Globe Scout Me wins at Start Tel Aviv contest – Platform for athletes to take part in innovation festival in Israel

Globe Scout Me, a platform for athletes, coaches and teams, that is, all those from the world of sports, will present Serbia at this year's DLD festival in Tel Aviv. The platform enables athletes to create profiles, upload their statistics and sports game footage, whereas coaches and teams, on the other hand, can search the athletes database by all kinds of criteria – the position they play in, the sport, age, height...

The final of the contest of startup companies from Serbia and Montenegro, Start Tel Aviv, which featured five companies, was held on Tuesday, July 11, 2017. The winning project, Globe Scout Me, will take part in the startup festival which will take place on September 3 through 7 in Tel Aviv.

To Ognjen Vlaskalin, one of the founders of Globe Scout Me, this will be an opportunity to get to know the Tel Aviv startup ecosystem, but also to meet potential investors and potentially agree cooperation. As he says for eKapija, he came to the idea for such an application around ten years ago, when he finished college in America and his friends kept contacting him to find them a good club in Europe.

– Eight months ago, we started developing the product itself, and the platform was made available online a month and a half ago. We now have over 500 registered athletes, but we haven't yet started dealing with the marketing. That is the next step and the reason why we applied to the contest, as it gives us an opportunity to travel to Tel Aviv, meet potential investors, possibly agree an investment and start developing the platform further on, expanding it – Vlaskalin says for eKapija.

At the contest's final in Belgrade, the jury of five (Kosta Andric of ICT Hub, Jenny Sedov, Deputy Ambassador of Israel to Belgrade, Moriya Kassis, founder of Product of Things, Natalija Sandic of Innovation Fund and Ivan Filipovic of 30Hills) had the task of choosing the best startup among the five finalists. According to Sedov, this was a difficult task.

– It's always hard to pick out the best, as we're not only talking about the business and ideas, but about people who stand for what they truly believe in. One of the categories we took into consideration was the concept, as well as how capable the representative of a given startup was to present their idea in the best way in Tel Aviv – Sedov explains for eKapija.

According to her, other criteria included the importance the project might have for the community and clients, the company's level of development, as well as to what extent the founders believed in their startups and what they were doing.

– All those criteria, combined, determined the winner of this contest – Sedov adds.

This year's Start Tel Aviv was the fourth such contest, and it was organized by the Embassy of Israel in Belgrade in cooperation with the Center for Technology Entrepreneurship Development ICT Hub.

Aside from Globe Scout Me, the Start Tel Aviv contest featured the mobile app FilterApp – a guide through cultural events in Belgrade, Uradi-zaradi – an online platform enabling busy people to delegate one-off tasks to those interested in earning money, Solagro – a smart recycling press project and Couch Coach – an app enabling basketball fans to take active participation in the game.

Global ranking lists of the best modern startup systems are constantly showing Israel to be one of the best locations for entrepreneurs and potential investors globally, along with California's Silicone Valley and the economic capitals of Europe.

K.S.