Yearly Archives: 2011

Israeli Startup Outbrain Raises $35 Million to Rule the Recommendations Space

In a world that suffers from content overload, personal recommendations are a bare necessity. Israeli startup Outbrain, one of the leading companies in the recommendations space, has completed a $35 million in Series D led by Index Ventures and joined by previous investors Carmel Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. This brings Outbrain’s funding to $64 million total since its inception in 2007.

CEO Interview with BlazeMeter, Self-Served Load Testing in the Cloud

Israeli startup BlazeMeter, a load testing in the cloud compatible with open source Apache Jmeter, has recently raised an undisclosed round from Yoav Leitersdorf’s YL Ventures. I’ve contacted Blazemeter’s CEO Alon Girmonsky, to learn more about the product and the load-testing market. VC Cafe: In very simple terms, what is BlazeMeter and what do you enable …

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Will Anobit be Apple’s R&D Center in Israel?

Apple is in talks to acquire Israeli flash maker Anobit for a rumored $400-$500 million, according to a report by Calcalist. This would be Apple’s first acquisition in Israel and if completed, Anobit and its 200 employees in Herzliya will become Apple’s R&D center in Israel.

Serendip – Harness the power of Twitter to curate your streaming playlist

Serendip is a new social music discovery and streaming service that allows the people you follow on Twitter to curate your personal internet radio station. If your Twitter crowd is busy posting links to YouTube music videos and you feel comfortable sharing your secret love for WHAM! publicly then Serendip is worth a try.

Why Nobody Seems to Want Non-Technical Co-Founders

Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur at the moment, and resources such as WorkInStartups, Founder2Be and Enternships have sprung up to help people locate co-founders and create or work in startups. Strikingly the vast majority of startup positions advertised are for technical co-founders such as CTO or Developer…

Pivot = Don’t Give Up

I’m a big fan of the Lean Startup movement. At the heart of Lean Startup methodology is the concept of “Pivoting”, essentially changing the product, the target market, the business model, etc when the startup can’t prove its original hypothesis.

Invest in Israel Newsletter December 2011

As every month, VC Cafe is re-posting the “Invest in Israel” Newsletter, published by the investment promotion center of Israel’s Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, which offers many helpful tools for prospecting investors.  For the Invest in Israel archive, click here. Below are the headlines for December 2011 (mid month update!) MICROSOFT ACQUIRED ISRAELI START UP VIDEOSURF  Microsoft bought …

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Pound Around the World – My Thoughts from Random Hacks of Kindness

This weekend, I took part in Random hacks of Kindness, a social enterprise hackathon taking place all around the world. I usually attend these things as a mentor, but this time I decided to roll up my sleeves, pitch an idea and get a project done in one weekend (48 hours)

Four Takeaways from WATEC 2011 Cleanvest Summit

I was fortunate to attend the party over at WATEC Israel 2011’s Cleanvest Summit. This is a pre-WATEC summit where startups got a chance to present their ideas to investors and hopefully have someone catch their bait.

Games of Luck vs Games of Skill and What it Means for the Tech Industry

There’s been a lot of talk recently about small startups being over funded.  Sean Parker, founder of Napster,  President of Facebook and Founders Fund investor,  said: “The market is ridiculously overcrowded with early-stage investors. A lot of these early-stage investors will fund literally anything…  [it’s] the assembly line approach to investing.” What’s the problem with …

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