On Wednesday, June 26th, the rising entrepreneurs of 50:50 Startups received the opportunity to meet in person for the first time. Held at JVP Margalit Startup City, this “pitch night” occasion was organized in collaboration with Together & Beyond and CNVRG.IO.
Our Palestinian and Israeli participants presented their venture ideas to a panel of judges. Six of the teams in our current program, along with one team from the previous cycle, made their pitches at the venue; two teams were able to attend via Zoom. We’d like to extend a special thanks to our judges that attended the pitch night event: Liz Cohen, Ran Israeli, Reuven Ulmansky, and James Finucane.
On a scale of 1 to 5, the judges assigned a score to each of the six given judging criteria to produce a verdict: creativity and innovation, degree of applicability, positive social impact, pitch quality, and the project’s scalability/growth according to the team members’ abilities.
Following the pitches, the mentors of our program were invited to meet the entrepreneurs to engage and converse about venture creation and, of course, provide feedback on their progress face-to-face at the roundtable session. The participants, judges, and co-hosts convened to have dinner together after an eventful evening.
We are deeply grateful for the time of our mentors, judges, and Erel N. Margalit for bringing together this wonderful night dedicated to peaceful co-creation and building bridges through entrepreneurship. It is our greatest pleasure to be hosting such incredible people to uplift and support young Arab and Jewish creators.