Israeli women in tech gather to select representatives for global competition

In what felt like a rare moment of optimism, over 120 women from across Israel’s tech industry gathered in Mastercard’s offices in Ramat Gan last week to hear pitches from five female-led ventures to select the Israeli representative for the global She Tech competition in Amsterdam. The event was hosted by Yazamiyot, Israel’s leading community of women entrepreneurs, in partnership with the FinSec Innovation Lab, Mastercard, Arieli Capital and ESOP-Phoenix.

She Loves Tech event.

The She Loves Tech competition is the world’s largest startup competition for women and technology. Early stage startups who have a female founder, gender-focused value proposition, technology impacting women positively, or majority female consumers are eligible to participate. Countries from all over the world compete to send their representatives to their regional semi-finals, and later the final competition in Singapore in November.

The event was organized by Yazamiyot CEO Hilla Ovil-Brenner, FinSec Operations and Marketing Director Sharon Zarfati, and Monika Bercu, Director of Global Business Applications at the Vishay Group and Partner at Yazamiyot.

Five different ventures competed to represent Israel, all led by female-founders and CEOs. Each competitor made a brief pitch about their venture to a panel of 18 judges and then responded to their questions. The winners of the competition who will be representing Israel in Amsterdam at the She Loves Tech regional semi-finals later this month were ventures Feminai and JOB360.

Feminai, led by Co-Founder and CEO Karny Ilan alongside CTO Shani Klein-Antman and CPO Gal Yanuka, has developed a wearable medical breast cancer solution which offers personal AI medical screening plans. Ilan said that the “competition allows us to present ourselves to new crowds, helpful both from a business perspective and for spreading awareness for breast cancer. She Loves Tech specifically enabled us to directly reach our future users and clients, which is why it meant so much to us.”

JOB360, founded in 2021, is led by two women, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs Amira Kasem, an Arab Israeli woman from Nazareth and Chani Sebag, a Haredi woman from Bnei Brak. The venture aims to improve soft employment skills among job seekers from disadvantaged populations, in particular Israel’s Arab and Haredi communities, in order to integrate them into the job market by using technological simulations. “With hard work and determination, dreams can come true and glass ceilings can be broken, even when the glass is very thick,” said Kasem, who represented JOB360 at the competition. “There is no doubt that we need to turn the Startup Nation into a multicultural Startup Nation.”

Amira Kasem.

Other participants in the competition included ShopperAI led by Co-Founder and CEO Lanor Daniel, FlyZone, led by CEO Adi Arbiv, and Coda, led by CEO Shani Bibi. “This competition isn’t just about local impact - it’s a fantastic global opportunity, showing that the power of creativity and determination in Israel knows no boundaries. Together, we're shaping a brighter, more innovative future,” said Ovil-Brenner, who led the event.

To be a founder, Israeli, and female

Women remain disproportionately represented in Israeli high-tech, and there has been a concerning decline in the number of female entrepreneurs, according to a February report by RISE Israel, formerly Start-Up Nation Policy Institute. According to the report only 12% of entrepreneurs who secured initial funding in 2023 were female.

Israeli founders, and specifically female founders, have never faced such a challenging situation. “It’s never easy to be a founder, let alone a female founder, and, let alone an Israeli female founder,” Calcalist CEO Noa Tamir noted in her remarks at the competition.

Israeli female founders experience the numerous obstacles faced by any Israeli entrepreneur during this period: the disruption and trauma of October 7 and ongoing war, concerns over global isolation, boycotts, and investor interest in Israeli ventures, and a tech ecosystem which has not recovered from the shocks of the global downturn of 2022 and Israel’s judicial overhaul last year. But, in addition to these challenges, female founders also disproportionately maintain the burden of the home front during wartime as spouses and partners are drafted into reserves (or they themselves were drafted into reserves), inhibiting the ability of many to pursue new ventures in an industry which remains overwhelmingly male.

Attendees at the She Loves Tech competition.

But for a day at least there was reason for optimism. The competitors and many of the speakers at the event which included Tamir, LeumiTech CEO Maya Eisen Zafrir, Israel Advanced Technology Industries Association CEO Karin Mayer Rubinstein and Mastercard Market Delivery Manager Anat Shilon Lechner, referred to how special it felt to be surrounded by women in the industry, during a time that has presented numerous obstacles for Israel’s tech ecosystem and especially women in tech. For many attendees, this was the first conference that they’d attended since October 7th.

“This was an incredible showcase of the resilience and innovation of Israeli female founders,” said Ovil-Brenner. “Despite the ongoing conflict, this event highlighted the Israeli spirit. Seeing these amazing women come together is inspirational.”