Dan Singer: Start-up Nation

CHAPTER 9

. The Buffett Test

1. Interview with Yoelle Maarek, former director, Google’s R & D Center in Haifa, Israel, January 2009.

2. Joel Leyden, “Microsoft Bill Gates Takes Google, Terrorism War to Israel,” Israel News Agency, 2006, http://www.israelnewsagency.com/microsoftgoogleisraelseo581030.html; retrieved November 2008.

3. Quote from a transcript of a documentary film interview conducted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in 2007, provided to the authors.

4. Dan Senor is an investor in Vringo.

5. Interview with Alice Schroeder, author of The Snowball , 2008.

6. Uzi Rubin, “Hizballah’s Rocket Campaign Against Northern Israel: A Preliminary Report,” Jerusalem Issue Brief, vol. 6, no. 10 (August 31, 2006), http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief006-10.htm.

7. Interview with Eitan Wertheimer, chairman of the board of Iscar, January 2009.

8. Dov Frohman with Robert Howard, Leadership the Hard Way: Why Leadership Can’t Be Taught—and How You Can Learn It Anyway (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008), pp. 1–16. All quotes from Frohman in this passage come from this book.

9. Interviews in this passage with senior Intel executive were on background, December 2008.

10. Interview with Eitan Wertheimer.

CHAPTER 10

. Yozma: The Match

1. Jennifer Friedlin, “Woman on a Mission,” Jerusalem Post , April 20, 1997.

2. Interview with Orna Berry, partner in Gemini Israel Funds, and chairperson of several Gemini portfolio companies, January 2009.

3. Interview with Jon Medved, CEO and board member, Vringo, May 2008.

4. Interview with Yigal Erlich, founder, chairman, and managing partner of the Yozma Group, May 2008.

5. Gil Avnimelech and Morris Tuebal, “Venture Capital Policy in Israel: A Comparative Analysis and Lessons for Other Countries,” research paper, Hebrew University School of Business Administration and School of Economics, October 2002, p. 17.

6. The information about BIRD’s founding is from an interview with Ed Mlavsky, chairman and founding partner of Gemini Israel Funds, December 2008.

7. BIRD (Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation), “BIRD Foundation to Invest $9 Million in 12 Advanced Development Projects in Life Sciences, Energy, Communications, Software and Nanotechnology,” http://www.birdf.com/_Uploads/255BOG08PREng.pdf.

8. Dan Breznitz, Innovation of the State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 60.

9. Ed Mlavsky in a PowerPoint slide presentation to Wharton MBA students, 2008.

10. Interview with Jon Medved.

11. Interview with Yigal Erlich.

12. Ibid.

13. Interview with Orna Berry.

14. Yossi Sela, managing partner, Gemini Venture Funds, http://www.gemini.co.il/?p=TeamMember&CategoryID=161&MemberId=197.

15. Interview with Erel Margalit.

16. David McWilliams, “Ireland Inc. Gets Innovated,” Sunday Business Post On-Line , December 21, 2008, http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=DAVID+McWilliams-qqqs=commentandanalysis-qqqid=38312-qqqx=1.asp; retrieved January 2009.

17. Interview with Tal Keinan, cofounder of KCPS, May and December 2008.

18. Interview with Ron Dermer, former economic attaché, Embassy of Israel in United States, and senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, September 2008.

19. Interview with Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, December 2008.

CHAPTER 11

. Betrayal and Opportunity

Epigraph: Quoted in Julie Ball, “Israel’s Booming Hi-Tech Industry,” BBC News , October 6, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7654780.stm; retrieved January 2009.

1. John Kao, Innovation Nation (New York: Free Press, 2007).

2. Michael Bar-Zohar, Shimon Peres: The Biography (New York: Random House, 2007). p. 223. Also Reuters, “Peres Biography: Israel, France Had Secret Pact to Produce Nuclear Weapons,” May 30, 2007.

3. Michael M. Laskier, “Israel and Algeria amid French Colonialism and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1954–1978,” Israel Studies , June 2, 2001, pp. 1–32, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/israel_studies/v006/6.2laskier.html; retrieved September 2008.

4. De Gaulle quoted in Alexis Berg and Dominique Vidal, “De Gaulle’s Lonely Predictions,” Le Monde Diplomatique , June 2007, http://monde diplo.com/2007/06/10degaulle; retrieved September, 2008.

5. Quoted in Berg and Vidal, “De Gaulle’s Lonely Predictions.”

6. “Israel’s Fugitive Flotilla,” Time , January 12, 1970, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,942140,00.html.

7. Stewart Wilson, Combat Aircraft Since 1945 (Fyshwick, Australia: Aerospace Publications, 2000), p. 77.

8. Ruud Deurenberg, “Israel Aircraft Industries and Lavi,” Jewish Virtual Library , January 26, 2009, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/lavi.html.

9. James P. DeLoughry, “The United States and the Lavi,” Airpower Journal vol. 4, no. 3 (1990), pp. 34–44, http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/row/3fal90.htm.

10. Interview with Yossi Gross, director and cofounder of TransPharma Medical, and founder of many medical-device start-ups, December 2008.

CHAPTER 12

. From Nose Cones to Geysers

1. Interview with Doug Wood, head of creative affairs, Animation Lab, May 2008.

2. Interview with Yuval Dotan (fictitious name), December 2008.

3. Manuel Trajtenberg and Gil Shiff, “Identification and Mobility of Israeli Patenting Inventors,” Discussion Paper No. 5-2008, Pinchas Sapir Center for Development, Tel Aviv University, April 2008.

4. John Russell, “Compugen Transforms Its Business,” Bio-ITWorld .com, October 17, 2005, http://www.bio-itworld.com/issues/2005/oct/bus-compugen?page:int=-1.

5. Interview with Ruti Alon, partner, Pitango Venture Capital, and chairperson, boards of BioControl, BrainsGate, and TransPharma Medical, December 2008.

CHAPTER 13

. The Sheikh’s Dilemma

1. Interview with Michael Porter, professor of economics, Harvard Business School, March 2009.

2. Rhoula Khalaf, “Dubai’s Ruler Has Big Ideas for His Little City-State,” Financial Times , May 3, 2007.

3. Michael Matley and Laura Dillon, “Dubai Strategy: Past, Present, Future,” Harvard Business School, February 27, 2007, p. 3.

4. Quoted in Assaf Gilad, “Silicon Wadi: Who Will Internet Entrepreneurs Turn to in Crisis?” Cataclist , September 19, 1998.

5. Saul Singer, “Superpower in Silicon Wadi,” Jerusalem Post , June 19, 1998.

6. Quoted in Steve Lohr, “Like J. P. Morgan, Warren Buffett Braves a Crisis,” New York Times , October 5, 2008.

7. Quoted in Eyal Marcus, “Israeli Start-ups Impress at TechCrunch50,” Globes Online , September 14, 2008.

8. James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), pp. xix, 224.

9. Barbara W. Tuchman, Practicing History: Selected Essays (New York: Ballantine Books, 1982), quoted in Collins and Porras, Built to Last, p. xix.

10. Interview with Riad al-Allawi, Jordanian entrepreneur, March 2009.

11. Fadi Ghandour, in Stefan Theil, “Teaching Entrepreneurship in the Arab World,” Newsweek International , August 14, 2007; also available at http://www.gmfus.org/publications/article.cfm?id=332; retrieved March 2009.

12. Bernard Lewis, “Free at Last? The Arab World in the Twenty-first Century,” Foreign Affairs , March/April 2009. Similar observation has been made by Samuel Huntington.