Roi Carthy is the Managing Partner at Initial Capital.
Previously, Roi has worked at companies such as Soluto, Zend Technologies and 888.com.
Roi has been covering the Israeli startup scene for TechCrunch since 2007.
Born in Israel, Roi has spent many years abroad living in both the US (Boston, Olivet, DC) and in Europe (Budapest, Zurich).
Today, Roi works out of Tel-Aviv and lives in near-by Givatayim.
Generally speaking, video producers have a much easier time producing content than monetizing it. This is because the monetization side of the equation has two x-factors that are hard to get right. The first being the ‘with what to monetize’ factor–that is, the mechanism that facilitates the billing aspect of the user-flow. The second, being the ‘how to monetize’ factor– this being the model(s) under which the content is charged for.
Enter Cent2Cent, an Israeli company with a video monetization solution that is versatile enough for both high-end tv broadcasters (NBC is a client), and low-end bloggers. And with over 200,000 paid transactions to date, they might be on to something, too. → Read More
There’s something about Instagram that you can’t quite put your fingers on. It’s just a fantastic, sticky, launch-a-few-times-a-day kind of app. There’s really nothing you can point to that makes it any better than the bazillion other photo sharing apps. In fact, it even under-whelms features-wise.
But, but … there’s just something about it. Something in-between the pixels that makes it resonate with users.
And that’s exactly what Mobli has, too. → Read More
It was a couple of months ago that BiteHunter.com beta-launched itself as an aggregator for dining deals. Easily described as a “Kayak for restaurants,” BiteHunter is designed to help users locate dining deals, a problem which has been been addressed quite well for verticals such as travel, but quite poorly for dining, at least on an aggregated basis.
Today BiteHunter is announcing a new iPhone app (iTunes Link) that expands its dining deal search across the US, from the initial markets of New York, San Francisco and Chicago. → Read More
It was only a few shorts weeks ago that we reviewed Onavo, the must-have iOS app that significantly shrinks data consumption. We were so impressed with the app’s ability to save users money on their data usage plans, that we went so far as to say that every iOS user should download it.
Today the company is announcing a $3M Round A led by Sequoia Capital, with participation of Magma Venture Partners. → Read More
When we think of smartphones and geo-location the two main use cases that come to mind are mapping and check-ins. These are fine and dandy, but what if you could use smartphones to keep tabs of where your child is? Footprints lets you do just that.
The new app (iTunes link), available for both iPhone & iPad, tracks the location of the device and shares it with family and friends. These can then know in real-time a person’s exact location. The app can have several use cases, but the parent/child one seems the most compelling.
What about privacy? With more and more parents shelling out the cash to equip their tweens and teenagers with iPhones, I don’t see why a basic requirement couldn’t be running Footprints in the background. As my father put it when I grew up, our household was run as a totalitarian democracy. Ergo, he buys my iPhone, he gets to run whatever app he likes in the background. Parenting rocks. → Read More
There’s really no better way to describe Onavo other than a must-have app for any and every iPhone user on a data plan. I’ll go a step further: I think it’s the very first app one should install.
Why? Because Onavo shrinks your data usage (and thus, your bills). All you need to do is install the free app and you’re done. The app will then run in the background and do its thing and all you have to do is continue consuming data as you do today… Surfing the web, emailing, tweeting, using maps, etc. → Read More
If you’re a professional affiliate, buying traffic, getting paid, then turning around and buying traffic right back up again is your modus operandi. The ability to turn around and re-buy traffic as quickly as possible is the part where revenue generation can take a big hit. The challenge for affiliates is getting liquid access to their earnings. Easier said than done though.
It’s this particular problem that Payoneer, whose Master Card debit card solution we’ve covered in the past, has made into its house specialty and why it’s become a popular choice for international affiliates. → Read More
For the small percentage of our readers who do not enjoy a random penis sighting, comes Pick or Skip, a cleaned-up version of Chatroulette.
The idea behind the new site was to build a safe and more structured experience on top of the random connection/conversation aspect that made Chatroulette such a craze last year. → Read More
It was two years ago when Ophir Kutiel, who goes by the stage name ‘Kutiman’, became an Internet sensation with a phenomenal video music project called Thru-You.
The project comprised of seven tracks composed entirely of YouTube video footage that was sliced and diced over a 3-month period in Kutiman’s home studio.
He’s now back with a brand new track with a jazzier groove called ‘My Favorite Color’… Enjoy! → Read More
On the heels of its recently announced $1.75M round led by Mangrove, SohoOS is today announcing the roll-out of SohoOS.me, a new product that allows SMBs to create simple business profile pages for themselves—very similar to how About.me allows individuals to do so.
