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.
The latest IVC Online report is out and it offers interesting color on the funding of Israeli startups. According to the report, 137 startups raised $522 million in Q3 of 2011, up 53% from the equivalent period in 2010, but down 8% from the $549 million raised in Q2 2011.
Techcrunch broke the news on the acquisition of Poland-based Bliscy.pl by Israel-based MyHeritage.com. Bliscy will help MH increase reach as the acquisition brings MyHeritage family network to 56 million registered users and approximately 762 million profiles, 18 million family trees and 116 million photos.
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.
For the second year in a row, Seedcamp is coming to Tel Aviv on February 16 2011, at the Afeka College of Engineering. Internet technology start ups in Israel should apply *for free* on this link: Apply to Seedcamp Tel Aviv.
I came across Saul Klein’s excellent presentation from the last Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin and thought I’d share it with you. The main takeaways: Situation is grim: startups have no money, no clients and an imaginary war The valley…
