Bitesize Sunday: Weekend Reading on VC, Startups and Beyond

I’m testing the new version of Mozilla Firefox 3 beta 5 (you’ll be amazed how much difference there is with beta 1). Even though the speed is dramatically better, it is no excuse for having so many browser windows open. Therefore, just before I close all, below are a few of the links that have been keeping my browser busy:

Venture Capital Industry

* European Venture Investments have been holding steady. The equity kicker shares some stats and TechCrunch UK has a comprehensive list of deals.

* The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) says that venture capital performance out-performed the public markets in Q4 2007, but warns that economic troubles might slow growth in 2008. Here’s the full release in pdf format.

* Sequoia Capital is seeking to shift strategy in a way that could potentially put it in competition with some of its existing investors.

* Israel Opportunity Investor posted an interesting interview with Carmel Sofer,  a partner of Gemini Funds in Israel.

Miscellaneuous – Macro level news and useful links

* Economic stats on Israel for its sixtieth birthday, put together by IOI.

* Businessweek ranks Israel among the top 10 hotspots in innovation, as leader in technology and pharma.  Globes extracted a nice piece from the report:

“Not blessed with oil reserves like many of its neighbors, Israel has constructed a powerful economy from the ground up with a pioneering tech sector, earning it the nickname “Silicon Wadi.” The country boasts the highest concentration of high-tech companies in the world outside of Silicon Valley, the most Nasdaq-listed companies outside North America, pioneering facilities such as the Weizmann Institute of Science and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and the world’s largest generic drug maker, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA). Israel also hosts research and design centers for Microsoft, IBM, and Intel – as well as Motorola, which first set up shop here back in 1964.”

* Always wanted to write in Hebrew but didn’t know how? Ouriel Oyahon posted this link to a virtual kewyord in Hebrew.

* Israel and Italy will collaborate on tech projects through a bi-national fund.

* Israel moves up in the EuroMoney ranking and placed among the top 40 economies.

* I gave an interview to a Finnish Magazine a couple of weeks ago and since then found out that there’s a lot in common between Finland and Israel.

* Leviathan Energy, an Israeli based energy company signed a $50 million agreement to provide clean electricity to India.

* Cellint, an Israeli startup, offers a system called TrafficSense that delivers travel times, traffic speeds and incident alerts in real-time by tracking anonymous cell phones.

* Great post on widgets and their importance during market recession by Michael Jones, CEO of Userplane. Read it.

Early Stage Israeli Startups

* SeeU.Tv lets users upload user generated content for mobile and offers a 10 cents revenue share for each download.

* How do most people search for jobs online in China? Through Meijob, an aggregator created by Israeli entrepreneurs Guy Rotberg and Barak Paz Tal. Check out the press release.

* TeleMessage is an Israeli startup that enables sending SMS, Voice and Fax Messages from a PC through a browser plugin for a small fee.

Venture Capital Deals in Israel

* TheMarker reported that Yuval Neeman, a former VP in Microsoft corp, started InstallFree, a company developing virtualization software that claims to save 35-45% in costs for its enterprise users.

* Technospin, a developer of small wind turbines for clean energy generation based in Israel and NY, announced a series A of $8 million, led by 21 Ventures, an angel fund headquartered in New York.

* Shlomo Kramer, one of the original founders of CheckPoint, closed $20 million series D for his security startup Imperva (founded in 2002).  Imperva specializes application data security and is considered one of the leaders in the field. The company raised $54 million to date.

* Quark secured $27 million from Japanese investors, led by Mitzubishi and Taisho.Quark develops technology for Silencing RNA. The company attempted an IPO in 2007 but failed to raise $75 million.