St. Louis Wants Israeli Businesses to Call It Home

You know Israeli businesses are doing something right when the good folks from the St. Louis area are making a push to attract the attention of companies in Israel considering expansion.

The St. Louis-Israel Innovation Connection, developed by BioSTL, has made it its business, so to speak, to bring over offshoots from “one of the world’s innovation hotbeds, ” St Louis Today reports.

“Israel has more startup companies than anywhere else outside of Silicon Valley, ” said Donn Rubin, president and chief executive of BioSTL, a nonprofit focused on boosting the area’s biotechnology sector.

St. Louis is in stiff competition over Israeli business, against Boston, New York and San Francisco.

The recruiting outfit is focusing on companies in three of the region’s stronger industries: biotechnology, health care technology and financial technology.

Like everyone else, though, they’d like to stay away from trial and error. Their goal is find young companies with proven products and technologies, because those will appreciate access to venture capitalists, corporate partners, universities and business networks in the St. Louis region.

According to Rubin, “It’s baked into [Israelis] business plan to get to North America. This is where they are really going to hit their expansion and scale up.”

Uri Attir is working for the initiative over in Israel. “St. Louis is not as well known as it should be, ” he told St Louis Today. “It’s definitely underrepresented in Israel.”

The initiative was launched in May, and so far, after meeting with 19 Israeli companies, at least one seems ready to bite.

“We’re not in a position to make that announcement yet, ” Rubin said.