Tel Aviv University holds International Unicorn Day Conference

Initiating a new tradition at Tel Aviv University, the school’s Coller Faculty of Management and the TAU Alumni Association have instituted a Unicorn event each year on April 9, marking International Unicorn Day.

The first event in the new tradition took place at the university, with a discussion of the Israeli unicorn experiences of graduates Arik Faingold and Joel Bar-El.

Recently, a new study from Stanford University ranked TAU first both in Israel and outside the United States in the number of unicorns – private start-ups worth more than $1 billion – founded by university graduates.

Panelists at the conference presented stories of Israeli unicorn companies and held a discussion on fundraising for unicorns and Israeli start-ups. Among the participants was Faingold, a graduate of the Faculty of Management, serial entrepreneur, chairman and president of Comm-IT, and co-founder of Pentera, which became a unicorn in 2022. Also participating was Bar-El, a graduate of the TAU Faculty of Life Sciences and also of Harvard, and co-founder and chairman of Trax.

Dr. Benjamin's statements

Dr. Eyal Benjamin, faculty member and director of the Coller Institute for Entrepreneurship at the Coller Faculty of Management, said: “Tel Aviv University is proud to be the world’s leading academic institution outside the United States, whose graduates give rise to such unicorns. We are also proud to be the world’s leading academic institution outside the US in growing start-ups that received funding from professional venture capital investors."

“This says a great deal about the quality of the students,” he said, “but also about the opportunities that present themselves during and after graduation from the university, both through the social capital they have accumulated and thanks to the many entrepreneurial activities on campus – such as the Coller Start-up Competition, the Dan Launchpad program and more.”