The Chutzpah of Israeli Startups | Hacker News Reader

The Chutzpah of Israeli Startups

radoff.com

18 pointsjradoff16 comments

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

Heroism around doing ones work aka Protestant work ethic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic

You know, I often hear the "we lack manners" statement from Americans, and I never get where it's coming from. I suppose it all depends on who you compare with, but in my own limited experience (I've worked and traveled in Australia and central Europe) Americans are generally the nicest people I've ever met, in terms of everyday kindness and courtesy.

Lacking manners and being nice are different things. Yes, generally Americans are nice people. But when at the cafeteria I see people chewing with their mouths open, I often see guys cursing in the presence of women and children, and I see people violating basic rules of etiquette wherever I go.

Interesting. This "almost total lack of rank" is also present in Finland (mandatory conscription could be the reason why).

In Finnish the personal pronouns second-person singular (you) and plural (you) are not the same. Second-person singular is "sinä" and plural is "te". Latter can be used as a singular when talking with an older person, but most don't like to be addressed with it (equality - people don't want to stand out). For example if I were to meet the CEO of Nokia, I probably would use the singular "sinä". Even more so it is appropriate to address cabinet ministers with their first name.

Finnish women always use their first names when addressing each other, but men might not. We quite often use surnames (that practice certainly comes from the military) - could this be because we might have more unique surnames than first names?

We don't have that many start-ups. Instead we have 5th most patents per capita (Israel #16). http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_pat_gra_percap-economy...

Our "Chutzpah" would be "Sisu". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu

Does communication in Israel often include small talk? In Finland it certainly does not.

Funny you mention Finland, it is often brought up as a model of success in Israel. Many say that startups should aim to imitate Nokia's success instead of preferring short term gains by selling out to major US companies.

I think one reason for the difference may be that in Europe (though I haven't been to Finland yet) there's a very strong sense of continuity/stability - companies and indeed nations have been around for centuries - while in Israel everything feels fluid and uncertain, so people rarely do long term plans.

As for small talk, it exists but isn't required. It's not nearly as refined & important an art as it is in the US. People are comfortable with or without it. BTW, I just realized that many of the small talk among Israelis that just met is finding mutual acquaintances - with the country so small, you almost always find some. Is that so in Finland?

It is so.

About emulating Nokia (est. 1865)... it "never" was a tech start-up so it shouldn't be compared to new companies in terms of continuity/selling out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#History

I think it has more to do with its old industry - forestry and wood products. Some of the oldest companies in Scandinavia come from that industry. Swedish Stora Kopparberg (est. 1347) current Swedish/Finnish StoraEnso, which is the oldest LLC in the world was a mining company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stora_Enso#History%20of%20Stora

Strong tradition of continuity can also lead to risk aversion. That's a bad trait for entrepreneurs & VCs. We should take more risks, because our worst case scenario does not include losing health coverage etc.

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).

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.

"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.

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com