Education Seminar #2 - Start Up Nation

Doing ITF means I get the pleasure of attending a number of educational seminar days throughout the year.  Today's was entitled 'Start Up Nation' and was in my fav city of Israel - Tel Aviv.

If you haven't read Start Up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer you should probably stop reading this blog and get yourself to a book store immediately, buy it and read it.  

I read the book a few months ago while I was in Asia and it was a seriously good read.   Very basically put, it discusses why Israel has been as successful as it has in the high-tech / start-up industry with all its threats and weaknesses.  It's a real page turner and I can't recommend it enough. 

We started off today with a talk from a business development and marketing professional at BDO.  This guy was on a whole other level of passionate (yelling and hitting the white board kind of passionate) so good thing his talk was really interesting. 

He spoke about Israel being this massive social experiment that's had to deal with waves of mass immigration and a precarious geo-political situation.  Remarkably though, Israel has had continued GDP per capita growth since the 1950's.  Talk about killin it!

One of the things that stuck out to me was his discussion on the biggest weaknesses in Israel's economy.  These being: 

• low participation in the economy (most prominently from Arab women and Hasidic men);
• inequality and centralisation which leads to monopolies and low competition; 
• a degrading competitive advantage (China and India are producing quantity while Israel produces quality); and 
• poor public service (of which I have already experienced in my time here).

Notice how conflict didn't feature on his list.  That stood out to me.  But, I guess Israel has never had concrete peace with all of its neighbours so it's become fairly good at just getting on with it.  Props to you Israel.

He also spent time discussing what about Israeli society makes it so good at start-ups.  Compulsory army service in Israel is one of the big ones.  This leads to Israeli society being informal, direct, energetic, filled with copious amounts of chutzpah (an inability to accept no) all while being warm.  He gave the example of an Israeli queue (of which I have seen many) which is basically a triangle of people with the pinnacle of the triangle being the start of the line. Grossly inefficient and mildly angering but informal, direct, energetic and filled with loads and loads of chutzpah!  If you're not on your A-game here you will basically never get want you want ever.

Ultimately though, it's all about the creative energy, of which Israel has plenty.  And I guess this is something I hope to take home with me - more chutzpah (not that I need it) and more creative energy towards whatever it is I decide to do with my life.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on a walking tour through Tel Aviv focusing on how it has changed from sand dunes to one of the best start up capitals in the world.  

All in all, a superb educational seminar showcasing how bomb Israel is, specifically Tel Aviv and how I sort of wish I was an entrepreneur living in Tel Aviv walking around dishing out chutzpah like it was going out of fashion ... a girl can dream I guess.

Meet the ITF groups of Rishon and PTK

MM x