12 young Tel Aviv Based startups showed off on Sunday at the 3rd Junction demo day, which took place in down-town TLV. 18 months after it was founded, The Junction has positioned itself as The place where the real interesting gigs are coming from. Some of its prominent alumni from the past 5 [...]]]> By Asaf Levi

12 young Tel Aviv Based startups showed off on Sunday at the 3rd Junction demo day, which took place in down-town TLV. 18 months after it was founded, The Junction has positioned itself as The place where the real interesting gigs are coming from. Some of its prominent alumni from the past 5 waves include Vod.io, Clarityray, Ridefrog, Simplee, Vidit.fm and Moment.me, all are a funded and highly visible early-stage startups.

The Junction is a 3 months free acceleration program for young Israeli startups, backed by Genesis Partners VC. The program is like taking your early stage startup to an intensely fun & professional summer camp. However, it’s a give and take deal: you and your team get a table, chairs, great office hours and an endless supply of coffee, and in return you share your expertise with the teams around you. On the way you become friends and that’s where the magic happens. Each wave is a mix of 24 entrepreneurs who are programmers, Biz dev. guys, designers, UX experts and others from all kinds of backgrounds. Together you set the foundation to build better companies.

One difference from the YC accelerator model is that The Junction doesn’t take equity and doesn’t offer money. It’s a non-profit initiative and the VC’s behind it, Jonathan Saacks and Eden Shochat have a strategic, long-term vision to create a hub of creativity and innovation in the city, where the alumni of the different waves form a network that helps the new & old members take their ventures to the next level. A long waiting list to join the program and a very popular meetups each Thursday shows that The Junction is a success story.

On Sunday, 12 early stage startups pitched their product to a group of more than 20 local angel investors, among them Nir Tarlovsky of The Time,  Avichai Nissenbaum of LOOL Ventures, Roi Carthy, Eilon Tirosh, Gil Hirsch and others. It was the third demo day at the junction and the best one yet. For the first time, the Junction team let a few “external” companies present as a service to the entrepreneur community at large. Each company had 7 minutes to introduce their product and team to the investors. Few of them are really cool!

Here’s a complete list of presenters (note: later this week I will dedicate a post to each company. Stay tuned) -

WeTrip - A social travel app for iOS where travelers get real-time social driven information about their travel destination.

Tokkster - A live communication platform that enables website visitors to interact with each other in real-time.

Apparent  – Social network for parents. It turns the old-fashioned play date into a simple, valuable and fun experience for parents of 2-8 yo kids.

Twiize - Mobile app that enhancing phone calls with photos,music,videos and friends.

Dualgift - Reduces unwanted presents by bringing the recipient into the mix, allowing them to customize or exchange the items before they ship. The result is new user acquisition and increased sales for merchants, and better gifts for everyone!

HoneyBook - Like a beautiful photo needs the perfect frame, the perfect wedding needs a beautiful HoneyBook.

Scoreoid - the ultimate server platform for game developers, with a built in CRM solution!

perCv - The “Google Analytics” for the HR/Recruiting world. Optimizing your recruiting campaign.

VtagO - Video face recognition.

Alum.ni offers university alumni networks a new SaaS solution that provides tools for members to connect, help and get helped by the people they trust in an intelligent and targeted way.

Rompr is a web and mobile app for parents to share and discover fun family activities, expressing their inner parent awesomeness while helping other parents – and themselves – answer the question all busy parents face: what should we do with the kids?

Logicalls present Attentive phone assistant: let your phone work for you.

Stealth mode startup - A marketplace for solar energy.

KickTLV.com is sponsored by Hamifal.com – shared working space for Tel Aviv based startups!

I have the best job in the world, partly because I get to track down some of the greatest conferences out there and attend them as a Conduit ambassador. I get to learn new things, meet new people, and be inspired by great ideas — all while trotting [...]]]> A guest post by Sivan Cohen, Conduit

I have the best job in the world, partly because I get to track down some of the greatest conferences out there and attend them as a Conduit ambassador. I get to learn new things, meet new people, and be inspired by great ideas — all while trotting the globe. Last week, I was fortunate to attend LeWeb London, where a LOT was going on. Not only was it the first UK version of this Paris-based technology conference, but it was also an ideal opportunity for techies to catch a glimpse of some of the industry’s biggest names: Instagram, Highlight, Evernote, SoundCloud, Scoble, Arrington, Andrew Keen, Jamie Oliver and many more.

