraj Kashyap, formerly of Qualcomm Ventures.
Codementor is an online platform allowing coders to link up with "mentors" and clients to hire coders for projects on a freelance basis. The company is based in Taipei, Taiwan, and San Francisco, California.
Google for Startups is a startup program launched by Google in 2011. It consists of over 50 co-working spaces and accelerators in 125 countries, and provides hands-on lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Yadin B. Kaufmann is an Israeli-American technology investor, social entrepreneur and writer.
AppSheet is an application that provides a no-code development platform for application software, which allows users to create mobile, tablet, and web applications using data sources like Google Drive, DropBox, Office 365, and other cloud-based spreadsheet and database platforms. The platform can be utilized for a broad set of business use cases including project management, customer relationship management, field inspections, and personalized reporting.
The COVID-19 pandemic in the State of Palestine is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The State of Palestine first identified its cases in the Bethlehem area on 5 March 2020, when a group of Greek tourists who visited a hotel in late February tested positive for the disease. The Hebron district is considered an epicenter of the outbreak. The first two cases in Gaza City, Gaza were diagnosed on 21 March. On 24 August 2020, confirmed cases outside of quarantine centers were recorded.
Berkeley SkyDeck (SkyDeck) is a high-tech entrepreneurship startup accelerator and incubator program at the University of California, Berkeley serving as a joint venture between the Haas School of Business and Berkeley College of Engineering. Founded in 2012, SkyDeck promotes high-tech entrepreneurship in the Silicon Valley.
Caroline Winnett is the Executive Director of the Berkeley SkyDeck startup accelerator at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a serial entrepreneur, civic activist, angel investor, advisor and board member of several startups, and a frequent speaker on startups, accelerators, women in business and consumer neuroscience.
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