Halloween Roundup: Google’s platform, EasyStart, Ideas08 and more

Welcome to VC Cafe. If you’re new around here, you may want to subscribe to our feed and get daily updates for FREE. A few quick bytes of recent news that didn’t get their own post on VC Cafe:

Open Social, Maka-Maka and Google’s Attempt to Bite From the Facebook PieMarc Anderssen of Ning and blog.pmarca […]

Popularity: 21% [?]

The New Million Dollar Page (wannabe) and How I Saved an Alien

It’s silly, but what if this crazy idea worked? Save an Alien, an Israeli Facebook app hopes to create the “million dollar page” effect through an extra terrestrial plot. If 10M people adopt an alien each, the cute aliens will be saved from imminent death and this Israeli start up will have 10M subscribers- not […]

Popularity: 9% [?]

Don’t Stop Believing - Imagine Communications Scores $15M for Broadband TV

The Broadband TV niche in Israel is on fire. Following RayV’s $8M round earlier this month, Israel-based Imagine Communications announced a second round and a hot upcoming deal.
Imagine develops Personalized TV technologies for video on demand (VOD) and Internet Protocol TV (IPTV). Imagine claims that its next-generation multiplexing technology, the QOD […]

Popularity: 24% [?]

Shai Agassi Reinvents the Gas Pump for All-Electirc Cars @ Better Place

After almost becoming the CEO of SAP global, Shai Agassi now aims to reinvent ‘the pump’ - for battery powered all-electric cars.
With a $200M investment in his pocket, Shai Agassi is planning to build a network of battery-charging stations in the US, Europe and emerging markets with his new venture called ‘Project Better Place‘, […]

Popularity: 16% [?]

Goldman Sachs Invested $100M in Israeli Mobileye

Mobileye, a Top100 Innovator according to Red Herring magazine, develops vision systems to prevent imminent accidents by providing drivers with tools such as distance keeping between vehicles, dynamic cruise control and timely warnings in dangerous situations. Mobileye’s main product is its EyeQ vision system chip. The chip monitors the location of other vehicles on […]

Popularity: 18% [?]

TGIF - Friday Wrap Up and Weekly News

This week was full of tech news that deserve some VC Cafe attention. Here’s a short recap on the headlines that didn’t get their own post:Payoneer raises $3M from Greylock partners Payoneer markets manages and services prepaid MasterCard cards together with the Royal Bank of Scotland and the First Bank of Delaware. Anyone 13 […]

Popularity: 20% [?]

The Grass Can Be Greener - Update on Clean Tech

Earlier this month, Green Tech Media posted a great update byMeir Ukeles of Israel Cleantech Ventures on the growing popularity of Israeli Green Tech companies.
I summarized the main points from this report, but I recommend reading the full article.

On October 30, Israel will host a cleantech conference cosponsored by the Cleantech Venture Network, Ernst & […]

Popularity: 22% [?]

SmartShopper Makes an Exit, Strengthens Zango

Yet another Israeli exit this week. SmartShopper, a browser based comparison shopping engine was acquired by WA based Zango.com for an estimated sum of ~$9M according to alarm:clock and Techcrunch.
A problematic buyer*Zango has raised $40M from Spectrum Equity in 2004. It is notoriously known in the spyware business for its distribution of free games […]

Popularity: 14% [?]

Goodbye HTML, Hello Flash - Wix.com Starts The Web-Top Revolution

“Every time you say web 3.0 a start up dies”. Israeli stealth startup Wix.com is part of the revolution.
Wix, currently in private beta, enables users to create flash-based websites without writing a single line of code or being a guru designer. Wix believes that the time has come to for everyone to produce great […]

Popularity: 22% [?]

Taking on BIG Challenges - G.ho.st Aims High

We’re in conference season here in San Francisco and the Web 2.0 Summit that ended last week was one of the big ones. Thursday concluded with a Launch Pad in which six companies presented their startup to a VC panel. Among the finalists stood up G.ho.st, an ambitious Israeli/Palestinian start up.
G.ho.st stands for Global Hosted […]

Popularity: 12% [?]

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