What Israel’s startup scene can teach the world

Israel is a tiny country with an outsized impact on tech. Not only does it house as many as 3,000 tech-related startups (centred around Tel Aviv), but more than $6-billion a year flows into the country through exits (mergers, acquisitions or IPOs), according to Israel’s IVC Research Center.

Yossi Vardi, 73, sometimes called the grandfather of Israeli tech, is a serial investor and long-time booster of his country’s innovation sector. In 1996, he famously funded his son Arik’s company Mirabilis, which invented early message system ICQ and was sold to AOL in 1998 for more than $400-million. A featured speaker at Cybertech Canada conferences held by Israel’s embassy to Canada (and hosted at Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District last month), Mr. Vardi was asked what’s made Israel so good at startups.

Israel is often called the startup nation. How did it happen?

There is immense, enormous curiosity about this phenomena which happened in Israel, this hotbed, this mania of creating startups. If you do it on a per capita basis, it’s even more impressive, because we are only 8.2 million people. Read More…