In Israel Next Week

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I will be in Israel next week on vacation. While I won’t be holding a Start up Roundtable this time around, I will be happy to casually meet for coffee in Tel Aviv on Sunday July 12th.  

I would love to hear original ideas and talk to people with passion. If you have something interesting to discuss and you’d like to meet, please ping me on Twitter at @ediggs or contact me through VC Cafe.

Kampyle Adds User Feedback To Google Analytics (CEO Interview)

Shopping websites are extremely sensitive to deserted shopping carts. In some cases, 60-70% of their users would add items to their cart but suddenly close the window – leaving the site owner with little information about their reasons for leaving and more importantly, without revenue.

Kampyle, the Israeli start up developing SaaS feedback analytics, offers an easy integration of fully-branded and customizable feedback forms for website owners. The feedback forms are displayed to the user either by clicking on a feedback button, or automatically pop up when the user is leaving the page. Until now, the data was only accessible from Kampyle’s Analytics Platform. Today the company has announced the integration of its feedback data into Google Web Analytics, effectively adding engagement and user data into the site’s traffic reports, in real time.

VC Cafe had the chance to speak with Kampyle’s CEO Ariel Finkelstein about the new product release and the company’s business model.

VC Cafe:Congratulations on the launch. What are the main benefits for the user in the integration of Kampyle and Google Analytics?

Ariel Finkelstein, Kampyle’s CEO: The main benefits of the Kampyle – Google Analytics integration is the ability to provide a comprehensive solution for website and ecommerce managers. Until now, website analytics solutions answered the ‘Who’, ‘What’, ‘Where’, and ‘When’ questions, but couldn’t answer ‘Why’ – ‘Why did you abandon your shopping cart after putting 5 items in it?’, OR ‘Why did you leave our website without downloading any information even though you spent 27 minutes on our website’ OR ‘Why didn’t you book your vacation on our website after making 17 visits for more than 93 minutes?’. As you can see, the ‘Why’ question is the critical link in understanding user behavior. Therefore, this integration is business critical for website and ecommerce managers. The Kampyle – Google Analytics integration enables seeing the comprehensive answers to all the user behavior questions in one interface.
Regarding Google Analytics, they are the market leaders with about half the market according to our estimates.
This integration is via the new GA open API, enabling Kampyle’s customer with one click to have all their GA data on their Kampyle account.

See screeenshot: Read more…

VMWare Behind You: Neebula Raises $5 Million for Virtualization Software

Neebula Systems, developer of management tools for virtual computer environments, has raised a first round of $5 million for from Genesis Partners and Pitango Venture Capital.

Jonathan Saacks, a partner at Genesis, joined the company’s board as a result of the investment. Neebula was founded in 2009, and still doesn’t seem to have a website. One explanation for this unusual early stage investment at a time when most first round companies are struggling to raise funding is the founding team. Neebula was co-founded by CEO Yuval Cohen,  the former CEO of Marvell Israel and the CTO of Radlan, and CTO Ariel Gordon, former CTO of BMC Israel.

The company will provide solutions for the cloud environment, as reported by Globes.

Exclusive: TodaCell Raises $1 Million for Mobile Ad Optimization Platform (Interview with CEO Moshe Vaknin)

Toda!cell (www.todacell.com), an Israeli ad optimization platform, has raised an A round of $1 million led by Afterdox (see previous coverage on VC Cafe) the Fore Group and several other angels. The company had previously raised an undisclosed seed round, when it was founded in March 2007.

TodaCell’s platform matches premium mobile ad campaigns with users, based on territory, carrier, timing, user response, pricing and other parameters. The company is currently present in Israel and Tokyo and plans to expand to the US next.

VC Cafe had a chance to get some comments from CEO Moshe Vaknin,  a serial entrepreneur in the media and online advertising business. Prior to TodaCell he founded CheckM8, an ad yield management start up. He also served as the president and COO of Adwise during the tech bubble.

VC Cafe: The online advertising market is arguably saturated. What innovation does Toda bring to the table?
Moshe Vaknin: The online advertising is saturated. Toda is focusing on mobile advertising only. Our uniqueness is focusing only on off portal (unlike Amobee). The current off portal solution offer by companies like Admob, they do not answer and address advertiser need: high performance. Admob and others focus on Quantity, Mass, not quality as Toda does. With strong targeting engines and automatic optimization we are able to achieve very high ROI to advertisers. Unlike others, who care only about CTR (click through rate), we measure the efficiency to advertisers. Not enough how many people click, but how many people actually bought the product? How many did the right search? Accuracy in the ad deliver process is our power

VC Cafe: How do you plan to achieve scale with advertisers and publishers?

Moshe Vaknin:We work directly with major advertisers and also with mobile agencies who are looking to the off portal market as the big market and the important during the next few years.

VC Cafe: Who do you consider as your closest competitors?

