Bitcoin takes on Tel Aviv
Aglobal start-up elite team of innovative, early-stage start-up founders, hailing from 24 different countries, each of whom won the competition in their country of origin and was chosen from among dozens of candidates, will arrive in Jerusalem next week to absorb the knowledge, experience and inspiration from the city’s vibrant start-up ecosystem.
The venture, called Start JLM, is a five-day immersive program in which participants will meet with prominent figures in Jerusalem’s entrepreneurial-technological community, participate in specially designed how-to workshops, enjoy exclusive networking meet-ups and be inspired by Jerusalem entrepreneurs, investors and mentors at interactive fireside chats and panels. They will have site visits at leading companies such as Intel and Mobileye, present their startups to investors – and of course taste the nightlife, culture and tastes Jerusalem has to offer.
The project is the result of longterm efforts by the Foreign Ministry to promote Israel’s image as a hi-tech powerhouse abroad. It will be implemented in cooperation with the Jerusalem Affairs Ministry, the Jerusalem Development Authority and Siftech. The goal of the project is to bring early-stage entrepreneurs from around the world together in Jerusalem, offer them knowledge and give them experience to leap forward.
The entrepreneurs will meet with Elie Wurtman, a serial entrepreneur and investor who established the Pico Venture and Pico Venture Partners investment fund in Jerusalem; Saul Singer, coauthor of Start-up Nation and a sought-after lecturer in entrepreneurship and technology; Jon Medved, founder of OurCrowd, the largest mass investment fund in the world; Yaron Ben-Shaul, founder of the start-up Hometalk; Dr. Zeev Farbman, founding partner and CEO of the Lightricks, a start-up that developed Facetune and Enlight, which won Apple design awards.
At the end of the week of training and meetings, the entrepreneurs will present their start-ups to a panel of investors, including: Liat Aaronson of Innovation Endeavors; Google chairman Eric Schmidt; Hanan Brand of Cornerstone Venture Partners; Ben Wiener of Jumpspeed, which invests in Jerusalem start-ups; and David Stark, who founded a new fund a few months ago called Ground-Up Ventures.
Hosting the international team puts Israel and Jerusalem on par with leading global technology centers, such as Silicon Valley, New York and Berlin, which many entrepreneurs look to as a source of knowledge, experience, connections and inspiration. In recent years, the vibrant Jerusalem ecosystem of start-ups, investors, designers and technology professionals has registered unprecedented growth; the number of companies operating in the city has increased by hundreds of percent, and investments in Jerusalem companies have reached $1 billion.
Jerusalem was selected by Time magazine as one of the top five leading technological centers in the world and qualified as one of the top 30 Tech Cities of the 2016 StartUp Genome.
KU Club Tel Aviv
The world of virtual currency has entered a new industry: nightlife.
For the first time in the world, a nightclub will receive a payment from bon vivants in bitcoin, the first digital currency and the one with the largest market share of more than 1,000 other digital currencies traded worldwide. The milestone in the nightlife industry in the development of the virtual currency will be made possible by the cooperation between the KU Club Tel Aviv, which recently held its grand reopening, and Bits Of Gold, the largest bitcoin exchange in Israel.
In the first stage, the first guests who arrive at the club at 117 Salma Street in Tel Aviv will be able to pay in bitcoin for preorders and relatively large transactions. Later on, the club is expected to receive payment in bitcoin for all transactions on a regular basis.
These transactions also will be the first pilot for the clearing service in bitcoin, which will be relaunched by Bits Of Gold.
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Translated by Hannah Hochner.