Investment

Israeli Startup, Sense-Of-Fashion raised 260K$ (from Jeff Pulver and other private investors). The company has a web site (already live with revenue) that is a trading platform for fashion.

Via Globes (Hebrew)

I was invited to lecture at ISEMI about raising funds from private investors.
In order for my lecture to be relevant and up-to-date I've decided to check the current situation regarding this issue.

I've approached a few serious angel investors who were willing to share their views. 
As I suspected, it is not easy at all to get funding these days.
Out of 7 investor I contacted only 3 declare they still invest. 
The estimate is that there is a drop of 50-90% in private investments.

I'll try to summarize what I've learnt from these discussions.

The dark side:

Ouriel Ohayun (from LGI lab) reports that Clicktale has announced a round of financing. The amount (and the investors) was not published.

Read more here (Ouriel's blog)

Zitleman group has allocated around 20M$ to invest in Israeli startups, cooperating with Glenrock VC. They will invest in Round-A and later stages, but only about 100K$ in each company. They have already made several investments in Israel, and say they do no limit themselves to any field or company type.

Read more here (TheMarker, Hebrew) 

The Technion Seed is the new incubator from the Technion institute (Haifa). The incubator is actually a partnership of 4 VCs (Vertax, Buttery Ventures, Vitalife and Proseed), who'll invest directly in the companies. They will invest in up to 5 companies each year (with no 500K$ limit investment like most incubators).

They are looking for high-risk and high-rewards companies - a huge market, promising technology and innovation. They want to invest in Internet, ICT, Medical devices and 'new-materials' companies.

Read more here (Globes, hebrew) 

Video site Metacafe raised 30M$. The round was led by new investors Highland Capital Partners and DAG Ventures. Existing backers Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital also contributed to the round.

Read more here (Venturebeat) 

Pitango invests 600K$ in Omgili.

Omgili is a web-based information services company. The company's search and research services are based on advanced and proprietary discussion group search technologies. These services enable individuals, companies and institutions to effectively tap into the collective intelligence and experience of millions of people on the World Wide Web, and derive valuable information, knowledge, conclusions and insights.

The funding enables Omgili to upscale its search and storage capabilities to the dimensions needed in order to cover the lion's share of relevant online information on a daily basis, to pursue its plans to commercialize its technology and will take the company to a planned first round of funding.

Israeli adap.tv raised 10M$ from Gemini and Redpoint Ventures. The company has a contextual-video-advertisement platform - they analyze the video content (using text and sound) and display a related floating ad beside it. They already have an agreement with MetaCafe. 

Read more here (TheMarker, hebrew) 

Quigo raises 30M$ (valuation of 250M$) from IVP and their existing investors. Quigo has an on-line advertising platform, and lists ESPN, Fox, ABC and others as clients. They have also signed a big contract with Time. 

''Globes'' also reports that the company is readying for a Nasdaq IPO, which will probably take place in early 2008.

Read more here (Globes, hebrew)

Y&R (advertising giant) partners with PDWay. The deal is that Y&R will get a stake in PDWay in return for strategic help and marketing services (valued as a few million dollars). PDWay is into digital coupons, and has recently completed a 3M$ round from a private investor. They are now seeking to have a 10M$ round of investment (part of it is this deal with Y&R).

Read more here (Globes, hebrew)