CHICAGO PREMIERE!
82 minutes. 2014. Directors: Daniel Sivan and Yossi Bloch. In Hebrew with English subtitles.
There are more start-ups in Tel Aviv than in all of Europe, and more venture capital invested per person in the start-up nation of Israel than anywhere else in the world. But who are the people behind these start-ups and what does it take to follow a dream? The directors follow four teams over two years from Silicon Wadi to Silicon Valley. In their unflinching bird’s eye view, we feel the principals’ entrepreneurial pain as they sacrifice friends, and family and everything they own, hoping to strike hi-tech gold.
“The mindset of the typical Israeli entrepreneur has…helped shape the business. He (and it is usually a he, for there are even fewer female entrepreneurs than in Silicon Valley) is more of a nuts-and-bolts innovator than a clever marketer. Having grown up in a truly multicultural society, he is well equipped to deal with diversity. Being used to less generous funding, he knows how to improvise. Many Israelis also see their work as an act of patriotism, which explains how they can be both ultra-competitive, yet help each other out. And they are more interested in inventing things than in protecting them with patents.”
Silicon Wadi
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Howard Tullman in PersonNov. 1
Howard Tullman is an American serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, educator, writer, lecturer and art collector. A graduate of Northwestern University (B.A., 1967) and Northwestern Law School (JD., 1970) and former Ford Foundation Fellow, he turned around Kendall College and founded Tribeca Flashpoint Academy before heading up one of the largest digital start-up incubators in the country, 1871 Chicago.
