(drum rolling)
(audience clapping)
- So I came to the capital
of Jewlandia, Israel,
(laughing)
to talk to a fellow Jew.
What is different about Israel
and then how did they
create such amazing people?
- Oh, That's interesting.
- To make so many amazing businesses?
- There's like 14 million
Jews in the world.
- Yeah, that's it.
- which is nothing, and there
are 68 Nobel prize winners.
- We normally don't share our secrets,
but we'll share a few of them today.
- So here's the thing, right?
As Jews, we don't have a lot
of great Jewish athletes.
Name one.
- Oh, I never thought, no there's a guy.
- Joakim Noah's half Jew?
Half Jew, Half Jew.
- There's a bass player--
- We got Drake, we got Lenny Kravitz--
- [Noah] We got half Drake.
- We got half of Drake,
half of Lenny Kravitz.
So the thing is in Israel, the
rock stars are entrepreneurs.
And that started in the 90s,
Yossi Vardi's son sold ICQ
and made like hundreds
of millions of dollars.
- Shai from Fiverr's a pretty famous dude.
- Right, so like here, the rock stars
are entrepreneurs very much so--
- Interesting.
- and it may not be high tech
but it's entrepreneurs as a whole--
- Yeah.
- are rock stars.
And part of that is
like the salary of your
average non-high tech,
rather, person is super low.
- That's interesting.
- The only way to make
real money in Israel
is to sell your company
for 100 million dollars.
- And not just that
is that a lot of people I've noticed from
the tech industry get
paid American salaries.
- Yeah, right.
- So my cousin works
in more blue-collar stuff,
they make Israeli salary
which is like 10,000 shekel,
which is only 2,500 bucks
a month, so it's like 30,000 a year.
But the people in tech, I was
talking to some developers,
they're in like the--
- 35k a month.
- Yeah, big six figure salaries,
just like they're working in America.
Number two, everyone has
to go to the military.
- Yes, so there's a lot there to unpack,
there's one, the obvious tech side,
so 18 year old kid goes in, gets selected,
it's obviously the cream of the crop.
You get a three month training course,
which is basically everything
you need to know about programming.
In the IDF it's like look
we're building something
right now to do
counterintelligence on Iran.
You have three months to get
up to speed with PHP, Java,
whatever, just write it--
- It's applicable.
- and get out there.
- It's like saying you went
to Harvard for developer.
- Bingo.
- Israel's only got
like six million people.
- Right.
- I think the surrounding
neighbor countries have got,
let's just say, 50 million?
How many do you think are
in all the ones that don't like Israel?
A good amount.
- A lot.
- More than six million.
- More than that.
- If those people all had the same
physical weapons and they
tried to fight, obviously
Israel would lose.
- Clearly.
- So from two perspectives,
like from jiu jitsu or some shit,
you have to leverage intelligence
'cause that's the only way
they can fight off--
- Yeah.
- an enemy that's got four
times the amount of people.
So that is why development
in computer science
has been so big--
- Totally, and counter
surveillance like Mossad is the,
I don't care what you think
about Israel, Mossad's like
the most elite intelligence
organization in the world.
These are the guys who were--
- Yeah, but they have to be.
- calling the CIA and being
like, hey, there's this weird
thing happening in, you know, 2001.
- Why are Jews better at
negotiating than everyone else?
I guess Indians are comparable.
One thing I don't think people realize
is that the country's
been around seven years.
- Right.
- America has been around 300 years,
Britain's been around forever.
They don't have as many rules here yet.
Not that it's like Southeast Asia crazy--
- Yeah, the laws are very different.
- It's not Southeast Asia crazy
where you can drive at any
part you want--
- Sure.
- but, it's still new where
they're still evolving.
So it's just, like, in America
it's like, ah, here's how
things have gone and I think
why Israel has been able to
innovate is 'cause they're
like, alright, this is new
let's just figure it out on our own.
With the language, too,
they have words like rotsa.
In America you have to
say, "I want to eat."
In Hebrew it's one word, rotsa.
And so I think that
impacts how the culture
is 'cause it's like,
you ask why Israelis are always
like this (snaps fingers)
it's 'cause they're
words are actually short.
- Yes.
- And it's something because
they don't have as many people,
they don't have as much
time to protect themselves,
they're a new country and
so that has lead to a lot
more innovation and a lot
more, here's the exact things
we need to be doing, let's go
do that, and I think that's
why when you meet an
Israeli they're like, short.
- Yeah, yeah.
- It's not that they're short,
it's that they have one word for this.
