IsraelWebTour

SUN's Marketing VP @ IsraelWebTour

We thank Sun Microsystems for sponsoring this year's efforts.

IsraelWebTour companies were hosted at the Sun's Executive Briefing Center in Silicon Valley for series of discussions and meeting with Sun's VP Marketing Juan Carlos Soto.  Following MySQL acquisition SUN's focus on the Web 2.0 market and emerging technologies increased significantly. Soto discussed the $1Billion acquisition of the popular open source database company and how it is positioning SUN's future entry into the Web 2.0 neighborhood and the benefits as platform to companies in this space.

 

See Israeli Web Tour Showcase live with BlogTV

Tomorrow, starting at 08:45 PST, Israel Web Tour is having its key event - the startup showcase.
Even if you can't attend, you can join the event online, via a live broadcast, by blogTV. Check this post tomorrow, starting at 08:45 PST, see live feed of the event, and join the chat on blog TV site:

Kfir Pravda

Video Intro for IsraelWebTour 2008

Deb Schultz and I were invited by Brian Solis of Future-works to his studio last week.  We recorded the below video introducing IsraelWebTour.  Needless to say we had a blast!  You can also see more videos of IsraelWebTour companies introducing themselves in BlogTV Channel dedicated to IsraelWebTour.

Israeli Web Tour - On Video

Video is changing the web, and Israel Web Tour is joining the revolution!

During the event, you, our blog readers, will enjoy video coverage of the winning companies, interviews, and some of the social events that take place during next week. Yes, nothing like a good mix of startups, VCs, web giants and drinks...

We chose Blogtv excellent platform so you can see both live and pre-recorded video clips. You can find all of it in this channel. If you want to be a part of the experience - log in to blogtv during the live coverage and join the chat. You can also send us questions and comments - and we would include them in the videos.

Stay tuned to our twitter and Facebook group for live show alerts, and feel free to be a part of the conversation.

Kfir Pravda

www.pravdam.com

Ask.com to Kick Off Next Week’s Web Tour!

We are pleased to announced that Ask.com will be hosting the opening of our Web Tour.

The 15 participating Web Tour companies will join Ask.com for a working lunch discussion focused on Search Innovation. Ask.com’s SVP of Product Management, Doug Leeds, will showcase Ask.com’s products and technology and discuss trends in the high-profile Search industry. In addition, VP of Corporate Development, Manoj Verma, will discuss how startups can work with Ask.com and IAC, Ask’s parent company which is also home to Match.com, LendingTree, Home Shopping Network and Ticketmaster as well as many other leading brands.

The opening session will be held at Ask.com's Campbell, CA office on Monday, February 4^th.

We expect to have a very exciting agenda during the entire week and want to thank Ask.com for helping to kick off this year’s event.

The Winning Companies

Over 90 companies applied to take part in this year’s tour and we are proud to announce the chosen companies listed below!

The tour starts on 2/4 and the highlight of the week will be a public showcase on 2/6 hosted at Microsoft where each start-up will present to the industry and press.  We look forward to seeing you there!

THE 2008 ISRAEL WEB TOUR COMPANIES

5Min

5min is developing a unique Life Videopedia platform, enabling user's easy access to practical solutions in any field, via a rich library of short practical-videos.

PLYmedia

PLYmedia is a pioneer in the development and deployment of an interactive, multi-dimensional platform - PLYplatform.  The company delivers web publishers and broadcasters a range of applications focused on a new movement towards personalized, enhanced and interactive web video technology by bringing new context and meaning to video.

AllofMe

AllofMe is a one-step website for aggregating and managing personal digital assets (virtually any digital file, such as pictures, videos, Internet pages, or email messages).  The assets appear online on a Timeline, zoomable from century to a day in a life. That Timeline can be shared with personal interest groups such as family, friends, or colleagues.  eventually, it becomes a one-stopstation that defines and aggregates one's digital identity and assets.

NuConomy

Nuconomy Studio offers a new way to measure, understand and grow your content and community.  By using NuConomy Studio web sites are able to go far beyond the old page view model and measure their site attention, engagement and contribution metrics.

