The Israel Web startup place for sharing information and knowledge - it's all about Web 2.0, new companies and the whole scene. Welcome!


StartupIsrael News:


MyHeritage raised 15M$

MyHeritage just announced a 15M$ round, from Index Fund. Their user base grew to 24M (up from 17M last year). The users uploaded 230M photos and over 260M 'names'.

Read more here (TheMarker, hebrew)

SemantiNet raises 3.4M$

SemantiNet just announced a 3.4M$ round. SemantiNet is working on a browser plug-in that will deliver relevant content to the user, based on the site he's surfing.

Investors in this round include Yossi Vardi, Jeff Pulver, Giza and others.

Read more here (TheMarker, hebrew)

MIT Forum: Improving Your Negotiation Position

Article description: 

The meeting will take place on Tuesday, September 16th, 15:45-20:30 at Lion Hall, Recanati Building, Tel Aviv University .

Conventional wisdom suggests that small companies considering deals with large companies with respect to strategic collaboration, joint ventures, M&A or an investment are at a disadvantage. Are they? How can they level the playing field?

Key Topics include:
* Successfully negotiating with Investors
* Goals and bottom lines
* Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat
* More is less: getting a wise agreement

Information about the speaker: here

Registration- here


Lab-One incubator invests 2M$ in Corrigon

Corrigon just raised 2M$ from Lab-One incubator. Corrigon develops technology for visual-search, allowing users to find images over the web without 'text' search in the image description.

Read more here (TheMarker, hebrew)

Affilicon Israel: Affiliate Conference in Israel

Affilicon Israel ,an Affiliate Marketing Conference & Exhibition, will be held in November 24-25, 2008. It's a chance to meet face-to-face in Israel with top affiliate marketers and learn from experts in Search Engine Optimization, social networking and media, and other leading internet technologies.

There will be two packed days of learning and discussion of tactics, strategies, and other topics related to affiliate marketing.

More on Mashable. 

Speakitz is shutting down

Speakitz is shutting down, they couldn't get funding. Their technology allowed web publishers to easily offer readers to post comments - basically a forum.

Speakitz was established in 2005, and never raised any money - the founders invested themselves something between 100K$ - 200K$.

We're always sorry to hear such news, better luck next time! 

Read more here (TheMarker, hebrew) 

Xpanity raised 1.5M$

Xpanity, who's doing a Internet Explorer plug-in that allows readers of the same web-site to communicate, raised 1.5M$.  It's not a new idea - several companies tried to do this in the past (including some Israeli ones). Interestingly, they do not offer a Firefox plug-in yet.

Read more here (TheMarker, hebrew)

Koolanoo raised 25M$

Koolanoo, who's in the chinese social-network market has raised 25M$ in a third round. Koolanoo's network is 360quan.com, and they claim it's the third largest in China.

Read more here (TheMarker, hebrew) 

Payoneer Raises $8 million Series B From Greylock And Carmel

Techcrunch reports that Payoneer has raised $8 million in a Series B financing from Greylock and Carmel ventures. That brings the total the company has raised to $14 million.

StartupIsrael gets an infrastructure upgrade

I'm happy to announce that we upgraded our infrastructure from Drupal 4.7.4 to Drupal 5.8. As a reader you will not find many differences, but hopefully it will prove a more stable, safe and quick system.

If you do find any bugs or glitches, please let us know...