- All these people come,
millions of people start coming
from Europe, from Africa, from--
- Oh, interesting.
- You know?
And everyone has to find
themselves in their own place and
(speaks foreign language)
to create culture,
to found a new culture.
- If you look at America a
lot, about a lot of who are
the most successful people--
- Mmm hmm.
- What's one thing about them?
Immigrants.
- They're immigrants.
- So think about what happened
in Israel, whether it's
our country or not our
country, that's a whole 'nother
episode for people who
give a fuck. (laughing)
But, in America, a lot of the
immigrants work the hardest
and so, if you think about
Israel seven years ago,
it was 100% immigrants.
- Israel now has all these
crazy physicists, we have all
these crazy medical researchers,
all these doctors, today, right?
So think about what happened 20 years ago?
Fall of the Soviet Union--
- We have the best Russians.
- 1.3 million people,
Jewish-Russians who were working on
nuclear physics, who were working on
all this crazy stuff, come here.
I had a friend do a spinal
surgery that only can
be performed by three
people in the entire world.
Super sophisticated, two of
them are Israeli in Russian
and one of them is an Israeli in New York.
- What is negotiating
like in Israel for you?
What's something that
you've had to negotiate for?
- People are really
aggressive, but I think
what's interesting is under
that aggression, you can
fight and argue, negotiate,
whatever, and at the end of
the thing it's like, alright
well, Shabbat shalom,
have a wonderful Sabbath.
I recently tried to negotiate
for someone and the guy's like,
"What do you think this is?"
I was like, "This is Israel,
that's what I think this is."
(laughing)
- Yeah.
- I get by the way, this is
a pro tip for any of you guys
if you travel around the
world: I apply American manners
and fluent Hebrew, so I'll
just be like, "Listen, is there
"any way possibly that you
could please da da da da?"
And they're just like, "Whoa,
you didn't bark at me, like,
"what's going on?"
- Yeah.
- And they'll just give me what I want.
- In Israel what I've noticed
is when you're negotiating,
I went to go buy postcards
and he's like, "Three for 10,"
and I think the thing about
Israel is not that they have
negotiating superpower,
but they'll just ask.
- Right.
- So, I just default ask so he
said three for 10 and I said,
"Three for eight."
And he's like, "10."
I'm like, "Alright, eight."
He's like, "Okay."
- Israel has this extremely
direct culture in general,
and it also applies to business,
and it saves so much time.
The example I always give I
was interning at a VC fund,
I was kind of in the IR, of
sorts, before business school,
and the first day I go
in, and the guy gave me
very clearly busywork.
He's just like, "I want
you to research all our
"companies and give me
your thoughts on it.
"Spend a couple days on it."
I was like, I'm not gonna spend a couple
days on it, you have like
10 portfolio companies,
so I read about each one,
delivered an excel sheet of like,
here's what I think, here
are the opportunities
in the market, whatever.
I turned it over by like 3:00 that day.
And the guy looks at it and he's like,
"This is crap, do it again."
I was like, no one's ever spoken to me
like that and at first it's
super off-putting, but then
how much time did he just save?
And if you don't get offended by it
and just realize yeah, it was crap work.
I didn't wanna be doing
busywork so I rushed it.
But in the U.S., someone would be like,
"Listen, I think this is great
what you did, da da da da,"
and then it would take an hour,
it would be an hour long
conversation instead of
a three second conversation,
number one, and number two, I
wouldn't understand the fundamental point.
- Interesting.
- I'd be like, oh, my work
is good, I just need to add.
No, I need to start over.
Women play a really big role here.
I think there's sexism in
every kind of western workplace
and I think there's
discrimination against women,
and that's all awful,
but here I like to think
that women have much more of a say, like,
first female prime minister
in the modern era Israel.
Israel has more female fighter pilots
than Saudi Arabia has female drivers.
- One thing that was interesting,
the people in companies
speak English to each other, in Israel.
- Sometimes, depends what company.
- A lot of it.
So a lot of communication, and this is
really fascinating, is
that you have to cater to
the customers that are the default
or the lowest common denominator,
and you would think in most
countries they would do that,
but it's a good way that they
learn another language or
improve it 'cause a lot of
their customers are English, so
I was just surprised like
yeah, we email in English, we
talk a lot of times in English,
a lot of our meetings are in English,
I'm like, that's kinda weird.
Alright, Israel.
- Israel.
- Boom, check it out.
Cool country, come learn.
It's also a pretty fun country.
- It's amazing.
- It's really fun.
- The beach is like five minutes that way.
- I know
- Brilliant.
- Alright, deuces.
