Startup Country
Entering by train to the northern capital of Israel - Haifa, it is difficult not to notice the local Skolkovo, located almost on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The glance itself rests on compact, but at the same time flawlessly executed in the high-tech architectural style that has been here for 30 years already, the R & D centers of the leading technological giants of the world. And after all, not 2-3 companies here have broken their mini-campuses - there are at least a couple of dozen of them here. The names of one another are better known - Google, Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Yahoo !, Philips, Qualcomm, and many, many others.
It is sacred for any IT specialist the place is called MATAM (Merkaz Taasiyot Mada), which is quite prosaically translated into Russian as a “scientific and industrial center”. It fits well into the eclecticism of the Haifa landscape and involuntarily evokes different thoughts on the topic “what, in fact, they all need here.”
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MATAM is just one of the many footholds of Western science and technology, starting in the distant 70s from the lonely Intel office in Haifa. Now there are dozens, if not hundreds of them in the country. Each self-respecting IT company with a world name considers it its duty to open a representative office in Israel. One of the latest potential of Israel was highly appreciated by Facebook and Apple that opened their R & D centers in the country. The first recently held its most massive overseas software development conference in Tel Aviv (over 650 participants), and Apple bought two Israeli startups over the past year and, judging by the latest rumors, is not going to dwell on this.
Today, all of Israel is a sort of Middle Eastern "Silicon Valley", making a significant contribution to scientific and technological progress. Moreover, the leading intellectual force here is not the envoys from the West, but local professional cadres who were born on the Promised Land or arrived here as repatriates from the CIS countries.
It is characteristic that the research centers of American and European vendors did not appear here to bring education and progress to the Israeli masses, but rather the opposite. Like Spanish salespeople who arrived in America along with conquistadors and traded gold for glass beads and “fire water”, R & D centers hunt for Israel (in the best sense of the word, of course) for bright heads, offering in exchange for specialists a decent reward, and startups - venture investments.
Where do these same Jewish brains come from? In the case of the MATAM campus, they literally flow down to it from Mount Carmel, where the Haifa Technion is located - a leading Israeli technical university, which annually occupies pride of place in the world rankings of technological universities. Other educational institutions across the country are also not lagging behind - 13.5% of Israeli students study in engineering specialties, 5% of the GNP in the country is spent on scientific research, bringing Israel on this indicator to the first place in the world (for comparison, in the USA similar expenses are no more than 3%, in Russia - a little more than 1%).
A high level reached the motivation of students. Israeli techies are interested in learning from the top five, since not only the future directly, but also the present depends on it.
In fact, the following is happening everywhere in the country. R & D centers are beginning to be interested in young IT specialists in the course of their education, funding laboratories at institutes, ordering various research groups to student groups, and attracting the most talented to work in their ranks for part-time employment. It is clear that not only transnational corporations win from this, but also poor students who earn their livelihood and study without leaving it, and not just anywhere, but on Google, Apple, Microsoft or local, but no less comfortable. IAI, Elbit or Amdocs.
It would seem, what more to wish for? All the prerequisites to live-eat there. However, strangely enough, not all polls of young Israeli specialists sleep and see themselves in the future as respectable employees of large international companies.
In terms of the number of venture projects that only promise to grow into something serious, which only about one in 20 succeeds in, in the sphere of mobile and Internet technologies Israel today, without exaggeration, is ahead of the rest. According to some information, there are now more than four and a half thousand of them in the Promise. And the reason for choosing the thorny path of free enterprise not only in tough selection by large employers and high competition in the labor market - the notorious Jewish enterprise played its role, it was not without national pride (there is a lot of evidence that only the uncompromising demand of the navigation service Waze when selling Google for $ 1 billion, retain the right to brand and self-develop products, which the Internet giant without hesitation satisfied, because Waze is unique but worth it).
Among other reasons that have positively influenced the creation of a beneficial environment for start-ups in Israel, what is not called. Some believe that the main role was played by the same climate at about all times of the year, thanks to which the brain activity does not decrease all year round (for example, the California Valley is given as an example), others are convinced that the matter is in unique social networking when your brother sat at the same desk with the founder Mirabilis, who once interested AOL in the amount of $ 407 million for his instant messenger ICQ, and his uncle was the company commander of the head of SuperDerivatives, who had recently given over to the American brokerage firm for 350 million.
