Lgilab

StyleShake just got some serious PR

StyleShake, one of our Portfolio company, is continuously getting some PR exposure (translated in nice web metrics). But lately it got spotted in 2 major sites

BusinessWeek

At the site of British startup StyleShake, users design and work together online on their own cocktail dresses, which they can send to the company to have turned into clothing for them

Tim O'Reilly (Yes the one who created the late "Web2.0" expression). Here is the bit that i preferred

That effort to get people thinking about the next generation of internet applications, and what I came to call "the internet operating system" eventually bore fruit when Dale came up with a new name, Web 2.0...

But to return to the "maker" movement, the big tent includes not just "DIY," as the mainstream media is thinking of it, but the way in which computing is re-engaging with the physical world. For the last few decades, we have associated technology with a world that is increasingly virtual. What the makers are telling us is that the physical world is the next frontier for technology.

Well done Iris. Keep up

Technorati Tags: StyleShake, DIY, Businessweek, O'Reilly, lgilab

2007: a year of internet seed investment in Israel

TheCoils has a good post (in hebrew) that gives an overview on what happened in Israel regarding internet seed investments. 2007 was a very active year. Way more than 2006. I expect 2008 to be also an active one but many of those early investment will have to prove (including for our own portfolio companies) that a sustainable model is in place.

The interesting part of 2007 was that different models of investment were established in Israel and as TheCoils say, there is no Israeli VC that has not (tried to) put in place a special seed program to address correctly the internet companies.

If you can't read Hebrew there is a great table recapitulating the investment operations made over 2007 (click above to enlarge). The Internet Lab proves out to be one of the most active internet seed programs there. We are working very hard to make it also efficient and 2008 will be important for us in that respect.

Another trend i notices is that appetite from foreign investors (with no representation in Israel) for israeli startups: Mayfield, Spark, Mangrove (Zlio), Accel but also power angels Peter Thiel. And probably soon more (i heard about a deal or two coming up)

An important thing to spot is that many startups did not receive funding and probably won't. This is not necessarily a bad news: you do not always need VC money to succeed and you can build a very nice company without that (for example with angel money only). You can find some of those startups here

Finally 2007 was quiet in terms of M&A activity in Israel: all the attention was of course on Quigo (disclosure we invested in the new company of the founder of Quigo, Outbrain) that sold to AOL for 300+ m USD. Yedda was also acquired by AOL.

TheCoils should probably add also dPolls that was acquired by Toluna. 

2008 will reserve many opportunities for M&A as many startups will hit some nice milestones and some won't be able to pursue but still offer some nice assets to be acquired. The question will remain: Are we able to build giant internet players in Israel? I am not sure we will have the answer in 2008. Actually i think we won't. We'll need more patience for that.

2007 was a good year for the Israeli internet ecosystem and i think we are on a good learning curve. I am a bit concerned by the lack of developers and good wed design guys. But i am sure this will change soon. Really look forward for 2008

Technorati Tags: thecoils, internet, vc, startups, seed, investment

Vestopia covered by Reuters

Vestopia, one of our portfolio companies still in private beta is getting some good PR lately. Below a video by Reuters where they are mentioned in the new generation of financial services

 

 

VesTopia launches in private beta, invitations left

VesTopia, one of our portfolio companies (named until now Increditrade) , just launched their private beta, and we are very excited about it.

We have said much so far about it, on purpose. Their service actually lets you follow, in real-time, the real transactions and holdings within the personal portfolios of professional investors. All is done in a completely transparent mode, and while you get the pure transactions, you can also read about the strategies and opinions in the Investment Directors' blogs, and get alerts in RSS, SMS, email etc.

In the screenshot below you can see the real profile of one of the Investment Directors, Mike Gooson. You can see more pics and previews here

VesTopia are currently in a private, invitation mode only, but they still have some beta invitations left. So if you're interested, Click here or use invitation code LGI1ST in registration page

Many more exciting features are in the pipeline so stay tuned for the public beta and for great announcement VERY soon!

Technorati Tags: vestopia, startups, investement, portfolio

LGiLab invests in OutBrain and Timeless Cities

Today we are announcing two new investments with the Internet Lab of LightSpeed and Gemini. Number 3 and Number 4.

The news just broke on TheMarker by Raphael Fogel (website and newspaper).

Unfortunately there are some imprecisions i will try to highlight here. Both investments are not by Gemini as the Title mention but by The LightSpeed Gemini Internet Lab.

