The Israeli elections were just held earlier this week. Inspired by what we at Facebook did with CNN during the inauguration of President Obama, and Nana10 & Israeli TV Channel 10 decided to totally by themselves launch a similar integration. What was impressive, was the fact that they did it all by themselves and manged to even upgrade the integration by allowing people to actually comment on the live reports during the live stream, not just making status updates.

The Nana team told me afterwards that the reactions were so positive that they have decided to luanch similar integrations for the very popular reality show “Survivor” as well.

Kudos, the Nana team for being so innovative and showing the world what you can do with Facebook Connect. I am postive that this will inspire other media companies to follow suit.

To learn more about how you can implement Facebook Connect to make the world more open and social, just follow this link. Everything you need to know is here and you woun’t need any approval or support from Facebook to launch it.

The Funded , the recently launched resource for entrepreneurs (or gossip about VC’s as some would call it), just posted a number of profiles on Israeli VC’s. The judgments are quite hard with a few exceptions:

• Giza Venture Capital: Arrogant and untrustworthy
• Genesis Partners: They thing you work for them
• Walden Israel: This VC is asleep please do not disturb
• Apax Partners: If they invite you, it’s to learn…not to invest
• Benchmark Israel Capital: Michael Eisenberg – One of the most sophisticated/manipulative/dangerous people in the industry
• Pitango Venture Capital: Large tanker VC – too large for Israel
• Evergreen Venture Partners: They were very impressed, and we are still waiting
• Jerusalem Global Ventures: Shlomo Kalish is/was the alpha male of this VC
• Fortissimo Capital: One of the few serious guys in the industry
• Carmel Ventures: An investment company that thinks it’s a VC
• Zone Ventures: If you got extra time on your hands to burn
• Gemeni Israel Funds ouble face

It is not clear to me what parameters they use for passing judgement on the VC’s, however I think initiatives like thefunded have an important role to play. If nothing more, at least for forcing some kind of transparency on the VC’s. I have seen & heard too many bad stories from entrepreneurs raising capital so it’s good that a rating site like this exist.

It is not very difficult to find venture capital now a days. What is difficult though, is to find a suitable VC. A friend of mine once compared partnering with a VC like a software bundle, you have to be careful of what comes with the bundle.. I would say its more like a Catholic marriage. It’s is nearly impossible to get out once you are married…

I therefore recommend any entrepreneur to really examine carefully every potential investor beyond the money and the term-sheet, and question themselves if this really is a partner I can imagine to "live with"? Besides the cash, can they really add value? Scrutinize any potential VC like you would a bride to be and don’t exchange rings before you are absolutely sure that this is going to be the "mother" you want for your baby .

It will be interesting to see once the list of Israeli VC’s is complete who will take the lead.



I know some of the VC’s above better than others. The only thing I can say is that I have heard the same about Giza from many different people. The other thing is that if your market is in the US – be very careful of who you are partnering with. I would go directly to a US VC rather than an Israeli.  The network and in-depth knowledge about the market is key to success (unless you already have the network and only need their money).

Technorati Tags: VC, Venture capital, The Funded, Giza Venture, Genesis Partners, Walden Israel, Apax Partners, Benchmark Capital, Pitango , Evergreen Venture Partners, Jerusalem Global Ventures, Fortissimo Capital, Carmer Ventures, Zone Ventures, Israel, Entrepreneurs

My good friend and Maxthon partner, Morten Lund (early Skype-investor) & his team at LundKenner has just made a strategic investment in Israeli Start-up Spearcast. I am very happy of being responsible for making this happen. Morten will take a seat on Spearcast’s Board of Directors (I am already on Spearcast’s Advisory Board). Spearcast, recently launced a service called Palore. Palore lets you call business for free, rate them and share them with others in a very smart way. Spearcast was founded by very talented Israeli entrepreneurs Hanan Lifshitz and Erez Chochva. Read more about the investment here (in Hebrew sorry). I see great potential for this service and I am delighted that Morten and I (again for the second time) will be partners in crime.

Screenshot of Palore

Dinner in Tel Aviv with Techcrunch

Here’s a group picture from the Techcrunch dinner in Tel Aviv. From the right, Michel Arrington (look he’s got Maxthon on a U3 key around the neck!). I’m the happy guy between Michael and Ouriel.

