Entrepreneurship & Fundraising

For your attention

Entrepreneurship & Fundraising

View more presentations from Ariel Poler

The Big Bang of Crowdfunding: Startups as a Public Asset Class - Part 3

[ By Kevin Lawton from TrendCaller ]

View more presentations from trendcaller.

For your attention also Part 1 and Part Part 2

Raising Venture Capital - More Tips ...

[ By OnStartups ]

There’s already lots of great content on the web about raising capital and understanding deal terms. My favorite is the content on Venture Hacks (a must read, if you’re raising capital). But, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to share some of the “lessons learned” from my own experiences. Some of these you’ve probably heard before, but one or two will likely be new to you

Read here full story 9 Quick Tips Learned While Raising $33 Million In Venture Capital

Three Israeli Femme-preneurs To Keep an Eye On

[ by Roi Carthy - Techcrunch.com ]

...
the fact of the matter is that female entrepreneurs are a rare breed. Let’s all try a mental game together… How many female startup CEO’s can you name off the top of your head? I am embarrassed to say that I have trouble coming up with more than a handful, but I don’t think I am alone.

Here’s what I find strange about all this: I speak to VC’s and private investors regularly, and have never EVER heard anyone comment negatively on deal-flow based on the entrepreneur’s gender. Startups—at least this has been my experience—are weighted on the merits of the product, market and the team, but never on gender. Frankly, I can’t explain why female entrepreneurs are a rare commodity in our industry. (Feel free to enlighten me about the gender bias underpinning the tech industry in comments).

The situation in Israel is not much different. But it should only be the quality that counts… To that end, here are three Israeli female entrepreneurs worth keeping
...

Read here full story - Three Israeli Femme-preneurs To Keep an Eye On

Want to get funding? It’s all about research

[By Chris Morris, Entrepreneur Corner]

Video interview: Wendy Lea has worked as a bootstrap entrepreneur, corporate executive, and angel investor over the last 25 years. She joined GetSatisfaction.com as CEO in February. Lea is also the founder of The Chatham Group and an angel investor. Of particular interest to entrepreneurs are her thoughts on what she looks for when deciding where to invest and her advice for entrepreneurs who are looking for start-up capital (about 2 minutes into the clip).

Continue here...

In continue to previous post...

[By holyexposures.com]

At the meeting we heard from one VC, Blumberg Capital, who specializes in seed round investments of internet companies.
The partner of the firm who spoke, Bruce Tarragin, said that they were closing a deal in Tel Aviv now, and had already closed another deal earlier this quarter.

The Capital Market Bulls Return
There had been several months, since last October, with virtually no dealflow that was actually leading to investment. Now, there seems to be a reawakening of the capital markets. The negative sentiment of the market has been replaced with a feeling that we have already reached bottom, and now there are good ideas out there that are worthy of investment.


Continue here Israel Economy for Start Ups – Signs of Improvement

Sell High, Buy Low: Israeli Start Ups Get Funded

[By VCCafe.com]

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.

Read more: >>>

10 steps to catch VC cash

[By CNN Money]

Looking for funding for your big idea? Follow our 10-point guide to landing the right investors.


"The entrepreneur is the Pied Piper of a company," says Chip Hazard, general partner at Boston-based Flybridge Capital Partners. "We want an articulate, passionate CEO who can excite others - employees, customers, business partners."
Flybridge joined the syndicate that backed Goby Technologies, a Boston-based search startup that provides comprehensive leisure and travel information in a single site - first with a seed round to build a prototype, then with a multimillion-dollar Series A round to fund longer-term operations. >>>

Draper helps take companies "prublic"

[By David Lawsky and Anupreeta Das]

"It's an opportunity for an entrepreneur to get a little bit of liquidity and ... for a venture capitalist to either show that these companies have some real value to them or to sell some."

Venture capitalists invest in fledgling companies and hope to make a return several times that investment by taking the company public or selling it to a larger competitor.

There are 85 companies that have had to pull their initial public offerings because of inhospitable markets, Draper said. He said 200 start-up companies of the "highest quality" are ready to participate in the XChange.

Continue here ...

