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Start-ups boost big technology cos
Author  Roy Goldenberg

Everyone wins when a big company acquires a start-up.

From Globs

Exactly three years ago, Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) co-founder Larry Page again took over as CEO, ten years after leaving the position. Eric Schmidt vacated the post to become chairman, and Page began to take the search giant in a new direction. Schmidt, who had been parachuted into the company in 2001 because of investor pressure as a responsible adult to turn the small and bubbling start-up into the corporate giant that Google has become. However, three years ago, it was decided to go back to basics, and not just with a personnel change, in order to give Google the feel and atmosphere of a start-up that it had lost over the years. The idea was to instill innovation, agility, and a faster pace of decision-making in a company with tens of thousands of employees.

This was only part of Google's strategy to feel younger and more innovative. In fact, the company is one of the most active buyers of start-ups and technology companies, with over 150 acquisitions amounting to billions of dollars. This method has brought many new faces to Google's departments, and kept its head above the water in a range of fields.

Google is not alone of course. Many enterprises in Israel and other countries are trying to bring in innovation through the back door. However big and smart they may be, these enterprises know that not all wisdom is found in the company's corridors, and that there is a need for some smarts and new thinking from outside, either through acquisitions, or more efficiently and smartly through strategic collaborations.

Examples are Qualcomm Corporation (Nasdaq: QCOM) and Deutsche Telekom AG (XETRA: DTE). The two giants have shown great interest in tiny Ness Ziona-based Magisto Ltd. and have embraced it. The Israeli company has developed an advanced app for editing video clips directly from smartphones. The app is installed in hundreds of thousands of Deutsche Telekom handsets and the company works closely with Qualcomm on future developments.

"Video is one of the key elements in 4G networks, which are far faster than their predecessors. We consume as much as Facebook or WhatsApp in almost the same way, but Deutsche Telekom sought the extra something to offer its users, and provide this with our video editing service," says Magisto co-founder and CEO Oren Boiman.

Boiman says that the collaboration with Qualcomm put it in the lead. "All of Magisto's technology and the set of products that we're developing are not part of Qualcomm's repertoire," he says. "They know how to make high-speed cameras, but we bring the product that is supposed to be the killer app, which can differentiate between what it sees through the camera, how to take automatic pictures, track the person in front of the camera, and so on.

"The advantage of big enterprises cooperating with start-ups is the added value and differentiation for their users when the need to answer the question whether our product causes their product to be better and different from other products. They know that they can't do everything in-house."

In Israel, too, the same feeling that the lack of innovation can be solved by linking up with start-ups is also understood. For example,Zap Group Ltd. linked up with several Israel start-ups to offer added value to its advertiser clients. Zap Group CEO Nir Lempert says, "Assimilating a start-up in a big company can give it many advantages, such as a system-wide perspective, relevant ties in Israel and other countries, and help solve relevant business problems from life and not just in theory."

Lempert says that the company's cooperation model with start-ups allows them use the large enterprises as a kind of beta site for various experiences and to see how things work in practice, and to change direction, if necessary. "We can install the product on our websites and apps and together try and promote the finished product in the world," he says.

Lempert says that two successful examples are MobeeArt Ltd., which began as a company for building mobile sites for small businesses, and now develops systems for managing a full digital presence for these companies, and Vcita Ltd., which began as a diary management solution for free professionals, and with the influence of Zap Group developed the product to manage leads for small businesses.

"The change and development was made at our demand and needs, and these products are now sold in a number of countries. These transactions are win-win for both sides," says Lampert.

Who will win smartup2?

"Globes", in collaboration with Bank Hapoalim (TASE: POLI) is launching the second annual SmartUp competition for Israeli start-ups. As part of the project, "Globes" correspondents will track three start-ups, which receive assistance from incubator experts and Bank Hapoalim advisers, based on the understanding that many companies with good groundbreaking ideas get stuck at the start because of difficulties that prevent them from achieving their potential.

The project is designed for Israeli companies that have raised at least NIS 250,000 in seed funding. Each company selected for the program will receive over three months advice from the high tech and business world on a range of topics relevant for early-stage start-ups, such as marketing, financing, human resources, and heading overseas. All they have to do is to register at smartup2 page (in Hebrew), and tell us why your start-up should participate. Participating companies will receive a start-up package from Bank Hapoalim, including a high-tech account at preferred terms and a NIS 20,000 grant.

