Israeli embassy hosts Australian start-up competition
The Embassy of Israel in Australia in collaboration with the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Start-up Aus and OurCrowd, will host “Start Tel Aviv 2016″…a competition for innovative start-ups in the fields of ICT and includes mobile applications, web technologies, and cyber security.
The Australian component will run from May 25th to June 24th with the winner being announced at a major event in mid-July.
This year’s competition has a special focus on women – the event is looking for the top female Start-up founder or director. Women who are on the senior management team of a Startup are also eligible to apply.
The Embassy of Israel in Australia is working alongside Israeli diplomatic missions from 30 different countries around the world with the aim of empowering women in the high-tech sector.
The winning start-up from each country will travel to Israel for an all-expense-paid five-day start-up experience in the heart of Tel Aviv where they will partake in “DLD Tel Aviv Digital Conference”. This exciting and innovative conference runs from September 25-29, and is Israel’s largest international hi- tech gathering, featuring hundreds of startups, VC’s, angel investors and leading multinationals.
The Australian winner, along with winners from each of the 30 participating countries, will have the opportunity to meet the coolest and smartest companies, techies, investors, designers, artists, scientists, and cultural drivers from Israel and abroad. In Tel Aviv, the winners will be joined by local Israeli entrepreneurs to participate in lectures, workshops and meetings with leading Israeli investors and professionals.
Tel Aviv is the business capital of Israel and a leading innovation hub with a local ecosystem of world-class tech talents, dozens of leading multinationals and hundreds of tech startups. The city was ranked #1 Startup Ecosystem outside the United States by Compass Report, and one of the most innovative cities in the world by Wired. Tel Aviv’s startup scene is also a leader in gender equality: the ecosystem has been ranked #1 hub for women outside the United States. Furthermore, the city has a growing number of programs and accelerators that are by women for women, such as ‘Campus for Mums’ and ‘WMN’.
Israel is “The Start-up Nation”. Through its human capital, Israel generates more start-up companies than other large, industrial nations around the world. In addition, Israel has, per capita, attracted over twice as much venture capital investment as the United States and 30 times more than all the members of the European Union combined.
A spokesperson for the embassy in Canberra told J-Wire: “We had over thirty entrants and had to cut that back to 25. In the second stage we will have further paring until we are down to the final five and the winner will be chosen on July 11.”
