Start-up Nation

As a rare truly independent research institution in its field, the Council on Foreign Relations is a special place. It is an honor for Dan to have a home there. Richard Haass, CFR’s president, was immediately intrigued by the idea of a book on the Israeli economy. He contributed important insights and helped us draft expertise from CFR’s diverse scholars and members. We are also specifically grateful to CFR’s Isobel Coleman, author of the forthcoming book Paradise Beneath Her Feet: Women and Reform in the Middle East (Random House), for sharing her observations with us. Gary Samore, formerly of CFR, provided guidance early on. Jim Lindsay, CFR’s director of studies, made several important suggestions on improving the manuscript. The CFR staff is among the most professional of any organization we’ve dealt with in the private, academic, or public sectors; we would like to specifically thank Janine Hill for all her patient assistance, and Lisa Shields and her communications team.

Part of our book was written in the eclectic Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, which made an invaluable contribution by hosting Saul as a library fellow. Our thanks to director Gabriel Motzkin and librarians Yaffa Weingarten and Paul Maurer for all their gracious assistance.

We are deeply indebted to our industrious and creative team of research assistants: Michal Lewin-Epstein was our lead researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations; Dani Gilbert spent a summer at CFR with us and then continued doing part-time research while at the London School of Economics; Joshua Kram joined our team for a stint after serving as an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign; Talia Gordis brought her own experience in IDF intelligence, and Ian Mitch and Anton Ornstein also helped at CFR as we began the project.

A number of people we interviewed, as well as one of our researchers, came from Arab countries. We respect their request for anonymity, since association with this book could prevent them from working in the Arab world; and we are grateful for their contributions.

With speed and deftness, our friend Judy Heiblum of Sterling Lord Literistic—and a Unit 8200 alumnus—made important suggestions on the structure of the manuscript.

We thank all the friends and family who read the manuscript; your sharp and candid feedback sent us back to the drawing board. We are especially grateful to Dan Allen, Stephen Backer, Max Boot, Paul Bremer, Reed Dickens, Shane Dolgin, Jonathan Ehrlich, Annette Furst, Mark Gerson, Henry Gomez, Alan Isenberg, Terry Kassel, Roger Marrero, Roman Martinez, Jim Miller, Josh Opperer, Matt Rees, Helen Senor, Suzanne and Max Singer, Andrew Vogel, and Pete Wehner, who read the manuscript from cover to cover under considerable time pressure.

Dale and Bill Fairbanks (Dan’s in-laws) provided a quiet writing refuge in their art studio in Pensacola, Florida, keeping him well fed, highly caffeinated, and intensely focused for a long stretch leading up to the publisher’s deadline.

A group of Dan’s friends and business partners were extremely patient as this book was being written. Devon Archer, Dan Burrell, David Fife, Chris Heinz, and Jenny Stein deserve special thanks. Paul Singer, while never directly interviewed for this book, has been a teacher about macroeconomics without even realizing it. His very strong views about innovation economics impacted our thinking about the context for this book in the postcrash global economy.

We interviewed over one hundred people for this book, and wish to thank all of them for their time and wisdom. In particular, Hall of Fame Israeli venture investors Eli Barkat, Yigal Erlich, Yadin Kaufmann, Erel Margalit, Jon Medved, Chemi Peres, and Yossi Vardi have been living and telling the Start-up Nation story from long before we got involved; they were our guides. Jon Medved, in particular, was pitching the Israeli economy to the world before it was on anyone’s map. Other extremely busy people who spent a lot of time with us in multiple interviews were Shai Agassi, Tal Keinan, and Scott Thompson. Isaac “Yitz” Applbaum and Alan Feld went out of their way to put themselves “on call” for us. Professor Shira Wolovsky Weiss helped us early on, as did Ken Pucker.

A number of U.S. companies have a strong presence in Israel and truly “get” the Start-up Nation. Current and former leaders from three in particular opened their doors to us in Israel and in Silicon Valley and provided lots of access: thank you to Google’s Eric Schmidt, David Krane, Yossi Mattias, Andrew McLaughlin, and Yoelle Maarek; Intel’s Shmuel Eden and David Perlmutter; and Cisco’s Michael Laor and Yoav Samet.