The three winners will receive assistance from leading Israeli incubators and accelerators Explore.Dream.Discover8200 EISP, andNielsen Innovate.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 21, 2014

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2014

Globes - Everyone wins when a big company acquires a start-up

 

 

 

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Israel: start-up notions
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World's biggest fund discovers Tel Aviv
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Unlikely. But in other instances of investment in Israeli companies, the fund has certainly acted out of avowedly non-economic considerations. So, for example, in January this year the fund announced that it was putting Africa-Israel Investments Ltd.(TASE:AFIL), controlled by Lev Leviev, and its subsidiary Danya Cebus, back on its blacklist.This step was taken on the recommendation of the fund's ethics committee, which determined last November that the two companies were guilty of contributing to severe breaches of human rights through construction in East Jerusalem. As a result of this decision, the fund will sell off its holdings in Africa-Israel, which were worth NIS 7.3 million.Another loser is communications equipment producer Mellanox Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq:MLNX). During 2103, the Norwegian fund liquidated its holding in the company, which only a year previously amounted to some NIS 60 million. Its holding in Emblaze Ltd. (LSE:BLZ) was also liquidated last year. 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INNOVATION NATION
INNOVATION NATIONIsrael – a small country of 7 million, in a constant state of war and with no natural resources – has become a hi-tech powerhouse. Joe Charlaff reports on why its talent for enterprise is pivotal to its futureThe serious money to be made in the cellular equipment market is in systems-on-a chip (SoC), which routes and transmits the ever-growing data stream. Provigent, which develops innovative SoC solutions for broadband wireless networks, is currently one of the most talked-about Israeli start-ups. The outfit has been profitable for 18 months (posting $40m revenue last year, up 60% on 2009) and already boasts Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and China’s Huawei Technologies as clients. After months of debate about whether it should go for a Nasdaq IPO, Provigent directors announced in March that they had decided to sell to semiconductor giant Broadcom, based in Irvine, California, for $313m (€221m). The deal marked Broadcom’s ninth Israeli acquisition.A few weeks later Facebook snapped up its first Israeli company, Snaptu, which had launched a Facebook mobile app a few weeks earlier, for a reported $70m. And rumours were growing in techie circles that Conduit, a start-up based in Rehovot that creates browser platforms for toolbars, is negotiating a $1bn deal, possibly with Google or Microsoft, that would be the biggest sale of an Israeli internet firm so far.For the past 40 years, since ECI Telecom put down roots there, an enclave along Israel’s coastal plain – which became known as Silicon Wadi (the Arabic word for valley) – has become a hotspot of computing, surveillance, videogames, transport and other innovations. This hi-tech oasis, largely concentrated in Tel Aviv and smaller cities, is now home to companies such as Microsoft, Google, and many other household names, making it an important part of Israel’s economy. Intel’s latest microprocessor was developed at its new $110m R&D centre in Haifa, and Intel Israel has been responsible for developing the Pentium and Centrino chips which power most PCs around the world. According to official figures, Israel’s hi-tech industries, which include the software, medical, electronic and advanced mechanical sectors, made up about 15% of the country’s $200bn GDP in 2009, and 40% of its exports.It’s not hard to see how this situation came about. The modern-day State of Israel is a small country in the desert, constantly at war with its neighbours and with little in the way of natural resources. It has arguably had to live off its wits since its founding in 1948, becoming a pioneer in the field of desalination and a leading exporter of defence products. Toss in the influence of the Israeli Army Intelligence Corps’ technology units, world- class academic institutions such as the Technion in Haifa and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, and the shared Jewish experience of moving from place to place and starting afresh, and you can see where the nation’s resourcefulness stems from.But although Israel has the largest number of start-ups in the world in relation to its population – and is second only to the US in total – a growing number of successful home-grown companies are being gobbled up by larger foreign names.In selling out to US giants, Provigent – named by Ernst & Young as Israel’s most promising start-up for 2010 – and Snaptu are simply following in their peers’ footsteps. Only last April, Google paid $25m for start-up LabPixies, a leading developer of personalised web gadgets. Five months later it bought Quiksee for an estimated $10m. Founded in 2007, Quiksee produces location-based online tour technology, enabling users to create interactive 3D walkthroughs from simple video clips. The technology is regarded as the missing link in Google’s Street View service (used by Google