Venture Capital Under Attack

The journey to find these ideas has taken me from inventors’ basements, to obscure research labs, to, in one case, a smoky Milwaukee bowling alley renowned for its fried Twinkies. With a lot of hard work and a little luck that journey ends on the floor of a stock exchange, witnessing a company you helped build go public. It’s a helluva ride.

Great article by Adam Grosser with interesting statistics about the value of VCs to economic prosperity. The challenge is - what can be learned from the current financial crisis that will improve the VC industry.

CREATE is a key theme!

Job creation, innovation and new technologies will help lead global economy back to a growing and successful economy. Venture Capital plays an incredibly important role in the global economy, and thanks to VCs (in both time and money), entrepreneurs and start-ups management have indeed been able to grow seedling ideas employing many and driving worldwide competitiveness.

There is a lot to be said for a creative and transformative approach to take the best of what the VC’s do and creatively use it as one of the solutions to rebuild the economy through creation.

Web 2.0 Summit 08

Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco (5-7 November 2008):

The commercial web is now a teenager—it's been fifteen short years since Marc Andreessen released the Mosaic browser. To put this in perspective, television as a commercial medium reached its fifteenth birthday in 1956—the year Elvis Presley made his first appearance on national TV. National news broadcasts were still in their infancy, "As The World Turns" debuted as America's first half-hour soap opera, and "The Price Is Right" began its dominance of the game show genre.

A Conversation with Shai Agassi (Better Place) by Tim O`Reilly - from electric cars platform developing to SAP ex-position ... and back to cars ...




But most I've liked "World Map" from Silicon Valley point of view represented by Rebecca MacKinnon (Global Voices).



Check out all the Web 2.0 Summit highlights, - you can find them here.

Special thanks to blip.tv

Postscript ( Breakfast with Jeff Pulver )

Just two small video reportages for your attention about Jeff Pulver Social Media breakfast on November 5th:

By Oren Todoros - SeoVice:



By Jason Gilinsky - Falafel.tv:


And if you miss this time the event, Jeff will come back to Israel ...

... next breakfast in Tel Aviv is scheduled for December 16th. I will be posting the event on Facebook in a few weeks.

If you have ideas on how to improve the real-time social networking at the breakfast, please let me know.

Breakfast with Jeff Pulver (and friends) in Tel Aviv Harbor, Speedo Beach Bar

Some photos are added from today event to my first FACEBOOK album. It was just great! So many people come ...
Very nice day and warm business atmosphere.
A lots of fun... new and familiar faces... I made some new contacts...

Thanks Jeff, and looking forward to the next meeting.
It is so strange, somebody from USA have to come to Israel to organize so good event...

:-)
My best regards to all of you.
Fabian

Please help to save "mobuzz.tv"

Save Mobuzz from Anil de Mello on Vimeo.

Jeff Pulver again in Tel-Aviv

Yesterday, 30/10/2008 Jeff came back to Tel-Aviv. So, welcome home Jeff… to Holy land…

During my visit I will have a cameo role on the Israeli TV show “Mesudarim.” Mesudarim is the Israeli version of “Entourage.” I am pretty excited about this. :)

When I’m not at any of these events, chances are that I will be in a hotel lobby meeting with (early) early stage startups. At the moment I have about 27 such meetings scheduled. While my meeting schedule for this trip is now fully booked, if any friends are aware of an interesting hi-tech Israeli startups that I should know about, please feel free to send me a message and I will setup a meeting during a future visit.

Looks like "I have missed train"... Anyway I will ask him for meeting during next visit.

More detailed schedule of Jeff Pulver visit you can find on his blog.

One more valuable essay from Paul Graham

I have updated my link collection of "Articles in Cloud" by one more valuable essay from Paul Graham - "Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy"

The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies.

When Microsoft and Apple were founded.

As those examples suggest, a recession may not be such a bad time to start a startup. I'm not claiming it's a particularly good time either. The truth is more boring: the state of the economy doesn't matter much either way.

Great article, strongly recommended, especially for "one step before" entrepreneurs...

I like most of his articles and you can find more links to my favorite on "Articles in Cloud" sidebar. Also new "Hacker News - Y Combinator" RSS Feed added for your attention.

Regards
Fabian

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