16 Finalists, 3 Winners of the IsraelStartupNetwork Pitch Fest 2011

"Hi, Everyone,
Below you will find some basic information about the 16 finalists at our recent Pitch Fest, sponsored by Blumberg Capital, and hosted by Shiluvim. The first three are the winners, who were each awarded a very unique prize - every startup’s dream - a Due Diligence Process with Blumberg, which has already begun. The remaining 13 companies are listed in alphabetical order. Contact details have been provided. As you will see, these exciting startups cover a wide range of industries, reflecting the nature of our group. Over the coming weeks, we will be dedicating individual posts to each of these companies, as well as to many others among the 65 who applied to present.
All the best, and see you at our next event!
Arlene Marom"

Read here full story by Arlene Marom

Cameron Herold: Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs

To be great, does not need to be Good...

[ By Paul Buchheit ]

By now, everyone is tired of hearing about the iPad, but the negative responses are so perfectly misguided that it would be wrong to waste this opportunity. Even better, we can look back at the 2001 iPod launch and see the exact same mistakes. But this isn't about the iPad or the iPod -- it's about product design.


The most famous iPod review was from Slashdot, which simply declared, "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." The iPad reviews are similar in that they focus on the "missing" features.

Read full story - If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good

A tool for building your Elevator Pitch

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

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 ...

Today is my birthday

I have grown up…
:-)

Still enjoying my spring holiday till 18/04/2009.
Just a couple interesting talks I like to share with you:

By David Pogue:




and Brody Kenrick:



No comments, just see and enjoy - the sky is the limit ...
Have a great holidays!

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

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

Local worksop found

In reply to my invitation to discussion, posted on “the.co.ils Zone” forum I got reply from Erez Eden, about local community – “3 day startup - Israel”.



Being surprised I like to thank you Erez for provided information. Looks like I miss it searching myself, Google not perfect ... or my efforts were not energetic enough.

Sharing with my blog readers about “3 Day Startup - Israel”, I have to make delayed announce about they success - newborn startup, Tribiu!

This website is a product born from an intense weekend of 56 passionate professionals who spent 56 consecutive hours of their free time creating a unique contribution to the community…

My congratulation to all “56 passionate professionals”! Hope I will have an opportunity to participate in next coming “3 Day Startup - Israel” event.

See you there...
:-)

Startup entrepreneurship or What did you do last weekend?

How intimately it is - startup entrepreneurship, if at all?
It is about “marriage bonds” or “marriage of convenience”?

How about slogan:

100 people. Three days. One new company.

The participants ranged from students and corporate employees who wanted to learn the skills involved in creating a start-up to entrepreneurial veterans who wanted to get back in the game. It included men and women from all over the region, and integrated programmers, designers, marketing executives, financial planners and management personnel.

(From article "While You Were Mowing Your Lawn, We Created an Internet Startup" by Dan O'Keeffe)

Is “lifeSpoke.com” competitive enough price for three days workshop participating?


May it be realized in our small country? Taking in account specific character of local "market", looks like a formula have to be changed to: "50 people. Three days. One new startup". Are we ready join three days workshop having an own pet idea and finally to choose one another (better or best) of someone else? What will be your decision - to bury own “baby” (for while/forever) or to continue cherish it till right moment will come or right people will be found?

I invite to discussion all of you: first-time start-uppers and veterans, entrepreneurs, IT experts, angels, VC fund board members, managers, creative and art directors, anyone who may be interesting in such kind of initial event.

Looking forward, I allow for wrong vision or some “local market rules” misunderstanding. Not all models that work there, in USA succeed here in Israel. I see also languid situation on local web-sites and forums related to startups.

But I also know, that each month we read in news about more and more new Israeli startups. Angels still hunting for seed stage companies, that means – potential is huge. So, in my humble opinion, we have to change in our minds relationship rules to enrich our self by many more opportunities.

Look around you, what happens on the network – it is actually social revolution. People shares almost everything, - from being society of encapsulated association (sorry for pun), we came to “whole sharing” society. So, why it takes to long time to understand that “sharing is power” and why it takes so long time to evaluate how this power may be used?

In continue to yesterday post...

My “news radar” catches out of there one more article by angel investor & entrepreneur, Marc Hustvedt – “5 Web 2.0 Services I'd Like to See (and I'd actually pay for)”.

