Ephraim Katzir was the 4th president of Israel. His paper, titled "My Contributions to Science and Society" tells Katzir' story as an autobiography intricately enlaced in the story of the state of Israel. The paper not only inspired me, but also gave me context and a sense of proportion. While I recommend printing and reading the entire doc, below I've quoted some of the sections I found particularly inspiring.
Israelis spend more time on the Internet more than almost every other country, according to the latest eMarketer report on UK Internet Users and Usage.
Since 2005, the FutureBrand Country Brand Index, produced in partnership with BBC World News, has measured the strength of a country brand. Israel moved in the right direction in 2010, climbing 11 spots to #30. Israel was also crowned as one of the 'Rising Starts of 2010' along with Chile, Argentina and Iceland.
The World Bank published the Doing Business 2011 report earlier this week, measuring how easy and pricey it is to complete the various bureaucratic procedures and red tape involved in setting up, running and shutting down a firm. Israel went up one spot from last year in the latest report, ranking 29 among the 183 countries included in the study.
Bootstrapping can be really hard for some early stage startups, but Israeli startup Enigmai, makes it seem easy. Started in 2009, Enigmai built and deployed a simplified workforce management SasS tool that enables SMBs and large companies to better manage their human resources. VC Cafe interviewed Engimai's founder and CEO Adir Iakya to learn more about how this bootstrapped startup is planning to replace the incumbents.
The Q3 2010 MoneyTree report for Israel was published yesterday with somewhat encouraging results: VC investments in Israel continue to grow and some $253 million were invested in VC-backed tech companies in the third quarter, representing a 23% increase compared to the previous quarter and a 42% compared to the same period last year which only saw $178 million invested.
A cool little project by Lukaz Kostka @ljdk tags startups on a map using the CrunchBase API and CloudMade Maps.
For the fourth consecutive year, TWS is taking place in Tel Aviv today with an impressive line up of judges, including silicon valley's most prominent angel Ron Conway and his partner David Lee (which recently got media attention for 'angelgate'), Saul Klein of Index Ventures and Seedacmp and Yair Goldfinger, founder of ICQ and Dotomi and angel investor in Israeli startups. If you're reading this on Monday the 18th, tune in to the live stream of the conference at http://www.twsconf.com/
Shana Tova from VC Cafe - a few wishes for the new year and a look back on the year we've had.
BizMe2, a new Israeli startup led by serial entrepreneur Yair Margolin, is looking to do to conferences what Wordpress did to blogging. I spoke with Yair last week to learn more about BizMe2 and plans for the future. The conversation was in Hebrew, so hopefully nothing got "lost in translation".
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