eBay acquired Israeli startup The GiftsProject for an undisclosed sum, according to AllthingsD. Founded in 2009, The GiftsProject has created a social commerce application, enabling users to vote, comment and buy a gift together as a group. Back in February, the GiftsProject announced a partnership with eBay as well as $1 million seed round from Gemini and Index ventures.
Alley Insider, one of my favorite tech blogs, published an interesting post yesterday, titled "If We Hear About Any More Startups Like These, We'll Scream", listing some of the latest startup trends in idea buckets. Their frustration is coming from the sheer number of startups doing the same thing in the US, but for all of us living out of the US, the question should be: Is it currently being done right your country?
This summer, I had the pleasure to be a mentor at the Entrepreneurship Summer School, an elective at London Business School (my alma mater) where students are tasked with testing whether their startup ideas can turn into a fundable business over the course of three months. Check out the tips for raising funding from angels after the jump.
IBM Global Entrepreneur, the computer giant's entrepreneurship outreach arm is looking for the smartest early stage startups around the globe that will help solve tomorrow's problems. The next event on the list is taking place in Tel Aviv, Israel on September 21st. While registrations are now 30 companies have passed the initial screening process and were selected to present in front of a panel of judges this month.
The World Economic Forum has published the Technology Pioneers report for 2012. The report showcases 25 innovative young companies that were selected as they are well positioned to address some of the world’s challenges, in a broad range of fields. Amongst the award winners is DoubleVerify, an Israeli startup providing advertising verification services.
A big spread on Israeli startups and Venture Capital by Tobias Buck was published in the FT this morning , showcases what made Israel the startup nation, and what are the challenges ahead.
Marc Benioff, CEO of SalesForce gives a very energetic (almost evangelical) keynote speech on collaboration, and creating an employee social network, in front of 45,000 attendees.
Innovid, a video advertising startup, has raised $9.5 million round led by Sequoia Capital with Genesis Partners and T-Ventures (Deutsche Telecom) participating in the round. As part of the funding round, Sequoia partner Gili Raanan will join Innovid’s Board of Directors.
Ad verification startup DoubleVerify has raised a fourth round of $33 million from private equity fund JMI Equity and Institutional Venture Partners (IVP). According to Ynet, the deal values DoubleVerify at $200 million. JMI knows quite a bit about display advertising, having bought DoubleClick before its $3.1 billion acquisition by Google.
Three months ago, Bjoern Herrmann and 21 year old Max Marmer decided to put some hard data to the test, by benchmarking 3,200 statrups on 25 KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in their very buzzed Startup Genome Report. They didn't stop at just writing reports, and have put together a startup accelerator in Silicon Valley, called Blackbox.
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