The Start-up Nation Is Losing Its People. Everything else will follow.

Growing up in Israel, the startup nation narrative was part of the national identity, something you absorbed alongside military service and Independence Day. It wasn’t just a brand. It was an ethos that a small, resource-poor country could think its way to prosperity, that human ingenuity was our natural resource. I believed it. I built my future around it. What I found when I arrived was something quieter and more troubling than the headlines suggest. The music is stopping. And almost no one is paying attention.

The numbers, at first glance, tell a different story. In 2025, Israeli startups raised $15.6 billion, and total exit valuations hit $89.8 billion, the second-largest in Israeli tech history. Investors still line up. The press still celebrates. But strip out Google’s $32 billion acquisition of Wiz, and a different picture emerges, the average acquisition size dropped 40%, to just $160 million, driven largely by acqui-hires of young, cheap........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)