Author: Zack Miller

8 Israeli tech trends for 8 crazy nights: Payments (8/8)

We’re celebrating Hanukah in Israel right now and given all the fun and festivities going on, we thought it would be a good time to look back over the past few months and highlight some of the tech trends we’re seeing in startup land in the Startup Nation. As a caveat, these trends are based upon our deal flow – what we’re seeing on the ground. So, Happy Hanukah and enjoy. >>Read about all the top Israel technology trends this holiday season<< :::::::::::::Payments::::::::::::: The problem: Payments are moving away from traditional point-of-purchase and onto mobile devices, into the cloud, and within software. The technology and transactional ecosystem have to migrate from hardware to software (or at least a mix of the two). Solutions: Israeli companies aren’t focused on taking on core merchant payments the way a Square is but are more focused on niche parts of the market. Digimo: While lots of new payment players are basing their solutions on new hardware  — like terminals or NFC — Digimo uses existing payment infrastructure and enables mobile payments with an interesting twist...

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8 Israeli tech trends for 8 crazy nights: Social video (7/8)

We’re celebrating Hanukah in Israel right now and given all the fun and festivities going on, we thought it would be a good time to look back over the past few months and highlight some of the tech trends we’re seeing in startup land in the Startup Nation. As a caveat, these trends are based upon our deal flow – what we’re seeing on the ground. So, Happy Hanukah and enjoy. The Problem: The internet has made us into creators, and has let the world express themselves in ways that people could never even dream about years ago. While it is easy to share pictures and text, it is significantly harder to create, publish, and share video content through social media and the internet as a whole. The Solutions:  Vtago– Vtago has revolutionized the way people share videos with their friends by allowing the user to tag friends by using faces extracted from the video itself and connecting them with the user’s friends. In addition, each friend will get a personalized video showing only the parts of the video...

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8 Israeli tech trends for 8 crazy nights: Small business automation (6/8)

We’re celebrating Hanukah in Israel right now and given all the fun and festivities going on, we thought it would be a good time to look back over the past few months and highlight some of the tech trends we’re seeing in startup land in the Startup Nation. As a caveat, these trends are based upon our deal flow – what we’re seeing on the ground. So, Happy Hanukah and enjoy. >>Read about all the top Israel technology trends this holiday season<< :::::::Small Business Automation:::::::: The problem: Small businesses have small marketing budgets, so they can’t afford full-service agency marketing support. They typically also lack the time and kn0w-how to run professional marketing campaigns. The solutions: Appforma: Like Wildfire Interactive (acquired by Google) before it, Appforma provides easy-to-use tools for small business to begin tapping Facebook for new leads using giveaways, contests, and coupons. The Israeli startup has already inked a partnership with leading small business website company, Wix. Gigya: Gigya is a pretty ubiquitous technology provider when it comes to social logins — the ability for websites to allow users to...

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8 Israeli tech trends for 8 crazy nights: NFC (5/8)

We’re celebrating Hanukah in Israel right now and given all the fun and festivities going on, we thought it would be a good time to look back over the past few months and highlight some of the tech trends we’re seeing in startup land in the Startup Nation. As a caveat, these trends are based upon our deal flow – what we’re seeing on the ground. So, Happy Hanukah and enjoy. >>Read about all the top Israel technology trends this holiday season<< ::::::::NFC::::::::: The problem: Delivering content to the mobile device has always been somewhat cumbersome. There hasn’t been a quick, easy, low-power, and relatively inexpensive way for mobile phones to share data communications. Bluetooth seemed to solve some of that but requiring two devices to pair up limits its usage. It’s still been really hard to get content onto the phone. The solution: There is a technology standard called Near Field Communication (NFC) that quickly allows for two-way communication between endpoints by bringing them in close contact to one another. NFC is becoming standard in handsets now and...

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8 Israeli tech trends for 8 crazy nights: Water (4/8)

We’re celebrating Hanukah in Israel right now and given all the fun and festivities going on, we thought it would be a good time to look back over the past few months and highlight some of the tech trends we’re seeing in startup land in the Startup Nation. As a caveat, these trends are based upon our deal flow – what we’re seeing on the ground. So, Happy Hanukah and enjoy. >>Read about all the top Israel technology trends this holiday season<< :::::::::Water::::::::: The problem: Water’s a finite resource. There seems to be enough of it on the planet — it’s just not distributed evenly. Israel’s topography and geography in particular make water a critical asset. The transportation, purification, and consumption of water are all global issues. The solutions: Atlantium: This firm takes UV-disinfection to a whole new level. It is the only UV solution validated to 4-log virus disinfection credit, using live Adenovirus Lucid Energy: This Oregon-based renewable energy firm has inked a deal with one of Israel’s leading water utilities. With it’s in-pipe turbines, Lucid can cheaply and efficiently generate electricity from...

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