Related posts: China: Strength in Advertising Suggests A Stable Year Ahead, Yide Partners With Maxthon To Launch Browser, Ice Age 2 Viral Campaign, Why I Love Podcasts, The Art of Creating A Community, Digging Maxthon, IE7, Firefox and Opera, Me in New Media Age, Maxthon Users Put Yourself On The Map, Call For Action! Create Your Own Maxthon Video!, Maxthon Make The Illuminati Seem Like Exhibitionists, Today I Become the Offical Anyfilms Blogger For Samsung Mobile, TooDou – Video & Podcast Sharing From China, Douban – A Chinese Book, Music and Movie Recommendation Thing, Celebrating One Year As A Blogger, Cartoons, Dane’s & Word of Mouth

I have now passed my first year as a blogger and it has been an amazing year. This blog was born out of many requests that I got from working with various media agencies and start-ups on questions like: do you have any research on viral marketing? do you know of any company providing …? what media strategy do you suggest that we use on…? have your heard of..? We are looking to hire a talented person that..? What do you think of this business plan? Can you help us find investment for this new start-up? and many more. Instead of emailing ideas etc whenever it came up, I thought I just start a blog to share some of my experiences and know-how with my circle of contacts. However, I never dreamt of that it would turn into a business..

Here are some of the major take aways from my first year as a blogger.

1. Build a fantastic business network & made new friends
2. Helped companies in generating new business
3. Launched Samsung Mobiles “Anyfilms.Net” blog campaign through my cooperation with Hyper Happen.
4. Helped some talented people getting new jobs
5. Adviced media agencies on blog strategies, viral marketing and what makes people tick’
6. Connected people
7. Inspired others to blog too
8. Launched my company Mash Up Media – (MUM)
9. Connected start-ups with Venture Capitalists & vice versa
10. Made some money too

To sum up: I have learned a lot, got in touch with so many new and interesting people, helped other people with promoting their businesses and skills. If there is one thing I can say is that blogging is good for you and your business whatever you might be doing, just remember the famous line “Anything that you say, can and will be used against you…” so think twice before you post. BTW, stay tuned later over the next couple of days for a new blogging announcement.

Technorati Tags: Maxthon, Internet, Media, Blogs, We Media, Citizen Media, Citizen Journalism, Advertising, Anyfilms, Samsung Mobile, Business Developent, Blogvertising, Online Media, Hyper Happen, Networking, Mashups, Mashup Media

What have we learned from our mistakes? Will the local Israeli venture capitalist’s get in the game? With these questions in mind the Israeli VC Gemini Israel Funds gathered a group of former and current influential from the Israeli Internet scene.

There where people from ICQ, Speedbit, Hotbar, Aladdin, Netsnippets, Spearcast, Maxthon (guess who..) and others I don’t know. The event was opened up by Bob Rosenschein, CEO and President of Answers.com (formerly Guru.net) sharing some of his lessons learned over the years. Afterward Gemini Israel’s Daniel Cohen, gave a presentation to open up a discussion on why it is so quite on the Israeli Internet scene. Where is the next ICQ, Hotbar or Answer.com ? What are Israeli VC’s lacking that the US based VC are not? Why can’t Israeli VC spot an Internet success in the making?

Well, one of the explanations David gave was the geographical distance that somehow does not seemed to be bridged by cutting edge communication like Skype etc. We are just not there in the coffe shops of Paolo Alto or hanging out in Silicon Valley. I agree on that one, but I believe some of the main hurdles of Israeli VC’s are:

• Lack of balls – they are simply to afraid to follow their gut feelings (after having been burned by the previous bubble)
• An obsession with R&D based companies
• A fixation with patents and unique technology platforms

With this in their back heads, they are simply missing the lesson that successful Internet companies are not rooted in heavy R&D, patent and they often lack any particular cutting edge technology. Rather their DNA is made up by

• A cool brand that is community oriented and sharing based, or answers an immediate need (think Maslow‘pyramid) and are often disruptive.

Anyway, I think it was a very good initiative to organise the get-to-gether – and who knows, perhaps the next Internet success in the making is really just around the corner or right under their noses….