his year's winners included a higher number of clean tech companies, Amongst the 31 companies to receive the honor is Israeli startup Takadu, creator of a SaaS product for water distribution networks through the adoption of a grid approach
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 March 2010 edition after the jump. For previous editions, click here.
Deloitte Touche in Israel produces a Venture Capital and Private Equity survey every other quarter in an attempt to identify trends within the venture capital arena, give a summary of VC expectations of the Israeli VC community for the next six to twelve months. This is the survey 33rd installment in Israel and the responses were collected in June this year.
The summary of high tech capital raising in Q2 is out, and the IVC Research Center confirm what we've already knew - capital raising in Israel is showing seeds of recovery (see VC Cafe's post "Crisis Shmisis") with $343 million raised in 104 deals, representing an increase of 47% from the previous quarter. Life sciences continue to lead capital raising, attracting $109 million, and Israeli VC investments are a much smaller slice of the pie.
Some call it "quick hits", "first read" or "readings". At VC Cafe we calls it Bitesize. Below are the headlines for the week of July 8 2010: Startups of the week virtual good paymentsSupersonicAds - a dominant leader in virtual currency monetization for online games, virtual worlds and social networks. The company's customizable, plug and play payment platform gives consumers the opportunity to earn virtual currency for free by completing targeted offers
Gerson Lerhman Group ("GLG", but not to confuse with the hedge fund), the world's largest monetized expert network, and Bloomberg Professional Services announced a high-value collaboration, enabling Bloomberg Professional clients access to more than 50,000 select GLG Council Members through the Bloomberg terminal.
The second quarter of 2010 has come and gone and despite the depleting VC and incubator capital in Israel, the quarter has brought approximately 40 deals with over $400 million invested
Libox, a new Tel Aviv-based startup offering a free service to share and store photos, videos and music, wants to disrupt the industry. To learn more about the product and the founder's ambitious vision, I interviewed Erez Pilosof, founder and CEO of Libox who also founded and ran Walla! (Israel's largest online portal) from inception to IPO as well as Oren Nauman, deputy CEO at Libox.
BizMe2, a new Israeli startup led by serial entrepreneur Yair Margolin, is looking to do to conferences what Wordpress did to blogging. I spoke with Yair last week to learn more about BizMe2 and plans for the future. The conversation was in Hebrew, so hopefully nothing got "lost in translation".
Battery Ventures held its first Entrepreneurship and Venture Creation Workshop in Tel Aviv on July 1 and 2 (see VC Café’s previous coverage of the workshop here). For Battery, the workshop served two main purposes: (1) to enable the firm to ‘give back’ to the Israeli entrepreneurial community amidst a challenging funding environment; and (2) to enable the firm’s investment professionals to meet and evaluate the entrepreneurial talent that is currently working on, or considering launching, early stage technology ventures in Israel.
Janvest, a new seed fund of $5 million backed by American angel investors and chaired by the former head of the Mossad (Danny Yatom), saw an opportunity to fill the gap by making offering US-based angel investors the opportunity to tap into the Israeli startup industry. To learn more, VC Cafe interviewed Brian Rosenzweig, one of the managing partners in the new fund and the former marketing director at 21Ventures.
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