And this, too, is the seed of truth. In the conditions of a small country, a start-up meets an angel investor in a bakery, and having eaten according to burekas (local pie), they make a deal of the century.
The next start-up boom in Israel began after the high-profile release in 2009 of the book by American analyst Dan Senor and Israeli journalist Saul Singer, Startup Nation, which addresses the reasons for how Israel has become a global center for entrepreneurship and technological innovation. In it, the Israelis received a theoretical basis explaining their ambitions and aspirations, the answer to the question “Why?”, Which completely satisfied them, and began to act further.
Now, in most cases, startups are created according to the classical scheme: Moshe and Dudu's cousins ​​meet in one of the Tel Aviv cafes with good Wi-Fi, put their MacBooks and other devices on the table, and over coffee, talking about the health of family members and memories service in the army (served in the same regiment), they gradually reach the main point - how much to ask Google or Yahoo! money for a startup, the name of which is already invented by them between the first and second cups of coffee, and the concept is formed between the third and fourth. Well, if they don’t buy it, you can go to visit great-uncle Itzik, who closed his small bakery 5 years ago and is now successfully investing in IT start-ups.
They invest in venture projects in Israel quite willingly. There are a lot of their investment funds and accelerators, Western and, more recently, Russian entrepreneurs and business structures are interested in local startups. The state helps - it is important for politicians to attract foreign investors, in the conditions of permanent war their money guarantees the country a certain financial stability. The investment climate in the Israeli startup environment is one of the most favorable. The country has all the conditions for the development of this industry - a transparent tax policy, investor-friendly legislation and many free trade agreements. According to the latest statistics, since the beginning of 2014, 335 Israeli startups have attracted 1.6 billion dollars, which is 81% more than in the same period in 2013.
However, with this seemingly favorable state of affairs, the supply still exceeds demand and hundreds of Israeli start-ups fail without obtaining funding. Tellingly, their creators do not scare the creators; here it is - an indicator of experience and regular work that the start-up does. This failed - another will shoot, arguing something like this, they continue to go towards their goal. And in this mental peculiarity, according to a number of analysts, lies another important reason for the formation of an ecosystem that is favorable for startups.
Perseverance, stubbornness, own opinion - part of the Israeli mentality, which in fact, consists of some contradictions. Intel founder in Israel, Dov Froman, called this phenomenon a “Culture of Disagreement,” saying that it was she who was able to bring up a generation for which innovation is part of life.
Having recovered from the crisis of the past decade, the high-tech industry in Israel today is experiencing a real boom, a powerful impetus to which has been given by the rapid development of mobile technologies. More than 200 thousand people work in the IT industry in Israel today, 70% of exports are technology related. The country has the highest density of technology companies after Silicon Valley (about 4,000), and a fairly large percentage of them achieve serious results, going from an IPO to the NASDAQ or being absorbed by large corporations.
It is Israel who owes the world the advent of ZIP archiving technology, developed by Technion scientists, the first USB-drives created by Israeli M-Systems, the legendary ICQ, used in the Microsoft Kinect console by Primesense 3D sensors, and much more. In addition to the already mentioned Waze, international recognition was achieved by Rakuten, a popular VoIP client bought several months ago by Viber, a popular VoIP client stepping on the heels of Instagram Mobli photo service, in which Hollywood stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, a descendant of Mobli, one-syllable Yo, and hundreds of millions invested their millions others, so far unknown in wide circles of startups.
Every day, using these developments in our smartphones and tablets, we often do not guess their origin. But investors from all over the world have long understood how, from modern technologies, legs grow. And now the small state in the Middle East is being closely watched not only by politicians and the military, as it always has been, but also by venture capitalists and technology market analysts.