ClickTale

ClickTale is an innovative hosted service that enables websites to record and watch movies of their users' complete browsing sessions - every mouse movement, every click and every scrolling action.  As the pioneer and leader in Web Interaction Analytics (WIA), ClickTale captures, analyzes and helps websites optimize their user's online behavior inside the web page.

BlogTV

BlogTV Ltd. is a provider of live video streaming platforms for Internet and mobile users.  blogTV platform allows any Internet or mobile users to have their own live video show and broadcast it from a webcam or a third generation cellular phone.

Sportingo

Sportingo is about fans sharing their opinions with sports community.  All fans are invited to register and write articles about any sport related event ranging from match reviews and team performances no nostalgia articles about memorable moments in sport. Sportingo is about fans writing for fans; fans commenting and ranking the articles of other fans; fans deciding what the topical and important stories of the day, fans setting the sport agenda

PicScout

Your Visual Assets Always Come First. PicScout deploys advanced technologies to improve business of visual assets owners and users.  Since introducing its Image Tracker service in 2003, the company has established itself as a market leader for content monitoring, serving the world's most prestigious visual collections.

Qoof

Qoof is am Internet video commerce company.  Qoof's video commerce platform is the convergence of the online Internet shopping world with Internet video, helping an infinite number of companies cost-effectively sell more products and services and reach new customers by harnessing the scalability, decentralization and power of syndicated Internet video.

8hands

8hands is a small and friendly desktop application that allows a single point of entry to all your social networks - Receive real time notifications, conveniently connect with all your online friends, IM and share online content with them and view useful statistics about your online social life.

Velingo

Velingo's Search Mining proprietary technology tracks large amounts of search decisions and creates a collective knowledge, to provide more relevant search results and content recommendations.  Velingo's solutions relates more relevant advertisements and premium content to any given search, thus increasing search revenues.

Delver

Personalizes Social Search engine - Leveraging user's social networks into delivering personal search results with high degree of relevance. Delver search engine draws a connection between content and people, allowing you to easily search for information within your network and find people relevant to your search queries.

PageOnce

PageOnce gets you everything you want, and nothing you don't. Our FetchOnce technology™ grabs the most relevant stuff from the websites you care about.  You can get bank info, bills that are due, cell phone minutes, emails, and what's coming next from Netflix all in one place - all without ever having to logon or surf to multiple websites.  PageOnce makes the Internet "password-free" by handling every username and logon for you.

Journeys

Journey's develops, runs and operates the Journeys world game.  Journeys provide and easily accessible and fun bridge between virtual worlds, the wen and real life, non gamers communities and casual gamers communities.

Erayo

Erayo is an innovative wholesale marketplace for unique, exclusive products from around the world. With Erayo, manufacturers can penetrate international markets and retailers can source imported designs and creations. erayo’s industries focus are fashion accessories, home décor and jewelry.

The Tour Showcase -- Come meet the companies - February 6th

We are gearing up for a great day of presentations, networking and interesting panels at the IsraelWebTour Showcase on February 6th, 2008 @ the Microsoft Campus in Mt. View 8:00AM - 2:00PM

Tickets are available here.  Make sure you get them early.

We are offering free passes to the Tour closing party at www.Slidesf.com to those signing up for the showcase now.

The Lineup -- Look who is talking at IsraelWebTour 2008

We've been gathering together a pretty exciting line-up to meet and welcome our 15 Finalists at this year's IsraelWebTour.  Here is a sample of our selected confirmed speakers, visionaries and entrepreneurs who have graciously agreed to share their knowledge and expertise with the group!

