Start Up Nation

There are many chest thumping offerings about Israel, and this book joins the list as one of them. While no one can agree 100% with the politics of a country - Israelis themselves disagree with each other - no one can not admire what the nation has achieved in over 60 years. The fact that it continues to thrive is a living miracle.

Written for an American audience that is uninitiated to Israel, in a prose that goes well with coffee, this book is not so much about start ups, but about the combination of circumstances and values that has enable Israel to be the number one start up country in the world. The book is hardly self deprecating. Every flaw (Israelis argue, are non-hierarchical), every negative (Israel has no water, no natural resources, no friends) works out to become a significant driver to make it the society that it is today. This thinking that flaws are a friend can sometimes lead to tautology. In a conversation I had with Indian admirals, they said that the best and worst thing of India was its democracy. Without which they would not be a nation of 1 billion people. With it, they cannot run very fast, thus explaining their "Hindu" rate of growth.

But ultimately, the message of the book can be distilled to the following. Human ingenuity is driven by the force of circumstances. The less you have (definitely no resource curse), the more ingenious you must be to survive - which is Israel's case. To foster start ups, it helps to have a pool of talent, a cluster of industries, and ready venture capital.

I smiled at the constant references to the military (especially 8200) and the knowledge and network that the service to the nation helped foster throughout the country. Couldn't agree more.