When you're stuck in congestion, opens the Waze to try to find a way out. If taking the bus, the Czech Moovit to know if it is near the point. Upon arriving home, turn on your notebook (which, as 92% of all laptops on the planet, probably use Intel CPU) and puts a song to play while preparing dinner - whose entrance is a Saladinha of cherry tomatoes. You do not know, but, in all these situations, consumed coming technologies in the same place: Israel. The laptop Intel chips were invented there, where the company has a base with 8000 employees. Waze, now owned by Google, has also emerged there - the same origin Moovit, Wix sites tool and even the cherry tomatoes we eat (the species was developed by the biotechnology company Hazera Genetics). Today, Israel is the country with the highest concentration of startups per capita in the world: there are about 6000 of them, for a population of 8.4 million people. Each year, there are about 800 new startups in the country, which has been dubbed Silicon Wadi (wadi is an Arabic term meaning "valley"). "The market here is so heated that promising ideas are held by investors, and not the opposite," says the Brazilian Michel Abadi, who lives for 12 years in Israel and is a member of a fund that finances startups.
This seems even more surprising taking into account the geopolitical situation: Israel has been involved in five wars in the last 15 years. But the technological wave can be explained by three major factors. First, skilled labor: Israel has good schools and, with the end of the Soviet Union received 1 million Russian immigrants, many of them highly educated.
The second factor is money. The country receives US $ 10 billion a year in foreign investment. It may seem a modest number close to $ 60 billion that Brazil receives. But if you consider that Israel has fewer inhabitants than the city of São Paulo, it is an avalanche of investment. This allows it to be the largest investor in research as a share of GDP (the United States is sixth, and Brazil is the 31st. In the ranking), according to a survey from the University of Toronto.
The third factor is the war itself. Historically, all major technological innovations have to do in some way with it. The foundations of the 20th century, as the transistor and the laser, the more elements present in the 21st century, almost all had military funding. Silicon Valley, California, was born as a technological center of the US Navy (and Google began to be developed in 1994, thanks to a scholarship partially paid by Darpa, the high-tech Pentagon division). Israel is one of the countries that spend with his army: 5.2% of GDP, according to World Bank data (the country is ahead to the USA and Russia, which spend 3.5% and 4.5%, respectively, all that produce with military defense). This mountain of money will stop in technological innovation, which then end up gaining civilian versions - and fueling the scene of startups.
A robot between two worlds
After participating in the Vacation from War ( "War holiday"), an event that brought together Jews and Palestinians for three months in Germany, the developer Avner Peled returned to Israel thinking about how to keep up and strengthen ties. She had the idea to create a telepresence robot, called Separation Wall-E. "He would be in Tel Aviv streets and would be controlled remotely by people in the West Bank," he says, which has already built a prototype. Thanks to the project, Avner was accepted at the Media Lab Helsinki (innovation lab at the University of Aalto in Finland), where he will spend the next two years perfecting the robot.
The army also just approaching the Israelis, in a way. In Israel, military service is mandatory for men and women, and lasts at least two to three years. This causes people to meet and are forced to live for a long time, which ends up producing a natural networking. "No wonder many of the startups CEOs come from elite army units," says Lior Romanowsky, director of ThemeGo (a site that organizes trips to theme parks) and also official fighting the Israeli Air Force.
So much so that to Unit 8200, ciberinteligência division of the Israeli army, gave rise to a startup millionaire. Two members of this unit, which had created a software to analyze the financial transactions of suspected terrorists, had the idea of adapting the tool - and use it to detect scams in e-commerce sites. Born to Fraud Sciences, a company that was eventually sold to PayPal, giant payments on the Internet, for $ 169 million. Another born of military networking company is Feature.FM, which created a platform to distribute music from new artists in streaming sites. It was created by officials Mamram (term meaning "Computer and Information Center"), who managed the technological infrastructure of the army of Israel. "We live in the desert, we need technology and innovation up to water the plants," explains Zohar Aharoni, founder of the company.
Cabinet ago
In Silicon Valley, companies spread across San Francisco and cities around, as Cupertino (home of Apple) and Mountain View (Google's headquarters). The epicenter of Silicon Wadi is on Rothschild Avenue in Tel Aviv, which includes historical buildings, offices and coworking spaces - where any startup can set up your office without renting the property itself. One of the biggest is the Mind Space, which came a year and a half in one floor of a building of the avenue. Today, it occupies more than five floors, with 700 people working. Everyone sees and hears what others are doing.