But besides the stuff LeWeb is usually associated with — the big names, the fancy venue and the glamour of it all in general — this particular conference came with a couple of notorious and unforgettable quotes that left me thinking.

Here are the seven quotes that I think best reflect the state of the tech industry today (for more of an analysis on each one, check out my full post on the Conduit Blog):

• “The 21st century is a lousy time to be a control freak”— Alec Ross, senior advisor for innovation to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, discussed the influence of social media in cultivating changes in government.

• “Imagine walking into a room and knowing everything about anyone in it”— When Paul Davison, founder and CEO of Highlight, uttered this thought, everyone flinched uncomfortably in their chairs.

• “Windows Phone is the new cool” — In a world where we have gotten so used to the Android/iPhone war, when a new player is crowned “cool,” especially among developers, it makes you believe once again that anything is possible.

• “The world isn’t only Silicon Valley” —  Michael Arrington, known for being a provocative interviewer, asked Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, why he chose a COO from Europe. His reply most simply put: “Cause the world isn’t only Silicon Valley.”

• “You can’t say October 26th [The Kloutocalypse] in our office without people flinching” —   Alexia Tsotsis, editor at TechCrunch, tried to corner Klout CEO Joe Fernandez and ask him if Klout isn’t “just a whole lot of BS.”

• “Facebook is trying to copy Path” — Henri Moissinac, head of Facebook’s mobile business, took the microphone during Q&A and stated that many people in Menlo Park [Facebook HQ] like using Path and are inspired by it. Then he literally announced, “Facebook is trying to copy Path.” What a statement!

• “Pinterest makes crap look good. It bores me, but it makes stuff look good” — Jamie Oliver participated in a panel with Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram. It was a true Instagram lovefest. But when Pinterest came up, Jamie’s infatuation suddenly died down. While Pinterest is known to be the fastest-growing site in history, Jamie’s quote reveals that he’s not that impressed.

LeWeb was certainly a conference for the true webaholic, and perhaps one of the more philosophical web conferences around. Which might explain my personal enjoyment of it. I especially enjoyed the part when The Onion’s Baratunde Thurston told us how his team created a Twitter account called @SwineFlu so that when they followed people who tweeted about their swine flu fears, they would get an alert saying “@SwineFlu is now following you.”

To say the least, it’s a conference that gets you thinking, which in my opinion is more than anyone can ask for. What other quotes got you thinking?

Photos by Ira Dotan Khrakovsky

“I believe in a world that is on the record,” says Gil Hirsch, CEO & co founder of face.com, while consistently refusing to disclose any detail about what seems to be the next Facebook acquisition of an Israeli company. I say “seems to be”, because this [...]]]> By Asaf Levi

Photos by Ira Dotan Khrakovsky

“I believe in a world that is on the record,” says Gil Hirsch, CEO & co founder of face.com, while consistently refusing to disclose any detail about what seems to be the next Facebook acquisition of an Israeli company. I say “seems to be”, because this interview was performed a few weeks ago, before Facebook has officially confirmed the acquisition. Since yesterday, face.com’s future is under a thick fog screen, which makes this post a unique opportunity to hear about this great company that the giant blue whale from Menlo Park was willing to pay $60 million for.

Imagine yourself sitting in a bar with your friends and suddenly notice this crazy chick on the other side. Back in the old days, you would walk over to her and start a conversation without knowing a thing – her name, relationship status, what she likes. What if you could just point your mobile device, take a snapshot and boom! you have a complete profile made of everything that Google & Facebook can find. Zillion of ice breakers at your hand, contact details, pictures, social graph, personal address and practically everything that’s out there. However, Face.com’s technology is not there yet. Considering facebook’s acquisition, an inevitable question rise up: Is this what facebook is cooking for humanity?

