IsraelWebTour

PayPal to kickoff IsraelWebTour 2009

Companies participating in IsraelWebTour this year will have a packed agenda for the next four days with private meetings across Silicon Valley.  To kickoff the tour PayPal will host a private reception and briefing at its headquarters welcoming the Israeli CEOs. 

Jack Stephenson, SVP, Strategy, Partnerships and New Ventures at PayPal will greet the visiting startups and joining him will be Osama Bedier, VP Product Development and Matthew Mengernick, VP of Core Technologies at PayPal.

PayPal, the leader in on-line payments, is a significant player in the industry with more than 57 million active accounts in 190 markets and 17 currencies around the world.  Last year PayPal acquired Israeli start-up FraudSciences, a company which develops fraud detection and protection product for the sum of $169 million.

Our special thanks to Nadav Naaman, Steering Committee member of IsraelWebTour 2009 and Head of Mobile Proximity Payment Products at PayPal for his leadership in making this happen.

10 Great Start-ups Coming to the 2009 IsraelWebTour!

We are really pleased and excited to announce this year's start-ups joining us for the third annual IsraelWebTour! These are some truly compelling companies with a wide range of technologies and business models from content creation and syndication to the semantic web, rich media and the social web.

During the four-day tour starting on April 20 and wrapping up on April 23, the start-ups will have the opportunity to meet with leading industry players, investors, customers, and strategic partners in a mix of targeted meetings, roundtable discussions, and networking events. On April 22, each start-up will present its product to the industry and press at a semi-public showcase hosted at the Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati offices in Palo Alto. Click here for more information on the showcase.

The CICC launched the tour in partnership and collaboration with Google, PayPal, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.  The 2009 tour is sponsored by Credit Suisse, WSGR, US Venture Partners and Intel Corporation.

The participating companies include (listed in alphabetical order):

Conduit, www.conduit.com/
Conduit provides website syndication solutions for web publishers by creating a direct, always-on connection between publishers and subscribers. More than 180,000 publishers have joined the Conduit network worldwide, including Fox News, Lufthansa, Major League Baseball, Greenpeace, TechCrunch, Softonic and organizations in 180 countries around the globe.

ContextIn, www.contextin.com
ContextIn's proven proprietary multi-lingual semantic algorithms significantly increase relevancy and targeting to deliver the most valuable, targeted advertising inventory and traffic quality. Our algorithms have been proven to maximize both relevancy and monetization for Ad Networks, Advertisers and Publishers alike for increased ROI.
EyeView Digital, www.eyeviewdigital.com
EyeView is transforming online conversion through the use of rich-media content combining compelling rich-media content with a world-first rich-media conversion platform. The result is a proven and significant increase your website’s conversion rates. EyeView’s solution is ideal for a wide variety of websites and online industries such as: Gaming, Online Forex, Travel, Credit Cards, community, Software and eCommerce

Footbo, www.footbo.com
Footbo is the place for football/soccer lovers world-wide. Headquartered in London, UK, Footbo is the leading international social media platform with an exclusive focus on soccer. It combines the concept of social networking with the world of soccer to provide fans with a one-stop platform for all their soccer needs.

SemantiNet, www.headup.com
Semantinet is pioneering the development of “Top Down” Semantic Web technologies. SemantiNet’s Headup Semantic Web plugin, currently available as an addon for Mozilla's Firefox browser, presents you with textual and rich media content related to the objects and terms it identifies on the pages you browse. Headup not only identifies these objects but has a basic understanding of the relationships between them.

SundaySky, www.sundaysky.com
SundaySky enables publishers to quickly, easily and cost-effectively infuse their website with video clips. SundaySky’s DynamicVideo™ Platform allows mass generation of always up-to-date video content, while leveraging existing content repositories. Videos are personalized for each user, interactive, and are intricately linked the site the user is viewing, even if that site is totally dynamic.

Superfish, www.superfish.com
Superfish has developed a unique, first of it’s kind, 3D object recognition engine to bring high-accuracy visual matching, browsing, and comparison into the world of search engines. The company’s unique IP puts together machine vision, machine learning and advanced search algorithms to allow for users to intuitively find similar objects visually.

SweetIM, www.sweetim.com
SweetIM is focused on delivering fun content and self-expression tools. SweetIM products are intended to allow users to upgrade their social engagement, by offering fun content and an add-on for IM, webmail, and social networks that is easy to use. Through these tools users are sending daily over 6M flash animations, games and video to each other.

