With six first investment deals Evergreen Venture Partners was the most active VC fund in Israel in 2010, according to the latest IVC Research Center report. The second place was shared by Battery Ventures Israel and Pontifax, with five investments each.
The Gifts Project is a social ecommerce platform enabling group gifting. Its CEO, Ron Gura, was a mentor at Seedcamp Tel Aviv 2011, an early-stage micro seed investment and mentoring programme. Startup Intelligence recently interviewed him for VC Cafe.
Wix, the Israel-based flash website platform, has announced a D round of $40 million. The new investors in the round are Insight Venture Partners and DAG ventures who joined previous investors Benchmark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Mangrove Capital Partners that also participated in the round.
Tokbox raised $12 million after going through a significant pivot. The company essentially stopped developing its consumer facing product, and instead focused on Open Tok, its video chat API, as its core business. We had a chance to conduct a short interview with Ian Small, CEO of TokBox to find out the pivot decision was made.
Israeli startup headlines for March including new fundraising rounds, product launches, M&A deals, cleantech headlines and Israeli venture capital news, curated by VC Cafe, the home of Israeli startup news since 2005.
Facebook surprised with its first acquisition in Israel today, with the announcement that it is buying Israeli startup Snaptu (previously known as Moblica) for an estimated $60-70 million. Founded in 2007 by Ron Makavy, Micha Berdichevsky, and Barak Naveh, Snaptu raised a total of $9 million in three rounds
Wibbitz provides web developers with a plug-in which automatically transforms static web content into an interactive video. The company was one of the five winners at Seedcamp Tel Aviv 2011, an early-stage micro seed investment and mentoring programme. Startup Intelligence caught up with co-founders Zohar Dayan (CEO) and Yotam Cohen (VP Business Development) to find out more.
Crowdfunding platforms can offer the credibility and infrastructure necessary to successfully harness the financial power of the crowd, but because crowdfunding is a new trend, many people misunderstand how to effectively leverage the tools available to them. RocketHub's founder presents the pitfalls to avoid for crowdfunding success.
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. See the February 2011 edition after the jump. For previous editions, click here.
After reading lots of posts on 'lean startups', listening to Eric Reis in Seedcamp and devouring Steve Blank's "Four Steps to the Epiphany", I wanted to see real examples of companies that went through a pivot process. By definition, a Pivot, is a change in the company's strategy or business model when things aren't exactly working out according to the business plan. The first post in the series is on TokBox, a startup that went through a business model change and managed to generate significant value as a result.
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