Net

Silicon Dragon

Rebecca Fannin have just published her book "Silicon Dragon - How China is winning the tech race". I was interview by Rebecca a year ago on my role in Maxthon. Now the story is out - with some great quotes from my buddies Morten Lund and Bill Tai as well as Maxthon founder Jeff Chen. The book is a very interesting and entertaining read on Chinese entrepreneurship - believe me it is like nothing else...My claim to fame in this book is :

Jacobsson's skip to Facebook is symbolic. He is one of the first tech entrepreneurs to leap from a Chinese to an American start-up, as sign of the growing stature of made-in-China technology..

Article in Metro Teknik - Sweden

Pulver's Israeli Facebook Party

Although I really didn't have time to go Jeff Pulver's Facebook party given my new job, new child and relocation errands, I'm glad that I stepped by. Letting your Facebook friends connect with each other over free drinks is definitely a great idea. Everyone was wearing stickers with their name, company and tagline. Anyway, I made some new acquaintances and had a chance to catch up with some old friends. Kudos to Jeff for inviting me and for the great idea.  I wonder if there are any other Facebook networking events like this around the world? (In the picture Jeff, me and Ouriel).

PageGangster - PDFs on Steroids

Forget about boring PDF browsing. PageGangster takes PDF's to a brand new level. Just upload your existing PDF files here and convert them into a cool looking 3D publication. Browsing traditional media like a magazine or a newspaper is as close as you can come to the real thing Online. PageGangster is a piece of art from the Danish company PG Publications.

Register for Le Web 3'07 Fourth Edition


 The registration for the fabulous Le Web 3 '07 fourth edition and preliminary program taking place in Paris on Dec 11-12 has opened. If you are only going to attend one web related event in Europe this year - this is the one!

Hong Kong Web Startup Meet Up

Last year when I was visiting Hong Kong and met with the Simon Lee & the guys at Bullpoo, they complained that there where not enough web entrepreneurs in Hong Kong. And if there were, they were not aware of each other. I then suggested that the meet up with a few people I had been in contact with and start meeting informally for drinks once a month. Guess what? Today Simon tells me over Skype that the initiative I started have just resulted in the fourth Hong Kong Web Start up Meet up, and they were almost 200! Amazing!

EditGrid hosted the last meetup, Yahoo HK have started to show-up and  Catharina Maracke from Creative Commons was there as well. I am really excited about the fact that it was started on my initiative and in one year has grown to such an extent. There is nothing more gratifying than being able to help and connect people with each other.

And of course, what event/group can be taken seriously if they don't have their own Facebook group? Join HK Web 2.0 on Facebook here.

I for sure will come by next time I have an opportunity to join the meetup. Good luck - and thanks Simon for sharing the story.

Summer Time - And the Kids are Jumping

I know I haven't been blogging for the last 3 weeks, sorry about that for all you people who have been up sleepless wondering what is going on. There is a very good reason for it:

• We have a new baby on the way
• I am taking some time-out before my next new very exciting venture (stay tuned)
• Family time - it's summer!
• I have found Twitter and Facebook as more suitable platforms for updates and all the miscellaneous stuff.

Stay tuned for more stuff on Outsourcing my life, RunCasting and Storyboarding!

Golden Gate RunCast with Guest's

Yesterday Loic and I took our RunCast (or should I call it a FogCast?) to a new level: The Golden Gate RunCast featuring guests: Bill Tai, General Partner with Charles River Ventures (and on the Maxthon board) and Konstantin Othmer,CEO and founder of Coremobility. It was a great run on a bridge over troubled water and can bee seen as bridging the gab between Europe and the US ;)

Technorati Tags: billtai, goldengate, loiclemeur, coremobility, crv, storyboards

Storyboarders - Now On Facebook

Since the feedback on my idea of using storyboards to develop business plans have been very positive, I decided to create a Facebook group dedicated to the topic. Enter Storyboarders. Drop your word-based business plans & burn those power points. Enter the storyboards! We are the storyboarders, creating conversations - not just presentations!  Feel free to join in & let's crowdsource it to the next level. Who knows, perhaps this group will give birth to a new business plan format better suited for humans including VCs?

