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

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

No, LGiLab is not an incubator

Since we receive the question/comment every other meeting, i thought it was important to precise that LGiLAb is not an incubator (“Hamama” as we say in hebrew)

So let me precise what i mean by that: LGiLab is a joint venture of two funds dedicated to invest in israeli internet startup at very early stage. So far nearly no difference with an incubator and maybe the “lab” expression combined with “very early stage” can bring some confusion.

We are providing initial cash (up to a million dollars) to entrepreneurs to start off quickly their business and prove there is a good market feedback before taking an option on investing further. We are not hosting companies, or providing vertical services such as HR, marketing, finance, legal, which is what an incubator also does.

However we are trying to work with our portfolio companies and help them in specific issues

• recruiting some key employees
• review regularly their activity
• access to specific internet companies
• open doors here and there by leveraging our network

But this is not done on a full time basis and certainly not a by a team dedicated to it (i am the only full time personn on the internet lab).

We are very close to the way angels work with their companies, bearing in mind we are looking a step further and try to help our company grow enough to get to an A round.

If you are an entrepreneur what you should know is that the Internet Lab has a format of investment that can help you get quickly some money so you can run your company as fast as possible to a milestone of success.

Look forward to questions/comments if any

 

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

Announcing LgiLab second investment: IncrediTrade

Today we announced an investment of LgiLab in Increditrade. This is our second investment since the creation of the Lightspeed Gemini Internet Lab (first was BP inTech). (Ofer Hi-Tech where the idea was born took also a minor stake). Increditrade will provide a range of services for simple retail investors that seek simple solutions and powerful information to make effective investment decision on financial markets

IncrediTrade empowers retail investors to make better investment decisions by leveraging reliable information in a simple and transparent format, which until now has been available to professional investors only.

The opportunity is great. The idea (we cannot disclose right now) is purely outstanding. The team (picture below of founders Assif Stoffman and Guy Hirsch CEO) is strong and brings heavy expertise both in investment fields and in internet marketing (Eran is part of the team).

We cannot say much right now since the company is in stealth mode and service will be released later this year. But i can tell you it is going to change the way investments are made. The challenge is big though. Making it in the financial world requires a lot of sharp efforts. We will work hard at LgiLab to make sure Increditrade gets the best support.

At this moment all you can do is register to their temporary homepage to get an alert when the service is released. 

I will join the advisory board of Increditrade along with Dan Ciporin .

• You can download our press release here
• More on themarker (hebrew) and thecoils (hebrew)

 

 

Video interviewed on TheMarker TV on our first investment

Thanks to Guy Grimland for the interest in interviewing us (Bp inTech entrepreneurs, our first investment and me). TheMarker TV is the online tv of the news paper themarker.

In hebrew only

 

LGiLAB at LeWeb3 next Week

Yoni and I will be attending leweb3 conference in Paris next week, which is certainly the largest web event in Europe this year (1000 attendants from 30 countries and massive PR coverage) and probably one of the best since january 06.

Lots of Israelis are attending. I will personnally be involved in 2 panels and that will be too a great opportunity for networking.

Let us know if you are also there.

Off to Silicon Valley/San Francisco

Blogging will slow down the next 10 days. I am off to California to attend Web2.0 Conference and IsraelWebtour as well as many other events and meetings. I will of course meet with Daniel Cohen, Gemini Partner in the valley as well as LightSpeed Venture team.

This is my very first trip to Silicon Valley. Look forward to see and feel this world i am reading/writing about everyday day for a long time now.

If you are around and want to meet up contact me at ouriel (at ) lgilab – dot – com. © Andre Pogodin - FOTOLIA

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.