A business incubator is an organization that helps startup companies and individual entrepreneurs to develop their businesses by providing a fullscale range of services, starting with management training and office space, and ending with venture capital financing. The National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) defines business incubators as a catalyst tool for either regional or national economic development. NBIA categorizes its members' incubators by the following five incubator types: academic institutions; non-profit development corporations; for-profit property development ventures; venture capital firms, and a combination of the above.
Social venture capital is a form of investment funding that is usually funded by a group of social venture capitalists or an impact investor to provide seed-funding investment, usually in a for-profit social enterprise, in return to achieve an outsized gain in financial return while delivering social impact to the world. There are various organizations, such as Venture Philanthropy (VP) companies and nonprofit organizations, that deploy a simple venture capital strategy model to fund nonprofit events, social enterprises, or activities that deliver a high social impact or a strong social causes for their existence. There are also regionally focused organizations that target a specific region of the world, to help build and support the local community in a social cause.
Silicon Wadi is a region in Israel that serves as one of the global centres for advanced technology. It spans the Israeli coastal plain, and is cited as among the reasons why the country has become known as the world's "start-up nation". The highest concentrations of high-tech industry in the region can be found around Tel Aviv, including small clusters around the cities of Raʽanana, Petah Tikva, Herzliya, Netanya, Rehovot, and Ness Ziona. Additional clusters of high-tech industry can be found in Haifa and Caesarea. More recent high-tech establishments have been raised in cities such as Jerusalem and Beersheba, in towns such as Yokneam Illit, and in Airport City.
Michael Jones is an American entrepreneur, investor and CEO of Science Inc. In 2017, Jones was named one of Los Angeles's 500 most influential people by the Los Angeles Business Journal.
Dov Moran is an Israeli businessman, electrical engineer, inventor, investor, and writer. He is best known as the inventor of the USB memory stick, and one of the most prominent Israeli hi-tech leaders.
Techstars is a pre-seed investor that provides access to capital, mentorship, and other support for early-stage entrepreneurs. It was founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado. As of January 2024, the company had accepted over 4,100 companies into its accelerator programs with a combined market capitalization of $106bn USD. Techstars operates accelerator programs in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
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.
Startup accelerators, also known as seed accelerators, are fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components, and culminate in a public pitch event or demo day. While traditional business incubators are often government-funded, generally take no equity, and rarely provide funding, accelerators can be either privately or publicly funded and cover a wide range of industries. Unlike business incubators, the application process for seed accelerators is open to anyone, but is highly competitive. There are specific accelerators, such as corporate accelerators, which are often subsidiaries or programs of larger corporations that act like seed accelerators.
Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) is an international venture capital firm founded in 1993. The fund specializes in investments in startup companies, focusing on digital media, enterprise software, semiconductors, data storage and cyber security, having raised close to $1.4 billion USD across nine funds. JVP is headquartered in Margalit Startup City Jerusalem with offices in Be'er Sheva, New York City and Paris.
AngelPad is an American seed-stage startup incubator, launched in September 2010 by Thomas Korte and Carine Magescas with six other former Google employees as mentors. AngelPad provides mentorship, seed money, and networking at two 10-week courses per year.
AngelList is an American software company for fundraising and connecting startups, angel investors, and limited partners. Founded in 2010, it started as an online introduction board for tech startups that needed seed funding. Since 2015, the site allows startups to raise money from angel investors free of charge. Created by serial entrepreneur Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi in 2010, Avlok Kohli has been leading AngelList as its CEO since 2019.
Robin Klein is a British entrepreneur and investor. He was until 2015 a venture partner at Index Ventures and co-founder of The Accelerator Group, an advisor and investor in early-stage companies. In April 2015, he and his son, Saul founded LocalGlobe, a seed stage venture capital firm.
OurCrowd is an online global venture investing platform that empowers institutions and individual accredited investors to invest and engage in emerging technology companies at an early stage while still privately held. Based in Jerusalem, the company launched in February 2013, and has since opened overseas branches in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Spain, Singapore, Brazil, and the UAE.
Shlomo Touboul is an Israeli business executive and inventor who has founded several companies including Finjan and Shany Computers. He is currently the President and CEO of Illusive Networks, a startup from the Israel-based incubator, Team8.
Illusive Networks is a cybersecurity firm headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel and New York. The company produces technology that stops cyber attackers from moving laterally inside networks by finding and eliminating errant credentials and connections, planting deceptive information about given network's resources, emulating devices, and deploying high interactivity decoys. Network administrators are alerted when cyber attackers use security deceptions in an attempt to exploit the network. Illusive Networks is the first company launched by the Tel Aviv-based incubator, Team8. In June 2015, Illusive Networks received $5 million in Series A funding from Team8. To date, it has raised over $54M.
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 Michelle Gonzalez, formerly of Google.
Wercker is a Docker-based continuous delivery platform that helps software developers build and deploy their applications and microservices. Using its command-line interface, developers can create Docker containers on their desktop, automate their build and deploy processes, testing them on their desktop, and then deploy them to various cloud platforms, ranging from Heroku to AWS and Rackspace. The command-line interface to Wercker has been open-sourced.
Yadin B. Kaufmann is an Israeli-American technology investor, social entrepreneur and writer.
TAU Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in early state startups in Israel. It was founded in 2018 by Tel Aviv University and Nimrod Cohen, and is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Talon Cyber Security is an Israel-based provider of cybersecurity technologies with headquarters in Tel Aviv. It develops a secure browser engineered to provide enterprise-grade security across all devices, irrespective of location, device type, or operating system.
