Will the Start-Up Nation continue to develop? 40% of Israeli computing students would prefer to work in a startup company. This represents a significant rise since last year, when only 18% of students expressed this preference, according to a survey carried out by John Bryce Training in advance of Oracle Week 2015.

The survey also finds that technology entrepreneurship is also developing, with 27% of those who dream of a start-up aspiring to found their own venture, and 42% considering this as an option for later on.

In high-tech, there is a distinct preference for media, Internet, cyber and mobile. The survey was carried out among 258 John Bryce students, aged 20-30, studying software development.

The participants in the survey also did not hide their fears of the challenge. 80% say that the greatest challenge is to develop an interesting invention; 79% admit that lack of financial security will be a concern at the start; 49% say the greatest challenge lies in finding a partner for their venture; and 30% mentioned difficulty in finding workers.

As far as participation of women in start-ups is concerned, there is still a long way to go. "There are still more men than women in software development studies," says Ziv Mandel, CEO of John Bryce Training and a co-founder of Oracle Week 2015. "This needs to change," he says, "and we are encouraging that, because there is no justification for the current situation. In many cases, the outstanding students in our courses are in fact women. Beyond that, I see for example good representation of women in Mamram (the Computing and Information Systems Center) in the IDF, and that is because that track is not available to men with a combat profile. So that automatically creates positive discrimination."

Mandel suggests three reasons for the general yen for technological entrepreneurship: firstly, the Y generation aspires more than its predecessors to self-fulfillment; secondly, the successes of other start-up founders, and the fact that we don't hear so much about the failures, infects others with the bug "it's an addictive roller coaster rise," he says. Thirdly, technology today is more accessible than ever, and you don't need to know mathematics to develop software. "Young people can sit at home and earn money from Internet traffic. They can generate traffic for restaurants instead of opening a bar," says Mandel.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 12, 2015

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