Creating a profile is painless. Businesses can include their logo and contact information, as well as links to their Twitter profiles, Facebook Pages and collateral, for example, PDF’s and videos. Businesses can also customize the look & feel (see screenshots after the jump).
On the face of it, it’s a simple product, however, it could have significant impact on the company and its customers. Here’s how.. → Read More
With the number of iOS apps now well over 300,000, app discovery is becoming an increasing frustration for users. It’s also become a major challenge for developers as the increasing number of apps is making it more and more difficult for them to attain exposure for their apps.
Now, straight from the “What Took So Long for Something Like This to be Released” department, mobile developer community site AppBoy has released an iOS app check-in SDK. → Read More
For the past two years I’ve been holding onto the belief that Israeli entrepreneurs should devote particular focus on the opportunities available to products and services that cater to Small & Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs). Slowly but surely, more and more companies have indeed started targeting this space, the most notable being Kampyle, SohoOS, and Clarizen.
Today, Chicago-based but Israeli-founded Future Simple is announcing a $1.1M round led OCA Ventures with participation by the I2A Fund, as well as angel investors. → Read More
If you live and breathe the web—as most TechCrunch readers do—you may have noticed that the minute a child enters your life, you tend to start viewing the web differently. It’s almost comical how many Internet entrepreneurs I’ve come by, who as soon as they become parents, grow a new-found desire to create web products for children.
The main issue I’ve come across is that sites and web products for children are built for age groups that are too far apart. From my experience, a product or site can’t target 1-3 year olds, and 3-5 year olds, at the same time. Again, from experience, that just doesn’t work. That’s why I find what BabyFirst (a cable and satellite channel) is doing with BabyU to be interesting. → Read More
When I met Kampyle CEO Ariel Finkelstein last week, the first words that came out of his mouth were: “Can you tell me who the hell are these people that sit over there in the Valley and invent all these stupid terms like ‘Pivot’ … ?!” He then went on to tell me about the company’s most important product insight since launch and how it is changing their business.
When Kampyle launched three years ago, the company had a clear product vision: A platform for site owners that gives them an easy way to aggregate and then follow-up on user feedback. The idea was to combine ‘feedback analytics’ with traditional Web analytics. The theory went that by helping companies close their feedback loop, they could better understand and serve their users and customers. The theory became practice, and Kampyle has been growing in every KPI since. → Read More
Last night, one of the high-tech industry’s pioneers, Ken Olsen, who co-founded Digital Equipment Corporation, passed away. Most of you who only discovered computers in the 1990′s have never heard of him, but he is in fact a legend, and he impacted my life in a tremendous way.
Two years ago, I added this comment on a post by Mike about SGN founder Shervin Pishevar’s email about entrepreneurship. I’m reprinting it below, with some slight edits: (after the jump) → Read More
I have a thing for money-making, simple solutions to obvious problems, and GeoSurf sure is one of those.
This may come as a surprise to some, but even though it’s 2011, if you’re a media buyer, you pretty much work in the dark. I mean this in the sense of media buyers’ ability to actually see their ads on the properties they bought digital real estate on, as well as the ability to see which advertisers are bidding against them.
To tackle this issue—a paradox caused by IP and geo-targeting employed by media professionals themselves—proxies have to be used. These, however, tend to be tricky to use and are often plain unreliable. GeoSurf’s solution fills this void. → Read More
Guy Grimland of Israeli business newspaper TheMarker published two articles (both are in Hebrew) this morning about a rumored relationship between Facebook and Face.com.
The first article claims that Face.com rebuffed an acquisition offer worth ‘tens of millions of dollars’. The second article claims that Face.com is powering Facebook Photos’ facial recognition functionality, which was clearly upgraded in the past few months, albeit, with no indication there was a third party involved. → Read More
It looks like Mangrove Capital Partners believes in the business opportunity held in helping small businesses, do more, well, business. The Luxembourg-based venture capital firm has invested $1.75M in SohoOS to further propel the company’s small business management suite. Michael Jackson, previously COO of Skype, will take a board seat.
The concept behind SohoOS’s offering is to put business utilities that are common for medium to large businesses with resources, in the hands of both online and offline small and micro businesses. Think designers, programmers, plumbers, yoga instructors, small PR firms, consultants, the list can go on and on. → Read More
Last month we wrote about The Gifts Project’s closing of a $1 million funding round. Today the company is finally able to lift the veil on a major accomplishment … turn out it is its gifting platform powering eBay Group Gifts.
The upstart also managed to have Index Ventures join the round, with Saul Klein actively advising. The actual amount is undisclosed. → Read More
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