“We’re not here to out people” explained Hirsch weeks ago. “We have a sensitive technology. We are aware of that and made sure all of our APIs and services only allow you to recognize people you know, like your friends on Facebook. Generally though, I think that the world is moving to a point where it’s in your benefit to be discovered. Obviously you’re more vulnerable as a result of that, but also more recognizable and more transparent. This is true for brands, this is true for people, and this is true when you’re looking for a job. Our world has changed in that perspective, but when it comes to face recognition I do believe that extra care needs to be taken into account. We focus on people and their identity and we apply face recognition in a very subtle way. I keep reminding myself of caller id. Back in the day, you didn’t know who’s calling you. You didn’t have the option of seeing the number. When mobile devices came in, all of a sudden people started using this feature all the time, but you had to opt in. Suddenly, it was clear how beneficial this simple form of transparency is. Today it’s considered rude if you don’t reveal your number. That’s also relevant to the information you can infer from someone’s face including who we are, what we are and whether people willingly share it with you.”

Where is the down side of all this? Are there any limits as you see it?

“I’m a very private person and like most people I’d like to have a sense of control over my personal information. I’m not one of those who claim that everybody should give up their privacy because they should have nothing to hide. I don’t feel that way. I do have stuff that I’m not comfortable sharing, but people can feel comfortable sharing parts of their identity in certain contexts. I would like most people I speak with to have access to the information I share online.”

“We’re not here to out people”. Face.com team in action.                

Photo: Ira Dotan Khrakovsky

We met at face.com’s HQ in Tel Aviv. We had a few drinks and talked about how face.com, one of Tel Aviv’s most prominent companies was brought up. Considering facebook’s acquisition, face.com will have dramatic role in today’s digital life. “The way we started this whole thing was slightly different,” told Hirsch. “Eden Shochat and I were friends and he came to me with another entrepreneur, Moti Shniberg who came up with the idea of building a face recognition technology. We teamed up with Yaniv Teigman and began working. Our focus was to build a Facebook app and before we knew it we had a company! it was that quick, really, somewhere in late 2007.

“We saw that people are sharing a lot of photos on facebook. Those photos were mostly public at that time and privacy was not that much of an issue. facebook has rolled out it’s ingenious people tagging feature and we thought it was amazing. We thought why don’t we take the exact model and add automation in order to suggest tagging automatically. Which is really what you see in our products and APIs today. There is always a human behind the automation saying ‘I approve.’

“After that we added the ability to find photos of you and your friends on Facebook that you never knew existed. It was never automatically tagged, we just showed it to you so you can take action or correct it and say ‘sorry face.com you got it wrong.’ It was so popular that we made this our product. After we released Photo Finder, many different companies wanted to use this feature and that capability from different perspectives. Including the ability to alert you when a new photo of yours has been uploaded.”

 Gil Hirsch. “45,000 developers are using our API”.   

Photo: Ira Dotan Khrakovsky

Tell us some more about your API. How developers are using your technology?

“Right now we have about 45,000 developers using our face recognition and detection technology, which means that people are doing amazing stuff out there for mobile devices and websites. A big chunk is coming from video chat sites. They want to avoid the chatroulette fiasco, so they are looking for faces. Later on we came in with age detection, which is a new product and gender detection.

“Other ways of leveraging our technology included snapping a photo of your face, cropping it out of the photo and applying it to more gimmicky stuff, as well as utility at a retailer like EyeBuyDirect.com that sells glasses online and has a ‘try before you buy it’ feature. You upload a photo, pick up a catalog item and it automatically places it on your face. It’s as close as it can be to the real thing. They are using our technology to recognize where the eyes are and recommend whether to buy or not. It is very successful, they’ve reported 30% increase in sales.”

What about security. Obviously your technology has a lot of value for security agencies, armies or airports. Do you find these markets attractive?

“Personally I don’t have any issue with law enforcement but the face.com business approach is entirely focused on consumer markets. It means that if a partner of ours is misusing our technology, we will shut him down. By design, we are the most responsible vendor of face recognition technology on the net. That’s the longer vision of our company and this is why we’ve always developed our own consumer apps. It is very educational for us, and has been our way to test the waters”.

If you’ve already brought that up, let’s talk about KLIK, the face recognition mobile app you have recently launched. How’s it going with KLIK?

“I think KLIK is a great way to take our technology to mobile. What we’ve done with KLIK is to take our photo tagger abilities, combine it with your Facebook social graph and build a photo network around it. We redesigned our technology to work with mobile and in real time”.

“The need came out of a simple statistic: people on mobile devices do not tag photos as often as they did when they were uploading their point-and-shoot photos to Facebook. The difference in tagging activity is substantial, and it’s because of the high friction of manual tagging. By automating tagging in real time, KLIK also has that magic moment when it instantly recognizes a person in the camera frame. It’s like Shazzam for people!”

