Our tour to DLD Tel Aviv with the Next Media Accelerator
Earlier this month, we took off to visit the “Startup nation”: A group of the NMA team, mentors and supporters went to Tel Aviv to take part in the DLD Innovation Festival and be members of the official delegation from the City of Hamburg in cooperation with Next Media Hamburg.
Israel (and Tel Aviv in special) are well known for developing a strong startup ecosystem. Our goal was to understand the special spirit that is behind this success and to grow our international network.
The Hamburg Expedition
The NMA group consisted of representatives from companies as Weischer Media, Kolle Rebbe, Hamburger Sparkasse, Ministry Group, D-Level, Pushh, EY, Elevator Startups (Estonia) and more. Based on this broad background and level of expertise and together with the help of two Tel Aviv-based start ups from former NMA batches who introduced us to their personal local network we got an even better understanding of the special culture.
NMA-hosted workshops on start up specific topics as well as cooperation events with Next Media Hamburg completed the deep dive into the “Start Up Nation Israel”.
On the third day of our stay DLD started and we were all well prepared to gain even more insights and see people from all over the world to join this excellent networking event which took place in Tel Aviv for the seventh time already. Everyone who joined a DLD event in Munich in January knows what we are talking about: This time we found a very different setting with temperatures around 30 degrees that made DLD an outside happening.
And of course, besides the official agenda we used the opportunity to experience the Tel Aviv lifestyle with beach visits and typical food expeditions as well!
So what are our major learnings?
- Israel shows a very strong interest not only in IT but in high tech in general. For example, no one of us has ever seen more e-bikes than in Tel Aviv.
- “A no is not an answer” — this quote from the inspiring panel member Moran Nir describes very well the typical mindset of Israeli founders: straight forward, focused and very clear about their goals.
- Life is always better at the beach! In serious terms: The geographical environment attracts young people from all over the world and helps to make any discussion on work-life-balance unnecessary.
Four days full of new impressions and input that will last for long. And all members of the Hamburg group have one idea in common: You will be seeing us in Tel Aviv again. As soon as possible!
