Start-up Nation by Dan Senor Page A

real advantage was having no inhibition about traveling to far-flung places in pursuit of markets that desperately
     needed its products—places where, in the 1960s and ’70s, entrepreneurs from the West simply did not visit. As a result, Netafim
     now operates in 110 countries over five continents. In Asia it has offices in Vietnam, Taiwan, New Zealand, China (two offices),
     India, Thailand, Japan, Philippines, Korea, and Indonesia. In South America it has a presence in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico,
     Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Netafim also has eleven offices in Europe and the former Soviet Union, one in Australia,
     and one in North America.
    And because Netafim’s technology became so indispensable, a number of foreign governments that historically had been hostile
     to Israel began to open diplomatic channels. Netafim is active in former Soviet bloc Muslim states like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,
     and Uzbekistan, which led to warmer relations with Israel’s government after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 2004,
     then trade minister Ehud Olmert tagged along on a Netafim trip to South Africa in the hope of forming new strategic alliances
     there. The trip resulted in $30 million in contracts for Netafim, plus a memorandum of understanding between the two governments
     on agriculture and arid lands development.
    Israeli entrepreneurs and executives, though, have themselves been known to engage in self-appointed diplomatic missions on
     behalf of the state. Many of Israel’s globe-trotting businesspeople are not just technology evangelists but endeavor to “sell”
     the entire Israeli economy. Jon Medved—the inventor of the “nickname barometer” to measure informality—is one such example.
    Raised in California, Medved was trained in political activism, not engineering. His first career was as a Zionist organizer.
     He moved to Israel in 1981 and made a small living by going on speaking tours to preach about the future of Israel to Israelis.
     But a conversation he had in 1982 with an executive at Rafael, one of Israel’s largest defense contractors, burst Medved’s
     bubble. He was told, unceremoniously, that what he was doing was a waste of time and energy. Israel didn’t need more professional
     Zionists or politicians, the executive stated flatly; Israel needed businesspeople. Medved’s father had started a small company
     in California that built optical transmitters and receivers. So Medved began pitching his father’s product in Israel. Instead
     of going from kibbutz to kibbutz to sell the future of Zionism, he went from company to company to sell optical technology.
    Later, he got into the investment business and founded Israel Seed Partners, a venture capital firm, in his Jerusalem garage.
     His fund grew to over $260 million and he invested in sixty Israeli companies, including Shopping.com, which was bought by
     eBay, and Compugen and Answers.com, both of which went public on the NASDAQ. In 2006, Medved left Israel Seed to launch and
     manage a start-up himself—Vringo, a company that pioneered video ringtones for cell phones, which has quickly penetrated the
     European and Turkish markets.
    But his own company is less important. Regardless of what Medved is doing for his enterprises, he spends a lot of time—
too much
time, his investors complain—preaching about the Israeli economy. On every trip abroad, Medved lugs a portable projector
     and laptop loaded with a memorable slide presentation chronicling the accomplishments of the Israeli tech scene. In speeches—and
     in conversations with anyone who will listen—Medved celebrates all the Israeli landmark “exits” in which companies were bought
     or went public, and catalogs dozens of “made in Israel” technologies.
    In his presentations he says only half-jokingly that if Israel followed the lead of “Intel Inside”—Intel’s marketing campaign
     to highlight the ubiquity of its chips—with similar “Israel Inside”