Dan Senor

Dan Senor is the co-author of "Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle" (2009), the best-selling business book that argued Israel's remarkable per-capita innovation output — more NASDAQ-listed companies than any country except the United States, more venture capital investment per capita than anywhere in the world — was the product of specific Israeli cultural, military, and institutional factors that other nations could study and partially emulate. The book, co-written with Saul Singer, sold more than a million copies and became the primary text through which American business leaders, investors, and policymakers came to understand Israeli innovation as a strategic and economic asset rather than merely a political cause. Born in the early 1970s and educated at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Senor served as the Coalition Provisional Authority's spokesman in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 before becoming a venture capitalist and writer.

Senor co-founded the Start-Up Nation Roundtable — alongside Paul Singer — the high-level forum that convenes American investment leaders, technology executives, and policy officials with Israeli counterparts to advance capital and partnership connections that outlast any individual administration's Middle East policy. The Roundtable operates on the premise that the most durable form of U.S.-Israel relationship-building is economic: a constellation of venture capital investments, technology partnerships, corporate R&D centers, and bilateral business relationships that creates institutional constituencies for the relationship that are independent of political cycles. This insight — that economic interdependence produces more resilient alliance support than political declarations alone — has been one of the most consequential framings in modern pro-Israel advocacy.

Senor has been a consistent foreign policy voice in Republican circles, serving as foreign policy advisor to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign and remaining active in national security policy discussions through books, media, and institutional affiliations. He hosts the "Call Me Back" podcast, which focuses heavily on Israeli politics, diaspora issues, and U.S.-Israel relations. At Rank 35, Senor is the translator between the Israeli innovation story and the American investor and policy community — the author who reframed what Israel means to American audiences and built the institutional infrastructure to sustain that reframing across decades.