Getting Access to Israel – the Start-up Nation

In 2009 Dan Senor and Saul Singer published “Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle”. The book explores the economic miracle that is Israel. It’s remarkable that such a small and young nation under almost constant security threat was able to achieve such economic success.

That was back in 2009 and things have only got bigger since then. There are more Israeli companies listed on NASDAQ than any other foreign country. Last year Israel saw nearly $15 billion in exits through public offerings and buy outs as a number of start-ups were catapulted to the next level.

What is Israel’s secret?

There are a number of theories. Israelis are used to working under challenging conditions and they have a culture of taking calculated risks and staying cool under pressure. Israel also has a very high number of immigrants from all over the world – a ‘brain gain’ rather than a ‘brain drain’.

The start-up culture is centred around Tel Aviv with its metropolitan lifestyle, beaches, café culture and night life. But in reality it exists all over the country. There are a number of excellent R&D centres up north and the tough climate down south is the impetus for new ideas in agritech – ranging from the efficient use of water to growing crops in areas that were thought to be impossible.

The enormous number of start-up companies in Israel brings with it a whole ecosystem – incubators, VC funds and advisers.

All this means that if you are involved in any aspect of the start-up sector, you really should be factoring Israel into the equation.

In recent years we have seen an increasing flow of Australian investors trying to get into Israel such as Square Peg Capital. This has been matched by more Israeli companies expanding into Australia to take advantage of the stable, democratic society and the ideal launching pad into Asia.

KWS is uniquely placed to help Australians get into Israel and also Israelis get into Australia. We have a team of lawyers based in Israel that specialise in multiple jurisdictions – Australia, Israel, US, UK, NZ and French. This means that we can provide multi-jurisdictional advice for our multi-jurisdiction clients.

The KWS team in Israel comes from lawyers that have had experience in top tier commercial firms around the world. However unlike any other firm that offers multi-jurisdictional services we are able to hub our lawyers together in one place in our Israeli office.

However having lawyers working in different time zones in Australia and Israel also means that we can provide services around the clock. We can work during the day, bright and fresh, while you sleep. 24 hours a day, 6 days a week – we are here to help.

Date: December 04, 2015
Author: KWS Legal
Posted in: Insights

Practice/s: Start-up law