Many popular things in the world of high tech started in Israel, including Google's Startup Growth Lab program, which is designed to help local startups grow. It was launched here five years ago and was then adopted by Google worldwide. Since its international expansion, the program has run in 16 other countries, including England, Spain, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and Brazil, among others.
Google’s accelerator focuses on marketing and business strategy, and its graduates have raised a combined sum of over $3.7 billion. Six of the startups became unicorns, four went public and two made an exit. The accelerator gives participating companies the tools every startup needs to grow quickly and globally; it includes branding and marketing communications, UX, management and team building, data and analytics, Google Ads, and more.
The program lasts four months and is intended for B2C and B2SMB companies. The sixth cycle opened this month, and a close look at the startups accepted to it may indicate who will be the next stars in Israel’s high-tech ecosystem. How do we know? Because Elementor, Orcam, Papaya Global, Melio, and Conneacteam are just some of the program's graduates.
Out of hundreds of applicants, ten startups from various fields were accepted for the new cycle.
Riverside
Field: Content creation
Year of establishment: 2019
Founders: Nadav Keyson (CEO), Gideon Keyson (CTO), and Jonathan Keyson (Head of Sales)
Number of employees: 130
Financing: $47 million from two rounds, led by Oren Zeev
Riverside started as an internet platform for discussions on various topics (hence its name - the banks of the rivers were the places where people would come to talk and socialize). It then became a platform that allows you to record studio-quality podcasts and video interviews easily and directly from your browser.
Masterschool
Field: Career building
Year of establishment: 2019
Founders: Otni Levy (co-CEO), Michael Shurp (co-CEO), and Eran Glicksman (CTO)
Number of employees: over 100
Financing: $100 million seed round (Group11, Pitango, Target Global, Sir Ronald Cohen, Dynamic Loop Capital)
Masterschool is a chain of schools for careers in technological professions. Its students do not pay any tuition fees until they land a job working in the field. The company offers a unique platform that allows experts from the industry to establish schools and lead promising talents in a variety of high-demand technological professions. Graduates from dozens of Masterschool schools have already started working in leading companies in the industry, including Google, Microsoft, Intel, and more.
Theranica
Field: Digital health
Year of establishment: 2016
Founders: Shimon Eckhouse (Chairman), Alon Ironi (CEO), and Ronen Jashek (COO)
Number of employees: 50
Financing: $85 million from four fundraising rounds
Theranica’s system is called Nerivio - it is a wearable device that allows you to treat chronic pain using electrical signals. During a migraine attack, Theranica’s system, which is connected to an app, monitors the intensity of the patient's pain and releases electronic pulses that stimulate subcutaneous nerves, which reach the brain stem and trigger a response that causes the release of neurotransmitters that reduce the intensity of the pain.
Guardz
Field: Cyber Security
Year of establishment: 2022
Founders: Dor Eisner (CEO) and Alon Lavi (CTO)
Number of employees: 12
Financing: $6 million in seed funding (Hanaco, iAngels, GKFF, Cyverse and leading angels)
Guardz develops holistic and effective protection for small businesses. Its technological solution helps businesses that do not have cyber protection to implement the layers of protection they need, combined with insurance coverage quickly, easily, and at a price adapted to each business. The product automatically scans the external and internal network of each business and identifies potential threats by analyzing the data in real-time.
Karma
Field: Ecommerce and fintech
Year of establishment: 2014
Founders: Jonathan Friedman (CEO) and Ronen Yuval-Hoch (COO)
Number of employees: 67
Financing: $5 million by 2020, followed by an additional $5 million investment from the NFX Fund. Recently, Target Global led another fundraising round of $25 million.
Karma introduces the next generation of online shopping, with an application that allows the use of a friendly tool for smart shopping based on AI. The company develops smart features that make sure that consumers can pay less by scanning the web for active coupons, alerts on price drops, discounts, and cashback with every purchase. Karma already has more than 4 million users and works in partnership with more than a hundred thousand of the world’s biggest brands.
