Like the appetizer sampler in a restaurant, this is supposed to be a teaser, or an appetizer if you will. There’s a lot of new Israeli tech out there, and the only way to find out about it is covering one at a time. VC Cafe is happy to introduce five Israeli early stage online startups that you probably didn’t know.
EyeView – creator of online video tutorials, a good differentiator for new online products. The story of the company is interesting: EyeView was founded by three Israeli entrepreneurs when they were each living a different continent: Tal Riesenfeld in Boston (MBA student at HBS), Oren Harnevo (CEO) in Sidney Australia, and Gal Barnea is based in Israel. The three were able to work on the product and win Harvard’s business plan competition using mostly skype to communicate with one another. Despite its size (7 people in a tiny appartment) Eyeview was able to secure some big name clients like eBay, Yahoo and Nokia.
VC Cafe’s Rating: Good product, need to automate the technology and focus on business development.
Bukisa – share your knowledge with others and get paid when people use it. Similar to About.com, Bukisa is primarily focused on building user generated content for SEO purposes. The revenue share rates are calculated using the ‘Bukisa Index‘ are advertised on the home page, showing the rate paid for 1000 unique user views. In addition, Bukisa provides contributors with social media tools to spread their content around the internet using Digg, SU, Reddit, etc. The result is a web 2.0 About.com of sorts.
VC Cafe’s Rating: If content is king, Bukisa is on the right track – but can they effectively monetize and share enough revenue to make it attractive to users? I’m not sure. SEO and creative monetization are definitely things for them to focus on.
Soluto – Stealth Israeli startup just completed a first financing
round of $2.3 million led by Giza Venture Capital and Proxima Investments. Soluto was founded in 2007 by Ishay Green and CEO Tomer Dvir. Green was previously the co-founder of Onigma, McAfee’s first acquisition in Israel ($20 Million). There’s not too much on the site besides an invitation to a survey and their enigmatic goal:
Cause users worldwide to smile
Make you best friends with your computer
The Soluto user community will revolutionize the PC experience
VC Cafe’s Take: The focus of the survey seems to be around software installs, freeware, downloads and social media. One of the questions is “do you trust Microsoft?” which seems to hint at offering an alternative for discovering software (if you know – please contact me through the form). From the looks of its landing page, the UI will be good!
Call for startups: If you are:
- An Israeli startup or team with a working prototype: Alpha, Beta, Gamma
- A VC fund marketing manager
- An app developer or open source programmer
Contact VC Cafe to get your prouct featured and reviewed and join the discussion on the VC Cafe Network.100 joined in the last 3 days alone.
Call for writers: VC Cafe is growing and looking for ambitious writers who want to get their feet wet and their hands dirty in the startup and venture capital world. New products, funding rounds and social media are our thing. If you have a high level of English, and you’re obsessed with new sites and business models, send me your resume and a sample post at eze at vccafe [dot] com. MBA students preferred.
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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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