Technorati Tags: businessplans, creativeprocess, crowdsourcing, Facebook, storyboards, tools

Storyboards As A Business Plan

Since I have been sitting in on quite a few start-up pitches as well as continuously being pitched myself by all kind of ventures, I was thinking if it is not on time to change the current format for business plans. Let's face it most VC's don't even read them, not even the executive summary for that matter. Power point is more and more taking over although we are all sick and tired of them too - especially if they have more than five slides.

Since most businesses are like a developing story - wouldn't it be easier to use the storyboard as an example of visualizing you business plan? We all love stories, wether they are fiction or not , on TV or not, true or false. As a matter of fact, most good businesses have a good story to tell. Why not try to tell that story as you see it develop over time on a storyboard?

Using the storyboard as a format for describing a business forces you to reduce the crucial steps into single frames and let go of those long never ending paragraphs that nobody reads anyway. I personally use a lot of visual tools in my day to day businesses. My favorite so far is Mind Mapping wether on paper or as for the past four years, a software called MindManager. As a matter of fact, I went through all my University studies using mind maps, which some of them I still have left.

I think that story-boarding is very close to mind mapping, but helps you perhaps better to tell or develop a story. Going forward, I will start using storyboards for some ideas I am developing in parallel with mind mapping.

What then are my favorite tools? Well, except for paper and pen:

• MindManager
• Pages - comes with Mac's iLife (use the creative templates )
• MacJournal - not a visualization tool, but fantastic for note taking - especially the full-screen author with enable me to write with green letters against a totally black  background - putting all the distractions behind.

Finally there is Montage, which is a very interesting screenwriting software aimed at pro's - but an interesting option if you really would like to tell your story in a screenwriting format. What are your favorite tools?

Technorati Tags: businessplans, macjournal, mindjet, mindmapping, montage, startups, storyboard, storytelling, vc

What do you think?

Ever since I announced that I am stepping down from my active involvement in Maxthon, the stream of proposals and offers just keep coming. Although I did expect some positive reactions I never anticipated the amount of positive reactions. I now really need to carefully think about what my next move should be and what kind of venture/s I would like to get involved in.

Since I know that my blog readers are extremely intelligent, wise and really wise people, I have decided to crowdsource for some inspiration. Currently a number of options are open:

• Join the VC world
• Top position in a very well known public company
• Join a start-up
• Combine a number of ventures under my Mashup Media company
• Start something completely new
• Just take a very long vacation and think about it

What do you think?

For those of you located in the Bay area, I will be over again July 24 - Aug 1st and as always I love to meet up with fellow entrepreneurs and share experiences,  so if you want to meet up, please leave a comment or contact me directly on you know what...;)

Technorati Tags: entrepreneurs, Maxthon, netaneljacobsson, crowdsourcing, VC, venturecapital

Loic's & my Run & PoolCast From Spain

 

Loic's and my first RunCast together finishing of with a PoolCast filmed at a secret location in north Spain.

Technorati Tags: leweb3, loiclemeur, netaneljacobsson

Virtual Goods Summit 2007 Videos Up

Here's two video's from the Virtual Goods Summit in Stanford last month. The first: Virtual Items - mainstream or not? Featuring: Jia Shen, James Hong, Robert Scoble, J.T. Stephens and John Vars.

The second video: "Making Virtual Economies Work" focused on what it takes to build, launch, and maintain a successful virtual economy. Featuring: Mark, Joshua, Brock, Raph, and John.

Technorati Tags: vgsummit, vgsummit2007

Stepping Down From Maxthon

Dear friends,

I have decided to step down as Senior Vice President & Partner and reduce my active involvement in Maxthon in order to pursue new exciting challenges.
Maxthon has been my main client & more than full time partner for over two years now and gone from 21 million to almost 100 million downloads during this period.

Now that the big strategic deal with Google done, the company is established as a respected browser alternative, I feel that the right time has come for me to move on and get involved in new and exciting ventures.

As a share holder I will continue to support and follow Maxthon’s continued success however, my day to day involvement in the company will stop. For high-level deals you can still reach out to me but for the rest please turn to: business (at) maxthon.

To wrap up, I want to thank you all for these two great years and wish the Maxthon team all the best.

As for future ventures & adventures, stay tuned!

Technorati Tags: Browsers, China, Google, Mashupmedia, Maxthon, netaneljacobsson, Software

Outsourcing My Life # 5

Here's a new episode of outsourcing my life. New experiment: To outsource the building of a new business. Comments welcome!