Peech
Field: SaaS and Web applications
Year of establishment: 2020
Founders: Danielle Dafni (CEO) and Jonathan Amit Kanarek (CTO)
Number of employees: 17
Financing: $8.3 million (MIbex Investors, Cardumen Capital, Ariel Maislos, Nas Daily, Fresh Fund, Ofir Shalvi, Udi Weinstein, and more)
Danielle, a film major graduate from Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts and a graduate of the IDF Spokesperson's Filming Unit, worked for more than a decade as an independent professional video editor for the largest companies in Israel: Disney Israel, Microsoft, SodaStream, El Al, and more. The deep familiarity with the field and the way companies use content made her realize that there is one type of film that technology can edit better than humans can: content films.
She met Jonathan Amit Kanarek, who has been a coder for more than 20 years and a system architect at Kaltura for the past ten – and together they launched Peech in May of 2020. The two are developing a video platform for content marketing teams, which will allow teams to manage and edit video automatically, without limitation, additional external tools, or dependence on professionals.
OneStep
Field: Computerized physiotherapy
Founders: Tomer Shussman (CEO). Yuval Naveh (Chief Scientific Officer), and Shahar Davidson (CTO)
Number of employees: 50
Financing: $14 million (main investors: D10 and Aleph)
One Step has developed a computerized system that helps physiotherapists in their work. The system consists of a management station installed in the clinic and an application for the patients' smartphones. Its technology makes it possible to receive accurate information about the patient's movement using only the phone's sensors, without the need for additional equipment.
The company's name hints at the solution it offers: the system gives patients access to a rich video library that includes short videos, each of which shows how to perform a single exercise. The patients have to perform an exercise or two every day, and they slowly progress ‘one step’ forward each time, so they don’t feel overwhelmed by the treatment they need to do. This makes the whole treatment process much more enjoyable and helps patients stick to it – thus achieving better results.
Anchor
Field: Fintech
Year of establishment: 2020
Founders: Rom Lakritz (CEO), Omry Man (CRO), and Leeor Aharon (CTO)
Number of employees: 25
Financing: $15 million in seed investments (main investors: Antra Capital, Tel Ventures, and Rapid Ventures)
Anchor’s platform ‘anchors’ all the working conditions between suppliers and customers, and collection conditions within its platform. In addition, it produces an updated agreement that is available online and is signed by both parties. The platform serves as the anchor of the business relationship between the service provider and the customer and makes them of equal value – especially when it comes to terms, receiving the service, and payments.
Lexense
Field: Legal Tech
Year of establishment: 2021
Founders: Yedidya Nisan (CEO), Ilya Schukin (CTO), and Khen Levy (VP R&D)
Number of employees: 28
Financing: $8 million led by Pitango, Fresh Fund, and others
Lexense's mission is to make justice and the legal system accessible and open to everyone. It does this by developing technology that enables the provision of quality legal services, faster and more efficiently, at a lower price. The company established a digital law firm, whose goal is to make legal services pertaining to small claims accessible – because the bureaucracy behind it is usually very cumbersome and not economical. The entire claim process is carried out on the platform simply and transparently for all parties.
Fundit
Field: Fintech
Year of establishment: 2021
Founders: Geva Avidan (CEO); Omer Haim, and David Novoseller
Number of employees: 30
Financing: $2.8 million in seed, plus an additional $1.3 million from another round
Fundit.io is a platform that helps business owners find financing solutions for their businesses. It was built to provide a unique solution for the needs of business loans and digital marketing, and in particular for the needs of many small business owners who have difficulty finding a financing solution in the current market.
It has developed a technology for collecting and processing information that enables the construction of a comprehensive risk profile for every business. Based on it, the platform knows how to find the exact financing solution for a user's needs. The company has collaborations with many financing entities, including businesses that are not active online and therefore benefit from the automatic underwriting capabilities developed by the company.
