The Key Israeli Story: StartUp Nation

Larger Post coming…without appreciating the context (yesterday’s post), it is hard to fully grasp the origin nor significance of the tech renaissance that is taking place in Israel.  One has to see it to fully appreciate it. Much like Boston and Silicon Valley had its origins in military R&D and culture, Israel’s tech ecosystem also comes out of this. It has had innovation after innovation emerge from its advanced defense work. For example, ICQ (not AOL messenger) launched instant messaging onto the world and originally came from te Israeli Defense Force’s internal uses. Same with voicemail and many other innovations. Israel has some of the world’s best minds in Big Data, IT security software, messenging, telecom infrastructure, etc.  A lot of this is described in the book, Start-Up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. Some of the numbers are eye-popping…one start-up per 2,000 people in the country for example. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Equally important is the Israeli resilience & tolerance for risk.  This is at the heart of the entrepreneurship.  When living in the charged environment discussed yesterday, you can’t help but to grow up with a DNA that accepts risk/change’s role in life and embraces the necessity of innovation.

I have to run to Tel Aviv’s accelerator, SOSA (their equivalent to Chicago’s 1871). More to come.