Technorati Tags: outsourcing timferris 4hourworkweek

Off to San Francisco & SuperNova 2007

I'm off to San Francisco (again) for a bunch of meetings and SuperNova 2007. I have a lot of interesting meetings lined up, amongst others: meetings with my two favorite platform providers: Facebook and the Twitter. I know most of my readers have lots of request for new features and improvements - dump them here and I'll make sure they reach the right people.

I will spend all Wednesday to Friday in San Francisco and will be in Palo Alto the rest of time (until 27th). I you wanna meet up please leave me a comment or just get in touch directly.

I will also try to post a daily video on Facebook so feel free to tune in from time to time. Also, don't forget to join The Maxthon Lovers group on Facebook. It's growing and would love to see you there as well. Oh, and don't forget to join the Le Web 3 group as well.

Maxthon also have a skin competition coming up soon for the 2.0 version with cool prices. If you want to create a cool skin and spread it to millions of users around the world and even have the chance to win the default position - please let me know. Start- ups and companies are also welcome!

Technorati Tags: Jaiku, Maxthon, leweb3, leweb3.1, Supernova2007, Twitter

A Conversation About Le Web 3

Here is Loic's answer to my suggestions on Le Web 3. This is getting more and more interesting. I like this format. Don't forget to swing by the new group leweb3 group on Facebook to leave your comments and suggestions.

Technorati Tags: leweb3, leweb3.1, loiclemeur.facebook

Symi - A Mixture Between Traditional & Modern World

  Symi Harbor 
  Originally uploaded by Net

Last week I spend a couple of days on the beautiful Greek island Symi where my father has a little house. Symi i 2 hours off Rhodes by ferry and 40 minutes by hydrofoil.

As probably one of the most beautiful Greek islands, Symi is a mixture between the old & new world. What amazed me was how the majority of the local population still worked in old traditional professions and many of them dependent on the sea.

At the same time, Symi is full of Wifi equipped cafe's and more an more foreigners have started to settle in, at least part time.

The only locals that manages to get a decent education are those that move to Athens or Saloniki. However, the problem is that they usually don't move back to Symi since there is no suitable work for them. This is quite remarkable considering that Wifi is well spread on this little island that still needs to get its water supply by boat twice daily from neighboring Rhodes.

The Greek authorities should invest more efforts to promote Internet entreupreneurism to the people living on the Greek islands. Like this locals could still stay on Symi while running boarder-less businesses something that would raise the educational, professional level as well as attracting people from outside to settle down and invest in remote places like this.

Outsourcing My Life Part 3 - The RunCast

Here's the 3rd episode of Outsourcing my life. This time in RunCast formate. Very shaky but not stirred. Unfortunately the battery died halfway through in parallel with me reaching 90% of my heart capacity. Now I'm off to Rhodes and the greek island called Symi to focus and get things done. I'll be back with a new episode (GreekCast ?) later this week and some more thoughts about global entrepreneurship & ideas for Loic's Le Web 3.1.

Technorati Tags: Outsourcing, loiclemeur, netaneljacobsson, runcast, leweb3

Outsourcing My Life 2 - Loic's RunCast Comments

This is becoming funnier and funnier. Loic just posted his RunCast with comments and and a new challenge to me as a follow-up from my previous Outsourcing My Life 2. Now I have been challenged to comment on Le Web 3 in RunCast format too! Don't worry. A RunCast with Outsourcing My Life 3 will come too now with comments on Le Web 3. And Loic, what about turning peoples VideoCast on Le Web 3 into an actual Advisory Cast Board? Stay tuned to the RunCast, SwimCast and PoolCast too.. Technorati Tags: loiclemeur , leweb3 , netanel , outsourcing, entrepreneurs, video

Outsourcing My Life II

Here is the second part of Outsourcing My Life II. Let me know what you think. Is it too long? Do you have any questions or ideas I should respond to? Now The ball is yours Loic .

New challenge to Loic and all global entrepreneurs:

To create a video serie in this conversational format to share and exchange the challenges of being a global entrepreneur. Let's exchange ideas, help each other out and get inspired by each other. It can be very short clips on a particular idea, or any advice you might have to other entrepreneurs or just a cry for help.

Outsourcing My Life

Inspired by Timothy Ferris book "The 4 Hour Workweek" and AJ Jacobs, editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, I have just taken the first steps to outsource my life. Being a Swede/Israeli living in Israel, running the business of Maxthon, based in China while spending lots of time on the road especially in the US and running Mashup Media can be quite a challenge. 

