For decades now, Israel has been a hotbed for innovation. At its center, the city of Tel Aviv houses a bubbling tech ecosystem, attracting the country’s best and brightest entrepreneurs to its shores. From early stage up-and-comers through established Unicorns, foreign investors and corporates have identified the need to have a presence in the country to effectively tap into the thousands of startups innovating across sectors.
Expanding Israeli operations
Aerospike is an American NoSQL database provider; operating in Israel since 2018, the company has looked to locate relevant talent and local startups to help advance the greater Aerospike roadmap. In an interview with Geektime, Oshrat Ben Avi Zabludovitz, an executive at Aerospike Israel, said that access to the Israeli talent pool was one of the key reasons behind Aerospike establishing a presence in Israel.
“Like many other American tech companies based in Silicon Valley or New York City, Aerospike realized the enormous potential the Israeli tech ecosystem holds. Israel is a gold mine for innovative technologies, and Aerospike is looking to power these technologies with its real-time data platform,” says Oshrat.
She adds that following a visit to Israel, John Dillon, Aerospike CEO, became enamored with the country, “the human capital, and the nature of Israeli startups and their similarities to startups in Silicon Valley.”
Oshrat also notes that after Dillon’s visit, Aerospike decided to expand their operations in “The Holy Land”. The Silicon Valley-based company enhanced sales and operations teams, while also founding an R&D center in Tel Aviv.
According to Oshrat, the company quickly realized that the flourishing Israeli startup ecosystem is not just a vast resource pool, but also a perfect landscape for sales and service. “Since the beginning of the Aerospike Israeli branch in the second half of 2018, we have established a significant and stable community of Aerospikers in Israel.”
From digital transition to mobile games, Israeli software is a key element in fueling global innovation. Over recent years software has proved king, and thousands of Israeli startups have followed suit, developing next-gen software that's based on massive amounts of data. This put Aerospike in an ideal position to not only harness Israeli technologies, but also help build them. “In today’s digital world, where every microsecond moment matters, the demand for real-time database solutions enabling high efficiency is emerging. This is what the Aerospike NoSQL real-time data platform offers its customers… Aerospike’s unique patented technology enables organizations to act instantly on billions of transactions while dramatically reducing hardware footprint.”
This was music to the ears for more than a few popular Israeli companies, according to Oshrat, “ We are thrilled with our successful first milestones in the Israeli market, working with such amazing customers as Playtika, IronSource, AppsFlyer, Cybereason, and many others.”
This is yet another piece of evidence to Israel’s graduation from the “Startup Nation” to the “Scaleup Nation”. And Oshrat sees more collaboration to come between Israeli startups and Aerospike. “May it be saving lives or helping exploit AI and ML to improve people's lives, there are great opportunities in our developed world, the biotech industry, cyber, and others. We are looking forward to becoming a part of these crucial spots, taking a role in the mission of making the world a better place… our Israeli branch is expanding into new verticals and domains to support the rapid growth processes that we are experiencing currently, and we are hiring more employees to our teams, including engineering, operations, and sales teams.”
