If you haven’t heard about the new book, Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle get ready for a treat. This book is already making waves in the Israeli hi-tech community and well beyond, and promises to be an instant and lasting classic. An Amazon bestseller its first week out, Start-up Nation is perhaps the best insight yet into the phenomena that is the entrepreneurship-driven Israeli economy.

Written by Dan Senor, senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Jerusalem Post columnist Saul Singer, the book asks and answers the question; How is it that a nation only 60 years old, 7 million people strong (smaller than New Jersey), literally surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding and with no natural resources, has:

• Highest concentration of startups in the world
• Most VC investments per capita in the world
• More NASDAQ listed companies than any country besides the US, more than all of Europe, India, China and Japan combined
• Economy barely hit by global economic crisis

In short, how do we kick ass with such little feet? The book and its answers are particularly timely for a world struggling out of a global economic crisis. Most agree that there’s only one way out; Innovation, and Israel is its hotbed.

What Drives the Innovation?

Without stealing the thunder from this uniquely well written book, here are a few of the observations Dan and Saul present from detailed case studies and interviews with Israel’s top innovators:

• Israeli immigration and assimilation policies bring and support a highly motivated, diversified pool of talent into the country.
• Israel spends more as a percentage of our economy on R&D than any other country in the world and knows how to make that money relevant to startups.
• Israel actively cultivates a culture of entrepreneurship and leadership in the military. Teenagers are not only given the responsibility to make life-saving decisions, typically with little data, but to question authority regularly in doing so.
• The Israeli economy respects and knows how to integrate the unique talents and “chutzpah” developed by soldiers in the military.

The reason this book is so important is that it puts a spotlight on a side of Israel that most people never think about and surely don’t see on national news in the US. See Dan on NBC’s Squawk Box, Morning Joe and Meet the Press. If that doesn’t swell your chest up with pride, you’ve got a cold. Go get this book and spread the word.

“There is a great deal for America to learn from the very impressive Israeli entrepreneurial model – beginning with a culture of leadership and risk management. Start-Up Nation is a playbook for every CEO who wants to develop the next generation of corporate leaders.” – Tom Brokaw, NBC

Dan and Saul’s TechAviv World Tour

Want to meet the authors? So do we so we’ve invited them to speak at all of our TechAviv events worldwide (IL, CA, MA, NY) starting with New York on Nov 12th. Got a question or comment for Dan or Saul, leave them in the comments section or tweet them here and here.

This week Twitter released their much anticipated Lists feature which basically lets users create aggregated feeds of related twitter accounts they want to follow and share.

We’ve created our own lists and we’re inviting all tweet’n Israeli startups, founders, VCs, Angels and tech bloggers/press to get on. And if you or your business is not on twitter yet, you’re outside the conversation. You’re missing it and we’re missing you. Business is about relationships. B2C, B2B, B2Whatever. You either engage, listen and learn, or you don’t. Yalla, let’s tweet.

Submit your twitter feed here to get on one of the lists:

• Israeli Startups
• Israeli Startup Founders,
• Israeli VCs
• Israeli Angels
• Israeli Startup News (Bloggers/Press)

The TechAviv Founders Club in Israel, now 500 founders and investors strong by invitation only, is meeting Weds, Oct 28th, 6:30PM in Herzliya to see, discuss and help three of our hottest local startups. TechCrunch 50 winner for Best International Startup Trollim, SEO optimization star RankAbove and the just launched ServerMojo by the tireless Pidgin Technologies demo in front of a standing-room only crowd of 150. RSVP is now closed but you can see who’s coming here and we’ll update this post with event videos.

October Startup Demos:

Trollim is a skill evaluation and comparison platform assessing the coding level, performance and skill set of programmers worldwide. Programmers of similar skill sets and coding languages compete against each other either by one to one or many to many coding challenges (Battles). Trollim’s patent pending proprietary algorithms are able to evaluate multiple coding languages, skills and the competitive performance of the participants, compare their skill sets against others programmers and improve them over time. Founder and CEO Raz Alon demos.

RankAbove, an early star of search engine optimization field, develops Drive; an automated platform for SEO based on algorithmic intelligence, ROI optimization and predictive capabilities. Drive offers SEO professionals the ability to easily see more data; dramatically reduces the time they spend on SEO tasks; and gives them the unprecedented ability to predict the results of their SEO work. Founder and CEO Mayer Reich demos.

ServerMojo is a server and site monitoring and alerts service for sys-admins and site owners. With both free and premium options, users can define monitor intervals and types, choose to be alerted by email, IM, Twitter, RSS or SMS and are provided with a range of charts showing server uptimes/downtimes and response speeds over time. Multiple geographically dispersed scan nodes provide accurate and essential monitoring for all levels of user from the individual site or blog owner right up to large enterprise systems. Founder and CEO Ron Kass demos.

