IVC Online has recently released the Q3 quarterly survey on the state of the VC industry in Israel. Q3 2008 contributed $600 million to the capital raised by Israeli VCs, 45% above Q3/07 levels. These figures are not surprising, given that CalPERS, the $180 Billion sized California Public Employees’ Retirement System (), ranked Carmel Ventures …
Continue reading “2008 capital raising in Israel expected to reach an 8-year record high”
A week ago VC Cafe covered the alpha release of Israel and San Francisco based boxee. Today Boxee has announced a $4 million A round from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures to continue development of its social media center software. Boxee takes TV viewing online to the next level, by giving your computer a …
This morning I was invited to stop by Tech Spin Out 2008, a conference organized by the British Venture Capital Association (BVCA), with the goal of exploring the activities that help transform small companies into big companies. As I mentioned many times in this blog, Israeli has the largest numbers of startups per capita in …
Continue reading “An Industry on “Life Support”: Notes from the BVCA Tech Spin Out 2008 in London”
Newsflash: the worse the economic situation, the more people play video games. It’s cheaper to stay at home and play Super Mario than to go out for a movie these days. According to a recent article by the New York Times, Video Game sales were up 18% in October, reaching $1.3 billion. There are many …
Continue reading “Playce provides Game Infrastructure As a Service: VC Cafe Interviews Yoram Avidan”
Doom and gloom reports return to all the major tech blogs – this time the crisis hits the Venture Capital Industry – starting with TheFunded.com’s editor Adeo Ressi, and his presentation to the Finance and entrepreneurship faculty at Harvard Business School titled “the canary is dead – something is wrong in venture capital“. The basic …
Continue reading “Crying Wolf: Or what Broke the VC Investment Model?”
In times like this, a startup should leverage any help it can get. The Active Startup Club at London Business School published a list of resources for London based startups and entrepreneurs. VC Cafe is happy to share these with the entrepreneurial community of London and the rest of Europe. 1. Seedcamp: They provide a …
Continue reading “Top 20 Entrepreneurial Startup Resources (Europe)”
As the phone converges into a GPS device, people are putting away their TomTom devices and simply installing a navigation app on their 3G phone. The level of detail on these apps varies, but Israeli startup 3DVU claims to have the killer navigation app. The new version of Navi2Go will supply both 3D aerial photography …
Continue reading “Navi2Go: The Ultimate Killer Navigation Application?”
London Business School’s student-run Media Club is prepping for the London Media Summit, to be held on 24th November. This year LBS has an interesting lineup of some of London’s top Media community members. The Summit is entitled “The Great Debate: how can ‘old’ media survive?”, touching on some of the issues relevant to content …
Continue reading “Event: The London Business School Media Summit”
Exciting day for Israel based Mo’minis: the company has launched its new website offering an DYI mobile game studio and announcing GameCast #1 – a rapid mobile games creation contest. The company partnered with Sun Microsystems and Orange Israel in an effort to encourage the creation of original mobile java games. Apart from cash prizes …
Continue reading “Mo’Minis Launches Mobile Game Development Platform”
For the fifth year, Loïc Le Meur’s Paris-based Internet conference Le Web 08 will choose the most promising online ventures. Last year, two Israeli firms (Ply Media and GHost) snatched two out of the top spots. This year, among the 30 finalists are two Israeli startups: Contrust (read VC Cafe’s interview with CEO Shai Wolkomir) …
