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DiggA total of 90 companies applied for inclusion in the Israel Web Tour of Silicon Valley that took place last week. Most of the 15 that were chosen for inclusion and presented at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus, were notable for being consumer Internet startups with real technology underpinning their offering. As a result, there were no rotten ones in the bunch. That being said, some were much better than others. And while, it's slightly unkind to place a few of these 15 companies toward the bottom of a list when they already beat out 75 other startups, hopefully it's useful to investors and technology dealmakers that couldn't make the presentations.
Below is my ranking of the 15 in order from best to worst prospective venture capital investment. To provide background, I've included an official description of each company as provided by the California Israel Chamber of Commerce blog: - Joshua Jaffe
1) Qoof
Official Description: Qoof is an Internet video commerce company. Qoof's video commerce
platform is the convergence of the online Internet shopping world with
Internet video, helping an infinite number of companies
cost-effectively sell more products and services and reach new
customers by harnessing the scalability, decentralization and power of
syndicated Internet video.
VC Rating: Bypasses online video ads by placing online stores in widget form across the web. Like QVC for the web without the schlocky jewelery. This has the potential to be very, very successful.
2) PLYmedia
Official Description: PLYmedia is a pioneer in the development and deployment of an
interactive, multi-dimensional platform - PLYplatform. The company
delivers web publishers and broadcasters a range of applications
focused on a new movement towards personalized, enhanced and
interactive web video technology by bringing new context and meaning to
video.
VC Rating:
Applications on top of video are useful but if these guys figure out a
way to monetize video, this could be a blockbuster. It's in the process
of raising a Series A now.
3) Delver
Official Description: Personalizes Social Search engine - Leveraging user's social
networks into delivering personal search results with high degree of
relevance. Delver search engine draws a connection between content and
people, allowing you to easily search for information within your
network and find people relevant to your search queries.
VC Rating: The combination of search and social networking seems
lucrative. Delver's lovely user interface will help user adoption.
Making search more like spending time on your favorite social network
would make Delver a hit. Backed by Carmel Ventures, Delver is looking to raise a Series B later this year.
4) NuConomy
Official Description: Nuconomy Studio offers a new way to measure, understand and grow
your content and community. By using NuConomy Studio web sites are
able to go far beyond the old page view model and measure their site
attention, engagement and contribution metrics.
VC Rating: There is lots of room for improvement in web site analytics and NuConomy tries to go a step further by making the intelligence actionable. Closed a Series A from WPP today.
5) ClickTale
Official Description: ClickTale is an innovative hosted service that enables websites to
record and watch movies of their users' complete browsing sessions -
every mouse movement, every click and every scrolling action. As the
pioneer and leader in Web Interaction Analytics (WIA), ClickTale
captures, analyzes and helps websites optimize their user's online
behavior inside the web page.
VC Rating: Their unique approach to web site analytics is to make it more intuitive. They raised a first round from YL Ventures in December. The question for ClickTale and Nuconomy is whether their products are that much better than Omniture, Google Analytics and others? If they're not that much better, but just different, then these will end up as mid-range acquisition targets.
Official Description: AllofMe is a one-step website for aggregating and managing personal digital assets (virtually any digital file, such as pictures, videos, Internet pages, or email messages). The assets appear online on a Timeline, zoomable from century to a day in a life. That Timeline can be shared with personal interest groups such as family, friends, or colleagues. eventually, it becomes a one-stop station that defines and aggregates one's digital identity and assets.
VC Rating: Could be popular with the kids. Raised seed funding last year.
Official Description: 5min is developing a unique Life Videopedia platform, enabling user's easy access to practical solutions in any field, via a rich library of short practical-videos.
VC Rating: Nice site but it's a competitive target. One of these will emerge as the leader but who it will be is anyone's guess.
8) BlogTV
Official Description: BlogTV Ltd. is a provider of live video streaming platforms for
Internet and mobile users. blogTV platform allows any Internet or
mobile users to have their own live video show and broadcast it from a
webcam or a third generation cellular phone.
VC Rating: Nice platform but the problem is that it makes it so
easy to produce a live television show, all the interested parties will
be busy broadcasting themselves rather than watching anyone else's show.
