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
Genieo Innovation of Israel, creators of the ultimate home-page personalization engine, announced early this month the closing of US $3 million in seed funding.
Backed by leading private investors, the company is bringing to market the industry's first fully automatically updated and micro behavioral-targeted (MBT) personalized home-page. "Our technology transforms a homepage into a personal assistant" says Miss Sol Tzvi, founder and CEO of Genieo ...
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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
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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).
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.
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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.
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.
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.
