Tel Aviv ranks second worldwide for Tech Startups

The Startup Genome released the first half of its massive 160-page report on the world’s top startup ecosystems. The ambitious, collaborative R&D project was created by three young entrepreneurs, Bjoern Herrmann, Max Marmer and Ertan Dogrultan, who set out to take a comprehensive, data-driven dive into what makes startups successful.

The comparative analysis, produced in collaboration with affiliates from UC Berkeley, Stanford and Telefónica Digital, covers a host of topics, including how the landscape of startup ecosystems has begun to extend beyond Silicon Valley to become somewhat of a global phenomenon. The report compiled a global ranking of startup ecosystems based on a 50-variable, 8-component index, which includes Startup Output, Funding, Company Performance, Talent, Support Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Mindset, Trendsetting Tendencies and Ecosystem Differentiation.

Unsurprisingly, atop the rankings sits Silicon Valley, which remains the mecca of entrepreneurship and was used as a baseline from which to compare the rest of the list. Coming in second is Tel Aviv, followed by Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City and Boston, before crossing the Atlantic to London — which ranked as the largest ecosystem in Europe. But even developed ecosystems such as New York and London have more than 70 percent less risk capital available than Silicon Valley for Startups in the early, ”PreProduct Market Fit” Stages of the Startup Lifecycle.

Interestingly, the report also notes that entrepreneurs in Tel Aviv have a hard time adopting new technology trends, as more than 80 percent of startups use the historically popular programming languages of PHP, C++, Java and .Net, despite a number of those languages rapidly falling out of fashion in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, in favor of Ruby, Python and Javascript, for example.

Still it's amazing to see that Israel’s Silicon Wadi beat out the places commonly thought of as startup hotbeds, such as Los Angeles (Silicon Beach), New York (Silicon Alley) and Seattle (Silicon Rainy)!