So when I heard Timothy Ferriss speak at the Web 2.0 Expo last month I got inspired. I have always been of the opinion that you don't need to run around, answer all your emails and talk on the phone all the time to get real results. I never picked up the book, but today I stumbled upon Timothy's website and read the account of how AJ Jacobs outsourced his life.

This is music to my ears! I just know that this is the right thing todo. I immediately contacted Brickwork
, and now I am sitting here all excited waiting to take the first step in oursourcing my life. I already work on a daily basis with China, US and Europe, so why not add India to the sauce as well? I've always loved a good curry.

I will let you know how it goes as the story develops..

The Master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.

Tao Te Ching

Let the story begin..

Technorati Tags: Outsourcing, Timothy Ferris, 4 hour week, AJ Jacobs, Esquire, Brickwork, Maxthon, Mashupmedia, Lifehacks, India

Entrepreneurs & Business men - The True Peace makers

I have been thinking for a quite a while what it would take to make peace in the Middle East, and in the rest of the world for that matter. Especially what kind of DNA the real peace makers are made of.

I have like many others, long time ago lost the faith in governments, politicians, international organizations and non-profit organizations. Governments are still the leading peace makers but also the biggest obstacle to real peace.

Politicians are blinded by their own ego and their hidden agendas are often the real obstacle for true peace. Weakened by their relatively short term in office, they are too engaged in clinging unto power at any price. This leads to short term considerations and betrayal of it’s citizens.

Enter the entrepreneur and business man.

Throughout history, business men and entrepreneurs have seen governments rise and fall. Focused on succeeding with their endeavors under any circumstances, the business men and entrepreneurs have always been seeking out new creative ways on the road to success and prosperity.

Although spread out all over the world, coming from different cultures and religions, they all speak and understand the same language.

The language of money, success and education.

They all understand that in order to succeed and prosper- peaceful relationships are essential. No one understand the value of partnerships more than business men.

They say that money does not smell. That might be true. Whether you are Iranian, Israeli, Syrian, Jewish, Muslim or Christian - the value of money and success is the same. It is one language we all speak and understand.

Although countries might be in a state of war with each other. There have always been unofficial, underground activity between business men and entrepreneurs across boarders and between enemy states. Here in Israel where I live, this has been true since the existence of the Jewish state.

Although we might be in a state of war with neighboring countries, there has always been contacts between business men across the boarders.

Ideologies. Politics. Governments and religion. They are all secondary to the business man and entrepreneur.

The business man and the entrepreneur understands the value of partnerships.
The business man and entrepreneur are pro-actively seeking each other out to partner, even though their governments might be in conflict.
The business men and entrepreneur understands the value of a good deal.

It is against this background, that I dare to say that the future of real peace making lies with the business men and entrepreneurs.

They have the vision, the passion, the common interest and the drive to do great things, to succeed, to reach out to others, to want to share their “collective intelligence” and show others how they can succeed too.

I know that there is a lot of talented business people and entrepreneurs out there that understands exactly what I mean. We might not share the same ideologies, religions or political points of view - but we all share the language, the passion to succeed , do great things and prosper.

I am considering forming some kind of network for this purpose... What do you think?

Open-Source Peace Corps...?

Create Your Own Subtitles To Any Video with SubPly

The guys at Plymedia just launched SubPLY. SubPLY allows anyone to create and add subtitles to any video from any site enabled by PLYmedia and post it anywhere they wish.  Disclaimer: I site on Plymedia's Advisory Board.

Technorati Tags: Plymedia, Subply, Video, Subtitles, YouTube, Metacafe,

Two great weeks in California & Phoenix

After two full weeks on the road it's finally time to head home to Israel again. It has been two great weeks starting out in San Francisco and the Web 2.0 Expo, followed by five days in Palo Alto and finally the CRV Leadership summit at Royal Palms Resort & Spa in Phoenix.

I think I summed up my views on Web 2.0 Expo before so I won't comment on that here. It is always so great to be in California, I get so much stuff done and have time to meet and hang-out with interesting entrepreneurs, venture capitalist and other great people. Although I try to spend a week a month in California, I must say that this time has been the best so far.

One of the highlights was hanging out with the Plymedia gang on Shabbath (for whom I am an Advisor) and especially hiking at Tiburun with Ben Enosh. It was a great day and I felt that I really made a new great friend. I also had time to meet new interesting entrepreneurs like Nik from Omnidrive, Yahya from Freewebs and others.