Our project, the VCStart collective investment platform , is also looking at Israel. So far we are working with startups registered only in Russian jurisdiction, but the next ones are several countries, and the first one is Israel, where, despite the high percentage of investment funds and the attention of large investors, there are still a huge number of startups that need funding and able to interest a potential microinvestor from Russia and the CIS countries.
It is sacred for any IT specialist the place is called MATAM (Merkaz Taasiyot Mada), which is quite prosaically translated into Russian as a “scientific and industrial center”. It fits well into the eclecticism of the Haifa landscape and involuntarily evokes different thoughts on the topic “what, in fact, they all need here.”
')
MATAM is just one of the many footholds of Western science and technology, starting in the distant 70s from the lonely Intel office in Haifa. Now there are dozens, if not hundreds of them in the country. Each self-respecting IT company with a world name considers it its duty to open a representative office in Israel. One of the latest potential of Israel was highly appreciated by Facebook and Apple that opened their R & D centers in the country. The first recently held its most massive overseas software development conference in Tel Aviv (over 650 participants), and Apple bought two Israeli startups over the past year and, judging by the latest rumors, is not going to dwell on this.
Today, all of Israel is a sort of Middle Eastern "Silicon Valley", making a significant contribution to scientific and technological progress. Moreover, the leading intellectual force here is not the envoys from the West, but local professional cadres who were born on the Promised Land or arrived here as repatriates from the CIS countries.
Brains for sale
It is characteristic that the research centers of American and European vendors did not appear here to bring education and progress to the Israeli masses, but rather the opposite. Like Spanish salespeople who arrived in America along with conquistadors and traded gold for glass beads and “fire water”, R & D centers hunt for Israel (in the best sense of the word, of course) for bright heads, offering in exchange for specialists a decent reward, and startups - venture investments.
Where do these same Jewish brains come from? In the case of the MATAM campus, they literally flow down to it from Mount Carmel, where the Haifa Technion is located - a leading Israeli technical university, which annually occupies pride of place in the world rankings of technological universities. Other educational institutions across the country are also not lagging behind - 13.5% of Israeli students study in engineering specialties, 5% of the GNP in the country is spent on scientific research, bringing Israel on this indicator to the first place in the world (for comparison, in the USA similar expenses are no more than 3%, in Russia - a little more than 1%).
A high level reached the motivation of students. Israeli techies are interested in learning from the top five, since not only the future directly, but also the present depends on it.
In fact, the following is happening everywhere in the country. R & D centers are beginning to be interested in young IT specialists in the course of their education, funding laboratories at institutes, ordering various research groups to student groups, and attracting the most talented to work in their ranks for part-time employment. It is clear that not only transnational corporations win from this, but also poor students who earn their livelihood and study without leaving it, and not just anywhere, but on Google, Apple, Microsoft or local, but no less comfortable. IAI, Elbit or Amdocs.
Start-Up Nation
It would seem, what more to wish for? All the prerequisites to live-eat there. However, strangely enough, not all polls of young Israeli specialists sleep and see themselves in the future as respectable employees of large international companies.
In terms of the number of venture projects that only promise to grow into something serious, which only about one in 20 succeeds in, in the sphere of mobile and Internet technologies Israel today, without exaggeration, is ahead of the rest. According to some information, there are now more than four and a half thousand of them in the Promise. And the reason for choosing the thorny path of free enterprise not only in tough selection by large employers and high competition in the labor market - the notorious Jewish enterprise played its role, it was not without national pride (there is a lot of evidence that only the uncompromising demand of the navigation service Waze when selling Google for $ 1 billion, retain the right to brand and self-develop products, which the Internet giant without hesitation satisfied, because Waze is unique but worth it).
Among other reasons that have positively influenced the creation of a beneficial environment for start-ups in Israel, what is not called. Some believe that the main role was played by the same climate at about all times of the year, thanks to which the brain activity does not decrease all year round (for example, the California Valley is given as an example), others are convinced that the matter is in unique social networking when your brother sat at the same desk with the founder Mirabilis, who once interested AOL in the amount of $ 407 million for his instant messenger ICQ, and his uncle was the company commander of the head of SuperDerivatives, who had recently given over to the American brokerage firm for 350 million.
