US newspaper The Boston Globe has named Tel Aviv as the world’s second best city for tech startups, after Silicon Valley in California. Los Angeles came in at number three, New York at number five and London at number seven.
Startup Genome, a resource for tracking and building startups, used eight factors to form a list of the world’s leading high-tech cities for startup entrepreneurs: total activity of entrepreneurship in the region, amount of active and comprehensive risk capital, total performance and performance potential, how many risks founders took, ability to adopt new technologies, quality of support network, talent and differences between Silicon Valley.
According to the list, Tel Aviv has the highest density of tech startups in the world however, despite their success, startups in Tel Aviv are below average in terms of adopting new technologies, like programming languages. In 2009, there were 63 Israeli companies listed on the NASDAQ, which is more than Europe, Japan, Korea, India, and China combined.
Startup Genome expects Tel Aviv to become a niche or regional hub, not a global powerhouse like Silicon Valley.