Three Israeli innovation teams win 24-hours virtual 'boot camp'

Start-Up Nation, Tel Aviv Municipality and Google for StartUp jointly created the boot camp, which offered hundreds of eager participants their first big break.

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020 12:24

Gvahim board of directors member Tania Amar [L] Shahaf Bar-Chen of INT College [M] and business development professional Assaf Luxembourg [R] during the bootcamp. (photo credit: Courtesy) — Gvahim board of directors member Tania Amar [L] Shahaf Bar-Chen of INT College [M] and business development professional Assaf Luxembourg [R] during the bootcamp.

(photo credit: Courtesy)

Three Israeli start-ups were selected as winners in the 24-hour virtual Tel Aviv “boot camp” which ended on Thursday. They will be given a chance to pitch their idea at SigmaLabs, a free ticket to the upcoming DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival and the full ThePowerMBA program, gratis. Originally only one team was meant to be selected, but the judges thought all three are deserving of the win.

The winners are IMMA.Health, which makes a device that will help women monitor their fertility in their own homes; DeskPlan, which offers an improved way to manage the daily work employees are given to do; and StoryToons, which can help parents create video stories with their children.

The selections seem to strengthen the trends currently seen during the COVID-19 crisis: extending the provision of medical services outside the clinic and in the home, improving working from home structures in companies and allowing parents innovative ways to spend quality time with their children.

The winners also display the extent to which the Israeli ecosystem is international, with IMMA.Health being a French-Israeli start-up and StoryToons a Russian-Israeli one. French speakers and Russian speakers comprise some of the largest groups to expand in recent years in Israeli society due to the high volume of immigration from both cultures.

Tania Amar is one French-speaker featured in the boot camp, who has already built her life in Israel and worked with leading hi-tech firms. She is also a board member of Gvahim, an NGO that supports skilled immigrants wishing to build a life in Israel.

The challenge was successful in other ways, too, as 100 start-ups were created and hundreds of mentors took part in it, among them former Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat, at no cost.

Barkat encouraged the audience to "test [ideas] in Israel and then go global" and to "quickly seek customers and leverage change."

Another well-known mentor to take part was business development professional Assaf Luxembourg.

Other categories included in the boot camp were food-tech, agri-tech and cyber, all vital sectors as the world gears up to deal with the challenges of global warming and the shift from store to online shopping.

The man behind the boot camp, Yossi Dan, said he was "blessed" to get so much pro-bono help from the best talents in the Israeli ecosystem, among them OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved, and announced: "Mission accomplished."

Start-Up Nation, Tel Aviv Municipality and Google for StartUp jointly created the boot camp in cooperation with Gvahim, ThePower MBA and OurCrowd, among others.