Jews and high-tech business success

Great Debates
1

I hate to bring up this issue, since it usually brings accusations or implications of anti-semitism and/or association with all sorts of anti-semitic loons, but I think there is an interesting phenomenon that begs to be analyzed, especially since it is a subject people aren’t usually willing to talk about.

Basically, I have noticed lately that, of many tech startups that became successful, if you look at their founders/CEOs, they are Jewish by a much larger percentage than in the general population.

Some examples from the more stellar tech companies of today:
[ul]
[li]Google: Larry Page and Sergey Brin[/li][li]Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg[/li][li]Paypal: Peter Thiel[/li][li]Yelp: Jeremy Stoppelman[/li][li]Digg: Kevin Rose[/li][/ul]

But it’s not just the cream of the crop. Many of the somewhat successful companies that I read about in the news or on blogs are Jewish.

As a Doper, I’m naturally curious as to why such a statistic occurs.

Some possible answers (not that I necessarily accept any of them, I’m just listing them)
[ol]
[li]Some cultures are over-represented in some professions (e.g., say, Irish-Americans in the police force, not sure if this is true) and this is a self-perpetuating phenomenon, since you are most likely to follow the profession of people around you.[/li][li]The Jewish culture is such that it encourages entrepreneurship.[/li][li]The Jewish culture is such that it provides people with a mindset that is useful for success in business[/li][li]People in the Jewish community help each other out, in such a way that it increases the odds of a startup company to succeed, and it is done in a way or to a degree that other ethnic groups (e.g. Italian-Americans) don’t do for each other.[/li][/ol]

Regarding item 3, a Jewish-American friend of mine once mentioned the term “Goyishe kupp” which one Yiddish Dictionary describes as

Is it possible that the centuries of persecution have resulted in Jews having a non-Goyishe kupp, which in turn happens to be useful in business?

Regarding item 4, the help could be, for example, as simple as a mention in a NYT article. If a lot of reporters at the major newspapers and magazines are Jewish (is this true?), they get to know about the companies their friends or acquaintances are working on, and if their circle of friends is predominantly Jewish, they end up hearing and writing about companies started by Jews, which ends up helping these companies succeed?
So, my questions to you guys:
[ol]
[li]Is the basic premise in this OP correct? Is the percentage of Jews in successful tech companies much higher than the percentage of Jews in the general population?[/li][li]If the premise is correct, what do you think the reasons are?[/li][li]Also, if the premise is correct, is there something about this pattern of success that people from other ethnic groups can learn and emulate in order to increase their odds of success?[/li][/ol]

2

Speaking as a Jew, we tend to be more educated and successful as a group for a number of reasons. First of all there aren’t many of us in the US. About 5 million or 2% of the population. We tend to be centered around urban areas like New York, LA, Chicago, Philly and Boston where there are more economic opportunities. We also tend to come from smaller families and place a high value on education and professional success. So it should not be surprising that you see a disproportionate number of Jews in finance, high tech, and media.

Yes:

  • Focus on education, not sports
  • Don’t have a bazillion kids you can’t support
  • Go to college
  • Work hard
  • Don’t buy a ton of crap you can’t afford
3

Don’t you think that the number of upper-middle-class college-educated Caucasians who have 1-2 kids is more than the 5 million you mention for the Jewish-American population? (I have no cite to back this up. It would be good if someone with access to such data let us know)

ETA: I should have added that if indeed there are more Caucasians in the US with these characteristics than the total number of American Jews, that these two groups would at least be equally represented in the list of successful tech companies.

4

It’s a cultural thing I think, the entrepreneurialism.

Why do so many Koreans open dry cleaners?

Why do so many Pakistanis (and similar) drive cabs?

I guess there’s a reason for stereotypes.

PS Reminds me of an old line on the Imus show; they were talking about Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year). The rabbi said that 2010 was the Year of the Attorney. Evidently 2009 was the Year of the Accountant.

5

I’d say it’s number 4 - the Jewish network.

I remember visiting a family friend living in Canada, and he started telling us about how good the Jews were at networking and helping each other - they put one Jew on the hospital board, and within two years there were three because they lobbied on behalf of Jewish candidates. they are now up to five IIRC.
They lift up people in their network in the hope that their success will lift them in turn.
He said that Irish people came a close second for that kind of bias.

6

You know who else believed in Jewish conspiracies?

7

It’s not a conspiracy. Irish people living abroad do it to.

Jewish culture tends to be fairly insular with a big focus on family and the shared identity of the ‘chosen’ people.
Favoritism is a natural result of those attitudes.

8

I’d imagine it probably has more to do with Jewish kids receiving school supplies for seven of the eight nights of Hanukkah.

9

I think it’s networking, but I don’t think it’s necessarily conscious networking. One key to success in any crowded field is “don’t give people an excuse to single you out.”

In the world of ideas, having a Jewish name, work ethic, personal affect, etc., is nowadays accepted as entirely normal. It doesn’t make waves in nearly the way it might have back when ideas were not a market commodity - because ideas have always been currency among Jews.

What would be surprising is if there were more diversity in the content and usability side of new media. Gentile, Asian, and other achievers in the field really do give the highest place to the numbers man and the codegeek - as if monetary value and social value were somehow contradictory.