And this, too, is the seed of truth. In the conditions of a small country, a start-up meets an angel investor in a bakery, and having eaten according to burekas (local pie), they make a deal of the century.
The next start-up boom in Israel began after the high-profile release in 2009 of the book by American analyst Dan Senor and Israeli journalist Saul Singer, Startup Nation, which addresses the reasons for how Israel has become a global center for entrepreneurship and technological innovation. In it, the Israelis received a theoretical basis explaining their ambitions and aspirations, the answer to the question “Why?”, Which completely satisfied them, and began to act further.
Now, in most cases, startups are created according to the classical scheme: Moshe and Dudu's cousins ​​meet in one of the Tel Aviv cafes with good Wi-Fi, put their MacBooks and other devices on the table, and over coffee, talking about the health of family members and memories service in the army (served in the same regiment), they gradually reach the main point - how much to ask Google or Yahoo! money for a startup, the name of which is already invented by them between the first and second cups of coffee, and the concept is formed between the third and fourth. Well, if they don’t buy it, you can go to visit great-uncle Itzik, who closed his small bakery 5 years ago and is now successfully investing in IT start-ups.
They invest in venture projects in Israel quite willingly. There are a lot of their investment funds and accelerators, Western and, more recently, Russian entrepreneurs and business structures are interested in local startups. The state helps - it is important for politicians to attract foreign investors, in the conditions of permanent war their money guarantees the country a certain financial stability. The investment climate in the Israeli startup environment is one of the most favorable. The country has all the conditions for the development of this industry - a transparent tax policy, investor-friendly legislation and many free trade agreements. According to the latest statistics, since the beginning of 2014, 335 Israeli startups have attracted 1.6 billion dollars, which is 81% more than in the same period in 2013.
Culture of disagreement
However, with this seemingly favorable state of affairs, the supply still exceeds demand and hundreds of Israeli start-ups fail without obtaining funding. Tellingly, their creators do not scare the creators; here it is - an indicator of experience and regular work that the start-up does. This failed - another will shoot, arguing something like this, they continue to go towards their goal. And in this mental peculiarity, according to a number of analysts, lies another important reason for the formation of an ecosystem that is favorable for startups.
Perseverance, stubbornness, own opinion - part of the Israeli mentality, which in fact, consists of some contradictions. Intel founder in Israel, Dov Froman, called this phenomenon a “Culture of Disagreement,” saying that it was she who was able to bring up a generation for which innovation is part of life.
Having recovered from the crisis of the past decade, the high-tech industry in Israel today is experiencing a real boom, a powerful impetus to which has been given by the rapid development of mobile technologies. More than 200 thousand people work in the IT industry in Israel today, 70% of exports are technology related. The country has the highest density of technology companies after Silicon Valley (about 4,000), and a fairly large percentage of them achieve serious results, going from an IPO to the NASDAQ or being absorbed by large corporations.
It is Israel who owes the world the advent of ZIP archiving technology, developed by Technion scientists, the first USB-drives created by Israeli M-Systems, the legendary ICQ, used in the Microsoft Kinect console by Primesense 3D sensors, and much more. In addition to the already mentioned Waze, international recognition was achieved by Rakuten, a popular VoIP client bought several months ago by Viber, a popular VoIP client stepping on the heels of Instagram Mobli photo service, in which Hollywood stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, a descendant of Mobli, one-syllable Yo, and hundreds of millions invested their millions others, so far unknown in wide circles of startups.
Every day, using these developments in our smartphones and tablets, we often do not guess their origin. But investors from all over the world have long understood how, from modern technologies, legs grow. And now the small state in the Middle East is being closely watched not only by politicians and the military, as it always has been, but also by venture capitalists and technology market analysts.
Not plowed field
Our project, the VCStart collective investment platform , is also looking at Israel. So far we are working with startups registered only in Russian jurisdiction, but the next ones are several countries, and the first one is Israel, where, despite the high percentage of investment funds and the attention of large investors, there are still a huge number of startups that need funding and able to interest a potential microinvestor from Russia and the CIS countries.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/236009/
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