It may be a small country but when it comes to technology start-ups, Israel looms large. Last week the Israel Economic Mission to North America and Greenberg Traurig hosted the Israel Conference: Global Mobile & More in New York. I participated in a panel discussion along with Tom Nicholson, my colleague at the ARC Fund, and other representatives of tech and early stage funds. The founders of a select group of Israeli start-ups, looking to establish themselves in the U.S. market, were given an opportunity to make their pitch and respond to our questions.
It was readily apparent why these companies were highlighted. They all had articulate spokespeople with polished presentations, and companies that had already gone through initial stages of development and proof of concept. But as one entrepreneur after another stood in front of the crowd making their case, a familiar pattern emerged, one that I recognize from regularly listening to investment pitches by New York based companies. More on that later but first a few Israeli venture highlights.
A company called Pango is using pay-by-phone technology to replace the annoying experience of fumbling around for change to feed a parking meter. The company is already operational and has traction in Israel and Europe. I am quite familiar with the concept because I have been using my phone to pay for parking in Miami for years. The city works with a company appropriately called PaybyPhone that powers mobile parking in various cities in the US, Canada and Europe. These companies are part of two broader trends we are going to be seeing a lot of: using mobile devices as a convenient replacement for cash, membership cards, tickets, etc. and transacting in the temporary use of places and things – assigned parking spaces, spare bedrooms, event spaces, power tools, you name it.
MyCheck is also riding the mobile replacement trend to eliminate an annoying experience – check jail. You know, when you are finished eating, ready to leave, but the waitress and bill are nowhere in sight. I just met this company but their promotional video won me over.
However, they are definitely not alone. Over the last year I have seen a flurry of apps targeted at bars and restaurants that hope to integrate with market leading POS systems such as Micros. An interesting variant is the use of tabletop screens, not only to pay the bill but to read the menu and order. A company called Ziosk is installing devices at casual dining restaurants such as Chili’s and changing the role of servers.
Eating isn’t the only thing you do in a restaurant or bar. You listen to music.Sevenpop has built an app to turn the venue sound system into a jukebox. This is a business I am also familiar with since I am an advisor, and an investor through the ARC Fund, in a U.S. service called iJukebox. Of course it was important for iJukebox to build a slick interface and features but the real challenge was in licensing recorded music, publishing, and performance rights and implementing a transactional system that is painless for users.
I mostly focus on media and entertainment and so a company called Wibbitzgot my attention. The company has created a proprietary text-to-video platform that analyzes and understands text-based web content and automatically generates a video clip with a computer generated voice-over and visual effects. I have looked at various applications that convert text to speech and others that automatically generate visual content based on keywords, but Wibbitz offers a unique way to publish original video for web and mobile.
So what is the pattern? Whether they were born in Israel or the U.S., there always are multiple start-ups, and often several established companies, trying to solve the same problem. Sometimes there are a great many when a particular technology or business idea is in vogue. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While it can be confounding for investors trying to place their bet, competition raises the bar and spurs innovation. If you are paying attention, you hear the fresh idea or technical advance that is breaking new ground.
Source: Forbes.com
