
The Chutzpah of Israeli Startups - jradoff
http://radoff.com/blog/2009/12/05/chutzpah-of-israeli-startups/
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orangecat
_How can we encourage people to take more risks in the USA? Clearly, we’ve got
a great startup culture here–particularly in regions like Silicon Valley and
Boston, but could we be doing more elsewhere in the country?_

Decouple health insurance from employers.

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nir
I think there may some misunderstanding of the "Chutzpa" ingredient. As an
Israeli living in NYC for the past 3 years, I don't think Americans are less
entrepreneurial or more risk averse than Israelis. What is _very_ different is
the manner of communication - which I think has as much to do with the fact
that modern Hebrew is extremely young, and simply hadn't yet evolved the
"syntactic sugar", so to speak, that makes American communication somewhat
more abstract.

The Hebrew mode of communication vs the American English one can be likened to
executives at a board meeting vs engineers working on fixing a bug.

This has positive & negative implications: communication in Israel, translated
literally to English, would seem blunt and sometimes plain rude to Americans
(and remember, I'm in NYC ;)). On the other hand, the same directness (and
almost total lack of rank - you call your army officer, or cabinet ministers,
by their first name) tends to get assumptions questioned, ideas presented and
problems recognized quite faster.

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TriinT
_"This has positive & negative implications: communication in Israel,
translated literally to English, would seem blunt and sometimes plain rude to
Americans."_

That is quite interesting! Especially so when one takes into account that
Americans i) tend to lack manners and ii) take pride in being direct.

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access_denied
My people (the Germans) have this reputation for being impolite. I tend to
think this is because we have the tendecy to be brutally direct when we want
to be honest. We like to be honest, in that sense anyway, regarding matters of
work. This comes off as rude to members of the civilized world (say, the
British or Japanese). (I am writing this after +6 years of experience living
in foreign countries.)

Another observation: the heroism around doing ones work is strong in Germany,
we have that in common with the Americans (in the West, don't ask certain
Asians). Yes, certainly there are many French (for instance) fellows, who like
theire work. But the Germans (and Americans) have that tendency to get "macho"
about it.

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nir
The first time I visited Germany as a Sales Engineer, the company's local
German salesperson told me "Be direct. People here appreciate a straight,
yes/no reply". I was relieved to hear this :)

I suppose some might consider communication in German less direct due to
issues like Sie vs Du separation. But since I wasn't speaking German it didn't
really register with me.

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neilc
_Israel has the highest density of tech start-ups in the world._

Comparing the density of startups in Israel vs. the entire US or the entire
European region is misleading, because the US and Europe are so much larger
and more heterogenous. It would be more accurate to compare the density of
startups in Israel vs. Silicon Valley (comparable geographic area and
population).

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crux
You should be careful in the way that you use the word 'Chutzpah'—in English
people usually use it to mean ballsiness, but in Yiddish it still means
impudence, affrontery, gall. Not a good quality. I don't know about modern
Israeli but given its negative cognates I wouldn't be surprised if it is still
not a nice thing to accuse someone of there, too.

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mynameishere
"Chutzpah". Very Gladwellian. The simplest explanation is that Israel has lots
of Jews, who tend to be smart and hard-working, as demonstrated consistently
for 1000s of years. The need-a-poker-face-to-utter-it explanation is that they
have "Chutzpah".and that's the key to success.

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crux
Wait a minute, you think it's reasonable and patent to assert that there's an
inherent racial quality (we know it's not cultural, since Israeli culture can
barely be said to be a hundred years old) that makes Jews smart and hard-
working, whereas the assertion that Israeli culture is less risk-averse than
American is utterly absurd? I don't particularly agree with him but I think I
agree less with you.

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mynameishere
Standardized testing, historical influence, Nobel prize results, Fields metal
prize results, Senate and House election results, Ivy League enrollment
results, Forbes 400 membership, chess grandmaster positions, etc, etc, all
point to unusual abilities on the part of Jews. There are only a few
categories where they aren't represented to a wild disproportion. To say that
"Chutzpah" (aka Assholism) is the reason, is absolute nonsense. Human
endeavour deals in intelligence and little else.

