With a $4M investment, McCann Worldgroup has bought a 15% stake in Israeli incubator ‘thetime‘.
This move isn’t a particularly surprising considering ‘thetime’ was founded by Ilan Shiloah, who for the past 10 years has been chairman of McCann Erickson Israel. ‘thetime’ was also co-founded by angel investor, Nir Tarlovsky. Uri Weinheber, previously of Lab One, acts as the incubator’s CEO.
A Chief Scientist licensed incubator, the stated objective of the ‘thetime’ is new media investments (although this seems not to be a hard constraint). The current portfolio consists of 30 startups, including Tawkon & SohoOS.
This is of course great news for the Israeli startup ecosystem, which over the past couple of years has seen a substantial increase in early-stage investment outfits and accelerators.