Axis Tel Aviv has come a long way since the first meeting I came to many years back. The Peres Peace Centre had a heightened sense of purpose but the event had already begun.
The sessions which included AI & SaaS were nothing less than you’d expect: Investors really took the opportunity to ask their questions – on-stage – leaving little for the imagination, but it wasn’t all stark crazy…frankly, it’s humanizing robotics that interests me, but that’s for 2025 [maybe].
In the Climate Tech or what was once called Clean Tech – it’s always much more interesting when the investor is out on a limb. Who will the really good companies choose? Do they, like the innovative, want to be involved scientific type of investor, or are they up for strategy and business concerns type investor? Do the investors care if the experiment explodes or will they sit enraptured through all the series rounds right up till the sale or whatever the eventual ‘exit’ plan is?
The Keynote speaker from Spain is a world-class speaker at that – I really was captured & enraptured by that and learned a lot – Josemaria Siota, Corporate Venturing expert @World Economic Forum – How do Startups work together with corporations when the R&D team is already in place?
- Start with Business Units Plan – rather than the tech.
- Focus on a Use case – rather than being generic.
- Run a Proof of Concept – rather than the whole deployment.
- Co-design the Proof of Concept – rather than push/sell it.
Conclusions:
The major themes of the talks included Startups in the AI, Machine Learning, Robotic, CleanTech/ClimateTech/Property Market/Construction.
Participant List:
V-Hola – v-hola.com – Mobility – Afifi Group, Israel Innovations
StarStone – thestarstone.com – Con Tech and PropTech – IndieBio, SOSV
SpeedSize – speedsize.com – AI & Software – Almaz Capital, Horizon Capital, Startup Network and others
Resilin – smartresilin.com – ClimateTech – 3xAngels + Acies Bio
RGo – rgorobotics.ai – AI & Software – MoreTecch, StageOne, Converge, Vasuki
Momentick – momentick.com – ClimateTech – TAU Ventures and Chartered Group Japan
Mada Analytics – madaanalytics.com – ClimateTech – Barclays Bank, Morgan Stanley, Impact, Techstarts, Artesian VC, Schneider Electric, NBIF
Inspris – humains.com – Mobility – Angel Investors, Project Voice, Capital Partners
Hydrox – hydrox.earth – ClimateTech – OSEG, CLP-OSEG, ESIL, Richter
Corsound AI – corsound.ai – AI & Software – Awz Ventures
Cognifiber – cognifiber.com – AI & Software – Chartered Group, Singapore (Japanese LPs)
Citytransformer – citytransformer.com – Mobility – Lubinski group, Afifi Group, Israel-Canada, ADI Technologies and others…
Ception – ception.ai – Contech & Proptech – More VC, Shapir Engineering and Industry Ltd, Cemex Ventures
Baromar – baro-mar.com – ClimateTech -Private Investors
Atom Construction – atomconstruction.tech – ConTech and PropTech – Angel Investor