Triond, www.triond.com
Triond offers a new approach for user generated content. Triond publishes, distributes and monetizes users' content over a network of niche websites. This way users get to focus on the content creating process, while leveraging the service in order to get more readership, recognition and revenue than they would if they were to publish individually.

WorkLight, www.myworklight.com
WorkLight enables businesses to reach customers, employees and partners securely in the places they frequent. The flagship product, WorkLight Application Platform, securely syndicates enterprise applications in a multitude of consumer online channels, such as widgets, social networks, personalized homepages, iPhone applications, blogs and RSS feeds.

2009 tour focuses on developing a model of success during economic downturn

 

The focus of the 2009 IsraelWebTour has shifted slightly to answer the current economic downturn. This year the focus is honing in on growth, partnerships, alliances, and new business models to meet the needs of the times. As the third annual WebTour nears (April 20-23), we are still taking applications.

“Israel continues to play a vital role in creating and shaping new leading-edge technologies and talented entrepreneurs. The IsraelWebTour is known for offering Israeli entrepreneurs the ultimate fast-track to resources and know-how in Silicon Valley,” said Shuly Galili, Executive Director, CICC.

The tour brings selected Israeli start-ups to Silicon Valley to spark opportunities for growth, partnership, and collaboration with leading technology leaders. The chosen high-tech companies will meet with leading industry players, investors, customers, and strategic partners in a mix of targeted meetings, roundtable discussions, and networking events. On April 22, each company will present its product to the industry and press at a public showcase.

“In these challenging economic times, the tour is focusing on facilitating companies’ growth paths, and on building meaningful partnerships and alliances with the industry in ways that meet everyone’s needs,” adds Galili. “Our goal is to include companies who are more advanced in their product development, customer base, and business model.”

Once again, the California Israel Chamber of Commerce (CICC) has partnered and collaborated with Google, PayPal, Yahoo!, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook to put on this great event.

The CICC is still taking applications. Israeli internet and mobile web start-ups are encouraged to apply. Interested companies should complete the online form or can contact Tami Lev at the CICC by email or call her directly at (408) 343-0917.

Click here to view a highlight video from last year’s event.

Press inquiries can be sent to via email to Brian Blank, FutureWorks PR.

2008 WebTour Highlights

As the 2009 IsraelWebTour draws closer, we thought we'd share some highlights from the 2008 tour. The 2009 tour is right around the corner, being held April 20-23 in Silicon Valley. We're still taking applications for top-notch Israeli internet and mobile web start-ups. Interested companies should complete the online form at www.israelwebtour.com or contact Tami Lev.

2009 IsraelWebTour returns to Silicon Valley - April 20-23

 

Get ready!!!!  Plans for IsraelWebTour 2009 are underway.  This Spring (April 20-23), we will again allow Israeli companies in the internet space to take part in the unique experience called "The IsraelWebTour".

IsraelWebTour is not a conference...it is a phenomena that evolved and enabled entrepreneurs from 30 companies to accelerate and advance their efforts in Silicon Valley.  Companies such as FoxyTunes (acquired by Yahoo!), Yedda (Acquired by AOL), Fixya, Picaapp, BeInsync (acquired by Phoenix Technologies), Delver, Plymedia, Nuconomy, ClickTale, MyHeritage....etc.

This year IsraelWebTour will continue to focus on growth and partnerships, collaboration and investments.  As in previous years we partnered with the giants:  Google, PayPal, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook.  The platform is built for targeted meetings, roundtable discussions with industry experts and key investors, presentations, and networking soiree.

COMPANIES WISHING TO APPLY!!  please send us -- online form  For more information: contact Tami Lev at CICC tami@ca-israelchamber.org or call 408-314-6464.

Special thanks to our 2009 Steering committee members.

IsraelWebTour's PicApp secured $3.2 milion and formed key partnerships

We were very excited to see the recent announcements by Picapp regarding its funding.  Picapp was one of the 15 companies we hosted last February at IsraelWebTour 2008 in a special roadshow to Silicon Valley, CA.

PicApp spun off from PicScout, the world's leading visual content monitoring company, to an independent company following the successful development of the picapp.com platform. The product was recently named as one of top 100 undiscovered sites by PCMagazine and gained much traction within blog networks and the blogging community.

Picapp raises its first funding round and has announced its partnership with another big blog network, Yardbarker. The service allows you to embed free and licensed images in your blog by copy and paste widget code. The service offers repository of more than 10 million high quality images that contains small PicApp advertisement with them

The new funding totals $3.2 million and was led by the Israel based firm, Carmel Venture with an additional backer Yair Goldfinger co-founder of ICQ.

Good luck Eyal and team!!

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.