• Jonathan Abrams, Founder and CEO, Socializr
• Michael Arrington, Editor, TechCrunch
• Cathy Brooks, Executive Producer, Seesmic
• Jeff Clavier, Soft Tech VC
• Daniel Cohen, Partner, Gemini Israel Funds
• Ron Conway, Baseline Ventures
• Tim Connors, General Partner, USVP
• Ken Elfant, General Partner, Opus Capital
• Yaron Galai, Co-founder and CEO, Outbrain Inc.
• Saar Gur, Partner, Charles River Ventures
• Jason Harinstein, Corporate Development, Google
• Auren Hoffman, CEO, RapLeaf
• Reid Hoffman, Founder, LinkedIn
• Bradley Horowitz, VP, Product Strategy, Yahoo !
• Philip Kaplan, Founder and President, AdBrite
• Raj Kapoor, General Partner, Mayfield Funds
• David Kostman – Head, Global Internet Banking Group at Lehman Brothers
• Sarah Lacy, Author, BusinessWeek Columnist
• Loic Le Meur - Founder and CEO, Seesmic
• Dan'l Lewin, Corp. Vice President, Strategic Emerging Business Dev., Microsoft
• Mike Maples, Managing Partner, Maples Investments
• Ajit Nazre, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
• Deborah Schultz, Founder, Chieft Strategist, Deborah Schultz.com
• Seth Sternberg, CEO, Meebo
• Josh Silverman, CEO Shopping.com

Stay tuned for more info on the companies and their scheduled visit...

Facebook confirmed to host IsraelWebTour Startups

We are excited to announce that Facebook will be hosting a special session and meetings in their downtown Palo Alto offices for the IsraelWebTour companies.  Specifically, the visit will include a  discussion with Facebook's Platform team  getting under the hood on current opportunities for the startups and developers to leverage the Facebook API to enhance their own business models.

IsraelWebTour companies will "Hack" at Yahoo!'s Brickhouse

Our friends at Yahoo! are working hard to prepare for the IsraelWebTour 2008 (February 4-7).  As companies are currently being selected, the tour organizers and steering committee members are working diligently on the program for the 5 days in Silicon Valley.  Yahoo! was our sponsor in 2006 and joined again this year to host and meet with IsraelWebTour companies.  Bradley Horowitz, Vice President at Yahoo!'s Advanced Development Division will address the group in a private session at Yahoo!'s San Francisco Brickhouse.  Bradley leads Yahoo!'s efforts in building innovative products and services company-wide.  His team manages programs such as Hack Yahoo!, a grassroots program to foster and harvest innovation throughout the company. 

Joining Bradley in the IsraelWebTour session is Salim Ismail, a seasoned entrepreneur/investor and Head of the Brickhouse.  The uniqueness of the Brickhouse idea fits well with hosting the 15 emerging companies from Israel.  The Brickhouse is located in South of Market area of SF where the hip, creative digital webbies live and work.  For more on the Brickhouse you can read here in a recent article by Business Week.

Special thanks to Gil Ben-Artzi, Corporate Development at Yahoo! and our cheerleader on the IsraelWebTour Committee for plugging us well.

P.S.  There will be an additional and very fun session at Yahoo! with some of the leading "geeks" / CEOs in the current internet/web 2.0 sphere.  Stay tuned for the next blog 

Catching up with FixYa - In New Silicon Valley Office

Recently I had the pleasure of visiting FixYa's new Silicon Valley office and catch-up with their CEO Yaniv Bensadon. It is always an amazing experience for me to walk into the office of an Israeli company that made the leap and established Silicon Valley presence.  Particularly knowing how challenging and long the journey is for most entrepreneurs.   For FixYa it was not different. 

FixYa is the first Crowd Sourced Tech Support site that established a live community of users who share their experiences with tech support issues, FixYa offers a solution for every tech support problem, on 800,000 consumer products.

FixYa was one of the 15 companies we selected last year for the first IsraelWebTour.  Back in November of 2006 FixYa had already great traction and seed funding from Dr. Yossi Vardi.  However,Yaniv was very determined to leverage his participation at IsraelWebTour to find the appropriate VC and launch FixYa's efforts in the US.  Following the tour and few introductions and meetings FixYa was able to raise $4 million from Mayfield Fund and Pitango . 

Today, Yaniv is focusing on building FixYa's operations in the US and expanding its already growing community of users.  FixYa currently has over 3 million unique users and they are planning to grow this number significantly by the end of this year. The focus is currently on building the brand and positioning FixYa as leader in the space.