The best event was however the Charles River Ventures Leadership Summit at the Royal Palms Spa & Resorts in Phoenix, Arizona. What a great place! I wish I had brought my wife..This was the first time in five years that CRV had invited all their CEO's and founders from their portfolio companies and top speakers from various industries.

Against the backdrop of the Camelback mountains the event was very well planned and with a great lineup. I am really glad I decided to stay another week just to participate here. Besides all the portfolio companies people like Chris Sacca (Google), Evan Williams (Twitter), Andrew Baron (Rocketboom), Scoble, Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Ted Leonsis, Nathan Myhrvold (Intellectual Ventures & frmr Microsoft CTO), Prof. Yared Diamond (Pulitzer winner and author of "Collapse"), Larry Summers (frmr US Treasury Secretary), Matt Jacobson (Facebook), David Eckoff (VP Turner) and many more.

I particularly enjoyed chatting with Evan Williams (Twitter rocks!), Chris Sacca, Om Malik, Matt Jacobson, David Eckoff, Andrew Baron and David Sachs (Geni). Man! Geni is so good. Its going to become so big. David is a fantastic entrepreneur.

The event was really top quality in terms of speakers and participants but best of all - intimate enough for having quality time with each other. There was also time for desert hiking (see photo above with me & Bill Tai making the "m" Maxthon sign) lots of cactuses and a feeling of being beamed to Indian and cowboy land. Will post a separate CactusCast that I shot on the hike later.

I definitely learned a lot, met new friends and was inspired. Lot's of stuff on my mind now, new potential partnerships and new business ideas. Time to head home to wife and kids - I really miss them!

Technorati Tags: CRV, Freewebs, Geni, Larry Summers, Maxthon, Nathan Myhrvold, Plymedia, Rockeboom, Royal Palms Spa & Resort, Ted Leonsis, Twitter, Web2expo, Yared Diamond

Advice to Start-ups : Do Not Sponsor Big Conferences

I am surprised to see how many new web start-ups that are sponsoring big conferences like Web2.0 Exp, Web 2.0 Summit, Digital Hollywood etc you name it.

I have only one advice to these companies:

If your target audience is not conference attendants (and they very seldom are) Do not waste your marketing budget on these events! It's a total waste of money. Your potential users/customers are most likely not early adopters, partially half-converted Internet savvy media people and developers. If I would be an investor I would be very upset to see resources wasted like this.

Believe me, if you as a start-up would instead pay anybody on the street $50 to become a user - I bet that it would be a better return of investment that paying outrageous sponsorship fees for web conferences.

Go where your users are. And they are everywhere. The big challenge is to aquire real users - Go and get them!

Technorati Tags: Web2expo, Web2.0expo, Marketing, Advertising, Start-ups, Web2expo

Web 2.0 Expo Next Week

I am going to be at the Web 2.0 Expo in SF all next week and I am going to bring with me two developers from Maxthon as well to the show. My schedule is jammed packed but if you would like to meet up April 15-22 at the show or on Thursday/Friday in Palo Alto - please let me know.

Technorati Tags: Web2.0expo, Maxthon

Guy Kawasaki "The Art of the Start"

Here's a great video with Guy Kawasaki talking about The Art of the Start at TiECon, May 13, 2006. I read his book and I can warmly recommend it for any entrepreneur or entrepreneurs to be. Filled with a lot of truths, killing many illusions (probably based on learning a lot from his mistakes) about how to run a start-up. I met with Guy 1 1/2 year ago when he recently got into blogging. I remember how he told me that he really invests a lot of time and thinking behind every blogpost that he writes. You can definately see that. He loves the "10" points format which is reflected in many of his posts. This video is a nice summary of the book.

How LinkedIn Led To Maxthon

I often get the question of how I got involved with Maxthon. I mean how does a Swedish/Israeli guy becomes a partner in a Chinese company? The answer is, thorough LinkedIn. Belive it or not. Not directly, but in-directly. Here's the story:

It all started when I was working at ICQ (an AOL subsidary) and was trying to track down Nicklas Zennstrom from Skype for an idea I wanted to explore. I then found that the missing link between be and Niklas Zennstrom was a Danish fellow called Morten Lund (early Skype investor). To get to Morten I had to go through a contact I had at MTV in London, another Danish guy called Henrik Werdelin - now VP at Joost.

