5min Wins Top Spot in TechAviv’s Peer Awards

TechAviv, the members-only meetup group for Israeli start ups, has concluded its starup competition the “TechAviv Peer Awards“. The top spot was awarded to Israel’s 5min.com, the leading online platform for how-to, instructional and knowledge videos, which was crowned as the most promising Israeli web start up in 2009. Colnect was a close runner up.

The finalists were chosen in a three week process which included 100 applicants and 6,000 public votes. The ten finalists with the highest number of votes were narrowed down to five through a members only survey. Finally, tonight’s winner was crowned by the highest number of text messages following a 10 minute presentation in an invite-only event for Israeli start up founders and investors.

The TechAviv Peer Awards finalists were:

face.com – a smart face recognition engine . The company launched a Photo Finder application for Facebook, which enables users to detect themselves in pictures uploaded by their friends even if they were not ‘tagged’. The app also facilitates automatic tagging of friends in pictures. The company has approximately 630,000 monthly unique users according to Comscore (Nov 2009). Face.com was founded in 2007 by CEO Gil Hirsch. Follow FaceDotCom on Twitter.

my6sense.com – a personalized information feed for the iPhone. The company developed what it calls ‘digital intuition’ technology, which learns what is most important to you based on the user’s consumption habits without the need to set preferences. Founded in 2007 by Barak Hachamov, who now serves as chairman. (See previous coverage on VC Cafe). Follow my6sense on Twitter.

colnect.com – the collectors marketplace and community. Colnect is a comprehensive online solution for collectors of mass produced collectibles (stamps, notes, coins, baseball cards and so many more) revolutionizing their collecting experience by allowing them to manage their personal collection online and be a part of a designated community.Colnect is the ‘little start up who could’ – it won the 2009 edition of Startup 2.0 after being completely bootstrapped by its founder. Colnect was founded in 2007 by Amir Wald. Follow Colnect on Twitter.

6rounds.com – a video chat live meeting point. 6rounds users meet their friends and friends to be, by inviting each other to 1 on 1 interactive video sessions or “Rounds” where they are matched with other interesting new people based on common interests and share experiences together. The product was one of the 6 pre-approved Google Wave gadgets (see post on VC Cafe). Founded in 2008 by CEO Dany Fishel. Follow 6rounds on Twitter.

5min.com – the one stop shop for DIY and howto videos. 5min offers a one-stop solution for online video: providing segmented offering of tens of thousands of videos; empowering websites to integrate videos throughout their sites with just hours of work; and creating incremental revenue, traffic and engagement. The winner of the 2009 TechAviv competition, 5min has it all: ad hoc content creation, monetization vehicles, distribution mechanisms, a proprietary video player and perhaps most importantly, an audience of 2.3 million unique users a month (according to Comscore, Nov 2009).5min was founded in 2007 by CEO Ran Harnevo.  See previous coverage on VC Cafe and follow them on Twitter at @5min.

Congratulations to Yaron Samid and the TechAviv team for the impressive lineup and the tremendous execution throughout the year. We should also take the opportunity to wish the best of luck to all Israeli start ups in 2010 – kick ass!