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Eric Schmidt and Dror Berman have written a letter to Calcalist stating that they expect the next Google to come from Israel.
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Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt has written an open letter in the Hebrew financial web site Calcalist about technological advances and Israel’s place in the world of innovation in honor of the 66th Israeli Independence Day.
In it, the 59 year old Schmidt, who is a founding partner with Innovation Endeavors, discusses how far the world has advanced in recent years in the field of technology and communications and how the rate of progression is constantly accelerating. He believes that by 2025 the entire world population will have full access to all types of information through advancements in telecommunications and the internet, in part due to the efforts of technological entrepreneurs.
Innovation Endeavors (IE) is an unconventional investment firm based in Palo Alto CA that partners with entrepreneurs at the intersection of emerging technologies and growing global markets and has invested in over 65 companies in the US and Israel. IE helps entrepreneurs build lasting companies that will create jobs, generate wealth, create new markets, or change already-established ones.
Schmidt cites the 1.3 billion people who today must live without electricity, clean water, basic medical services or even the opportunity to use basic financial services, such as banking. But technological entrepreneurs, especially in Israel, are already finding ways to solve these problems, according to Schmidt. These include satellites that assist in agriculture and information systems to track the outbreak of disease.
“Israel’s entrepreneurs have a long history of innovating in areas like these. Chemist Daniel Shechtman won a Nobel Prize in 2011 for discovering quasicrystals, now used in everything from surgical instruments to LED lights. Stuart Licht and Ran Tel-Vered, of the University of Massachusetts and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, developed the super-iron battery, a cutting-edge, rechargeable power source, ” said Schmidt.
It is Mr. Schmidt’s belief that the Israeli entrepreneur has a unique ability to meet these great challenges. On his last visit to Israel Schmidt says that he met some of the “smartest and most ambitious” entrepreneurs that he had ever seen, people who were not afraid of risky long term projects. He feels that military training plays a role in giving Israelis a head start in computers and other techno fields.
“The continued commitment of Israel’s government to finance the research together with big industrial players from the US and China mean that Israel is closer to having a strong impact on the next stage of world technologies, ” Schmidt wrote in Calcalist.
Eric Schmidt also explained that technology is actually just a tool for the entrepreneur who is the one that brings about change. In that respect, Israeli entrepreneurs are needed to help affect advancements.
Google has such confidence in Israel that Mr. Schmidt declared it to be a “key country” for its investments and that Google intends to expand those investments in the future. He further praised Google’s Israeli investment partner , Yuval Shachar, who is a also partner in Innovation Endeavors.
With a BS in mathematics and computer science form Tel Aviv University, Shachar is an entrepreneur himself, having started Israel’s Qwilt which was bought out by Cisco. In addition, he is a partner at New York’s Marker LLC private investment firm.
A founding managing partner together with Eric Schmidt at Innovation Endeavors, Dror Berman is an Israeli investor who currently lives in Palo Alto California.
As the founding managing partner of Innovation Endeavors, Dror seeks diverse, creative ways to partner with entrepreneurs who are applying emerging technologies to re-shape industries globally. He previously worked at Yahoo, NICE Systems and an Israeli CE retailer. After serving in the IDF, Dror completed a degree in computer science from the Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva and an MBA at Stanford.
Schmidt concluded his letter by saying that IE is “excited about the partnerships that we will have in Israel in future years with Israeli entrepreneurs who are committed to changing the world and we wish all of you a happy 66th Independence Day.”