Official Description: Sportingo is about fans sharing their opinions with sports
community. All fans are invited to register and write articles about
any sport related event ranging from match reviews and team
performances no nostalgia articles about memorable moments in sport.
Sportingo is about fans writing for fans; fans commenting and ranking
the articles of other fans; fans deciding what the topical and
important stories of the day, fans setting the sport agenda.
VC Rating: I like what these guys are doing and think it will be a successful business. It's scalable, addressing a targeted demographic and has a ripe advertising base in gaming companies. But with $3.2 million already raised from a London-based media investment company, I wonder how big this venture can get.
Official Description: Your Visual Assets Always Come First. PicScout deploys advanced
technologies to improve business of visual assets owners and users.
Since introducing its Image Tracker service in 2003, the company has
established itself as a market leader for content monitoring, serving
the world's most prestigious visual collections.
VC Rating: I can attest firsthand that this definitely solves a
problem. After raising just a friends and family round, PicScout is
profitable and growing. The risk is whether or not its business model
of inserting ads in the pictures will deter readers to such an extent
that publishers decide it offsets the revenue and liability boosts.
11) PageOnce
Official Description: PageOnce gets you everything you want, and nothing you don't. Our
FetchOnce technology™ grabs the most relevant stuff from the websites
you care about. You can get bank info, bills that are due, cell phone
minutes, emails, and what's coming next from Netflix all in one place -
all without ever having to logon or surf to multiple websites.
PageOnce makes the Internet "password-free" by handling every username
and logon for you.
VC Rating: It definitely solves a problem. You can try it here. If it attracts users, it will be easy to make money in the same way Mint does. But, will it get squeezed by Pageflakes, iGoogle and Netvibes on one end and OpenID on the other?
12) Journeys
Official Description: Journey's develops, runs and operates the Journeys world game.
Journeys provide and easily accessible and fun bridge between virtual
worlds, the wen and real life, non gamers communities and casual gamers
communities.
VC Rating: Online
travel startups scare. Startups backed solely by corporates make me
even more afraid. Journeys isn't an online travel startup but it is
backed by Elron and it will test the theory that well-financed virtual
worlds can't fail.
13) 8hands
Official Description: 8hands is a small and friendly desktop application that allows a
single point of entry to all your social networks - Receive real time
notifications, conveniently connect with all your online friends, IM
and share online content with them and view useful statistics about
your online social life.
VC Rating: Looks like Meebo for social networks. While there are some advantages to this such as posting a note to all of your various social networks, social networks are different than IM clients. Does anyone really want to manage their social networks without visiting the networks themselves?
14) Velingo
Official Description: Velingo's Search Mining proprietary technology tracks large amounts
of search decisions and creates a collective knowledge, to provide more
relevant search results and content recommendations. Velingo's
solutions relates more relevant advertisements and premium content to
any given search, thus increasing search revenues.
VC Rating: Worthwhile ambition to suggest to online searchers results that they may not know they are looking for, but this recommendation engine didn't seem to be that useful. In the process of raising a Series A.
15) Erayo
Official Description: Erayo is an innovative wholesale marketplace for unique, exclusive
products from around the world. With Erayo, manufacturers can penetrate
international markets and retailers can source imported designs and
creations. erayo's industries focus are fashion accessories, home décor
and jewelry.
VC Rating: Low barriers to entry without any market liquidity and a hefty marketing challenge makes this a longshot. The web site was launched last month.
- Goodmail faced many closed doors on way to latest VC round
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- Analyst: Software maker Chordiant should seek sale
- ex-Kelkoo CEO rips Yahoo!, blames its culture for failed deal
- Think your portfolio is ugly? Behold Carl Icahn's
I agree with all the choices. I also believe Qoof has something amazing to offer. I look foward to seeing more great things from them in the coming weeks,months and years.
Howard
,
Thanks for the comments, guys.
Interesting point, Dave. I agree that is useful to know WHEN it's worthwhile to visit your social networks. Although, I suspect many people aren't as efficient as you and visit their social networks simply as a diversion from work or school whether there is important new activity in their network or not. Nevertheless, I'll give 8hands another look.
Great cover,
though I have to disagree about 8hands- I use it to choose WHEN to visit my networks.
I get all the notification and their content, so I know when something worthy is going on and avoid time waisting due to unworthy log ins.