Additionally you can read update on FixYa here and also a great interview with Yaniv here.

Good luck from IsraelWebTour team.

Microsoft Silicon Valley to Host Startup Showcase -- February 6th

We are excited to announce that Microsoft will join as sponsor of IsraelWebTour 2008 and will be hosting the Showcase at their conference center in Silicon Valley on February 6th between 8AM and 2PM.  The showcase is the public session where the 15 selected companies will be able to each present to the industry and press.  Last year's showcase drew over 300 people and we expect great turnout again this year. We are also thrilled that Dan'l Lewin, Corporate Vice President of Strategic and Emerging Business Development will join as speaker and host. 

Stay tuned for additional program updates. Registration for the showcase will be open soon to industry, investors and press.

Yedda - 2006 IsraelWebTour Company Acquired by AOL

We met Yaniv Golan and Avichai Nissenbaum when Yedda was selected to present and participate at the 2006 IsraelWebTour.  Definitely two very solid and dynamic guys who brought great energy to the group during the week long tour in Silicon Valley.  Here is a fun interview they had with Deb Schultz before they joined the tour.

In the last year Yedda reached many milestones including raising $2.5 million from Genesis Partners, and reaching over 50 affiliated partners who are the main drivers of traffic to Yedda's site.

Today it was announced that AOL will acquire Yedda for an undisclosed amount.  AOL will incorporate Yedda's technology, which matches questions to related inquiries while also finding other users to answer them, into select programming areas on AOL.com.

Congratulations from IsraelWebTour team !

Call for Companies!

Call for companies application is now live on the site.  New Deadline is December 10, 2007 at 5PM PST.

Spread the word!!

Back by popular demand

Plans are underway for the second annual Israel Web Tour.  Stay tuned for "call for companies" details.

Make sure to subscribe to the blog to get the latest tour news.  For additional questions regarding press passes, media and other sponsorships, please email us directly.

 

The Tour Showcase Highlight Reel

For those of you who missed IsraelWebTour Showcase we have the highlights in this short video.  Special thanks for all who were involved in making this a smashing success.  More follow up reports will be coming soon....

Day Two -- The Showcase...network...network...network

and the next youtube will be.....,
originally uploaded by debs.

Day two of the IsraelWebTour started this morning in Palo Alto's Sheraton where the 15 companies had the opportunity to present before Silicon Valley crowed of over 150 investors, industry leaders and professionals.  It was hectic and busy at times having companies presenting one after the other.  During breaks the crowd rushed to checkout the demo area where companies were stationed infront of special iMac screens featuring their products.

In addition, this showcase featured a panel called "The Impact of the New Web – Culture, Entertainments & Commerce" moderated by the notable editor of TechCrunch Mr. Michael Arrington.  The panelists were savvy technologists/investors who are highly regarded in the internet industry: Keith Rabois of LinkedIn who is also the first investor in YouTube, David Tennenhause of Amazon, and Daniel Cohen of the Gemini Israel Funds. 

Please check Yaniv Golan's blog to read more in-depth coverage of this panel.

Companies had a series of meetings following the showcase including some private sessions with Demo's Chris Shipley.  Tomorrow.... visiting SandHill Rd. VC's, MSN at Microsoft and private one-on-one meetings.at Yahoo!...

Day One - our tour kicks off at Ebay

The  "fabulous fifteen" arrived this morning and we enjoyed a great day at Ebay, Adobe and Wilson Sonsini.  Stay tuned for more details on the panels and the day.

We look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning at The Showcase.

WebTour Company -- Introducing Yedda!

This is the fourth interview in a series of fun interviews Deborah Schultz conducted with the Israel Web Tour companies.  We asked each CEO to answer a few questions that we hope will give you a little insight into and their company and their personalities and what it's like to do business between Israel and Silicon Valley ( a 10 hour time difference).

