Executive Director of the Chicago-based America-Israel Chamber of Commerce Dror Zetouni spoke Tuesday to students about the advances and attitudes of technology companies in Israel.

At an informal meeting in Grainger Hall, Zetouni explained how Israel's commitment to education and perseverance through turmoil over the last decade — combined with vigor — brought the country's venture and technology companies up to par with the best in the world.

Israel currently has the third-highest rate of entrepreneurship in the world, Zetouni said, boasting about 4,000 startup companies and ranking only behind the United States and Canada.

"It really takes an entrepreneur, a guy who has balls … or a woman, sorry, to go out and do something, start something," he said.

Zetouni said because Israel is such a small country — comparable in size to Maryland — it is easier for companies to collaborate with one another.

"The culture — it's like the Silicon Valley, everything is so close," he said. "If someone is going to invest in you, they would probably want you to be kind of near. They don't want you to be 4,000 miles away."

While Israeli businesses do provide many services and products in the United States by working with and receiving investments from U.S. companies, Zetouni added most larger companies only do their research and development overseas and maintain their headquarters in America.

"Every single [Israeli] company that's listed in NASDAQ has their headquarters in the States," he said. "That's where the market is."

Zetouni said the business culture in Israel is much more informal, even "anti-hierarchical," and because of the turmoil the country has experienced in recent years, many prominent engineers, entrepreneurs and homeland-security products come from the military.

"The best elites are technical," he said. "Think about it. You guys are all in your early 20s. Think about a unit in Israel. The guy is developing research and development. … He's in charge of a weapons program."

Zetouni said the military has a hard time retaining soldiers even as young as 21 or 22 because venture capital and technology companies present them with irresistible offers.

"When he gets out, you know, he's a wet dream to a startup company," he said.

UW graduate student Marisa Jacobson, founder of the Graduate Students Israel Education Initiative, the group sponsoring the event, said it is important for Zetouni and other Israelis to help represent the progress the country is making in business.

"Israel is a country with just a wealth of achievements, so it's important for us to expose the campus community to some of those achievements," she said. "And, in this case, with the technology and venture-capital sector."

Jacobson added in America, people tend to only receive negative depictions of Israel and not enough of the country's positive attributes.

"I think it was a good turnout. Everyone seemed to learn a lot," Jacobson said. "And it's the positive contributions of Israel that don't get enough attention, which is one of the reasons I think [the] event was so important."