The Internet Lab inspires other initiatives

I read today that EverGreen, another israeli VC is creating a specific internet seed programm. I think this is great news for the israeli entrepreneurs that will find, beyond business angels and LgiLab other alternatives for financing their early stage programm

Evergreen is following the recent trend of Israeli venture capital funds' investing in Internet companies. The Jerusalem-based JVP fund has announced it will change its focus to media and content technologies; Gemini and Lightspeed have established an Internet laboratory that has made two investments

It is written in the article, LgiLab has been around now for more than 10 months, we made 2 investments and are on the way to make more. As far as i am concerned i believe it takes more than just putting some money and see how the company goes.

• It is important to spot, even at early stage, the right guys for the right idea. Too many me-toos or feature-company are around 
• be able to contribute to help your portfolio through your knowledge of the internet and through your network,
• bridge the gap with the US, which remains a key strategic market for most startups.

That’s what we are trying to do at LgiLab: this is not an easy job. This model starts to be popular among VCs. In the US Charles River launched a few month ago something similar with QuickStart and we know other israeli VCs are trying to put together a similar approach.

We see a lot of internet projects and i am very confident on the ability of this country to build world champions

MetaCafe is on the way, Gizmoz could be great, Jajah rocks. Let’s wait and see who will be here in one year now.

Tags: vc, israel, internet, lgilab, entrepreneur

Comments

[Shai]

Many of the other funds I've talked to are toying with one version or another of this model.

At Giza, we have made a number of small "lab-style" investments over the last year, including three Internet/gaming companies. At the moment we have a number of Internet companies in process with the same funding model.

It's the kind of thing that makes a lot of sense for Israeli Internet startups, if for no other reason that it allows local VCs (many of whom got badly burned on Internet deals during Bubble 1.0) to "dip their toes" into the Internet waters again.

That having been said, I can only second what you write about the challenges of finding the right company and helping them leverage our connections.