Maps and Google Earth), which allows users to view images of streets around the world.Even in the depths of a global recession, 63 Israeli companies were acquired or merged in 2010 – a decline of 22% from the previous five-year average of 82 deals – according to the Israel Venture Capital Research Center (IVC). From 2009 to 2010, the size of the average deal fell 15%, from $37m to $32m. VC-backed deals (26) totaled $1.25bn, down from $1.54bn (28) in 2009.Three of last year’s M&A deals exceeded $200m and two were in the $100m-$200m range. The top 10 amounted to $1.4bn, 69% of the year’s total. The leading deals were 3M’s acquisition of Attenti, estimated at $230m; Mellanox’s $218m purchase of Voltaire, a Ra’anana-based provider of scale-out data-centre fabrics; and the $213m acquisition of network processer-maker Wintegra by PMC-Sierra, which already has a presence in Israel.Tel Aviv-based Attenti is a leading supplier of remote people- monitoring technologies, used to keep tabs on people awaiting trial or on probation, and by healthcare staff to assist in the care of elderly patients. The company’s CEO, Yoav Reisman, says: “3M’s culture of innovation fits well with our own, and its research-and-development capabilities and global reach will help accelerate the growth of our business.”Saul Singer, co-author of Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, points out that no matter how hi-tech their products, the founders of Israeli businesses are entrepreneurs. When they reach the stage of scaling a company up, they become bored, preferring to move on to their next idea. “It’s not a bad thing,” he says. “Look at the career of an entrepreneur who is productive and able to build a few start-ups, then compare that productivity to someone who remains in the same company”.In his view, the pace of change over the next 20 years is likely to be greater than that of the past 50. “We don’t know what will happen, and in that situation it’s preferable to be in a start-up economy where there is much more flexibility. Start-ups are much better equipped to deal with rapid change as opposed to big companies and that makes them more valuable.”One problem is that Israel is a young nation with little experience of developing world-beating companies of its own. According to Todd Dollinger – chief executive of The Trendlines Group, which invests in and develops innovation-based businesses in the life sciences, cleantech, IT, security and other markets – few managers have “grown up” in large enterprises, meaning they lack the skills to engineer a company’s expansion. “Israelis who develop real skills in the sales and business- development realms do so while outside Israel – in the US, the UK and elsewhere,” he notes. “When they come back to Israel after succeeding abroad, they don’t stay in business development, they seem to move on to new ventures and their skills are lost.”A more serious hindrance is the lack of capital. Mindful of the rewards of a hi-tech culture – namely jobs, profits, investment opportunities and knowledge – governments in the 80s and 90s hatched Israel’s incubator system and various seed-funding mechanisms. Yet even at their peak, Israeli venture-capital funds were unable to offer large investments and following the global capital-market downturn, they struggled to raise cash. As a result, Israeli companies turned to foreign sources, which in many cases entailed basing their headquarters and senior management in the funder’s city. This has been exacerbated recently by a change in the R&D law – a cap on the penalty paid by companies if their operations are moved abroad. Dollinger adds: “The government’s insufficient support for education is a potential disaster. It’s bad for the country in every conceivable way.”“In general, start-ups can go two ways,” says Michael Eisenberg, a partner in Benchmark Israel II, a Herzliya-based fund that specialising in seed, start-up, and early-stage investments in ICT companies. “Either they sell or go public, otherwise the investors can’t get their money back. It’s about making money for the investors.“In Israel there is an issue about companies selling early and not going all the way to becoming a large company. A few reasons can be attributable to that: there has been some short- termism from fund managers looking for quick exits. There is a sea change and the trend is now for there to be larger, venture- capital backed companies, which is exactly what is needed, and the entrepreneurs are dreaming bigger, which will help the venture environment and lead to greater opportunities.”The financial crisis of 2008, which severely impacted institutional investors, was the major impediment to raising new funds. In 2009, only $234m was raised by Israeli VC funds and $200m of that was raised by just one of them, Sequoia Israel. In spite of improved macroeconomic conditions, Israeli VC funds were unable to attract new capital in 2010. Capital-raising trends in Israel generally correlate with trends in the US, which experienced a 50% reduction from 2009 levels.Last year, the government announced an incentive programme for Israeli institutions to invest in domestic VC funds that is expected to increase investment by $220m in 2011-12. According to IVC CEO Koby Simana, the situation is critical. “Without improvement, it threatens the survival of numerous Israeli hi-tech companies that cannot raise needed capital.Moreover, VC funds will not be able to finance