Israel's Mad Scientists: Business Hackers, Programmer Bloggers, Recruiting Networkers

Wind sailing, December 2009: Young entrepreneurs in Tel Aviv beaches can start a long day of start-up building with a sail. Not very common but still an option / © 2010

Israel's new mad scientists are following in the path of the 1980's hackers, 2000's bloggers and 2005's social networkers. Mad scientist is the best term I can come up with right now. Hacker, blogger and social networker are also just analogies. It is certainly a mad gold rush to establish the "NEXT THING". Sharp changes in technology, business situations, political status and even personal work preferences are sprouting ideas for Internet and real world products. Technology is pushing innovators into WEB2.0, SaaS, Social-Networking, iPod accessories and apps, Face Book / Linked-IN / Twitter plug-ins, portable computing (NETbooks and more) and all sort of cloud computing unimagined even a year ago. Culturally and financially Israel's "turn to the East" is also pushing entrepreneurs in Israel in a different direction than before. The sharp business cycles in the US and Europe has been pushing Israelis to look east for business partners and markets, this shift is starting to yield results. Unlike the European and American counterparts, central and far-east Asians are much less concerned about Israel's security and political issues. They see Israel's ability to innovate and produce technology. To Koreans, Taiwanese and Indian businessman and bureaucrats the situation in Gaza is an unfortunate media blemish seem "just unfortunate". Also Asians have more experience with national and racial clashes.

Today's mad scientists look more like young literature professors or your local business manager. They dress casual, carry a laptop usually in a backpack and are on the phone and in meetings about 1/2 of their working time. The focus is usually on a few areas Israel is strong at: technology, security, water and now also electric energy. They usually start out meeting in cafes then graduate to the living room or the spare bedroom. Once their idea gathers momentum they find a few people and a group of three to six decides to put in the time. The last two years (2008, 2009) seed investors have disappeared so most try to make it without salaries. For most middle class Israelis this lasts six months to a year and then it's back to a full time job. The ones with a good idea and a winning teams will start selling their product or raise some venture capital funding. The ones who are not as lucky or smart usually go on for about a year and then move to something else. From all the hundreds of tries there are a few who actually succeeded and we are just now starting to see the "exits" Israeli start-up are searching for so hard. Well, this is a glimpse of the state of affairs in the little "start-up nation" ... come back for more buzz... there is plenty here to write about, Ami