The site has meeting rooms for times when you need privacy. Interestingly, one of them is secret (to access, you need to push a closet). It is that the idea is to discuss it in front of others even. "You become Mindspace member to have an office with all inclusive, including the community," explains the manager Dari Shechter. "This is a business commune."
The sense of community comes from Israel's roots, which was established based on rural community structures, the kibbutz. "Here people help themselves," says Ron Ozery. He cites an example. Once a potential competitor spent hours explaining how the company itself had failed - and giving tips so that it does not repeat the same mistakes. Ron is the creator of JobSwipe, an application that functions as the Tinder, only to search for and provide jobs. He usually works in WeWork, coworking space that was born in Rotschild avenue and today is a powerhouse, with 54 offices in Israel, Europe and the US and a market value of $ 10 billion. Now the company wants to take a step further - created WeLive, an area of "cohabitation" in New York, which will house 600 people in a 20-story building. They are small and furnished apartments, but the similarities with a common condo end there. The building will have fitness classes, parties and community dinners and a social network itself, all coordinated through an application.
This community trend leaves little room for lone wolves - as is the case of Yaniv Schuldenfrei, 30, who works alone at home in Tel Aviv, in only his dog company, Bella. About two years he develops a search engine for airline tickets that claims to be revolutionary. "Alice is for those who have complete flexibility as to the dates or the destination of a trip. My system is for those looking for price," he explains. Funded with own resources, he prefers to invest the money they would spend a coworking in the tool itself. "It's very hard work, think and deal with the crisis alone," he admits.
On the other side of the wall
While in Israel for at least 60 business incubators for startups, across the border there is only one. It is the Gaza Sky Geeks, the Gaza Strip, which emerged in 2011 and has helped launch 16 digital companies like Wasselini (taxi app), Tanaffas (site giving access to psychologists), Sabeel (a kind of Foursquare) and Datrios (social network for football lovers). The incubator, which last year received $ 200,000 in donations, is selecting the next start-ups that will help. A curiosity: in Gaza, 60% of computer engineering students are women.
In a world of so many startups can find even more unlikely combinations than the solo flight. If the HolyXplore, led by Shlomi Gilboa and his two sons: the journalist Alon, 24, and the master of science Elad computing, 33. The platform serves to organize and facilitate religious group travel. "People end up missing out on numerous social networks," says Shlomi, who in addition to playing the startup is also a doctor.
People from other countries have also gone to Israel to try to ride the wave of startups. "I like to believe I have entrepreneurial vein," says the London Sharonna Karni Cohen, who five years ago emigrated to Tel Aviv and is the creator of Dreame, an online platform where worldwide people can describe their dreams or memories - for they are transformed into illustrations, made by 50 artists from 15 cities. "The Israelis are both spontaneous and rational time, very down to earth, because of the war and the army. This combination is perfect for an entrepreneur. Here you become more alert to things," he believes.
But when a startup goes right, the path ends up being the opposite - leave Israel and go to the US. This was the case Eatwith site, a sort of culinary Airbnb: if you can cook, can sell tickets for a lunch or dinner at your place. The site has grown, it gained users in 30 countries, and the company decided to move to San Francisco. But its development director, Andrea Rosen, hit the foot to stay in Tel Aviv. "It's because I love the city," she says, which is divided between the long hours of a startup and also long hours as a DJ in places like Kuli Soul, mixed ballad with art exhibitions related to technology. For Andrea, the energy that moves startups also moves the busy life of the city - day and night. "When I want to rest, go to Berlin," he says.
StoreSMART: it created a system that recognizes your phone via Wi-Fi, and maps your drive in stores (which products you have seen, for how long, etc.). The data is transferred to the merchant.
Wework: multinational network coworking (shared offices, in which any person or company can work for a fee). It reached US $ 10 billion market value.
Unit 8200: ciberinteligência is the division of the Army. Gave rise to a startup incubator and several successful companies - one of them, online fraud detection, was purchased by Paypal.
Dreame: online platform where you can describe a dream - and get a painting based on it. The tables start at $ 40, and you choose the artist (they are 50, spread across 15 cities).
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