In recent months, offensive cybersecurity company NSO Group has become the ugly face of Israeli high-tech. According to an international investigation published in July, the technology, developed by the Herzliya-based company packed with workers who served in elite IDF intelligence units, was used by governments to spy on journalists, human rights activists and politicians. The investigation led the US government last month to put NSO, along with another Israeli offensive cyber company called Candiru, on the blacklist of companies operating against US interests. Even if, sometime around 2010, NSO was founded with the constructive goal of fighting terrorism, something undoubtedly went wrong along the way.
On the other hand, on our Ten Most Promising Startups list for 2021, one can find some good antitheses to NSO, companies that actually represent the beautiful face of Israeli high-tech and are utilizing technology to achieve positive goals. Some are based on the personal experience of their founders: Yael Elish found a medical treatment for her daughter on a blog, which led her to establish StuffThatWorks, a startup that rates treatment efficacy for hundreds of diseases. Ron Gura went to comfort a colleague who lost his wife and encountered the amount of paperwork associated with death in the United States. He then set up Empathy, which helps the bereaved navigate the maze of bureaucracy. And Noam Schwartz uncovered a stockpile of pedophilic material in Dropbox, which was the inspiration for the establishment of ActiveFence, which deals with malicious content on the Internet.
Israeli high-tech was built on companies selling software to the enterprise (B2B). Because of its small local market and limited resources, Israel had always been considered unsuitable for consumer market (B2C) companies. But this year’s list of promising companies demonstrates how much the lines have become blurred these days. Connecteam, for example, is the developer of an application for intra-organizational communication, ostensibly a classic B2B - but it invests tens of millions of dollars a year in direct marketing to employers and managers as if it were a B2C company. StreamElements, the talent agency of the future, collects revenue from network influencers, a kind of modern business-to-private-client hybrid, and StuffThatWorks is busy building a network of private users, hoping that eventually organizations or employers will subsidize their services.
The current list of entrepreneurs behind the promising start-ups is still overwhelmingly male and reflects the dismal state of gender equality in Israeli high-tech. And yet, two start-ups on the list, StuffThatWorks and Nexite, are led by female founders and CEOs. This is far from satisfactory, but does reflect a 100% jump in the number of women, in comparison with last year's list, a respectable growth rate for a promising startup.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 7, 2021.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2021.