For a relatively young country, Israel has managed to build a start-up community that has surpassed all expectations and benchmarks. The question that everybody is asking is how is it that Israel - a country of 8 million, only 69 years old, with no natural resources - produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful nations, and more companies on NASDAQ than any country in the world?We will ask this question to our two esteemed keynote speakers, Hanan Brand and Michael Mizrahi. Michael is successful director of accelerator, and Hanan is early-stage investor manager, who were in the core of it all. They are in Skopje to work with the Seavus Incubator team, as well with the startup community thanks to the support of the Swiss Entrepreneurship Program (#SwissEP), a project supported by the Swiss Government, implemented by Swisscontact.We will relieve in their eyes the startup miracle that Israel is becoming with a focus on the Jerusalem ecosystem, which they managed to build.SPEAKERS: Hanan Brand - early stage investor manager Hanan co-founded Cornerstone Venture Partners (CSVP), a US/Israeli Venture Capital Firm, after spending four years as a head of early stage deal flow at Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), ranked one of the top-10 consistently performing VC funds worldwide, and three years as investment manager and business development manager at Ofer Brothers (One of Israel’s largest conglomerates) tech arm. In 2012, Hanan co-founded Made in Jerusalem (madeinjlm.org), a high-impact non-profit organization that serves as an umbrella of Jerusalem’s tech and startup ecosystem. He acts as chairman of the board of the Organization. Hanan is a member of the board of trustees of MassChallenge Israel, and of Azrieli College of Engineering (JCE), and an active mentor at Siftech & AtoBe accelerators. He holds an MBA from the Technion- Israel’s Institute of Technology, and BA at Business Management and Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.Michael Mizrahi - Accelerator manager Michael Mizrahi is the Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Development at Azrieli College of Engineering in Jerusalem. He fills this role as board member of the nonprofit organization MadeInJLM, whose aim is to make Jerusalem one of the top start-up cities in the world. Mr Mizrahi is also director of the Startup accelerator AtoBe, which operates as part of the Azrieli College of Engineering. Mr. Mizrahi is also one of the driving forces behind three programs that are funded by the EU Tempus and Erasmus Plus programs. One of those projects is MMATENG, whose objective is to improve BA and MA programs in Material Engineering in cooperation with universities in Israel, Russia and Ukraine. Mr. Mizrahi is also CEO of Blossom a company which he founded in 2006. From 2010 to 2013, Mr. Mizrahi worked as a project manager for geothermal company GeoEnergy. From 2006-2008 he was Director of Operations at MOD China, who produce clothing for brands such as Mango and Zara. Prior to this he worked in research and development for Teva Pharmaceuticals (2004), and ECI Telecom (2007-2009). Mr. Mizrahi has a Masters in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from Hebrew University and a Bachelor in Materials Engineering from the Jerusalem College of Engineering.
