Author: wp_archive_user

The OurCrowd Guide to Israeli Startup Incubators and Accelerators

The OurCrowd Guide to Israeli Startup Incubators and Accelerators

Nov 15, 2012 |

The Israeli high tech industry is swarming with startups, some with the potential to be the next Waze (acquired by Google for $1.3B) But where and how are these startups originating? How do these companies go from being just an idea in an entrepreneurs mind to a multi-million dollar exit? A long-existing method to help launch a startup is the incubator/accelerator program. Israeli accelerators and incubators: role in the startup ecosystem the role of accelerators: Basically the function of incubators / accelerators is to detect startups that are at an early stage of existence and provide them with the initial and basic tools to get their ideas up and running, while mentoring them throughout the process. In return the incubator program receives an agreed upon amount of shares in the startup they are hosting or a fee for services rendered. how to apply: The incubator starts by advertising its program to entrepreneurs urging them to apply and explain what benefits they would receive if they would be selected to be “incubated”. the acceleration process: The lucky startups chosen for “Incubation”...

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Facebook store creator, EasySocialShop profiled in top Israeli business magazine

Nov 15, 2012 |

Meet Easy Social Shop, a platform that invites small and medium businesses to open “stores” on Facebook, allowing users to share products, rate them and perform direct purchases. People want to shop on “Facebook”, CEO of the company, Nissim Lehyani, explained to Calcalist. Tzachi Sultan, principal shareholder of Clal Finance Underwriting, and Nochi Dankner’s partner in the oil and gas drilling partnership Modiin, is joining the trend of investing in startups. Sultan invested 200-300 thousand dollars in Easy Social Shop, a startup which until now operated under the media’s radar, and which seeks to help small and medium businesses establish stores on Facebook. Broadly speaking, ESS is aiming to move the social network to becoming more like eBay and less like Facebook. ESS takes the product catalog that physical or virtual stores put on the Internet, and then transfers them to Facebook, allowing those stores to sell their products on the social network as well. The store manages the catalog on Facebook, and customers can rate the products, “Like” them and share them with their Facebook friends, and even...

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Waze for parking: Social parking app, Parko wins Israel Mobile Challenge

Nov 14, 2012 | , ,

The news is a little late but definitely worth taking note: Parko, a social/tech solution to the parking problem recently won the Israel Mobile Challenge, beating out 80 other contenders. The Israel Mobile Challenge is a competition aimed at promoting technological innovation in the smart phone arena. It was sponsored by Motorola, Google, and Ben Gurion University. Noam Bardin, CEO of Waze, acted as judge of the competition. According to Ynet’s coverage of the event: According to the company, statistics show that the average driver will spend almost a year of his life searching for parking. As Tel Aviv residents who face the challenge of searching for parking on a daily basis, the five young founders of Parko decided to devise a solution – in the form of an user-driven service that automatically finds available parking spots that have been reported by other drivers. The app incentivizes drivers to share the locations of parking spots they have just vacated with prizes, coupons and even cash – as well as the promise that next time, they won’t have to spend...

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Applango, finalist in Israel SaaS startup competition, wins place on Microsoft Accelerator

Nov 14, 2012 |

Applango, a startup providing enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) management solutions, today announced that it was selected as finalist at the 2012 IGT Cloud Summit among 24 other SaaS companies at DLD Tel Aviv. [bra_blockquote align=””]”Applango’s solution is a winner among SaaS offerings since it answers a crucial management need for companies that have adopted SaaS widely,” said Avner Algom, CEO of IGT Cloud. “The judges were pleased to award this honor Applango since it is solving a real-world business problem, and is already achieving traction in the market.”[/bra_blockquote] IT professionals know how easily other employees and departments can subscribe to cloud based apps. That is one reason for the massive growth of SaaS in the enterprise. All these uncoordinated efforts are difficult to track and manage and can often cause inefficiencies throughout the organization, wasting large budgets in subscriptions. Applango provides tools that CIOs and IT leaders need to manage SaaS applications. This way they can track usage, provision users, and monitor spending. Subscription waste is easily stopped and coordination between users is achieved. Companies that benefit...

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Israel’s health startups: the land of milk and life sciences

Israel’s health startups: the land of milk and life sciences

Nov 13, 2012 | ,

We write a lot about startups and given my background, I tend to write about Israeli Internet apps, social media, and software as a service (SaaS). But Israel is really known for its hard sciences: specifically, for its life sciences. Here’s a great infographic that breaks down exactly how competitive Israeli health startups really are (there’s also some great M&A data in the health vertical). Source: Israel – A Land of Milk, Honey & Life Sciences (Infographic)   photo...

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