Israel Tech Guard, an all-volunteer, not-for-profit initiative empowering Israel’s defenses with the latest technologies, is looking to raise $2 million for rapid-pace initiatives designed to help protect the nation during and after the war.
Formed on October 7 while the Hamas attacks were wreaking death and destruction, Israel Tech Guard was cofounded by serial tech entrepreneur Mor Ram-On; software engineer and team lead at Cybereason Ron Balter; and senior programmer Lior Mizrahi, cofounder and CTO of Maveriks.
Around 200 volunteers from Israel’s tech community are working for Israel Tech Guard, which is structured in teams of two to 20 developers operating as internal startups within the organization. This allows teams the freedom to run fast without worrying about office space, legal, financial, and other logistics.
Ram-On says that this agile approach has resulted in each solution taking, on average, a week to develop.
Projects by Israel Tech Guard include:
Blood Donation Bot: A mobile web app designed to streamline blood donation by checking eligibility prior to visiting, saving donors time while also helping the staff at Israel’s national blood and medical emergency service, Magen David Adom, better manage resources.
Rehab Track: An app that helps hospitals to track the location of patients during their rehabilitation to support their physicians treating them throughout the recovery process.
Guardian X: An automated media analysis system for social networks that detects faces and objects of interest and correlates them with known databases for matches.
Last Seen: Initially used to obtain information of missing persons, abductees and terrorists, this application pinpoints the longitude, latitude and altitude of media content.
Drone Finder: Detects drone-based attacks occurring during warfare.
Social Watchdog: A SaaS-based solution that leverages natural language processing to detect toxic content that violates terms of use on social media.
Helpy Bot: Designed to connect volunteers with individuals in need by using a WhatsApp bot, efficiently matching volunteers’ skills and availability with those seeking assistance.
The $2 million in funding will enable Israel Tech Guard to pay managers who currently are volunteering in addition to acquiring SaaS services and office space (currently donated) and some physical machines and equipment for makers lab for rapid prototyping.