MYBLOG by Ouriel

[podcast] Speech of Nicolas Sarkozy today in Jerusalem

I attended today the conference for entrepreneurs in Jerusalem in the presence of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. It was a fantastic place for networking and met many friends i have not seen for a while. He spoke in French and i had the idea the record it in a podcast you can listen below (he spoke in French). He spoke very directly and clearly said that business relations between both countries are not enough.

I am not sure he is aware of my small contribution to this: TechCrunch France (one of the top french blogs i am writting) is written from Israel neither than Gemini and LightSpeed invested in 2 French startups (Wikio.com and Bahu.com) but i am sure there is something right about his observations. Too many entrepreneurs still think the US market is the gold mine. It is a crowded one, with a weak money. Europe is not so crowded with a strong Euro..Make the maths..

Laurence Parisot, president of the MEDEF (corporate organization in France) also delivered a great speech. She came with 100 french SMBs ( a first in the history of israel) that were impressed by the israeli creativity and dynamism. One quote to remember "In israel believing in Miracles is being realistic". Inspiring

Technorati Tags: sarkozy israel parisot jerusalem conference

The new iPhone 3G: available everywhere, except israel.

Will be sold in 70 countries eventually. i Think there is already more iPhones in Israel than in the whole Middle East all together. So Who cares ?

Got 5 million dollars? Go buy Israel.com

In the early days of domain registration Jean Noel Frydman acquired Israel.com to prevent mailicious usage of the domain. Today he decided to Sell it for a minimum price of 5.5 million dollars during the TRAFFIC conference that will take place in Orlando. He claims money won't do all and will eventually decided on the acquirer once he makes sure he's worth it.

I would doubt the Israeli government let this go. But after all why not? I met at the IVA conference a startup that has acquired Jerusalem.com (for a fair amount of money..) so will see.

FYI America.com will also be on sale at 5 million dollars price point

Via IsraelValley

Technorati Tags: domain israel.com conference TRAFFIC orlando israel

Apple finally sells the iPhone in the Middle East but not in Israel. Who cares?

Apple has announced a deal to sell through Orange France the iPhone in a list of Middle east countries including Jordan and Egypt. Still no announcement of any agreement for Israel. But honestly who cares? Israelis are not waiting for Apple. If you live in Israel you already realized how popular is the iPhone here. Like me they brought it from the US where the dollar is low and unlocked their device.

On average 1/3 personn i meet has an iPhone here. You can buy easily (at a high price though) an iPhone in Israel in physical stores (a picture i took myself here above) or on the internet (just google "iphone israel"). Well done Steve Jobs!



Technorati Tags: iphone, orange, israel

Realizing time flies

I met a group of MBA students from the prestigious French business school ESCP EAP accompanied by Pr. Daniel Rouach. I was impressed by the knowledge of those students on the internet. We talked for 90 minutes about different things, TechCrunch and my job. Of course they asked me tones of questions on Israel. I am not sure how much of what i said was new to them. But what i realized is that new generations are internet generation: you don't need to explain them Facebook or Twitter or even Semantic search. They even laughed at the expression Web 3.
0 which is so useless and empty...It is just part of their life. Actually what i am realizing is that new generations have 2 lifes. Their real life and a digital one (Something i did not have when i was young). Internet is not a part of their life. It is their life. Therefore i believe the notion of "Geek" will soon disappear. What we have to learn they don't, They already do it naturally and fluently. New web apps should be design baring in mind that point.

The last thing i realized is that i am not that young any more!

ps: Thanks To Daniel Rouach for his great note and mention in IsraelValley (in French)

San Francisco's Mayor: Tel Aviv "Better" than San Francisco

Always great to hear popular figures talking about Israel so positively. The San Francisco's Mayor in visit in Israel seems impressed and has exactly the same reaction i had when i first come to Israel: the reality here is SO different from the one distributed over the media.

iDrink#8

We had a terrific time at Zizitripo in Tel Aviv. Thanks to all who made it at iDrink#8 (in particular Sarah Lacy, Robert Scoble, Laurent Haug, Jose Del Moral, and so many others). If you want to get into the iDrink bus check out here

The 2 Israeli internet realities

Israel is a country of paradoxes. You can find here one thing and its extreme opposite. Internet is not exception. I mentioned it in the past but i am still amazed (nearly shocked) by the outstanding gap you can find between local israeli internet websites and the services created by entrepreneurs that are addressing the global market.

I can't really read hebrew but israeli sites are poorly designed, user experience is prehistorical, advertising is disturbing the navigation, there is no optimization for Firefox which has close to 20% penetration rate, loading is slow, pictures are in low resolution, news sites are very rarely having RSS feeds and when they do they do not promote them correctly (read Orli's post on it)...The experience is frustrating specially because users are now used to surf everywhere.

On the other side, web startups try to build cutting edge sites with new design, experiences and competing with the best international standards. Check out Gizmoz, 5min, Gigya, Vestopia, StyleShake (disclosure: my fund is investor), MetaCafe, SeekingAlpha, Sportingo....and just compare with any average israeli site and pay attention to the quality of the execution

What is the explanation of that? I am not sure. Maybe the fact that our internet infrastructure is totally prehistorical (although penetration of free wifi is pretty amazing).

