Although it may sound a bit imaginary, the situation of prehistoric mythological unicorns rendezvous with cyber security futuristic teams is not imaginary anymore. These days we’ve just been notified about “ForeScout” – one more cyber security Israeli company who had joined the exclusive club of technology unicorns that crossed the one billion dollar valuation mark.
For Israel, a country with a population of eight million people, equivalent to New York city eight million population this is an outstanding achievement. The extremely entrepreneurial culture that’s present in Tel Aviv can not be denied. With more than thousand new startups founded each year, Israel’s startup nation has produced fantastic sources of innovation and world class technology companies.
Years 2015 and 2016 presented some even stronger acquisition wave, where US tech giants such as Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Apple and Google went shopping in the “startup nation” arena in an impressive tour de force. One impressive and memorable acquisition happened where Google had acquired the Israeli Waze for $1.1Bn, giving a social data boost to its mapping business.
Post acquisitions, Tel Aviv startup scene has been decorated with all the above mentioned logos where Google, Apple, and Facebook have all set up engineering operations in Israel in order hire technically outstanding talents. Tel Aviv has become a serious Silicon Valley competitor where local venture capital funds are playing a major role in this game.
While Checkpoint, the firewall pioneer leads with a market capitalization of $16bn (April 2016, April), some medium sized companies as Mobileye, GetTaxi, Outbrain, IronSource, Outbrain, Similarweb, Conduit and Taboola are chasing towards this direction.
Besides these giants, there are new augmented reality, internet of things, mobile, cloud and bitcoin technology players companies who do not only promise but also deliver already. Although Israel has not created unicorns like Uber, Airbnb or Snapchat it still can be very proud with an impressive portfolio by a super small sized country.
The startup nation is currently boiling, promising, and interesting to watch. It is a chase against time of capturing a market share, finding an acquisition, defining a valuation, chasing a nonstop talents hunt and always looking for a technology breakthrough. It is a thriller movie, a drama with highs and lows and always fun to watch.
Below is a quick Tel Aviv photo collection of Tel Aviv – every image is clickable.
Thank you,
Ronsho
Tel Aviv Memorabilia 
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