An Interview with Avichay Nissenbaum, CEO and Yaniv Golan, CTO of Yedda

Q. What does your company name mean and why did you choose it as the name for your company?
“We really like the sound of it. Seriously, Yedda is the Hebrew word for knowledge, which is only appropriate since Yedda is all about sharing personal knowledge. In a way, we are all experts - you, your uncle or your neighbor have precious knowledge to share. Yedda allows everyone to share their expertise in diverse fields. Later we found that Yedda also means 'singing' in old English, and we love that.”

Q.  In one sentence --what problem is your company addressing and solving?
“We enable people to benefit from the personal experience of others and help connect people who seek knowledge with people who have the knowledge.”

Q. What is your competitive advantage as being an Israeli based company and what are the disadvantages/challenges that this provides?
"We have a strong, technology-driven culture that is highly adaptive to problem-solving situations. On the other hand, the disadvantage of being associated with Israel is the fact that mayh people often associate Israel with the regional conflict and this is something we need to deal with as an Israeli company. In any case, thanks to the internet and phenomena such as the blogosphere, geography becomes less significant these days and the disadvantages are minimized.”

Q. What three words should an American techie learn to say in Hebrew if he is doing business with an israeli startup?

“Yalla, borrowed from our neighbors, which means let’s move forward."
"Chnun, which is the Hebrew version for the often-used industry term – Geeks :) "
"Achla, which means great."

Q. Which are your favorite US cities and why?
Yaniv: "I love New York because it's such a melting pot of different cultures, smells, and tastes. It's fascinating."

Avichay: "I love San Francisco. Great food, great wine, and moderate weather throughout the year. I also have a little place in my heart for Boston since I lived and worked there for a few years."

Q.  What myth(s) about Israeli startups do you want Silicon Valley to know?
Yaniv: "Well, fact is that Israel is a very small country and it's true that all of us in the hi-tech business know each other. We all go to a lot of the same events and have probably done business with one another at some point in our professional lives.”

Avichay adds: “This familiarity really helps the networking aspect of things. I guess this is a big advantage as opposed to other countries, and one of the reasons that Israel has been so successful in this field.”

Q. How many times do you travel outside Israel for work and which is your favorite airport? 
“Both Yaniv and I travel on business at least once a month, if not twice. My favorite airport is Ben Gurion Tel Aviv – it’s always nice to come back home.”

Now for some multiple choice questions:

Tel Aviv or Haifa: “Definitely Tel Aviv”
Cell phone or Skype: “We are great fans of Skype”
Army or Airforce: Navy :)
iPod or CD: “The iPod product is a wonderful lesson in usability and branding."
Books or Magazines:
Avichay: “Most of what I read is online.”
Yaniv: “Both. Browsers are great, but I still cherish the immersive experience of reading a great book or magazine. “

Q. Finally, What does Web 2.0 mean to you?
Yaniv: “We see Web 2.0 as a movement to make the web personal. It's about people, the content they create, and the opinions they express. It's about creating web services that are focused on creating a fun, useful platform for people to interact through.

Avichay: “To me, Web 2.0 symbolizes the democratization of content over the web. Web 2.0 puts the users in the center and gives them the tools to share,, express their opinions, and make an impact.

Share your knowledge, win an iPod Nano!

Answer this question:

The Best Example of Web 2.0

Web 2.0 has been with us for a while, but the exact definition of what Web 2.0 means is still controversial. No matter which definition you prefer - Tim O'Reilly's, Wikipedia's, Paul Graham's,  or the famous Web 2.0 validator's – it's clear that some companies do it better than others. In fact, you could argue that some companies have been doing it before the term was coined.

So, in your opinion, which company – recent or old [in internet years] sets the best example of Web 2.0?

Topics:  software, web 2.0

Asked by Ayelet on November 02, 2006

View the entire discussion on Yedda

Post to Yedda your answer to the question below. The attendee who receives the most thumbs up for her or his answer, will win a shiny new iPod Nano!

(Since only attendees of the IsraelWebTour can participate, please sign up with your real name. If you prefer not to use your real name but a nickname instead, please email us at iwt@yedda.com telling us who you are... )

The winner will be announced at the IsraelWebTour party.