Actionable advice from businesses in heavenly startup hotspot Tel Aviv

As well as being home to an array of creative entrepreneurs, this tech hub provides the perfect environment for businesses to grow through venture capital, seed funds and accelerators. Tel Aviv is also home to events such as the Start Tel Aviv competition.

In order to find out what makes Tel Aviv thrive, and to pass on some of these learnings to UK entrepreneurs, we’ve spoken with some successful Tel Aviv startups to share the local experiences that can be adapted for Britain.

First up we have insights from Allon Gladstone, the co-founder and COO of hereO, developer of a watch created specifically for children aged three and up, which contains the world’s smallest real-time GPS location device.

What made you decide to start the business?

The idea behind the business is pretty clear to anyone who is a parent – knowing where your kids are. The epiphany happened during the Nottingham Festival in the UK where Daniel, my partner, was in shock at the amount of young children strapped to a child-leash by their parents. He must have seen hundreds that day. At the same time, Daniel’s brother was locating his girlfriend using Google Latitude on their Blackberry. That’s when he thought, why not use the same technology like Google Latitude in a wireless leash?

When he got home he started researching the industry and was surprised how many products were available that claimed to locate a child (child trackers) but none fit an actual child. The next day he called me and Gill, and we started the company with the goal of creating a child tracking device that children will want to wear and parents will actually use.

How would you describe the startup culture in Tel Aviv?

The Israeli startup culture is just that, it’s a culture that revers startups. Every person here, from the guard at the front desk, to the cashier at the grocery store – all have either a startup idea or experience of a son making millions selling his company.

It has become so engraved in Tel Aviv that being a start-apist (Hebrew for a person in a startup) is more revered than being a doctor or banker. People in the TLV startup landscape know each other, either from a previous venture, or through one of the dozen meetings organised each week for startups by different startup centric organisations.

For example, in my IoT (Internet of Things) focused group, I have two-three events every day I can go to, most are free or very cheap to attend.

Read more guidance from experienced entrepreneurs:

• The five-year plan: Entrepreneurial lessons from starting in a credit crunch
• Disrupting an age-old industry: How the sharing economy is turning traditional business on its head
• The biggest lesson the UK can learn from Silicon Valley is…

How has this culture benefited the business?

People in Tel Aviv are not afraid to try a new business. Having a worldly and educated population concentrated in one city helps. Of course the money made from previous “exits” (sale of a company) helps fund the new generation of startups. The “can-do” attitude of people helps drive companies to success.

For example, while looking for an app programmer I was quoted by an Asia-based firm for 30 programmers needed. I completed it in Israel with just two local programmers.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced?

I would divide this in two.
1. Conventional company challenges, faced by all business worldwide. I would say that product delays due to a multitude of reasons such as design flaw or government requirements have been our biggest challenge because it affects our cash flow. Managing our cash burn rate is the biggest challenge, every product delay means more cash burned.

2. Tel Aviv specific challenges, which only TLV based businesses go through. Because we are in an environment where the start-up culture is so strong, it can be difficult to differentiate ourselves.

What is the most important lesson you’ve learned?

There have been too many important lessons learned to choose just one. I would start with – believe in all the clichés you hear about starting a business or achieving success in life. I think that a good work environment is a productive work environment.

Choosing the right people – your partners, employees, banker, even customers, is key to a positive work environment.When everyone enjoys and believes in what they are doing, likelihood of success increases tremendously.

What advice do you have for UK entrepreneurs looking to start a new business?

Just do it. Failure will only make you smarter for your next attempted venture.

Continue reading on the next page for advice from an engineer turned entrepreneur who helps game designers to generate revenue by connecting them to users.

Share this story