I’m excited and proud today to announce the launch of the TechAviv Angels. Born out of the TechAviv spirit of giving back to our community, the TechAviv Angels are a group of Israel’s most successful Internet, Web & Mobile startup founders that have come together to help identify, fund and mentor our next generation of big winners. We’re an informal Angel Club that gathers every two months in Tel Aviv to see pitches by Israel’s most promising Angel-stage startups. Our first “Demo Night” is November 24th. If you’re an Angel-stage Web, Internet or Mobile startup seeking funding apply here. The “Angels” tab will also be a permanent fixture at the top of this site. Applying and presenting is 100% free. Like Jason, we don’t believe startups should pay to pitch, ever.

Over the past two years of running TechAviv Founders Club events worldwide it had become painfully apparent that there are great inefficiencies in the pairing of quality founders with quality Angels in Israel. We hope to establish a platform that streamlines and ignites the funding of more early-stage Internet, Web and Mobile startups by investors that can play a pivotal role in their success. We believe these startups are the future of Israeli hi-tech.

Dream Team

Founding members of the TechAviv Angels include the founders of Israel’s biggest Internet, Web and Mobile exits over the last decade, including Yair Goldfinger (ICQ), Amir Ashkenazi (Shopping.com), Yaron Galai (Quigo), Ofer Adler (Incredimail), Jon Medved (Accent), Oren Dobronsky (Hotbar, SmartShopper), Eilon Tirosh (Exalink, Olista), Eden Shochat (Atternity), Itai Kohavi (Neat Group, Comfy), Ofer Vilensky (Jungo), Nimrod Lev (kSolo) and Avichay Nissenbaum (Yedda). See Full 30 Member List. Combined exits of the founding members exceed $3 Billion USD.

TechAviv Angels will invest individually at first but that may change down the road. Collectively we provide all presenting startups with critical feedback and connections. The platform is designed to facilitate more early investments in quality startups by “Mentor-Angels” that have extensive hands-on experience running similar businesses. We ultimately hope to foster lasting personal relationships that will lead to the building of great Israeli companies. As such, also participating in our Demo Nights are Israel’s top early-stage VCs that have a proven track record of backing successful Internet, Web or Mobile startups. Participating VCs include partners from Sequoia, Benchmark, Bessemer, Gemini, Genesis, Carmel, Canaan, Rhodium, YL Ventures and Kaedan.

VCs in An Angel Club!?

Many have asked why we’re including VCs in TechAviv Angels Demo Nights. The answer is we’re all about helping great founders succeed, period. In some cases an Angel-stage startup’s ideal investment partner may be a forward-thinking VC, Angel or both. Regardless, having a relationship with the leading people in our business is critical to a founder’s success. The TechAviv Angels have been lucky enough to reach a certain level of success building and investing in startups and now want to fuel Israel’s most talented young founders in pursuing their own dreams. When investors compete for your business, everyone wins.

New Economics. New Models.

The cost efficiencies of building Web businesses has rightfully shifted founder’s funding needs and focus from VCs to Angels worldwide. $50K from a strategic advisor is game changing for a Web startup today. Mini-funds like Y-Combinator have proven that.  TechAviv Angels Demo Nights are your chance to get in front of investors who’s guidance and contacts are more valuable than their money. We hope the success of this platform will lead to more Angel investing by successful entrepreneurs and the formation of more Angel Clubs in Israel.

Are you brilliant, grounded and contagiously passionate about your Internet, Web or Mobile business? Let’s get you funded.

UPDATE: Some great initial launch coverage here:

• StartupMania
• VC Cafe
• Ouriel’s Blog
• TheMarker (Hebrew)

NYU’s Stern Business School hosts 140 NY-based Israeli hi-tech startup founders, execs and investors tonight as Peer39, Kognito and Ogmento take the stage to demo in front of their local peers. Here’s a short blurb about each of our TechAviv NY October presenters:

Based on natural language processing and machine learning, Peer39’s patented SemanticMatch algorithms understand content meaning and sentiment, and deliver the most relevant and effective brand safe advertising at the page level. Founder & CEO Amiad Solomon demos.

Kognito creates custom and off-the-shelf immersive learning simulations and games that help individuals improve their people-skills in the areas of leadership, management, customer service, and behavioral health. Founder & CEO Ron Goldman demos.
Ever heard of Augmented Reality (AR)? Get ready for a treat. This new technology overlays digital objects onto real-life environments you view through a camera in realtime. Ogmento develops AR content, games and applications for the iPhone. Founder & CEO Ori Inbar shows us one heck of a cool demo.