OutBrain

We made an investment in OutBrain (the URL in TheMarker article is not working at the moment and there is a typo on the printed magazine..) a service to deliver personnal content recommandation with a secret but really innovative business model. Yaron Galai is the founder of OutBrain (with Ori Lahav from Shopping.com) and Yaron is probably one of the savviest Israel internet entrepreneurs. He co-founded Quigo, a very successful challenger to Google Adsense in the USA. Since i am a heavy blogger, i hooked with Outbrain idea and business model right away, just like my partners. The very young company has already a web service composed  that will evolve very soon.

I’d like to precise that the information in TheMarker regarding the amount invested jointly with other investors in OutBrain is not correct (“about a million dollar”).

OutBrain provides a rating system you can use directly in Bloglines and Google reader from Firefox and let you embed on your blog you best rated blog content (look on the right of this blog for the widget). But this will be more powerful than that and the secret-for-now business model is really smart. You can also read their blog

Timeless Cities

We also made an investment in Timeless Cities which will provide a 3D immersive world coupled with original social networks features where we invested 1 million dollars. Yes i know it sounds like Second Life, but the concept is very different and very focused to a simple adoptable idea. The project is the brainchild of israeli artist Doron Nesher and has Michael Weissman co-author of the best selling book The Paradox of Excellence as CEO. The company based in Silicon Valley, is still in heavy stealth mode and hopefully we ll be able to tell more very soon.

Our PR is available here for download

The interesting part is that both those projects are located in the US. The Internet Lab is also committed to invest in internet projects lead by Israelis abroad.

A lot has been going in the lab since we started. Our current portfolio companies, Bp Intech and Increditrade are making great progress and will be able to offer soon the service we all expect.

We have met many companies during the past months, and we will have more announcements very soon.

PS: the news is already on some blogs and alarm clock has already caught the news (thanks Jon, you are fast!). Update: it just got also in Mashable

Update 2: the news just made it in TechMeme, between TechCrunch and NYTimes

Tags: lgilab, internet, israel, outbrain, timeless+cities, techmeme

Can you build a world class winner without being in Silicon Valley?

If you are an entrepreneur i urge you to read this post by Saul Klein, current VP at Skype and recently appointed Venture Partner at Index Ventures.

He explains how and why internet giants can be built out of the US (this is already the case). He even mentions Gemini in is examples of supporting VC to this new wave.

I think his analysis could have been totally extended to Israel where what is missing most is not so much the entrepreneurial culture, the technical know how, or VC structures but the understanding of what it takes to build a true consumer internet play.

I believe also this is changing. There are already signs of it (ICQ and Shopping already did it) and some companies are on a good way (MetaCafe could do great for example) and there is a list of new web israeli companies that start to get there.

What is certain is that innovation in internet is no longer the monopole of some happy few graduates from Stanford or Harvard. And big players start to be financed in Europe and also in Israel.

Tags: saulkein, indexventures

BPintech first investment in RED HERRING

Always great to see so much PR around a first deal. Below an article in RED HERRING.

We are aware we have a huge challenge to take. But we are working hard to find the next internet champions in Israel.

Lightspeed Gemini Internet Lab’s Blog: day 1

That’s it! We decided to open our own blog. When we started thinking about it, we wanted to find a better way to explain what we do and share with whoever could be interested in our experiences, views and thoughts on the internet industry.  

A blog was a natural solution to this question. Blogs are a perfect format to establish an ongoing communication process too. Communication with those interested in what we do, Communication with those interested with what we think, Communication with those who share our passion. 

The new internet is a complex environment and as we found ourself, like most players in the industry, in a learning process we wanted to be closer to this new ecosystem made of entrepreneurs, ideas, companies, products, investors, thinkers ….A blog is helping us in doing that. 

Many VCs have already chosen a blog format to share and express themselves. Some of them are remarkably well written (like Union Square, First Round Capital…). In Israel too this starts also to be the case, but this is still a shy trend. 

This blog is the voice of several persons contributing to Lgilab activities and now also to this blog. We hope it will help our readers understand better what we do and how we work. We believe it will also be useful for entrepreneurs that are intending to contact us and meet with us. I realized that most people were reading my blog before joining a meeting. We think LgiLab Blog will be a better addition. We also think this blog could be useful for us and we look forward to your comments and reactions along with our posts.  

So what will we talk about here? We will discover it with you on the way, but expect posts about internet, web2.0 (we prefer the expression “new web”), startups, venture capital, Israel high tech and of course news about LgiLab. For information the pictures you see on the right of this blog are a selection composed of our own LGiLab photos and a random web2.0 tag from flickr. 

Hope you’ll enjoy.