Start-Up Nation Central Signs Deal With Taiwan’s i2i To Set Up Finder Platform

Israel’s Start-Up Nation Central (SNC), the Israeli NGO that tracks Israel’s tech industry, has signed an agreement with Innovation Industry (i2i), a tech ecosystem builder supporting and connecting innovation stakeholders in Taiwan, to launch an online innovation discovery and ecosystem tracking platform.

The platform, dubbed Global Finder, will be modeled after SNC’s successful Start-Up Nation Finder, a free resource for in-depth information about Israeli startups, investors, hubs, multinational corporations, and academic technologies, featuring data and insights on more than 6,000 active companies.

The platform will include a mapping of nearly 30,000 tech companies, hundreds of incubators, over 200 VCs and other stakeholders active in Taiwan’s ecosystem, enabling them to expand their business opportunities with the world.

The vision behind SNC’s Global Finder initiative is to create a global network of “finders” that will serve as gateways to a variety of ecosystems and expose stakeholders from all over the world to innovation, SNC said in a statement. This global network will help drive cross-border connections and partnerships, encourage international investments and technology-based collaborations.

The success of Start-Up Nation Finder has driven SNC to offer the model to other countries and innovation hubs around the world as part of an initiative called the Global Finder Network.

“We have developed the Start-Up Nation Finder to help Israeli technological innovators establish stronger connections with the global large-scale technology users and investors. We believe that any growing ecosystem requires such a platform, which is why we have established Global Finder Network that elevates the visibility of growing innovative tech ecosystems around the world and helps them expand their business opportunities,” said Professor Eugene Kandel, CEO of Start-Up Nation Central.

To date, SNC has helped to establish the finder platform in Thailand, New Zealand, and the US States of Michigan and Texas. Taiwan will be the fifth partner in the Global Finder Network.

“With almost 30,000 tech companies in Taiwan, we believe that Global Finder will help us expand Taiwan’s innovation and open our ecosystem to global collaboration and investments,” said Dr. Gary Gong, chairman of i2i, “We look forward to exploring how we can further collaborate by connecting corporations, startups and investors through the Global Finder Network. Launching Global Finder in Taiwan continues our efforts to strengthen the collaboration with Israel’s tech sector, which is also evident in the recent launch of our unique IP² LaunchPad innovation program that connects Israeli startups with Taiwanese ecosystem.”