 Those of us who follow the tech meetup scene in Israel can agree that it’s quite easy to basically kiss your personal life goodbye, yet manage to have free pizza and beer every night as you attend a wide range of meetups evening after evening. Be [...]]]> A guest post by Sivan Cohen, Conduit

 Those of us who follow the tech meetup scene in Israel can agree that it’s quite easy to basically kiss your personal life goodbye, yet manage to have free pizza and beer every night as you attend a wide range of meetups evening after evening. Be it a gathering on UI/UX best practices, tips on mobile discovery, or how to land your first seed, Israeli meetups are constantly happening.

My rule of thumb on finding a great meetup is whether it has ‘pizza and beer’ in the title, but since that’s not really an exact science, a list of recommendations would prove more useful—especially for those who are new to the scene. Here is my take on the 5 most awesome meetups you don’t want to miss. Give them a try and see which ones best suit your needs and interests.

• TechAviv

Where is it? IDC Herzliya
When is it? Follow the group to get updates and invites.
What are they about? Led by Yaron Samid, the TechAviv Founders Club is an invitation-only organization of active Israeli Internet startup founders and investors that meet monthly to showcase, discuss, and help fellow members succeed. Each month, member startups demo their products in front of 200 fellow founders and investors to get critical feedback and advice. They also hold group discussions led by a panel or speaker. The goal is to inspire, educate, and help one another succeed by harnessing their collective experience.
Who will you meet there? Founders, founders, and more founders, some investors, and some techies that just like this group
Tip: Get there early to catch a seat—the place gets packed.

• GarageGeeks

Where is it? 40 HaPeled Street, Holon
When is it? Join the Facebook group to get updates on upcoming events.
What is it about? Imagine an industrial garage, 300 geeks, and Yossi Vardi with high-profile guests talking about all things tech related. The garage is 100 square meters of space that includes heavy and light machinery tools, electronic components, a software development environment, and raw project materials. A perfect stage setting for techies.
Who will you meet there? All techies in all shapes and sizes—especially those who like robots
Tip: Come with some sort of refreshment (that’s the code) and a T-Shirt—it gets really hot in there!

• The Junction

Where is it? 32 Shoken Street, Tel Aviv
When is it? Usually Thursdays at 16:30 (but be sure to double check and RSVP before you go).
What are they about? Sponsored by Genesis Partners, The Junction is first and foremost a shared work space/open house for entrepreneurs. They also host meetups there and bring various speakers from all aspects of the tech scene to talk about how to create stuff.
Who will you meet there? Serious techies that are eager to learn more
Tip: RSVP to this—they are strict about who they let in.

• Mobile Monday

Where is it? Various locations
When is it? Follow the group to get updates on upcoming meetups.
What are they about? MoMoTLV is the official Israeli chapter of Mobile Monday (MoMo). MoMo is a global community of mobile industry visionaries, developers, and influential people that foster cooperation and cross-border business development via virtual and live networking events to share ideas, best practices, and trends from global markets.
Who will you meet there? Mostly mobile developers and startup founders, plus a few VCs and general techies
Tip: This is one of the trendiest meetups out there, so be sure to bring a large stash of business cards or install a business card scanner.

• Tel Aviv Beer Tweetup

Where is it? Usually at the Dancing Camel bar in South Tel Aviv, but some are sponsored by a few of the big names like Microsoft and Better Place
When is it? Join their Facebook group to get updates on monthly events
What are they about? Led by @YaelBeeri, this is the “unofficial” tech meetup to attend. If you Tweet, you should come by and meet the people behind the blue bird.
Who will you meet there? Almost all the Israeli techies on Twitter, no matter what they do
Tip: Practice your English—these people are mostly American expats.  

“We started Appsfire not thinking [...]]]>

Appsfire’s App Star Awards soon to close it’s a 3rd contest, offering $10,000 USD worth of advertisements & an iPad 3. With partners such as TC, TNW and GIGAOM, the app contest is aiming to highlight and reward new and upcoming iOS apps. We thought it’s a good opportunity to meet Appsfire.

“We started Appsfire not thinking it would become a business” says Ouriel Ohayon, co founder at Appsfire, a 4.6m USD funded company that has become a leading promotion and discovery platform for mobile apps.