Morten was quick to respond, but said that Nicklas was just too busy those days (I doubt it has changed ) so why don't I come by Copenhagen and he would give me a bunch of more interesting deals... I accepted his invitation, went to Copenhagen and then spend a day with Morten discussing Bullguard (his main baby then) and a number of other ventures for ICQ.

Nothing really came out of this meeting, more due to the lack of action from ICQ and less from Morten. However, it was the beginnning of a friendship that led to countless hours of IM chats for over a year. Morten kept pitching me on behalf of all kinds of ventures he was involved in or was planning to get involved in. At that time, I was really fed up with the total incompetence and lack of understanding of what was going on on the Internet at ICQ (and AOL too for that matter) and had started to look around for the next challenge.

Of all the ventures Morten and I discussed, nothing really seemed attractive to me at that time. Partly because I didnt want to relocate from Israel and partly becasue it just didn't make me excited. But things changed.

One early morning in late November 2005 Morten Skyped me from the Arab Emirates and asked me to have a look at a new browser he had stumbled upon. He was quite excited. 20 Million download in a year! And it was created by a Chinese developer living in Hong Kong!

Since I just had downloaded and converted to Firefox, my inital reaction was" Who needs another browser" ? But Morten just said: "Just download it and you will see.." Said and done, I did. I was converted - again! Maxthon was so cool, and they story behind so fantastic that I agreed to take on the challenge.

Morten wanted me to become a business partner and take the company to the next level. How could I refuse? After I made up my mind I spend the 4 months in endless IM conversations with BloodChen - Mr. Maxthon himself a.k.a. Jeff Chen. It was my first experience in Chinese psychology and negotiations. It taught me a lot of patience..

Jeff and I finally reached an agreement and signed it off - without ever having met...Talking about an original start of a new venture. Two years has passed since I joined and I haven't regretted it for a second. Maxthon is an amazing piece of software, but more than that, Maxthon is more like a movement of passionate fans and co-developers all over the world. We have actually become the only Chinese Internet/Software company with a true global footprint. And we keep on growing like crazy.

That was my little LinkedIn story. Hope you liked it. What is yours?


Technorati Tags: Maxthon, China, LinkedIn, Morten Lund, Skype , China, Joost, icq

Scribd is Great

I stumbled upon Scribd the other day. And I am really impressed. Such a simple way to store and share documents and yet so powerful. Scribd is a free online library where anybody can upload .pdf, .doc, .ppt, .xis, .txt etc. It also has an embeddable PDF player that let's you view documents right away in your web browser.

What I also like is the Digg-like rating system and the detailed traffic analytics for each document. Other very useful information like: recently uploaded documents, most viewed and similar documents makes this service leaves other document-sharing services I have seen way behind.  You can also subscribe to other peoples documents via RSS which is very cool. If done right, Scribd could become the default destination for uploading and sharing everything from dissertations, papers, research reports, PR and marketing materials. The question is just how they will deal with all the garbage that people will start uploading..

If I would be Google, I would immediately incorporate the main ideas from Scribd into Google Documents.. it's really a no-brainer.

Technorati Tags: Pdf, Scribd, Sharing, doc, txt, pdf, Tools, Upload

The Truth About Israeli VC's?

The Funded , the recently launched resource for entrepreneurs (or gossip about VC's as some would call it), just posted a number of profiles on Israeli VC's. The judgments are quite hard with a few exceptions:

• Giza Venture Capital: Arrogant and untrustworthy
• Genesis Partners: They thing you work for them
• Walden Israel: This VC is asleep please do not disturb
• Apax Partners: If they invite you, it's to learn...not to invest
• Benchmark Israel Capital: Michael Eisenberg - One of the most sophisticated/manipulative/dangerous people in the industry
• Pitango Venture Capital: Large tanker VC - too large for Israel
• Evergreen Venture Partners: They were very impressed, and we are still waiting
• Jerusalem Global Ventures: Shlomo Kalish is/was the alpha male of this VC
• Fortissimo Capital: One of the few serious guys in the industry
• Carmel Ventures: An investment company that thinks it's a VC
• Zone Ventures: If you got extra time on your hands to burn
• Gemeni Israel Funds:Double face

It is not clear to me what parameters they use for passing judgement on the VC's, however I think initiatives like thefunded have an important role to play. If nothing more, at least for forcing some kind of transparency on the VC's. I have seen & heard too many bad stories from entrepreneurs raising capital so it's good that a rating site like this exist.

