An amazing TED video featuring Psychologist Barry Schwartz who discusses The Paradox of Choice in Western Societies. According to Schwartz: “Choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.” Definitely a video that changed my outlook on life and the decision process.         Technorati tags: paradox, choice, barry schwartz, ted, decision process

Company Name: PredictAdFounded in: 2007Location: Raanana     PredictAd is an Israeli startup backed by Yossi Vardi that was launched in 2007. Based in Raanana, the company has created an autocomplete search box plug-in that refines the search query and helps site owners generate new search revenue by providing inline text and banner ads. PredictAd is not a search engine, but rather improves the search query. The Company is led by Noam Fine, CEO, Yossi [...]

Company: OutbrainFounded: 2006Located: Netanya   I had the opportunity to meet with John LoGioco, VP of Business Development at Outbrain, the free service that offers bloggers and publishers a ratings widget that can be used by visitors of their sites to rate their content. The service, which serves as a recommendation engine for readers allowing them to discover new content they might like based on the ratings they give, recently announced an analytics dashboard for [...]

Company Name: CopendaFounded in: 2007Location: Tel Aviv   I had the chance to interview Gadi Reichman and Tal Cohen from Copenda, the Israeli startup that offers an online social people search that allows users to find new friends and dating partners across social networks and dating sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Match, Plentyoffish, and more. Gadi and Tal founded the company with David Kariv nearly a year ago when the trio noticed a trend that [...]

Company Name: Lightspeed Venture PartnersFounded in Israel: 2006Israel Location: Herzliya Pituach   I had the chance to interview Yoni Cheifetz, a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, a global VC fund investing in Israeli startups. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Lightspeed has offices in China, India, Israel and the US. Recently Lightspeed raised an $800 million fund and introduced a new partner, David Gussarsky, to their team as a Managing director. Two years ago Lightspeed partnered with [...]

Company Name: Sun Microsystems IsraelFounded in: 1994Location: Hertzeliya Pituach, Israel   I had the chance to interview Edward Resnick, Sun Microsystems‘ Regional Segment Manager in Israel. Resnick was the second employee hired for the Israel office, which has now grown to over 180 employees. In my video interview below, Resnick and I discuss Sun’s history in the country as well as the company’s shift in strategy from Web 1.0 to 2.0.       This [...]

  Company name: SightixFounded in: 2005R & D Location: Netanya     Sightix, a B2B search service targeting social networks, has headquartered its research and development in Netanya. The company offers a unique search engine solution for social networking sites. While Google’s algorithm is based on page rank, Sightix gives users more personalized search results based on their own social graph. Sightix’s VP of Business Development, Ari Gottesmann, explained that Israel was a natural choice [...]

  Company Name: QoofFounded in: 2006Location: Bet Shemesh     Qoof is a video commerce startup that offers a widget eTailors and publishers can use to publish product videos on their sites. Founded by Richard Kligman in 2006, Qoof’s operations and team of over 10 employees are based out of Bet Shemesh. Kligman first came up with the idea after watching the home shopping channel. With TV, you never know who’s watching and what to [...]

The TWS2008 Internet conference took place yesterday in Tel Aviv.  The conference is organized by the Israeli popular blog the.co.ils, each year, and aims to find and present the 10 most promising Internet startups in Israel. Blonde 2.0 was happy to be a media sponsor of the event. 10 startups were chosen out of 100 that applied. The startups were selected by an impressive list of judges. Amongst them: Guy Kawasaki, Pete Cashmore, Om Malik, Deborah Schultz, [...]