But this is far from being the main reason: i think we lack of true wed design talents in Israel. There are some, but they are rare and usually go to startups because the upside is better. We lack of training infrastructure. We need more talents to feed marketing departments, web design agencies,..

The other reason could be linked to budget: since israel is a small country you cannot allocate too much money for creating a great site. I think this is half true. you can do a great website with a very little budget. And even when you have money the result is not always there (check out CellCom website for example which is far from perfect or wose 013/Barak my ISP or even DiscountBank my future ex bank)

The problem is not necessarily budget, but talent.

Should an internet startup outsource its marketing activities?

I was speaking last week at a Panel on Internet startups and Branding. One of the underlying assumptions to this panel was the fact that in Israel we are strong in making great technos but not so great at marketing them. I would say this is strongly changing mainly because a new wave of entrepreneurs is getting more and more exposed to consumer ventures and face the challenge to build brands and service that address directly the end user specially in the internet space.

Historically most high tech ventures in Israel have been non end-consumers oriented and more enterprise focused. I remember when i first arrive in Israel four years ago i could count on two hands the number of companies with an international internet consumer brand.

This has now changed a lot. You can find here dozens of new projects addressing directly end users. But those project have to face the difficult phase of attracting users and keeping them. Which requires a strong marketing culture within the company.

One of the attendees defended the idea that the same way you can outsource finance, legal and other stuff you can outsource marketing in order to solve that issue. I answered this was wrong to believe that someone else can do better something that you should do with excellence from day 1.

Finance and Legal are very rarely key competences in the young life of an internet startup. they are important but not key. Therefore it makes sense to outsource them. But if your service is all about seducing, attracting and understanding the user, the marketing is a key competence of the company. Even more: the whole DNA of the company should be imprinted with marketing. From the CEO to the product team. Marketing is not a function or a title: it is the company. Marketing is about having a great product, a great user experience, a good logo and brand identity, a good customer service, a good distribution road map, a good customer acquisition program and even more important a good customer retention program. Marketing is not about sales (which is always mistaken in israel where there is only one word for both). Marketing is not Business Development. Marketing is about how your company interact with your users at all level.

I do not know any successful web service that did not have a great understanding from within when they started. And one of the key symptoms of that is the quality of the execution. If you do not know how to execute well and assimilate fast the feedback around your execution there is low chance you'll make a difference and there is low chance your users will feel it too. This is why it is recommended to get out there with your product early and start to learn on to improve things with your users.

Let's take PR for example: do you need a PR firm from day 1? There are great PR firms out there, but you can start to do the job without at least at the beginning. StyleShake is a company we have invested in: they do not have a PR firm, not even a PR person inside. but the product and the concept is so good that they are naturally covered by the best papers and blogs (BBC, Wired, Financial Times, SpringWise...)..If this goes one they will have to scale it probably with a PR firm. But for now they do very well. You can the attention of bloggers by simply talking to them directly (of course not by sending a Press Release) or by being smart (Twitter for example just put wide screens at SXSW conference last year to get attention of bloggers)

If you think you don't have the necessary skills inside the company for that, then here is my advice: spend all your energy in finding the right key persons and bring them within the company.

Later, with scale, once you have proven you start to find the right pattern for success you will need to outsource some part of it (PR, media buying, SEO, strategy maybe,..). If you have some budget you can afford a consultant that will assist you. But outsourcing rightly is not replacing what you should already know and it requires time and skill.

There are at least 3 good reasons you'll never get a great outcome from a marketing provider if you don't know how do it yourself

• You won't know how to best select your provider
• you won't know how to best brief and pilot your provider
• You won't know how to best evaluate him

Like a great yogurt brand says in its base line: all the goods things start from within

Outbrain graduating to A round

I am big fan from day 1 of Outbrain, this smart rating system you can see on my blog. It happens to be also one of the first investments we made in the Internet lab. Here are the two reasons that make me happy about the following announcement.

Outbrain announces today an A round of 5 million dollars with Gemini and LightSpeed. After having raised money with LGilab we decided to continue supporting Outbrain in its growth.

Outbrain has all the great components we are  looking for: a great team (Yaron Galai the CEO just sold Quigo to AOL), a great service (in that case useful both for readers and editors) and a great business model (not obvious yet, but will be rolled out over time). I enjoyed observing the development of that company nearly since the day of its creation and saw how great it is addressing a complex need simply and efficiently, being adopted at the same time by a lot of users and partners.

Outbrain has a lot of challenges ahead but has also now the firepower to take them.

Finally It is the first lab company graduating to an A round stage and this makes us particularly excited. Our goal is to finance very early stage internet companies and help them grow until the point they reach a critical milestone and require more funding. Outbrain was our first case. But we have other great things happening in the lab. Stay tuned.

More on TechCrunch, GigaOM and Centernetworks (which is also using outbrain and a good interview of Yaron Galai). Also on Techmeme, VentureBeat and TheMarker and Globes (hebrew)

Technorati tags: lgilab, outbrain, blogs, ratings, vc, israel