Moshe Vaknin: The closer competitor I believe is Smaato as they are focusing on optimization too. We focus heavily.

VC Cafe:What impact does the economic downturn pose on your business model?

Moshe Vaknin:The economic downturn slows down new advertisers who plan to increase their budget going into mobile. However, our business model which is 100% performance gives confidence to advertisers that their money is spent the right way

VC Cafe: What does Toda bring to brand advertisers?

Moshe Vaknin: Toda brings brand advertisers 100% Transparency. Advertiser knows exactly where its ad positioned on the mobile page, which publisher, which category, which device, when, how frequent, no surprises for advertiser so they can plan their media accurately which is very important for brand advertisers.

VC Cafe: Looking back 18 months ago. Would you do anything differently?
Moshe Vaknin: If we look 18 months back, we will do the same. From day one we believed that mobile advertising is going off portal and not controlled by carriers. The introduction of iPhone and other smart phones just make the mobile browsing so easily, and we believe it is a beginning of new revolution.

Today Boxee Starts Competing with Hulu, On Windows

We told you about Boxee’s app dev challenge a few weeks ago, where 40 apps were developed with great innovation. Yesterday the results have been unveiled in San Francisco but the big winner was… Boxee!  The Israeli media center start up is loved by the open source development community and is about to roll out some major league upgrades today, including (drum roll please…) Boxee for Windows.

The Windows version not only opens Boxee to a much larger market, but also gets the media center software into the living room. Unlike Apple TV users, most media center PC users hook up their laptops to the TV. Given the right streaming experience, Boxee could eventually replace your cable box… I was part of the early alpha on Windows and it looked good back then – I’m sure that CEO Avner Ronen and his team will make PC users happy. Boxee is also available for Mac and Ubuntu operating systems.

Some other new Boxee features include:

Major League Baseball

Boxee partnered with MLB to offer MLB.TV Premium broadcasting of thousands of baseball games, live and on-demand in HD. This is part of a bigger bet that Boxee will be placing into sports and for expats like me this feature might be very popular.

Read more…

Twitter Apps Bug Battle: uTest Uncovers 317 Bugs On Twitter Desktop Apps

Real-Time Bugs? uTest, the world’s largest QA marketplace, announced the results of its “Twitter Apps Bug Battle”, a week long contest for 600 of its 17,000 crowdsourced QA professionals. The mission: find the as many bugs as possible in the five most popular Twitter desktop apps – Tweet Deck, Seesmic Desktop, Twhirl, Tweetr and Twitteroo.

The results of the test are noteworthy: uTest community members found 317 bugs in a week long competition for $4000 cash prize. 20% of the bugs were classified as “show stoppers” or defects in need of immediate attention. The testers then ranked all five Twitter apps based on overall quality, usability, and feature set.

Some interesting stats from uTest’s official Bug Battle results page: Read more…

Can Israeli start ups open US Bank Accounts?

Like many Israeli start ups, your company is targeting the US market. You are about to start sales in the US, and you currently accept both credit card and PayPal payments. On the expense side, you’re making payouts to suppliers in the US, but the Israeli banks are charging you outrageous fees and it takes time for transactions to complete, exposing you to currency volatility. Some questions arise:

• Should the Israeli start up open a US bank account?
• Which bank is recommended?
• Can the start up open a US bank account if  it has no physical presence in the US?
• Is it possible to complete the process online online?

The question of whether an Israeli start up should open a US bank account probably comes up in many Israeli start ups.

Joshua Nowack, Chief Numbers Guy at Nowack Strategic Business Advisory & CPA, answered these questions on LinkedIn’s Q&A Service, and I thought it would be good to share them with the readers of VC Cafe. Read more…

3DV Systems and PrimeSense Are the Israeli Firms Behind Microsoft’s Project NATAL

The acquisition of Israel’s 3DV Systems by Microsoft has been rumoured for a few weeks, but confirmation was given today at the annual press conference of Microsoft’s R&D Center in Israel, one of Microsoft’s four strategic regional development centers. The announcement comes just a few days after the Antitrust Authority approved the deal.

As reported by Globes, Moshe Lichtman, Microsoft corporate vice president and head of Israel R&D said:

“Fourteen development projects are taking place at the center today, twelve of them completely new and destined to become Microsoft products in new markets… the R&D center helped Microsoft in buying the intellectual property of 3DV Systems, and in the wake of that dozens of the company’s employees were recruited to work at the development center.”

The announcement is linked to Project Natal, a new Microsoft gaming system that lets the user control games through body movement and words. It’s like a Nitendo Wii on steroids, eliminating the need for a joystick and adding voice recognition. Sounds familiar? That’s because it is believed that Microsoft is using 3DV Systems’ patented technology as well as technology developed by Israel’s Prime Sense, a sensor that tracks and reacst to user movements outside the computer. 3DV Natal was revealed two weeks ago at the E3 games exhibition.