new companies or, in some cases, support their existing portfolio companies.”Looking ahead, IVC is cautiously optimistic about capital- raising, based on a positive outlook for the local economy and government steps to stimulate investment. “However, most of the impact of the government plan will only be felt in 2012,” says Simana, “since local VC funds must first raise substantial amounts – 60% of the total capital of each fund – from foreign investors. It’s a real challenge for Israeli VC funds.” Many hi-tech companies that have not managed to raise capital face a threat to their very survival, he warns.Yoram Tietz, managing partner of Ernst & Young Israel, points out that Israel’s main assets are human capital and innovation – and says that without more investment, the country risks losing its crucial innovative edge. Faced with such a crisis, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry and Trade have intervened, introducing a programme called the Competitive Advantage National Plan. Yuval Wollman, an adviser to the finance minister, explains: “Given that this is the growth engine of the Israeli economy, we thought that it would be wiser, strategically speaking, to capitalise on the advantages that we still have, examine the weaknesses and see what measures should be taken.”The ministries concluded that potentially innovative companies were being starved of capital from the Israeli market. At the moment it is common to exit start-ups early, with entrepreneurs aiming their initial public offerings at the US or agreeing mergers and acquisitions with large American companies. The government’s idea is to encourage companies to have their IPO in Israel so that they contribute to the economic ecosystem.The measures also include encouraging minorities, such as the Arab and ultra-orthodox Jewish communities, to join the hi-tech workforce through the higher education system. In addition, a fund is being established that will match government funding to private capital, facilitiating the transition of ideas from academic institutions to industry.To address the dramatic decline in the capital raised from local pension and provident funds (institutional investing domestically is only 0.2%, compared with 2% abroad), the government has allocated approximately $55m as a way of participating in the investment risk of Israeli institutional investors.And with seed-stage companies short of cash – raising only $39m in 2009, down 56% on the previous year – the government will allow investment in an R&D-focused company to be reported as an expense on day one, deductable against income from all sources over a three-year period.In addition, there will be tax incentives for large Israeli tech companies, such as the security specialist Check Point, to buy local start-ups, creating sub-industries within the Israeli market.Alan Feld, founder of Vintage Investment Partners, is convinced that the industry will get back on its feet, given time. His firm, which manages around $460m, has a database of more than 3,500 Israeli tech companies and tracks 90% of funds related to the sector on a quarterly basis. “We probably have the most active database of what’s happening out there,” he says.According to Feld, the decline in the amount invested in Israel between 2008 and 2009 is not dramatically different to what happened in the US in that period. While the drop in the amount invested was approximately 40%, the drop in the number of venture deals was only about 10%. Funds are investing in a far more capital-efficient way, he notes. In addition, venture funds have raised the bar by looking for better quality companies and being much more careful about how they invest. “We view that as being good for the industry as well. So, despite the drop in dollar terms, what’s more important is the number of deals done, which indicates a healthy level of activity.”A dramatic increase in angel investing, along with an increase in the number of venture funds returning to seed investing, also bodes well for the industry, and Feld believes that $600m-$900m will be raised by venture-capital funds this year – not far off the average raised after the crash of 2001. “We anticipate committing to at least three funds in 2011,” he says.As far as Singer is concerned, Israeli tech has huge opportunities for growth. “The ecosystem that has developed with American companies has barely begun with the same kind of companies in Europe, Latin America and Asia,” he says. “Siemens, Deutsche Telecom and Samsung are in Israel, but so many other companies outside the US are not. Why shouldn’t these other regions gain the same advantage as US companies have by injecting themselves with Israeli innovation?”There is considerable room for US firms already in Israel to increase their involvement, says Singer, and for those that are not in Israel yet. As well as exporting technological innovations, the country is making a name for itself in the field of innovative business models. In recent years two of its more conspicuous successes have been Better Place, which provides electric- vehicle networks and services internationally, and food company Strauss-Elite, whose coffee division operates in 12 countries (including Brazil, where it merged with a domestic operator to form the nation’s second-largest coffee manufacturer).It may be down now – but if history is anything to go by, Israel is far from out. 
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