Hello from cloudy Helsinki! The last couple of weeks I’ve been on planes and trains, but wanted to make sure you get a round up on some of the latest technology news on Israeli startups.
- Facebook Expands Credits Offers to Europe Via SupersonicAds – a huge deal for the Israeli startup, perhaps thanks to its UK office?
Facebook users in Europe will soon have the opportunity to earn Facebook Credits by completing hard offers through the offer walls of social games. Facebook today announced partnerships with SupersonicAds from the United Kingdom and Deal United from Germany to let European users buy magazine subscriptions, online movie rentals, and more to earn Facebook’s virtual currency.
Facebook will only allow Credits to be distributed through offers by approved providers once the July 1st deadline passes and all games to switch to Credits as their payment method. Therefore, attaining approved offers coverage in Europe through these deals is important so developers can still monetize users in the region who won’t pay for Credits directly.
- AT&T set up new R&D and incubation center in Israel in collaboration with Amdocs – welcome AT&T Foundry
- Cotendo raises $17 million in Series D from its current investors: Benchmark Capital, Sequoia Capital and Tenaya Capital as well as two CVCs: Juniper Networks and Citrix Systems. Founded in 2008, Cotendo increases the speed of large sites and enterprise networks through its encrypted Content Delivery Network (CDN). The company raised $36 million to date including this round. [Globes]
- Image sensor Advasense Technologies, was acquired by US-based Pixim for an undisclosed sum. According to Israel Venture Capital (IVC), Ra’anana-based Advasense raised $31 million in 2005-07 from Giza Venture Capital, BlueRun Ventures. VentureTech Alliance, and Taiwan’s CIDC. This deal is estimated at a few millions only. [Globes]
New Product launches
- United Parents, an Israeli startup, detects suspicious relationships or activities that kids are doing on their computer and sends parents a which can be downloaded for free onto the child’s computer, sends parents an alert by email or text message when a suspicious activity takes place
- Zerto brings disaster recovery to the cloud – Ziv Kedem, Zerto’s CEO: “[disaster recovery] is something you only want when you really need it. When you build a disaster recovery system, you have to buy all the servers and storage and all the other things that go into it, and then you have to pay all the operational overhead. It quickly gets expensive and complex to manage.” [All Things D]
- NowForce – transform standard mobile phones into life-saving networks. Through deployment of NowForce on their users’ phones, emergency response organizations are finally able to overcome the ‘Last Mile’ problem, an issue that has remained unsolved since the introduction of Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems. These systems allow organizations to communicate with fixed resources, but when responders leave their cars or are off-duty, they are suddenly beyond reach and can no longer be part of a planned response – no matter how critical. The company has raised $2.5 million from private investors.
- GreenSQL has announced the launch of GreenSQL’s Enterprise Edition for Unified Database Security, offering security, caching, auditing and masking in one package, ensuring that enterprise databases are protected from internal and external threats in real-time, while improving performance and facilitating database security policy compliance. GreenSQL also recently closed a $3.8 million Series B funding round led by Rhodium, with participation by Gandyr, 2BAngels and existing investor Magma Venture Capital ?who funded the company’s Series A round in 2009. [Business newswire]
Entrepreneurs Resources
Work in startups – job board for startup positions, mainly in the UK
e-Power house – find service providers for your startups
Kickstarter – the crowd-funding platform has become a popular source of early stage funding… and publicity.
Caplinked – check out the resources section. There’s a collection of useful documents for startup founders.
Sprouter – a social network, Q&A site and content portal for entrepreneurs
Lean Startup Circle – probably the best resource here. A place to publish and discuss ideas, tactics and results from real lean startup campaigns.
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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