Jared Moya
August 8th, 2006, 09:10 AM
TEL AVIV, Israel--If engineers here seem unfazed by the high-pressure environment of today's technology industries, it is because many have been trained under life-and-death circumstances.
When the Arab-Israeli war erupted in 1973, the Israeli army asked a couple of professors at the Israel Institute of Technology to come up with a way to scramble the guidance systems of incoming Russian-made missiles. The mission, according to the institute, was accomplished in two days.
"In Israel you don't plan. You improvise," said Zak Dechovich, who worked in the government's cybercrime unit before becoming chief executive of SecureOL, a software security company. "The market has its own forces."
Few markets, however, face anything like the forces imposed on Israel. Just last month, the technology institute was shut down in the first few weeks of conflict with Lebanon. Yet the country's tech industry is charting unprecedented growth despite the current war and chronic political disruption, drawing more investment from venture capitalists and multinational corporations than any other time in its history.
Between January and July of this year alone, 45 Israeli tech companies were acquired, five committed to mergers, and 12 went public, according to the Israel Venture Capital Association. Buyers included Microsoft, IBM, EMC, Oracle and Johnson & Johnson. In the same period, British venture capital firm 3i, Greylock Partners and Opus Capital all have recently begun or expanded investment activity in the country.
Industry organizations have tallied 2,642 high-tech companies in operation within Israeli borders, a ratio of one for every 2,400 people. Some, such as Check Point Software Technologies and Amdocs, have become publicly traded global corporations, but most are relatively small businesses.
"The number of start-ups is second only to Silicon Valley," said Tali Aben, a general partner for Gemini Israel Funds.
"We have at least as much entrepreneurship in Israel as in all of Europe put together."
--Amos Drory, American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
http://news.com.com/2009-1008_3-6102135.html
When the Arab-Israeli war erupted in 1973, the Israeli army asked a couple of professors at the Israel Institute of Technology to come up with a way to scramble the guidance systems of incoming Russian-made missiles. The mission, according to the institute, was accomplished in two days.
"In Israel you don't plan. You improvise," said Zak Dechovich, who worked in the government's cybercrime unit before becoming chief executive of SecureOL, a software security company. "The market has its own forces."
Few markets, however, face anything like the forces imposed on Israel. Just last month, the technology institute was shut down in the first few weeks of conflict with Lebanon. Yet the country's tech industry is charting unprecedented growth despite the current war and chronic political disruption, drawing more investment from venture capitalists and multinational corporations than any other time in its history.
Between January and July of this year alone, 45 Israeli tech companies were acquired, five committed to mergers, and 12 went public, according to the Israel Venture Capital Association. Buyers included Microsoft, IBM, EMC, Oracle and Johnson & Johnson. In the same period, British venture capital firm 3i, Greylock Partners and Opus Capital all have recently begun or expanded investment activity in the country.
Industry organizations have tallied 2,642 high-tech companies in operation within Israeli borders, a ratio of one for every 2,400 people. Some, such as Check Point Software Technologies and Amdocs, have become publicly traded global corporations, but most are relatively small businesses.
"The number of start-ups is second only to Silicon Valley," said Tali Aben, a general partner for Gemini Israel Funds.
"We have at least as much entrepreneurship in Israel as in all of Europe put together."
--Amos Drory, American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
http://news.com.com/2009-1008_3-6102135.html