10

A few other thoughts, since time has expired…

I’d be interested in how these new-media entrepreneurs’ Jewishness manifests itself. Does it help, say, to come from a fully Jewish home (culturally or religiously, doesn’t matter) rather than being the product of a mixed marriage? Does being from New York, or having strong ties to New York, confer an advantage? And if there are correlations (such as these), are they causative?

11

If so, I’ve missed out on it completely. It may happen in some circles, but it’s not common in the general Jewish community in my experience.

12

By the way, for the networking effect to work, there doesn’t have to be favoritism, or a “conspiracy”.

If, say, the Irish were over-represented in journalism, and if they mostly hung out with other people of Irish descent, it wouldn’t be a function of favoritism or conspiracy if they wrote about stuff that happens to Irish people more than about stuff that happens to non-Irish people.

And if having the major media write about your company is a big boost, then the Irish in the above hypothetical would get a boost from their fellow Irishmen, without there being an overt case of favoritism or conspiracy.

Similar thing if Irish people were over-represented in some other fields that can help startups succeed.

13

It could simply be that Jewish backgrounds make entrepreneurs feel freer to question, experiment and break categories, and allow them to blend in better in the new media marketplace. Not necessarily opening doors - just not closing them.

I guess my hypothesis depends on how culturally and secularly Jewish the new media idea-world really is. I think it’s thoroughly so, but not by any conscious group action. Making ideas make money has always been stereotyped as Jewish work, and that makes non-Jews a little reluctant to to try to compete even if they value ideas or are idea men themselves.

14

That’s the “secret” to my success. I can’t say if it’s due to my Jewish ethnicity/background or not. I can say with certainty that I haven’t ever been promoted or supported because of my ethnicity/background. In my twenty years of working in high tech engineering in Santa Barbara, most of the time, albeit relatively rarely in total, the within group promotions have been given to people who attend the same Christian church.

15

It astonishes me that anyone can mention high tech startups without mentioning Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs also.
I suspect it is simply a matter of being encourage to read and do well in school from an early age - something these groups share to a large extent. The interesting question is why the mainstream Christian population is so under-represented. My wife isn’t Jewish, but she had that same love of learning instilled in her that I did. One thing I have noticed - both my daughters had boyfriends who started doing much better in school while going out with them, since they had an example of someone who actually cared about academic performance and doing homework.

16

You don’t actually understand what the “chosen people” means, obviously. It means special, but in a “Better than everyone else,” sort of way. It means special in a “you must carry this burden,” sort of way (at least, that’s the best I can describe it).

I’m Jewish, in that I was raised by my father, who is a Jew, and it’s who I identify with more than any other social or cultural group – but religion doesn’t factor into it.

Networking has something to do with it, but not everything. And it’s certainly not a factor of favoritism. In areas where there are no Jews, I can still manage to make myself successful (relative to the norm). How/why? I think ahead.

I compulsively plan a half dozen or dozen steps ahead, for every possible outcome, good, bad or indifferent. I’ve never met anyone else, including Jews, who do it to the extent I do – but Jews are the only ones I’ve met who do it at all. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, in that having so much bad shit happen in my paternal lines gives me that attitude.

In fact, I do it so much that I constantly have a bag packed that I can pick up and leave the house with at any time. If I have a CO2 problem in my house, or if I for some reason feel threatened locally, I can leave. No questions asked. The same applies professionally – I always have an out.

17

The number of Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs is high, but the number of Indians and Chinese in engineering & computer science is huge. At least in Silicon Valley, they far outnumber the number of Jewish Americans AFAIK. And yet, the top tech companies are predominantly founded by Jews, not Indians or Chinese.

I’m not sure studying and doing well in school are that important to being a successful entrepreneur. In fact, if people are doing extremely well in school, they usually end up going into academic fields, or become doctors and lawyers. It seems to me that the people who become entrepreneurs are the ones that are smart but didn’t necessarily have the top grades in their field. The skills for being book-smart are quite different than the skills for being a successful entrepreneur.

I can see the point that a culture in which all that matters is sports and partying will not produce many doctors or entrepreneurs, but it’s also not clear that a culture that encourages studying necessarily produces a lot of entrepreneurs. Maybe the Jewish, Indian and Chinese cultures not only encourage studying, but also encourage entrepreneurship.

18

roflmao.

19

I’m not Jewish but one of my favorite books explaining a healthy perspective for creating wealth is:

Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money, by Rabbi Daniel Lapin

I read it many years ago in its original 1st edition. It has a message that is totally missing from the typical Christian upbringing that I was in. Instead of over-emphasizing beliefs such as, “it easier for camel to pass through eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”, Rabbi Lapin stresses that the productive output of work and wealth is how you help humanity. I’m not saying the Rabbi’s thoughts represent 100% of the Jewish mind but it’s consistent with my interactions with Jews and gentiles.

20

As a somewhat apostate mainstream gentile, I would say it’s that we don’t have the stomach for compulsive learning. That twist in the gut that comes from generations of risk - what forces Todderbob to plan 12 steps ahead for every possible outcome - that matter-of-fact pessimistic reflex that says every silver lining has a cloud revulses us somehow. (Even me, and I’m a horrible cynic.)

We can, of course, be good learners, but we tend to follow the roadmaps and save our compulsion for life’s more obvious competitions, like earning and winning. Speaking broadly and stereotypically, we’re people with a basic Calvinist heritage, motivated more by extrinsic rewards than the intrinsic value of our acts, because we are taught to seek that validation from outside before we let anything good happen inside.