startupmania

The weekend is upon us, as well as the winter season which is a time to settle down under a warm blanket with a steam cup of coffee and watch the rain falling down. As it falls on our small country, it falls on the rest of the world as well, and as it falls on start-up offices in Israel, so does it fall on start-up offices across the seas. Some of which are making some serious fund raising accomplishments.

The following start-ups may be hard at work on a project similar to something you may be intending to develop, or an idea similar to one an up-and-coming entrepreneur offered you to invest in. We’ve set loose our team of research-monkeys to sift through the investments made in the recent past and bring to you some that may be relevant.

We invite you to check into these companies, read the news about these people who are out to give the world its next big thing. Though few will actually make it, there’s a lot to be learned from their triumphs and mistakes. Many, also, are going head to head with Israeli start-ups, or develop products that could be applied in the Israeli market.

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California-based security start-up RedSeal offers a risk analysis and security breach location system in organizational IT infrastructure. It has recently raised $12 million from leading venture capital firms.

RedSeal has already accumalated roughly $43 million in investments, and is reporting a series of large-scale installations at international megaorganizations. The venture capital fund OVP Venture Partners led this last round of fund raising, joined by Venrock and several others.

This news could affect the Israeli Skybox Security, and the venture capital funds Carmel Ventures and Benchmark, who must now decide wether they will keep funneling funds into the company.

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Remember Israeli start-up MetaCafe? Well, DailyMotion, the French video sharing site who is considered one of their chieft competitors has just raised an additional $25 million. What does this bode for MetaCafe and their ability to raise additional funds from Benchmark and the Excel Fund? I believe the folks at MetaCafe, currently trying to promote their wiki-video products, are asking themselves the same thing.

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Data Robotics, creator of storage solution Drobo for SMB organizations, has just completed a fifth fund raising round which added another $10 million to its coffers. The round was led by venture capital fund Focus Ventures, which specializes in late-round investments, as well as Greylock joining in on the investment round. We would like to take this oppurtunity to ask if any of our faithful readers know of a supplier which offers the company’s RAID solution in Israel? We’ve been hearing a lot of good things about it and are itching to try it out (so we could tell you what it’s like, of course…)

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Current buzz is that in the future, we’d pay everything through our cellphones. This buzz has been circulating for well over a decade now, but start-up Bling Nation has just raised another $20 million to make that dream into a reality.

Bling Nation offers a simple and elegant solution: place your phone, with a preinstalled microchip supplies by the company, beside an payment device or cash register, and it will automatically transfer the payment to the store. You will receive an SMS with your purchase details, and once you approve it, the payment will take place.

Bling Nation intends on cooperating with the banks and retail chains, thus leaving the credit companies out of the picture. The payment will be automatically deducted from your bank account. They can offer the retailers the ability to pay them a much smaller commission than they currently pay the credit companies. Bling Nation’s revolutionary idea has already earned the company $28 million in venture capital investments in the past two years, and they’re currently operating a trial run in two towns in Colorado.

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Yet another start-up that wishes to make it easier for us to spend money, but also get paid, through our cellphones is MPower Mobile. The company, which believes the 3 billion cellphones running around the world are about to turn into 3 billion tiny, mobile banks, has raised $5 million in a second fund raising round. They claim that very soon we will be making financial procedures just as we send text messages.

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Many security start-ups continue to scare us from the faceless drones of the organization. The advise us to check up on our the operating of the organization and analyze it, limit it and install real-time alerts for any suspicious activity comitted by the enemy from the inside. For the delight of such companies, security regulations dealing in such matters are also increasing, so many organizations tend to adopt these supervision tools.

California’s PacketMotion is the current start-up that’s riding the crest of this wave. They have just completed a third round of fund raising, raising $5 million from venture capital funds such as Intel Capital.

The buzzword that seperates PacketSentry, PacketMotion’s product, from all the other similar security solutions is the fact that they don’t utilize Agent software on every desktop, promise to complete installation within a single work-day and assist the security manager in the tedious effort in enforcing HPAA, SOX and CI DSS regulations.

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To wrap things up, something a little lighter. Online gaming start-up Watercooler, also based out of California, has just completed a second fund-raising round totaling $5.5 million. It’s first round saw investments from Canaan Partners of roughly $4 million. Watercooler create online fantasy-sports, mostly on Facebook and other social networks. If you were planning on making a play in the field, just now that Watercooler boast a 26 million user base, and yes, they still needed a venture capital investment.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum