Ask Boxee about Google/Apple TV, Ask Wibiya about Meebo Bar/Facebook Bar, ask SohoOS about Zoho, Ask Followbase about SalesForce and you’ll get a logical explanation about how their product differentiates itself and how they’re going to win.
Now ask the same question again but this time cover your ears, don’t listen to their answer and instead concentrate on the CEO’s eyes… The eyes always tell the truth. You’ll see that despite the logical explanation they’re giving you they don’t really understand why you even asked the question at the first place. Deep deep inside they don’t feel they’re any smaller or inferior to the giants they’re up against and if you ever saw a Chihuahua standing firm and barking on a Pitbull you’ll know what I’m talking about.
It’s because they’re suffering from the David & Goliath syndrome!
The Origins of the David & Goliath Syndrome
If you want to understand the origin of the David & Goliath Syndrome you’ll need to get a feeling of the kind of place those entrepreneurs, who now lead most Israeli start-ups, grew up in. You’ll need to take a little trip down the time tunnel to Israel of the late 60s and early 70s…
For the first 30 years of Israel’s existence we were not so different from a modern age Sparta. A small nation, surrounded by enemies and breeding children to grow up as soldiers willing to die for their country. Israel was full of people who survived the Holocaust. You were either a child of a survivor or knew one. Every child grew up knowing that the alternative to a strong and surviving Israel was the death camps and the motto was “Never Again!”.
Just like in Sparta we had our elite worrier class, the ones who grew up in the Kibbutz. They were separated from their parents at birth (though their parents lived with them in the same Kibbutz) to grow up in children houses, crying at night for strangers instead for their moms, living in a collective where the individual was a tool serving the greater good of the whole. These were the ideal conditions for breeding the toughest, bravest soldiers and indeed most of those kids ended up in the best units of our army.
But the origins of the David & Goliath Syndrome reach way beyond the borders of the Kibbutz. Every child in Israel of the 70s grew up hearing two mantras over and over again:
- “It’s Good to die for our country” – Attributed to Josef Trumpeldor who supposedly said that at his death bed after being shot in the battle to defend Tel-Hai.
- “A few against many” – This was drilled to us from day one. We are few and the enemy are many. We survive not because of our numbers but because we’re smarter and better. We’re David and they’re Goliath.
Don’t mistake my tone for cynicism or criticism. We had no other choice and there’s no way we could have survived as a nation without the sacrifice of the people who fought to defend it.
But growing up in this kind of atmosphere comes with side effects and one of them is the David & Goliath Syndrome: An inability to realize you’re way way beyond your league and to really face the fact that your competition can wipe you out with a flip of a virtual button.
So next time Israeli entrepreneurs sit in your office and you’re thinking “Who are those arrogant bastards sitting here telling me they’re the next Google” know that this is not arrogance nor stupidity (maybe just a bit of Chutzpah). They really believe it. They can’t help it. They’re suffering from the David & Goliath Syndrome and their strategy is a one line bullet: “We’re better”.
10 minutes into their pitch you may be thinking “Why would I invest in those guys, they clearly don’t realize who their up against”, but you know what? These crazy people are exactly the kind of people that will keep fighting against all odds, the kind of people you want with you in the start up trenches. The only kind I ever want to work with.
Posted
on Thursday, November 11th, 2010 
Name's Avi Charkham. I'm a product person, co-founder @ Familio and Chief Product @ lool Ventures. Normally I prefer to simply tweet my thoughts but some times 140 are simply not enough :)