Beit Shemesh - "Israel's ten thousand miles from Silicon Valley; but it takes a nanosecond to get there," says Jon Medved, one of Israel's leading high-tech venture capitalists and CEO of a new startup calledVringo, which allows users to share video ringtones on their cell phones.

Israel is a small country with seven million people, unfriendly neighbors, and relatively high taxes. So why does it have the second-largest concentration of startups per capita after Silicon Valley? Jon says the two places are more similar than one would think.

He knows from life experience. He was born in San Diego, raised in Los Angeles, and went to UC Berkeley for college. That's where he first got interested in Israel, arguing Israel's case against campus colleagues during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

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