Let’s get right to it:
1. Sequoia invests in Israeli based Kenshoo, a SEM competitor to Google’s Double Click. Unlike Omniture and Atlas Solutions, Kenshoo enables both financial and quality management of SEM campaigns. [via The Marker (Hebrew) and via]
2. HP continues growth-through-acquisition – buys Israel based Nur Macroprinters for $117.5 million in cash. Yuval Cohen, CEO of Israeli VC fund Fortissimo has a reason to smile. His $12 million investment in November of 2005 granted him %51 of Nur’s shares, and a ROI of 300%. [via]
3. Israeli rating agency sold – Rating agency Standard & Poor’s, a division of publisher McGraw-Hill Cos Inc, said it had agreed to buy Israeli rating agency Maalot. [via]
4. Israel’s FTK technologies launches English learning software for the Indian market. The software targets a market of 900 million Indian speakers including: Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Urdu and Punjabi. By 2009, CEO Harel Cohen plans to include all the officially recognized Indian languages. [via]
5. Israeli GPS technology used in new device- Carphone Warehouse launches a new self-branded satellite navigation service using technology from Israel-based Telmap. [via]
6. Evergreen backed KnockaTV, an Israeli IPTV startup started by ICQ’s founders launches in alpha. I was lucky to receive a pass and it looks damn good. I plan to compare KnockaTV with Hulu later this week. [via]
7. VC Investments may hit 6 year high – investments in the US, Europe, China and Israel this year have passed the $30 billion mark and the industry is on course to post its highest investment total since 2001, according to a new report. [via]
8. Densbits, a small Israeli company working on flash memory semiconductors, was founded by Sequoia. Densbits is working on making flash memory denser. Densbit is working with Saifun, another Israeli company, to bring memory density to four bits per cell. Saifun is in the process of being acquired for $370 million by Spansion, a larger flash memory maker. [via]
9. Green Tech Media reports that Israel-based SolarEdge Technologies scored $11.8 million in its first round raised by Walden International Opus Capital and Genesis Partners. SolarEdge, still in stealth mode, is developing power-conversion technologies that combine hardware and software to improve solar-system efficiencies. The company was founded by Lior Handelsman and Amir Fishelov and is currently based in Herzliya, Israel. [via]
10. Tvinci, a small Israeli startup powers MTV’s online video player with no VC funding and two 26 year old co-founders. Access is restricted to Israel only at the moment, but try this site to check Tvinci’s video player. [via]
P. S. I was officially added to the Israel Web Tour steering committee. If you are an Israeli startup that applied to the tour by our deadline on Dec 3rd, I look forward to meeting you in person in Silicon Valley.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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