Here are all five Marc interesting in:

• Human Blog Translation Network
• "Big Red Button" - disaster planning and action
• Painless Photo Management
• Open Platform for our Data Breadcrumbs
• SocialMeme

To the best of my knowledge these don't exist, or at least haven't launched in any real way yet. If you know of a team working on them, please let me know.

... says Marc - so, please help him to solve the problem.

In case you find yourself in situation that nothing left from yesterday 30 ideas list of Y Combinator, move quick and take some from today’s “menu”.

Of course I have scan blog of Marc for more interesting posts. Result – his blog added to my Blog Roll. Thanks to Marc for informative source.

I am sure, one day I will contact him and offer to invest in my Web 2.0 early seed stage startup.

My best regards to all of you

Startups Y Combinator looking for

How often do you find a set of ideas from a seed-funding venture capitalist? For those of you who looking for some WEB 2.0 idea that may be accepted by investors I recommend article by Paul Graham about startup ideas they like to fund.

We don't like to sit on these ideas, though, because we really want people to work on them. So we're trying something new: we're going to list some of the ideas we've been waiting to see, but only describe them in general terms. It may be that recipes for ideas are the most useful form anyway, because imaginative people will take them in directions we didn't anticipate.

Some of them are obvious, but the interesting point is that almost all of them about same postulates: make non-comfortable comfortable, turn slow to quick, simplify complex things, attack existing well-known problems, provide some solutions by doing something different or just better.

Being a bit of an entrepreneur myself, my choice is No8:

... Current dating sites are not the last word. Better ones will appear. But anyone who wants to start a dating startup has to answer two questions: in addition to the usual question about how you're going to approach dating differently, you have to answer the even more important question of how to overcome the huge chicken and egg problem every dating site faces. A site like Reddit is interesting when there are only 20 users. But no one wants to use a dating site with only 20 users—which of course becomes a self-perpetuating problem. So if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take on dating that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get around the chicken and egg problem.

Check yourself and choose from list of 30 hints some for you, before last will be disappear …
:-)

Be practicable

You have read a lot of articles about “How to Start a Startup” or where to find an idea for startup. The main idea of most of them - to find something, that missing or can help you in your daily work (or pleasure) needs. In short – “Find pain you can reduce”…

So, here is my story. In year 2000 I have work in some outsourcing IT Company. I have work at home, company office and two customer’s offices, - totally on four computers while working week simultaneously. I had no laptop, in addition both clients term was using only they office computers.

The real pain for me was to update (send via PC to PC via e-mail) my set of thematic bookmarks stored in browsers I have used (MS IE and Netscape) and updated daily. The problem was very clear and painful, because once you forget to send updated bookmarks file to another computer, you have to synchronize two or more files. One time it is OK, second time it makes angry, and after all you have a several not synchronized bookmarks files.

I did research on Internet for some tool, which may help to store bookmarks on some global storage account and/or to allow synchronization with any computer, but without success.

How many people like me had similar problem in far 2000 …? I guess a lot … So, I came to conclusion that it may be very good idea for some startup or at least some project/tool.

I have discussed this idea with several colleagues … Some of them say “Hi, good idea! Go ahead …” But most of them says that it is very trivial problem/idea for startup…

I agree that discussion with opponents help to sharp (or to kill) an idea, but most important that entrepreneur must have a strong core to defense his baby.

Looks like my core in year 2000 was not so strong … Big mistake of entrepreneurs in far 2000 was about mission of startups and problem they have to solve. Only world-wide technologies, that can upside down the planet was fits to startups …

Time over… Old concept of startups was collapsed in 2000-2001… Today’s situation is different:

• Be creative
  
• Be small and dynamic
  
• Solve trivial problems for lot of peoples
• Make your product simple and usable
• Respect your customers/users
• Give some free products/services
• Be popular
  

All of this are components of quickest way to success…

But let’s back to my idea… After few years I have found that Google has implemented bookmarks functionality in they “Google Toolbar”.

I do not know, did they catch some startup or same idea was cooked in they kitchen. One thing is absolutely clear to me now, to make good and usable tools/services you do not have to be big like Gooooooooogle … You have to be practicable.

Tip of the day
When you're right, no one remembers. When you're wrong, no one forgets.
(Got from Rene, colleague of mine)