VC Cafe Turns Four

VC Cafe was born four years ago, in December of 2005. Back then, under goisrael.blogspot.com, my goal was ambitious but simple. VC Cafe was to be a source of positive news about Israel, beyond what one sees on CNN or BBC by providing a spotlight on early stage Israeli start ups, which often conceive brilliant ideas [...]

Advice for Start up CEOS: Learn Your A-B-C (Always Be Closing)

Imagine that your investors told you that you’re fired from the CEO role of the company you have founded with blood, sweat and tears. They do however give you a week to win your job back. What would you do differently?

SeekingAlpha Seeks No Further: B Round Raised from DAG Ventures

Israel-based SeekingAlpha, publisher of user-generated financial commentary has raised a B round of $7 million, led by DAG Ventures and joined by previous backers Benchmark (Michael Eisenberg) and Accel.

Did you Get Your Facebook Vanity URL?

The facebook land rush is on and boy it’s intense. Starting today, June 13, Facebook allows users to claim their username to appear in the web address of their profile page.
For example:

You must pick a name that is at least 5 characters long, and once you pick one, you cannot change it (for now). I [...]

VC Cafe Featured in “Blogs Every Israeli Startup Must Know”

TheMarker, Israel’s prominent business magazine and Haaretz, one of Israel’s largest newspapers, featured VC Cafe in a spread on “The Blogs That Every Israeli Startup Should Know“.
Guy Grimland, editor of TheMarker IT, interviewed me a couple weeks ago and at the outset of the interview asked me “why should startups approach VC Cafe rather [...]

Back From Hawaii, Lots of Excitement to Report

I’m going to resume writing on all the VC and Israeli startup news soon, but first I wanted to share a piece of personal news with you. This past week while on vacation in Hawaii, I asked my long-time girlfriend to be my wife. I’m happy to report she said “Ken!” (yes in Hebrew).
To kick [...]

Clip D’jour: VC Cafe Debuts On Vator TV

Vator TV, Bambi Francisco’s video startup, is a marketplace for ideas and capital. Founded in 2007, Vator showcases hundreds of video “elevator pitches”, uploaded by people looking to pitch their ideas, businesses, skillsets or needs, such as capital, partner or staffing requirements. I had the chance to pitch VC Cafe on Vator, and [...]

Red Herring Global Pictures

My friend sent me the Flickr stream from the Red Herring Conference in Seattle. Good times.
Here are select pictures from the event:

Pensive talk with a VC following a panel on VC investments in Europe.
The panel discussed opportunities for American and Asian companies entering the expanded European Union, which consists of 25 countries and 300 million [...]

Monday Roundup: 10 Israeli Business Headlines

Let’s get right to it:
1. Sequoia invests in Israeli based Kenshoo, a SEM competitor to Google’s Double Click. Unlike Omniture and Atlas Solutions, Kenshoo enables both financial and quality management of SEM campaigns. [via The Marker (Hebrew) and via]
2. HP continues growth-through-acquisition – buys Israel based Nur Macroprinters for $117.5 million in cash. Yuval Cohen, [...]

Start Up Journal Blog Watch

Greetings! After almost two months of absence due to a coast-to-coast move, I’m happy to be back to VC Cafe, and there’s much ground to cover.
First, some exciting news. Sarah Needleman from the Wall Street Journal interviewed me a couple of weeks ago, and the article went live last Friday (4/20) on Startup Journal, the [...]

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