Wall Street thunder - what will happen to Startups?

Financial market thunder in the U.S. last week without any doubts will affect on the strategy of investors, whether Angels or VC’s. So, what awaits Startups in near future? The same scenario like in far year 2001...? Deep roll-back of investments from High-Tech field for 2-3 years..? Or experience of past crises will give different result - a balanced approach in making decision, to continue invest in technology companies or not.

Being entrepreneur myself, just in beginning of my way (pre-seed stage) I have to admit that current situation is very worries me too. But much more, I am not envy to Startups that are at more advanced stages, - it is not a secret how “fragile” world and the life-time of young companies. How many non-sounds “aborts” will happen in coming near months? Names of what companies we will read in a long list of obituary, untimely gone and unfairly excluded?

The economy of U.S. is terminally sick while past 10 years. But all what is made so far, is squeezing one burst bladder by blowing a new one, building financial pyramid of speculative securities and obligations on the ruins and corpses of previous. All of us, worldwide, will pay high price of those “genius invents” of Wall Street’s financial gurus. But it is absolutely different theme, which have to be disclosed in kind of separate essay...

Hope, I am clear, sorry for my English …
I will be very thankful to anybody who may share thoughts about near future of investments in Startups, - light predictions are more than welcome.

Following the visit of Jeff Pulver to Israel

One more Israeli startup - SemantiNet announced that it has secured $3.4 million in first round funding. Founded in 2006, SemantiNet plans to launch its first product later this month, which it says will

"combine leading-edge semantic web technology with crowd-sourcing, state-of-the-art cross-platform multimedia and integrated browser functionality."

Investors are: Giza Venture Capital and Angels - Sir Ronald Cohen, Dr. Joseph Vardi and Jeff Pulver.

Read full story here

Lenin still live … more than any live …

Thirty eight years ago, in 1970 there was a hundred year anniversary of Vladimir Lenin, the guy who inspired Russian people to overthrow the previous Tsar government in Russia in 1917. He was a real icon for many Russians and so in one Siberian town some woodcutters decided to celebrate this anniversary by cutting all the trees on a big field leaving only those that would form a really huge message “100 Years to Lenin”. There were no Google Earth back there...

Great era ... Great achievements ...
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Selling snow to escimoses

Did you ever have heard about hardest business in the world? No ..?
It is selling snow to escimoses … They have a lot of snow and almost no money…
:-)

I like to inform you about small success of Israeli company, which sells locally made snow machine to … not to escimoses, but empire of winter and ski - Switzerland.

The Swiss town of Zermatt, which resides in the Swiss Alps at 1600 meters (5,315 feet) above sea level and is considered one of the top ski resorts in Switzerland, couldn't wait for the system to become a reality and decided on a solution which was more readily available

So, one more success of small and hot country – snow production for could region.
Viva Israel

Endless battle - Crome from Google

Some years ago I've read about why Microsoft so scared by Google, young startup company. The point was that “new age” modern software world will move totally to the Internet - Web applications, some symbioses of TV, Radio, Video and other media channels, Phones via IP and etc. No operation systems, - only browsers …

Today (02/09/2008) Google has announced on they official blog about new web-browser, called Chrome – the competitor of MS Internet Explorer and Firefox. Beta version will available for downloading only tomorrow (03/08/2008), but meantime you can enjoy they story, published like comic book explaining Google Chrome.

The new Google browser is designed for PC’s running Windows, but also expected later Chrome versions for Linux and Mac. The new browser is very “light” and fast, mostly oriented to work with graphics and multimedia resources. It is important that Chrome based on open source code - which means that it can be improved or modified by anyone.

Google states that Crome is not just a browser, but a modern platform for the Internet applications and other products of the company. The main idea is create product(s) for online work without any need of applications installation on client machine.

Hope it will better and more stable browser than others, we have met before.
:-)

Regards
Fabian