Smart City - Startup City

Support for Startups

We love helping startups! Tel Aviv-Yafo is now home to the largest concentration of startups and accelerators in the State of Israel. The Municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo, which aims to encourage innovation and promote Tel Aviv-Yafo as a smart city, actively assists and supports startups that are developing innovative services for the city's residents and visitors. Startups have access to a variety of services and benefits, including workspaces, access to municipal experts and databases, reduced taxes, conferences, beta sites and advertising.

Hackathons

Can we hack our way to solutions? Several times a year, the Municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo hosts hackathons to promote the development of applications and solutions for issues that the city faces in a creative and innovative way. In recent years, events have been held to solve challenges in the areas of tourism, education, the community, senior citizens and more.

MeetUps

Sometimes the best way to solve a challenge is to think about it together. MeetUps are meetings between municipal representatives and startups to present challenges that the municipality is facing and brainstorm ideas on how to overcome them, thereby improving the lives of the residents and the efficiency of the municipality's work. To prepare for a MeetUp, the municipality carries out an in-depth investigation of the administration or the department in question and uncovers the relevant challenges. Managers and employees are introduced to the idea of the MeetUp and the rationale behind it, and go on tours of a wide variety of workspaces, from startups to banks, and urban innovation centers. Government organizations are also invited to contribute to the mutual promotion of ideas. Startups participate in MeetUps in the context of social entrepreneurship and to support or launch a project dealing with education or welfare, as well as to get ideas for business-focused entrepreneurship.

“I Have an Idea”

We want to hear your ideas! As part of our cooperation with the city’s startup community, the municipality holds “I Have an Idea” gatherings, in which it presents urban issues identified and studied in depth by employees of the municipality and then challenges the startup community to find solutions. Groups are then formed to work on solving each challenge. The groups meet regularly for several months until a technological solution is found in conjunction with the municipality. Among the initiatives unveiled as part of "I Have an Idea" is a mobile application for special education instructors that enables them to track the development of motor skills in autistic children.

Workspaces for Startups

Let’s work together! The municipality has allocated shared workspaces to startups just starting out on their journey. These spaces are available at a subsidized, accessible price, giving entrepreneurs opportunities to: develop their initiatives in a pleasant, productive environment; meet and network with other entrepreneurs; connect with advisors and municipal officials; and access other support services.

OpenData TLV

We want to share our information. OpenData TLV gives open-source access to the municipality’s databases on population, transportation, events, education and more, through a friendly, easy-to-use interface. Visitors to the site can download urban data and analyze it using various tools, charts and graphs. OpenDataTLV encourages users to communicate and analyze data together and with local representatives. The information on the website is available in both Hebrew and English making it accessible to a wide, diverse audience, including application developers and programmers, students, researchers, curious people, journalists and more.