The honor of announcing the winners of the Israeli Venture Association’s Startup Competition, a business pitch event co-sponsored by DEMO’s partner in Germany.

Sixty-nine Israeli startups submitted plans and 11 finalists were selected by a panel of judges to present during the conference in DEMO’s tried-and-true six-minute format. A few of the finalists should be familiar to DEMO devotees. DEMO alums Worklight and Delver each made it to the final round.

Here’s a quick rundown of the final pitches:

Techtium is a fables semiconductor company developing an integrated circuit that allows portable electronics and other consumer devices to run on hybrid rechargeable power as well as alkaline batteries. The company’s Energi to Go implementation is an external charger that adds three hours of talk time to a mobile phone.

Worklight (which was Serendipity Technologies when it launched at DEMO 07) allows businesses to easily integrate salespeople and channel partners into the the enterprise data flow using secure RSS or AJAX widgets.

Diagnostic Technologies is medical diagnostics company developing a biomarker that detects the risk of toxemia in pregnant women. As many as 207,000 women die from pre-eclampsia each year, women who can be saved by this company’s $50 blood test.

WeFi is creating a world-wide network of open WiFi hot spots. A small client application identifies available WiFi hot spots, while collecting data about open networks that is added to the company’s comprehensive database.

Redbend Software develops Fota – firmware over the air: The company’s technology enables mobile operators to update mobile firmware over the air, reflashing the device even while it is in use.

ID-U Biometrics uses unique eye-movement patterns to identify people. This very early stage company is developing an application that detects eye movement as users engage with online commerce applications.

Delver, which launched its technology at DEMO 08, crosses social network concepts with search to allow users to find content, media and people within their social networks.

Modu is a tiny, modular mobile phone, that can be slipped into a wide variety of modu jackets – stylishly designed phone enclosures – and modu mates – modu-enabled consumer electronics devices.

Petnovations is developing products to improve the lives of pets and pet owners. The company’s first product is CatGenie, a self-cleaning litter box. To come soon: a dog collar that automatically dispenses anti-flea solution.

Gizmoz is a consumer entertainment site that lets individuals create 3-D avatars from their 2-D photograph. The company is soon to release Be A Star which combines content from branded media, such as feature films, with the company’s avatars.

Nearly 1,500 people voted by SMS for their favorite businesses. Their choices, organizers told me, aligned with the top finishers as determined by the judges. The IVA Startup Competition prize went to an unfunded, incubator-based company: ID-U Biometrics. The company automatically receives a spot at DEMOgermany in October.

]]> http://guidewiregroup.com/2008/05/ivas-startup-competition-finalistsand-the-winner-is/feed/ 0 http://guidewiregroup.com/2008/05/sequoias-mike-moritz-advice-for-building-enduring-companies/ http://guidewiregroup.com/2008/05/sequoias-mike-moritz-advice-for-building-enduring-companies/#comments Wed, 21 May 2008 05:03:16 +0000 chrisshipley http://guidewiregroup.wordpress.com/?p=138

It was refreshing to hear Michael Moritz talk about building “incredibly enduring companies” at the IVA meeting on Monday afternoon.

Drawing on the Dow Jones 30 companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Moritz pointed out that only four of the 30 companies on the index today – DuPont, GE, General Motors, and Proctor & Gamble – were a part of the index in 1960.

With no sense of irony – given Sequoia’s track record of spectacular exit through M&A, Moritz bemoaned the “ incredible shortage of the great enduring companies.”

How do you build one? These are his guidelines:

• Pursue billion dollar opportunities
• The founder’s spirit should rule
• Expand with Care – Walmart and Ames Department stores started from similar humble beginnings and at about the same time. Ames quickly expanded across the U.S., putting up stores ahead of the company’s ability to manage the growth.
• Examine your company as an outsider - Great companies, and here Moritz pointed to Rupert Murdock, must keep reinventing themselves to stay fresh.
• Skeptics are also wrong – Fed Ex was dinged as a business school plan because it would never work.
• Never bow to setbacks
• Lack of money breeds ingenuity – Amazon in the early years was capital constrained. Without much money, the company developed ideas and technologies to help save money.
• Invest during downturns
• Spirit of the founders must be captured by next CEO -The successors to founders Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, Andy Grove and now Paul Otellini, “make the spirit of the founders live,” Moritz believes. “They instinctively know how to react.”     Apple Computer’s board fired Steve Jobs fired in 1985 “because they believed in ‘adult supervision,’” Moritz asserts. “Youthful chaos is preferable to adult supervision.”
• Market growth often hides tremendous weakness.
• Don’t build useless products
• When lightening strikes – strike!
• Design what you want to use

Introduced to the stage at the Israeli Venture Capital Association meeting as a “mad genius,” Tim Draper may have demonstrated today that he is just mad. Insane mad.

The founder of what is perhaps the most active venture network (Draper Fisher Jurvetson), Draper started his talk by quoting Marilyn Monroe — “ ‘What the hell’ is usually the best decision.” – a quote he said he’d just discovered on the plane to Israel.

If “What the hell” isn’t DFJ’s approach to diligence, exactly, it might well be Draper’s compass for identifying new market opportunities. During his meandering talk, Draper identified many of his firm’s investments as the solution to insurmountable global problems. “Politicians see global problems and they create policies to solve them,” he said. “Entrepreneurs finally solve the problem.”

Skype, Hotmail, and Reva, for example, will bring world peace. “Communications companies have gone after [solving the problem of] war better than we imagine,” he said. “Think of it: the idea of having a war with someone is a little bit ludicrous when we’re all so interconnected, and businesses span the globe.”

Skype as olive branch may be a bit tough to embrace, but Draper did proffer the provocative notion that the world is shifting from “land-based governance” to “competitive governance.”

As borders fall, he said, “Governments must compete for great businesses, capital, and entrepreneurs.”

Competitive governments will be identified by free markets, rule of law, private land ownership, good communications infrastructure, liberal bankruptcy laws, easy repatriation, and no cross-border taxes.

I would have liked Draper to dig into this topic more fully; it’s a compelling notion that governments might compete more as entrepreneurs than as empires. Instead he jumped into a treatise on logarithmic market growth and acceleration curves. By Draper’s estimates, the last 100 years have brought penicillin, water purification, global transportation the Pill, and the moon walk. The next 20 years? Teleportation. He may have been pushing the point, but it’s hard to know for sure, given his discussion on the “terrestrializaton of Mars.” (Among his biz ideas: bat guano to provide nitrogen and a nuclear bomb to warm the red planet.)

Draper provided many seeds for hallway fodder, but nothing will capture the conversation so much as his passionate support for “energetic heroes.”

Draper the “Mad Genius” closed his talk by lip synching his rock homage to the entrepreneur:

He’s is the Riskmaster

Lives fast, drives faster

Skates on the edge of disaster

He is the Riskmaster