It is not very difficult to find venture capital now a days. What is difficult though, is to find a suitable VC. A friend of mine once compared partnering with a VC like a software bundle, you have to be careful of what comes with the bundle.. I would say its more like a Catholic marriage. It's is nearly impossible to get out once you are married...

I therefore recommend any entrepreneur to really examine carefully every potential investor beyond the money and the term-sheet, and question themselves if this really is a partner I can imagine to "live with"? Besides the cash, can they really add value? Scrutinize any potential VC like you would a bride to be and don't exchange rings before you are absolutely sure that this is going to be the "mother" you want for your baby ;).

It will be interesting to see once the list of Israeli VC's is complete who will take the lead.

I know some of the VC's above better than others. The only thing I can say is that I have heard the same about Giza from many different people. The other thing is that if your market is in the US - be very careful of who you are partnering with. I would go directly to a US VC rather than an Israeli.  The network and in-depth knowledge about the market is key to success (unless you already have the network and only need their money).

Technorati Tags: VC, Venture capital, The Funded, Giza Venture, Genesis Partners, Walden Israel, Apax Partners, Benchmark Capital, Pitango , Evergreen Venture Partners, Jerusalem Global Ventures, Fortissimo Capital, Carmer Ventures, Zone Ventures, Israel, Entrepreneurs

The Office: Stealing From the Best

 

Paul Kedrosky posted this fascinating BBC Documentary about the origins of the Office.  From the conversation between Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the series's creators they admit that they they stole ideas from everybody, and especially the best.

Ricky Gervais: We ripped off the best.
Stephen Merchant: No, there's not one new idea in that whole goddamn show.
Rick Gervais: We ripped off Laurel & Hardy, The Simpsons, Spinal Tap, and what was the other one you said?
Stephen Merchant: Woody Allen. Larry Sanders.
Ricky Gervais: We ripped them all off.
Stephen Merchant: And we got away with it.

I actually had a colleague when I was working for a start-up in London that not only looked exactly like David Brant but actually was like him in real life...That was quite an experience to say the least.

   Anyway, the bottom-line here is that you can create something really successful by "stealing" from the best and just serve it in a different way..

Technorati Tags: BBC The Office, Fun, Humor, Ricky Gervais, The Office

Web 2.0 Over and Out?

An interesting observation by EarlyStageVC is suggesting that Web 2.0 is over and out by pointing out the dramatically falling traffic among three pure web 2.0 plays : Techcrunch, Gigaom, and Technorati. Although a lot can be questioned regarding Alexa ratings' accuracy, the all show a similar falloff in reach compared to their Q4 peaks.

I don't know if this really is interesting or not, expect perhaps for Techcrunch, Gigaom and Technorati. However, judging from my own reading habits, I actually stopped following the three named properties quite some time ago now. I just don't find them interesting anymore. I would definitely put Gigaom before Techcrunch in terms of quality and depth, but still I feel they are lost the edge.

Likewise, I have noticed that Technorati is not picking up blog pings like Google Blog search and is seriously falling after in picking up blog posts in general. It's a pity, because I really like David, Tantek and Peter. Perhaps it really is an indication of a general falloff.

Anyway, wether or not web 2.0 is over and out or not does not really matter. What matters is that innovation continues - and it will and have always done. What is really good will in the end survive, the rest will contribute to the innovation wave but eventually enter the dreaded "Dead pool".

Technorati Tags: Alexa, Technorati, Techcrunch, Gigaom, Technorati, Web 2.0

Jerusalem - The Open Source City?

Is Jerusalem the true Open-Source city? I have been invited to participate in a workshop about Digital Society, Policy and the Internet at the beautiful Mishkenot Sha'ananim located in the heart of Jerusalem. The workshop is called " Jerusalem - An Open Source City in the Test of Time". The workshop is aimed to examine: How can we develop a rich and pluralist digital culture? And, what are the conditions to promote the cultural growth offered by the Internet? It is certainly a very interesting concept and Mishkenot Sha'ananim is a very special place indeed. Thanks to Dr. Nimrod Kozlovski, co-founder of Plymedia Inc (on who's Advisory Board I am a member) for inviting me. More about this later.

Technorati Tags: P2P, Open Source, Jerusalem, Digital Life, DRM