Sell High, Buy Low: Israeli Start Ups Get Funded

Despite the exit drought, more Israeli start ups have reported to recieve venture rounds from the last 60 days. You’ll notice the common thread: lots of private investor involvement and almost always participation of the previous investors as well.

My6sense – completed a $2 million round from private investors including Eric Benhamou, Eyal Waldman, Nachman Shelf and a few others. My6Sense offers iPhone users the ability to create a data feed of news, status updates, tweets, etc, which is automatically customized with related content using ‘digital intuition’. The company, founded by Avinoam Rubinstein and Barak Hachamov, launched in Nov 2008 and is still in private alpha.

LifeBond – Pitango venture capital and Robert Taub jointly invested an $8 million B round in LifeBond, which develops a biological glue for operations. GlenRock and the Zitelman group, Lifebond’s previous investors, also participated in the round.The company is led by co-founder and CEO Ishay Attar.

HCL – provides a process, which enables the conversion of cellulose to bio-fuels. HCL has received a $5.5 rounds from Burril and Company as well HCL’s seed investor, Zohar Gilon. HCL’s technology can convert all cellulosic waste types – wood, solids from city sewage plants, grasses etc – to sugars that can be fermented to ethanol and other bio-fuels.

Aspect Magnet – very quietly, this Natanya-based start up was able to attract more than $9 million in venture capital investments in a period of less than six months. ASPECT  invented revolutionary medical-grade desktop-size, high-resolution MRI systems for pre-clinical and clinical extremities applications. All of the company’s investors are based outside of Israel. The list includes: Nova Tech, Roll International and Harry Steimatzky.

Time Bridge – last month, the company announced a $5 million series B round from Norwest Ventures and Mayfield. This brings the company to $10 million to date. TimeBridge develops free scheduling software for meetings with a large number of participants. During the past year, TimeBridge has seen its user base increase tenfold from 30,000 to 350,000. In its own words “… schedule meetings with large groups or individuals across time zones, calendaring systems and companies… share their availability with others, and connect directly with calendars including Outlook, Google Calendar and Apple iCal.” More about this round at: http://www.timebridge.com/press110509.php

Galil Software – raised a second round of 3 million NIS back in May. The company is based in Nazareth, Israel and it offers big high tech clients development and testing services provided by 45 engineers in the Galil. What’s special about it? The company has an affluent list of co-founders (including two VCs) and it primarily employs Israeli-Arabs. It turns out that Israeli companies prefer taking local outsourcing contractors to reduce risk and increase the speed of communication.

Would you raise a large round in the current market condition? What guarantees are investors looking for? Please comment.