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.
Bloomberg, New York Times, CNN, USA Today... these are just a subset of Taboola's customers. Israeli startup Taboola has announced a $9 million series B round led by Crescent Point Group, with participation by Evergreen Venture Partners.
SalesForce.com, a pioneer in SaaS technology has made its first acquisition in Israel, with its decision to buy Navajo Systems for $30 million, says Globes. Following the acquisition, SalesForce will open its first R&D center in Israel.
Wanova, the Israeli corporate cloud services provider, has announced the completion of its round B financing totaling $10 million. The round was led entirely by previous backers: the Israeli offices of Greylock Partners and Carmel Ventures, as well as US fund Opus Capital.
Israeli startup Vikido has launched in beta, what some blogs call the Facebook for parents and their kids. The self proclaimed "social network with training wheels", enables kids to create and share audio, video and images with their parents, who can then control with whom the kids information is shared whether it is public or private (similar concept to Google+ Circles) as well as what channel is used for sharing, be it other social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Google+ etc) or email.
Israel's ministry of Justice approved the use of Google Street view in Israel, after a poll conducted by the Israeli Government services and information portal showed that 70% out of the 5,000 respondents were in favor of the Service, according to Globes.
The International Broadcast Convention (IBC) 2011 is the leading global tradeshow for broadcasting media and entertainment industry, covering the latest developments in broadcasting, mobile TV, IPTV, digital signage and forward looking R&D. This year, 28 Israeli startups in mobile, media and broadcasting technology are flocking in to IBC 2011.
Israeli startup Zerto has now announced the launch of a new product suite, the Zerto Virtual Replication as well as the completion of a $15 million B round led by U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) and joined by existing investors Battery Ventures and Greylock Partners.
Tawkon has secured a second seed round of $700,000 led by Israeli angels including thetime (operated by Ilan Shiloah, Chairman of McCann Erickson Israel and Nir Tarlovsky) as well as Zvika Barinboim.
Wired magazine published a great spread on its print version, covering Europe's hottest startup capitals, including Stockholm, Tel Aviv, Moscow, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and Barcelona, ranking the hottest startups in each of the cities (link to the pdf version after the jump).
An illustrated report of global VC investments in Q2 2011, highlights the number and volume of deals in Israeli startups. It's worth calling out some of the startups, which are not only making headway through product innovation, but also through the backing of world-class investment funds such as Sequoia, Battery, Greylock and up-and-comer funds such as Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors and Index Ventures.
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