Many international guests gathered in Israel last week for three parallel occasions. The first was a business delegation of key industry executives from the Valley led by the Jewish Federation, including my mayor, San Francisco’s Gavin Newsom. In a video interview to Israel21c, Gaving expressed that the real Israel is very different than what is …
Continue reading “Silicon Valley Tightens Connection With Israel”
It’s good to be a startup in Israel right now. Venture capital investments hit a seven year record, and everyone seems to be looking for early stage startups. Angels have found their place in the food chain, and it all seems to make sense. 1) The early stage investors are interested in ideas, and willing …
Continue reading “Labs, Incubators and Angel Funds Search For Early Stage Startups”
Last week’s top story was with no doubt Microsoft’s bid to acquire Yahoo. The plot was full of twists and drama, saved only to”Jurassic Park” style M&A deals like this one. Israel didn’t stand still last week, so I’ve gathered the most interesting startup and venture capital headlines of the week in my bitesize format. …
How many times have you sat down with your overpriced Starbucks soy latte and the internet couldn’t connect? Apparently too many times, because Starbucks decided to do something about it. In an official press release, Starbucks got rid of T-Mobile and announced plans to deliver AT&T Wi-FiSM service at more than 7,000 company-operated Starbucks locations …
Continue reading “WIFI Headlines: Starbucks Dumps T-Mobile, WeFi launches Mobile and Facebook Apps”
Amid turbulence of acquisition by Microsoft, News Corp, Private Equity funds and now a ‘help’ offer from Google, Yahoo! is not resting on its laurels. Following almost a month of rumors, PaidContent confirms that Yahoo! has bought Israel-based FoxyTunes, for an undisclosed amount. This is part of a larger move that Yahoo is making around …
Volatility in the markets soared this past week as we approach the end of the first month of 2008, and as we’ll approach the likely reality that the US has already entered a recession. The San Francisco Business Journal asked me to provide a comment for the article “Israel rolls out high-tech stars“. The question …
Continue reading “Bitesize newsbrief: Israeli startup headlines for the week of 01.29.08 | VC Cafe”
SemantiNet, a semantic search technology startup based in Israel, raised a round of $1.7 million led by Giza Venture Capital. Israeli angel and internet guru Yossi Vardi is listed among Semantinet’s previous investors along with Sir Ronald Cohen (founder of Apax Partners), Robert Imershein, Moudi Ben-Shachand and Jeff Pulver. There’s not much known about Semantinet’s technology. A blog post reports that the company development is …
The front page at TechCrunch looks as if it was taken out of the Venture Capital Cafe today. Out of 8 posts displayed on the home page, 5 are related to Israel – not bad for a tiny country in the middle east. AllofMe, SeeToo, Google Israel, eToro and SuTree – read more on VC Cafe.
43 former and present executives from Amdocs have raised several million dollars and formed AfterDox, an angel group targeting early stage enterprise software and telecom companies. The group explicitly expressed that they will not invest in medical devices or hardware companies. The angel group has already met with 70 prospect companies and is getting ready …
Continue reading “AfterDox – Former Amdocs Executives Form an Angel Investment Group”
Tired of staring at a motionless movie player while waiting to watch videos online? Israeli startup SpeedBit, creator of the popular Download Accelerator, has found a way to innovate and leverage the exponential growth of videos online. Delivering high quality videos to fast to the end-user has become a real challenge even for the big …
