Israel Conference: Clean Tech VCs & CEOs Meet in California

On June 4 in Los Angeles, the Israel Conference will spotlight Israeli clean tech, medical tech, high tech and more. Investors coming to the event represent about $20 billion in funds.

“Many Los Angeles and California business leaders and entrepreneurs will have their first opportunity to see first what Israeli companies, technologists and investors can bring to their enterprises,” noted Sharona Justman, conference co-chair and managing director of STEP Strategy Advisors, an acquisitions advisory and strategic planning firm.

“There are tremendous synergies in the technology communities in Israel and California and we expect this conference to ignite deals.”

Just 2 weeks ago, investors from California were in Israel scoping out opportunities in the clean tech arena.

The Israel Conference provides the unique opportunity to meet and reach over 50 top VCs and CEOs from Israel-facing firms and hundreds more that are coming to participate in the program and to network.

Opening speaker, Glenn Yago, Director of Capital Studies at the Milken Institute notes that “Increasingly, Israel is moving from being known as a research and development foundry to a focus center for innovation and applications development.

“Intellectual property in communications applications, entertainment, and clean tech is revolutionizing traditional industries. With over 8,000 patents from a population of just 7 million people, Israel is a hotbed of invention and innovation.”

Israel market facts:

Within the past 15 years, major companies have risen that were developed in Israel and have their corporate office in California with job creation in the hundreds of thousands, world-wide.

A number of these are Fortune 500 companies today with corporate offices in California such as Check Point, SanDisk, and Amdocs.

Israeli corporations do business in the world-market and hold the number one position on the NASDAQ second only to US corporations.

Israel has the largest number of scientists in the world per capita at 145/10,000 compared to the US with 85/10,000.

In 2008, over $2B in capital was invested over 480 Israeli high-tech companies, an increase of 18% over prior year with 50% coming from funds outside of Israel, mostly from the US.

Over the past 3 years, Israeli firms raised $2.3Billion in IPOs on exchanges around the world while over $18B was spent on acquisitions of Israeli High Tech companies.

Keynote speakers represent the spirit of inventiveness of the Israel market and include Yossi Vardi who is well known for Instant Messaging, Eric Benhamou of 3com Corporation and Palm, as well as Erel Margalit, founder of Jerusalem Venture Partners, one of the largest venture capital firms in Israel who will speak on media and entertainment technology.

Panels include executives from Sequoia Capital, Shamrock Holdings, Pitango Venture Capital which is one of Israel’s leading venture capital firms, Canaan Partners, Intel, SAP Labs, and the former Chief Scientist of Israel with Israel Gemini Funds.

The Clean Tech panel features a discussion on cutting-edge technology with Tigo Energy for solar energy, a discussion on water management with the Chief of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Kinrot Ventures that manages a clean tech incubator as well as The Westley Group, a California based fund headed by Steve Westley that actively invests in Israel, and TamarixVentures, one of Israel’s top VCs for clean tech.

The Israel Conference sponsors include Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Morrison & Foerster, Silicon Valley Bank, Mitchell Silverberg & Knupp, New Century Capital Partners, Zag.com, Bank Leumi, TheMarker, Business Wire, Israel Venture Capital Research Center, Southern California Israel Chamber of Commerce, Olmstead Williams Communications, Daly-Swartz Public Relations, and iHollywoodForum.

For further information, contact The Israel Conference at 310.445.5388 or email Paula(at)TheIsraelConference(dot)org or visit www.TheIsraelConference.org.

This article originally appeared on Green Prophet