Nevo

Nevo focuses on creating a community and network for Olim (people who have moved to Israel from abroad) who work in tech. Israel is a network-based society and people who move here lack the critical networks to help them succeed professionally – from missing out on experiences here like the army, university, and having little to no family and friends. In 2019, Michael Eisenberg and Abbey Onn identified this challenge and built a network and fellowship to create multipliers of impact from top-talent olim who are already employed in Israel. The Nevo fellowship meets twice a month and focuses on intimate conversations with top leaders, mentoring, and network expansion to deeply integrate Olim into the Israeli ecosystem. Fellows have met with Ron Gura, Saar Safra, Yuval Samet, Daniel Schreiber, Lior Handlesman, Kira Radinsky and more. Nevo, a Tel Aviv-based program, has 21 alumni, and 30 current fellows and is recruiting for its third cohort right now. Nevo is generously supported by Michael Eisenberg and The Paul E. Singer Foundation.

Since its creation, fellows have met co-founders, launched products, created initiatives, and found new jobs. Kevin Hanna met Tal Shmueli through Nevo and they just launched Stacked. In partnership with Nevo, Reichman University and Microsoft, Allie Vogel launched TrueHue, a VR tool to explore gender fluidity. Through Nevo, Daniil Chernov and Katerina Greenstein are part of the founding team of Reboot Startup Nation to help displaced talent from the Ukraine restart their careers in Israel. Eight fellows in the second cohort launched the Nevo Venture Capital Advisory Firm in which they advise Olim founders to help them succeed. Nevo fellows and alumni are active mentors and speakers, sharing their stories and making sure that the next generation of Olim have an easier path to finding a meaningful professional experience. Nevo fellows are formal mentors to Masa and ITC alumni among others.

CommTech  

Commerce Tech is Israel's retail tech and commerce tech startups community which fosters collaboration between Israel's top startups in the domain and MNCs in the retail space. Commerce tech is one of the fastest-growing verticals in Israel, with more than 700 active startups and 10% of total funding from 2021.

The community started in 2013 as a meetup community called Fash&Tech by entrepreneurs Yael Kochman and Neta Stavisnsky. In 2017, it changed its name and expanded beyond fashion to cover all retail verticals with the founding of Re:Tech Innovation Hub by Yael Kochman and Alla Foht. It recently rebranded again as Commerce tech to convey the shift in the industry and be more inclusive of technologies such as logistics & supply chain, payments, and others.

NuVC

NuVC is a community of 260+ venture capital professionals, offering a unique network of peers and friends, and promoting the exchange of ideas and experiences within the venture capital world. They hold networking events and study group sessions on various topics from tech and economics to legality and investments and have very active WhatsApp groups that allows its members to share their expertise and knowledge. The founders of NuVC realized people who had recently joined Israeli venture capital firms needed to go through similar onboarding processes and faced similar issues and difficulties while joining the ecosystem and that investors in general can collaborate and help each other on a day to day basis.

NuVC occasionally has events in Tel Aviv and Herzliya. Their study group sessions are usually hosted by different VC firms that lend out their office space. They also have done cocktail events in Tel Aviv. NuVC events have sponsors specific to each event though not directly related to the community. Their community includes members from top VCs firms in Israel and abroad (if they have an office here).

EcoMotion

EcoMotion, the smart mobility community, is celebrating its 10th anniversary and is the oldest topic-oriented innovation community in Israel. The motivation to open the community stemmed from the understanding that mobility is transforming – no longer steel, rubber, and tarmac, but it’s the brains, the data, and the sensors that will make a difference in tomorrow’s mobility– and that is where the Israeli brainpower can excel. EcoMotion defines mobility in its broadest sense – everything that moves. Thus, we have startups in autonomous vehicles, electrical vehicles, but also public transportation management, traffic management, drones and aviation and even supply chain and moving goods. EcoMotion is a partnership between the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Economics, and the Israeli Innovation Institute.

Back in 2013, the community was launched at an event featuring about 250 mobility geeks from various companies and startups that were somehow related to mobility and automotive. The weekend-long event was anarchistic by nature: everyone can go on stage, people were opening car hoods and tinkering away, 3d printers roared and the occasional fuse burned. Over the years, the community and that recurring main event have attracted more serious industry officials, but the original ‘easy spirit’ remains – allowing OEM executives to rub shoulders with two youngsters with a dream and a laptop. The last decade showed the impact the community has had; they are celebrating our 10th anniversary with the global EcoMotion Week, with thousands of participants from over 30 countries, and industry leaders from around the world participating and speaking to the 100+ startups exhibiting. Indeed, EcoMotion is the largest community: with over 650 startups, 13,000 newsletter subscribers, and many multinationals with offices in Israel: car manufacturers, train and bus companies, international organizations, municipalities and more. EcoMotion serves as a showcase of the importance of innovation communities, and an inspiration to other communities. Besides the main event, EcoMotion creates a lot of content and activities for its members throughout the year – investor events, dedicated meetups, training for the public sector and municipalities, and much more.

ConTech

ConTech is a world-leading ConstructionTech & PropTech innovation center backed by the Israeli government and Israel's Builders Association. They partner with global corporations, startups, government entities, and investors to disrupt the construction industry, making Tel-Aviv the epicentre of Construction Technology. They also run a startup incubator in Tel Aviv. While the $14 trillion global construction industry is the largest global industry, it is estimated that more than half the people on the planet still do not have sufficient access to homes and infrastructure. Add the fact that construction is responsible for 40% of the CO2 emissions in an age of global warming, and you can understand how far behind the industry is from reaching its goals and how enormous the potential of ConstructionTech is.

Since ConTech’s inception roughly five years ago, they have already seen great change. Their ecosystem has grown to over 300 startups, and it is one of the largest in the world, despite Israel's small size. In October 2021, the ConstructionDive website announced that 12 construction technology firms recently raised nearly $400 million in investor funding. Four of these companies are Israeli: Beyond3D, Versatile, Buildots and Veev.

Colosseum

Colosseum is an international sports innovation group headquartered in Tel Aviv, focusing on early-stage investments, Sports Tech Academy, and above all community. Established by Oren Simanian in 2017, Colosseum’s goal was to be a platform to connect between the sports and tech worlds and develop the local sports tech community, as we like to call it, ‘Sports Tech Nation’. At that time, sports and technology weren’t speaking the same language; sport executives were slowly starting to understand the need for technology, while most technology entrepreneurs didn’t see sports as a valuable market ($620B+). Over the last five years, our sports tech community has grown exponentially. When we started, we had 75 sports tech startups, now we count over 300 working in this market; among them are worldwide sports tech leaders. During this time, Colosseum has been promoting various events and activities to foster the development of the local community: from industry reports that are shared with the global community, to an annual sports tech conference, Sports Tech Nation, that brings together thousands of sports, tech, and capital leaders from all over the globe to experience the Israeli sports tech scene. The Colosseum network includes over 120 leading organizations like DFL, FCB, LA LIGA, NFL, NHL, FIFA, UEFA, IOC, and brands like Nike, Under Armor, Microsoft, Intel, etc.

In addition, Colosseum has also supported the development of sports tech through other initiatives, especially on the educational side. With over 1,200 alumni of the Sports tech Management “STM” programs, Colosseum has forged a path to learn how to best use technology in sports while simultaneously preparing future sports tech leaders. Overall, Colosseum is proud to be part of the growth of a community that proves that Israel is truly a Sports Tech Nation and that everything they do is to be the platform to continuously support this development. The Colosseum team includes Oren Simanian, Tomer Yehudayan, Fernanda Rojtenberg.