“Israelis’ time arrives – tech making trek from the dessert to the valley” – that is the title of Adrienne Sanders’ excellent article published in San Francisco Business Times this morning. Adrienne lined up a comprehensive outlook on the Israeli entrepreneurs who made the move from Israel to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area in the past 18 months. Mostly tech and internet companies, Israelis that moved their headquarters or opened offices in the the West Coast want get closer to the financial and markting muscle of the valley and take on a consumer market 40 times the size of Israel’s.
VC investments have a lot to do with it. According to the article, Once an Israeli startup receives venture funding, and often before one of the founding executives typically begins planning a move Silicon Valley to open an office. It’s become nearly a foregone conclusion. Yair Grindlinger, CEO of Supportspace, felt as if it was almost part of the investment deal. Eyal Hertzog, founder of Metacafe said:
“Working with other companies, interacting with CEOs of Internet companies, talking about trends, signing deals, building relationships, this is really happening here”
The print version of article also has a comprehensive list of the companies who made the move to the west coast. Below is a recreation, exclusive to the VC Cafe:
ISRAELI FIRMS THAT OPENED BAY AREA OFFICES IN LAST 18 MONTHS
click to enlarge:
To download your own copy of the article in pdf format, click here.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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