The New Silicon Valley

Back in May I posted about why we were coming to Israel and what we would be doing.  For those of you who have followed us these past two months, you've seen some of the great things we've done, companies we've met with, and an insight to the projects we're working on.  When we return home and complete our second year of business school, one question with which we will be regularly confronted is: Why Israel?

A recent Yahoo! News article highlights the answer to this question better than I could.  Titled "Israeli innovators build new 'Silicon Valley'", our work this summer has been focused on just that.  In a country where 500 new startups form every year, our group of twelve MBA's from Maryland, Harvard, Emory and Peking University have have worked to build six companies of our own.  We're not engineers or scientists - Israel has plenty of those (indeed Israel is home to more engineers per capita than any country in the world).  Rather, we are filling an important gap in the Israeli economy, taking innovations and building well-managed business around them.

This Thursday we will put our last seven weeks of preparation to the test, pitching our businesses to representatives from some of the world's top venture capital firms.  We will seek to raise funding for our own startups as we play a role in building the "New Silicon Valley" that is the Startup Nation.

Israel – Startup Nation

Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s Startup Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle is required reading for anyone looking to do business in Israel.  In it, the co-authors describe how Israel has undergone a transformation from fledgling nation to the world’s most exciting place for technological innovation and entrepreneurship.  The reasons are varied, but all have their roots in a shared sense of survival around which this small nation has cultivated the ideal environment in which to start a business.  If you don’t believe me, just consider that Israel has:

• the highest density of startup companies in the world (one for every 1,844 Israelis)
• more companies listed on NASDAQ than all of Europe
• the greatest portion of GDP spent on civilian R&D worldwide

From the perspective of an MBA student and entrepreneur, Israel offers everything you could ever dream of.  I’m told that driving down Highway 2 from Haifa to Israel I will see offices for global leaders like Intel, HP, Google and Microsoft.  Not to mention that I will have access to Israeli startups-turned-corporations such as Teva, Given Imaging and Netafim.  And nevermind the brilliant researchers at the Technion and the venture capitalists to whom I will pitch my ideas on a weekly basis.

The concentration of multinational firms, innovative startups and funded research in an environment that encourages learning by doing and innovative approaches to problem solving makes Israel the ideal place for an internship and beyond.