Watch the video (it’s awesome):

The new system will be compatible with every Xbox, but its cost remains a mystery.

In January, Microsoft – Israel R&D Center has laid off 50 of its 600 employees, after experiencing rapid growth since it was created three years ago.  Today, the center is regarded as Microsoft’s third largest in the world. It currently has 14 R&D projects under development primarily in security and telecommunications. 12 of the projects are new potential products for the software giant.

In the press conference, Mr Lichtman mentioned a few of the developments, including a new area of focus: online. Microsoft plans to leverage the acquisition of Israeli advertising company Yadata made 18 months ago, in order to help contribute to the agressive revenue goals from online advertising, a quarter of the company’s total revenue.

$12 Million E Round to Israel’s YCD Multimedia

Big founding round to Israel’s YCD Multimedia, provider of in-store digital media solutions. The company has reported a $12 million E round led by Pitango Venture Capital and Arts Alliance Digital Ventures, as well as a conversion of an existing bridge loan facility. The proceeds will be sused to build on the company’s presence in the US and UK markets and to invest in its product roadmap.

YCD Platform, the company’s flagship product offers a web platform for retailers to control the display of ads, promotional messages, audio and video playlists to various locations simultaneously. Therefore, customers in a retail chain equipped with screens connected to the system could show the announcement of a sale at the same time. The system also enables scheduling of the media content up to a year in advance.

In addition, the YCD Player enables store owners to perform multizone programming of music and video in their stores:  ”Your customers can hear classical music in the entryway, soft rock by the escalator, and jazz on the second floor and watch dynamic video images that change by day part as they move from zone to zone“. Other products include AdScreen and MuVi Wall, which create mood and increase conversions at the point-of-sale using physical multimedia displays.

YCD’s CEO Barry Salzman said that “This new investment gives us the capital to support the initiatives we are undertaking with larger chains in the US and internationally”. Prior to joining YCD he was the former president of DoubleClick’s global media business.

Founded by Noam Levavi (president) and Dani Zeevi (CTO) in 1999, YCD Multimedia has more than 1,200 customers in 5 continents including American Airlines, Toyota, Kodak, Hilton Hotels, Cartier, Pizza Hut, and Heineken.  It has offices in the US, UK and Israel as well as a Global distribution network of resellers around the world.

Sources: PR Newswire, PE Hub and TechCrunch.

Links I Posted On Twitter -Week of June 23

Most people don’t ‘get’ Twitter yet… what is the fuss about about people IMing with each other? Why would you want to read random people’s rants?  If that’s how you feel,  I challenge you to give Twitter a real try. On that note, below is a recap of links I posted or found on Twitter, about start ups, Israel and venture capital. You can follow my updates on @ediggs.

• List of top 100 global brands by value. Guess who has the top spot?? http://bit.ly/il5Hd
• Why PayPal Wants to Know Where Everybody Liveshttp://bit.ly/YwGUx
• http://www.mobi-app.com/ gets $800K in funding from Maayan Ventures
• Nonresidents’ investments in Israel and Israelis’ investments abroad in April 2009 http://www.bankisrael.gov.il
• Google Starts Including Wikipedia on Its News Sitehttp://bit.ly/13bDHV
• 100+ Alternative Search Engines You Should Knowhttp://bit.ly/JAFt
• Israel is now a developed market according to MCSIhttp://www.haaretz.com/hase…
• Digital Britain report (pdf) http://bit.ly/O0IEE
• Israeli security researcher Aviv Raff plans to publish a new Twitter security vulnerability every day in July http://bit.ly/FTKug
• Jerusalem to Begin Massive Investment in Biotech Companieshttp://bit.ly/WzlgJ
• ‘Kosher’ search engine launched in Israel http://bit.ly/p2yvq meet Koogle: http://www.koogle.co.il/ (thanks @Montini )
• The Challenges of Cross-Channel Marketing (eMarketer) http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007148
• Yahoo launches self-serve display advertising pilot: http://www.ysmblog.com/blog/2009/06/22/display-for-the-rest-of-us/
• OpTier wins Deutsche Bank contract: The Israeli company is providing the bank with transaction management systems http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/DocView.asp?did=1000460456&fid=1725
• Q2 Tech M&A Review & Outlook from the 451 group http://www.the451group.com/report_view/report_view.php?entity_id=58658
• LifeBond raised $8 million from Pitango, Omrix founder Taub, GlenRock Israel and Zitelman Group http://israelhealthcare.wor…

More interesting  tweets on @ediggs.

keep looking »

• About VC Cafe

      VC Café covers early stage startups, innovative technologies and venture capital news with a spotlight on Israel. Started in 2005 by Eze Vidra, VC Café has been featured on the Wall Street Journal and ranked as one of the top 100 VC blogs.