The startup Cyber DriveWare won 1^st place at the Pioneers startup competition, taking place in Tel-Aviv 
By Telecom News, 07:00, March 21, 2016
 
The startup was presented by the only female presenter among the finalists, Yulia Sachkova, which is also a new immigrant. The winning startup, Cyber DriveWare has recently been accepted to the Techstars-Barclays accelerator program
 
Over 130 startups competed, out of which 8 made it to the finals in Tel-Aviv. The winning startup will represent Israel in the worldwide finals taking place in Vienna, Austria. The worldwide winner will be granted 100,000 Euros

The Tel-Aviv finalists presented outstanding innovations in various fields, including IoT, Retail, Mobile Apps, Healthcare, Computer Vision and of course Cyber Security. The startups presented their companies in a prestige event, taking place on March/17/2016 in Tel-Aviv. The event started at 10am, and ended with an all-night dance party
 
This is the 1^st Pioneers event taking place in Israel. In similar with other Pioneers competitions worldwide (e.g. Germany, Russia, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and even in the far-east), the event started with a conference, included a startup expo, and ended with a dance party.  The peak moments were reached as the winning startup Cyber DriveWare was announced
 
The company invented a new dimension for the cyber security industry, making new traffic visible for the very first time. They call it “the I/O layer”. In that layer DriveWare blocks malicious traffic as it travels between the kernel and the hardware. The technology can even block malicious traffic while the malware or its intrusion are not detected. The new technology provides enterprises and critical infrastructures the capacity to defend themselves against sophisticated targeted attacks, assuring business continuity
 
Haggai Yedidya, the founder and CEO of Cyber DriveWare shares his experience: “As soon as we were announced winners, I was excited to share this great achievement with our investors (a UK-based VC) and accelerator (TechStars-Barclays). Both of which have strong European presence, and anticipate the finals in Vienna”
 
“Furthermore, we won with Yulia Sachkova as the presenter of the company (rather than myself), which is a great. It is not trivial to have few presenters of a company at such an early stage”, adds Haggai
 
Yulia: The week was very demanding, as we had to present DriveWare in a few conferences and events, while moving to MindSpace (the formal TechStars venue) and in addition renovate our outdated presentation. Hours before the competition, we were still updating slides. Food and sleep were luxuries we could only dream of
 
We came to a conclusion that Haggai Yedidya (the company’s CEO) will present the company in the international investors conference by Axis, while I present DriveWare in the Pioneers competition. It was somewhat of a gamble, as Haggai is an experienced presenter whom even presented in TEDx previously. However, I felt it’s time for me to step up. I have previous experience in presenting the company, including winning the global competition by Kaspersky last year (August 2015), where I presented DriveWare in MIT university in Boston
 
Haggai: Before we came to the decision of who’ll present, we consulted the Pioneers organizers, including Tal Catran, our pitching mentor. We sensed they support the idea that Yulia will present, and decided to take our chance
 
Yulia: Our bet paid off. It is a big honor for me to be a new immigrant and represent Israel in a global competition. I believe that this highly characterizes Israel where great opportunities evolve for many sectors of the population, whether those are women, new immigrants as well as other minorities
 
Cyber DriveWare now plans to leverage the supportive environment provided by Techstars-Barclays in order to perfect its pitch, in order to present Israel in the global finals with honors
 
Are you going to present Israel with honors or to win, we asked the company’s CEO? “Certainly to win”, Haggai answers. “Of course excellent startups will compete in the global finals, though we see ourselves as equal to them. Whoever comes from Israel to a global competition of starups comes from the best eco-system in the world, for entrepreneurship. Now with Techstars backing us up, we believe our chances are better than ever before

  Cyber DriveWare     ,Pircture of the winning team