#158 - The Land of Milk, Honey and Startups (Max Marine)

Israel has certainly earned the nickname “StartUp Nation”. We have the largest number of startups per capita in the entire world. The population of this small country recently passed 9 million, so that’s about a startup for every 1,500 people. The stories abound of huge exits, like Mobileye to Intel for 15 billion dollars, Mellanox sold to Nvidia for about 7 billion dollars earlier this year, and the list goes on and on and on. But what makes Israel the startup hub that it is? What does the VC - startup courtship look like here in Israel ? And with so many startups, what happens to all the ones that fail? Max Marine is a CFA at Lool Ventures, an Israeli VC that has invested in many successful Israeli startups including Zooz which sold to PayU for $80 million. I'm super thrilled to be joined by Max Marine on the podcast today to talk about our startup nation.