UpWest Labs Nurtures Promising Israeli Startups In Silicon Valley
Summary
The founders decided to put the two together and bring a small group of promising Israeli entrepreneurs to the U.S. for four months to meet customers, partners and investors. Today’s graduating group is comprised of 7 companies including Genoox, a big data platform for storing genetic information, UMake, an online 3D design tool and Codefresh, a cloud-based development environment. According to Ben-Artzy, the program has graduated 39 startups to-date (not counting today’s group) with 70 percent receiving at least some seed funding, a majority of which came from Silicon Valley investors. The mandatory military service also contributes because Israelis get exposure to technology that most folks don’t get to see at such a young age, he pointed out. They decided to start a program to nurture the most promising group of startups they could find and help them with all the logistics including housing, visas and making introductions to the right people.