UPDATE: Demo video below:

Peer39:

Kognito:

Ogmento:

Boston’s finest Israeli hi-tech founders, execs and investors are getting together tonight at MIT to see, discuss and help three local Israeli startups. Here’s a short blurb about each:

Savant offers a suite of Home Automation products that enable you to control and automate literally any digital device in your home. The company is also the first to introduce a native iPhone and iPod touch app for complete home control and automation. This is a demo that needs to be seen to be appreciated. Founder and GM Gadi Tamari takes us for a spin.

Ever wonder why travel sites don’t let you plan multiple destinations? So did MyRouteOnline founder Baruch Axelrod, which is why he built the handy little service that just launched to the public.

Attivio’s Active Intelligent Engine (AIE) data warehousing service lets your IT geeks see all of your businesses’ content and data, at one time, in one place enabling intelligent planning of day-to-day decisions and long-term strategy. This unified access to critical internal information also comes in handy for automatically inserting information into key business processes. Head of products Nachman Geva demos tonight.

It’s standing room only tonight to see demos by this year’s TechCrunch50 Audience Choice winner AnyClip, the visiting Mind360 from Israel and the highly stealth GNMarketLink which will be unveiled for the first time at TechAviv NY. Over 100 of New York’s Israeli hi-tech startup founders, executives and investors will be on hand. Here’s a quick blurb about our presenters:

TechCrunch50 Audience Choice winner AnyClip’s mission is to let you find and view any moment from any movie, ever. The Company has developed search and metadata extraction technologies which allow consumers and application developers to find the precise moment in time they are looking for or want to use in their applications. AnyClip works in partnership with Hollywood studios to unlock the value and enjoyment in their massive and important libraries of films. Founder & CEO Aaron Cohen (TechAviv Seed Co-Founder) will demo.

Mind360 develops scientific brain training games that improve individuals key cognitive skills through fun and effective techniques. The cognitive abilities trained are: memory, attention, executive functions, thinking and reasoning, and visual perception. Individual users select their own Personal Training Program which comes complete with a personal trainer and constant feedback that ensures a swift and noticeable progress. Founder & CEO Danny Aboody will demo.

Our friends at Google are hosting the TechAviv CA Founders Club meetup tonight. 100 members are coming out to see and discuss demos by TechCrunch50 winner @RedBeacon and the just launched @AppSto_re. Google engineering manager Oren Zamir and Yoah Bar-David will also be presenting the brand new Google Ad Exchange.

TechCrunch50 2009 winner RedBeacon allows consumers who need a service performed to find and interact with local businesses and professionals. Redbeacon goes beyond returning business listings with ratings and reviews by helping consumers determine the right service provider for their specific needs and allowing them to compare price quotes and book appointments online. Co-founder Yaron Binur demos.

AppSto.re is a service that shortens iPhone App iTunes URL’s so consumers can share them across the web, social networks, twitter, etc. This dead simple service comes in handy for the millions of iPhone App enthusiasts out there that want to share the love. You can image how valuable the backend link data becomes over time. Co-founder Ohad Eder-Pressman demos.

Google Ad Exchange is an innovation spearheaded by TechAviv NY member Eyal. This is game-changing stuff, led by one of the sharpest guys around. Here’s a preview video:

UPDATE: Photos from the event.

Yesterday was one of those days that we may look back on as an inflection point for Israeli Web and mobile startups. While we’re historically a technology-driven country and our consumer-facing new media track record leaves much to be desired, a new crop of Israeli hi-tech entreprenuers are flexing their passion and skills for user-experience focused Web and mobile services.

And kicking ass doing it.

At yesterday’s big TechCrunch50 finale the three big winners of the overall grandprize “Best in Show”, the “Audience Choice Award” and “Best International Startup” we’re all startups founded by and/or developed by Israelis. To those on the ground in the burgeoning Israeli web and mobile startup scene this comes as no surprise, but as a wake up call to grab the torch of Israeli hi-tech innovation and sprint it forward into the future. A future balanced by designers, UI and usability obssesed product manangers, US-polished managers and the world’s finest technology minds. Big things are on the horizon. Onward and upward. Shana Tova.

Congrats to our big TechCrunch50 winners. You made us proud.

• Best in Show – RedBeacon (See them at TechAviv CA Sept 23rd)
• Audience Choice Award – AnyClip (See them at TechAviv NY Sept 29th)
• Best International Startup – Trollim

UPDATE: As AnyClip CEO and TechAviv Seed co-founder Aaron Cohen pointed out, the Best in Show runner-up Threadsy is also co-founded by an Israeli, Udi Nir.

Schools back and TechAviv is hitting the classroom. Harvard Business School hosts TechAviv MA tonight at 7:00pm. 80 of Boston’s top Israeli hi-tech startup founders, execs and investors are getting together to see and discuss demo’s by the founders of CorrelSense, @Aprigo and @MocoSpace. Here’s a quick blurb about each:

Disclosure: I’m on the board of Aprigo.