A new report from RISE Israel (formerly the Start-Up Nation Policy Institute) finds that interest in Israel's tech sector is growing, both among entrepreneurs who have secured their first funding and CEOs of companies who have raised mega-rounds in 2023. women's participation remains low.
According to gender analysis, only 12% of entrepreneurs who secured seed funding in 2023 were women. Within this group, 57% are in the life sciences and health technology sector, 14% in the agri-food technology and water sector, and 10% in the retail and marketing sector.
Only 17% of startups that raised their first funding in 2023 had at least one female founder. This is significantly lower than the numbers for startups with at least one female founder that secured funding in the US and Europe in 2023 (26.2% and 25.5%, respectively, according to Pitchbook).
The lack of diversity in Israeli technology is evidenced by the fact that all 15 CEOs of companies that completed mega-rounds in 2023 are men, and all of them are centrally located.
The number of mega-rounds in Israel has significantly decreased from 40 in 2022 to just 15 in 2023. The mega-rounds totaled more than $2.3 billion (more than 30% of total investment in Israel in 2023).
Only two of those companies (one in life sciences and health technology and one in smart transportation) are not pure software companies.
The startups that received their first funding in 2023 were also dominated by software, with over 60% being software companies (some startups in the life sciences & health tech space were software companies developing digital health solutions). In reality, this number is even higher).
