“There were 56 Israeli startups on the map. Today there are over 400 in New York.”
Guy Franklin, founder and CEO of Israeli Mapped in NY, tracks the rapid expansion of Israeli tech in New York.
Guy Franklin
(Tomeriko - Live Focus)
Guy Franklin, founder and CEO of Israeli Mapped in NY, said the platform began as a side project while he was working as an accountant at EY in New York, after he noticed a growing wave of Israeli startups choosing the city over Silicon Valley and Boston.
“I wanted to map the Israeli startups operating in New York because I couldn’t find any resource that would map them all,” Franklin said at Mind the Tech New York organized by Calcalist and Bank Leumi. The goal, he added, was both to document the trend and to help founders connect.
What started as an informal effort “one hour a week” has since become a full-time business. The platform is an interactive map that tracks Israeli startups operating in the city and updates their numbers in real time.
Alongside the mapping tool, Franklin said the company has also built an investment arm focused mainly on Israeli cybersecurity startups. It has invested in 13 cyber companies and recorded four exits to date.
Franklin pointed to cybersecurity as one of the most significant growth areas in the Israeli startup presence in New York. “Six years ago there were like five Israeli cybersecurity startups in New York,” he said. “Today there are over 80.” He highlighted Cyera as one of the sector’s leading companies, citing a recent valuation of $9 billion based on its latest funding round.
Beyond cyber, Franklin noted increasing activity in healthcare and proptech, driven in part by New York’s dense concentration of residential and commercial real estate.
At the same time, he said the ecosystem has seen consolidation in other sectors. In ad tech, once home to around 100 companies, most startups have shut down, leaving only a small group of survivors including Taboola and Outbrain.
“We are tracking the trend of startups for the last 10 years,” Franklin said, framing the platform as a long-term data lens on how Israeli founders are clustering, and evolving, in New York’s tech landscape.
You can watch the full interview in the video above.