“I was frustrated (and still am) with the discovery experience in the app store” says Ohayon. “I could not find the right apps for me and my friends were in the same situation. So i decided to try to build (with my cofounder) a prototype of a service that would help users share their apps with one another. Later we realized there was a massive opportunity around this problem: developers also have a problem in marketing their apps and they do have money to spend to solve that problem”.

How is it better than the Appstore?

“It’s pretty simple. Appsfire filter the crapps, highlight the best apps based on your tastes, friends, location and budget. More importantly Appsfire has created a quality index that helps you spot the best apps in a second. no more need to reviews, scroll through the ratings and so on. This makes the whole difference. We also get lots of feedback from our users, saying that the UX we created is gorgeous and fast. This is why we get 5 star ratings over thousands of reviews”.

The people behind Appsfire are a well experienced entrepreneurs. Ohayon, a French-Israeli biz dev guy is in marketing and Internet for the past 15 years. Previously he worked at AOL. He also launched the French version of TechCrunch and recently co-founded ISAI (isai.fr) an early stage fund in France. His partner, Yann Lechelle, founded SaaS social networking platform Etheryl.com in the pre-Facebook years, and more recently co-founded mobile development agency KickYourApp.com.

With this kind of background, building a valid business model for their company was not that much of a task. ”We work with developers to promote their apps and Appsfire is one of the leading companies in the world specialized in doing so. A bit like Google with web links, we highlight a developers every day among all the recommendations we give. We get paid for this.”

Any last message?

“Keeping myself passionate and motivated with what i do. The rest comes as a consequence to that”

In the center of some [...]]]> Tel Aviv is probably one of the most interesting places to live in these days. In the heart of the ever stormy Middle East, the city is an oasis of creativity and innovation, a bustling yet small place with plenty of sunny days, smart people and an easy going approach.

In the center of some of the dramatic changes Tel Aviv has gone through in the past few years, one can easily spot an evolving community of young entrepreneurs, hard working dreamers. Some of them actually believe they’re about to change the world.

By 2010, Wired magazine had labeled Tel Aviv as one of the “Hottest Start Up Capitals”, pooling it with top European picks. “Tel Aviv is a hotbed of innovation”, the magazine said.

And Wired isn’t the only one to spot the city. Recently the Globe and Mail ranked Tel Aviv the most creative city in the world (!). That’s right, TLV landed the #1 prize. No doubt, the city is red hot right now. At every cafe in the city, you will find one or more teams working on products and wanting to disrupt, eager to compete in, and win, the market.

Different from the well established traditional Israeli high tech industry that brought up giants like NICE Systems, Amdocs or Check Point, Tel Aviv’s new entrepreneurial scene puts its focus on different types of startups: social media, web and mobile ventures.

This blog is the next logical step. Kicktlv.com is made for and by the local entrepreneur community, aiming to become the site that tells the story of this scene. Here, you will find in-depth stories about ideas, companies and entrepreneurs, alongside inspiring interviews with the city’s talents. Here you will hear about the next big things coming out of Tel Aviv. We hope you’ll enjoy this blog and feel free to share your thoughts. Peace.

Asafsky.

This is a call for all of you entrepreneurs, founders, developers and pretenders who burn the midnight oil in Tel Aviv trying to make shit happen. We have a new passion project called Kicktlv.com – Tel Aviv’s authoritative tech blog.

Under this category, ANGELS, we wish to build a crowd sourced bio and business profiles of Israel’s active Angel investors. Who are they? What turns them on? How to contact [...]]]> Hey, thanks for checking out Kicktlv.com, Tel Aviv’s tech blog. This blog is in the process of making. You are more than welcome to help building it!

Under this category, ANGELS, we wish to build a crowd sourced bio and business profiles of Israel’s active Angel investors. Who are they? What turns them on? How to contact them and what are the three things one must know before approaching Mr. X?

We invite the entire community to share it’s knowledge, allowing everyone to suggest, comment and share information about those opportunity seekers out there. All info is moderated and approved by admin.

Soon we will feature here dozens of profiles of Israel’s prominent Angels. Their favorite activities, how much capital do they tend to invest and what’s on their portfolio. Over time, we wish this profile will become a crowd sourced business wiki, Angel investor related. We encourage you, entrepreneurs, to share your experience, contribute insights and recommend.

Questions, ideas or anything else, feel free to mail me:

levasaf@gmail.com

Asafsky.