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.
What makes Sequoia invest an undisclosed multi-million dollar round in a 22 year-old’s startup? The future. No, not in the sense that young entrepreneurs hold the future of our industry. Literally the future. Or to be more exact, selling advertisers future trends. Of course to pull that off one needs some precognition.
One route was to comb the earth for mutated humans and exploit their gift, but… → Read More
I am at the fourth annual TWS Conference where ten Israeli companies will present their products on stage today. Yet again, Yaron Orenstein, the conference organizer, has lined-up an impressive list of judges to weed through the applications and presentations. These include: Ron Conway & David Lee from SV Angel, Emily Chang, Co-Founder, Ideacodes, Christine Herron, Principal, First Round… → Read More
Grocery shopping comparison site mySupermarket.co.uk has raised a third round of funding, bringing total financing to date to $21.4M. The $7.4 Series C round came courtesy of existing investors Greylock Israel and Pitango Venture Capital.
The company has also brought on-board Allon Bloch, previously President and Co-CEO at Wix, where he will remain on the company’s board. → Read More
What happens when that $145 tandem skydiving coupon you bought doesn’t seem like a good idea anymore? Or what if you can’t use it because you’re just bogged down with work? Fear not! Now you don’t have to let it go to waste… New site Lifesta.com has launched a daily deal exchange where Groupon-like coupons can be bought and sold.
Self-describing itself as ‘StubHub for daily deals,’ Lifesta… → Read More
Tawkon, one of my favorite Israeli startups of the past year, was in San Francisco at the Disrupt Alley last week to debut the release of its cellular radiation measurement app for Android. This follows the company’s $9.99 Blackberry version, and its unsuccessful bid to push the same app through the iPhone App Store.
If you haven’t followed our coverage of the company, Tawkon developed a… → Read More
It’s easy to be cynical about ad networks. I remember a media exec I once had drinks with who equated the online ad business to prostitution: “They are the only two major industries working on prepayment basis because both promise much bigger fantasy than they ever deliver.”
Like I said, easy to be cynical.
Recently though, an ad network came my way that has interesting twist. Its name is… → Read More
Did you know eight out of ten women wear the wrong bra size? Of course you didn’t. Now, thanks to Israeli iPhone app dev house, Digital Relations, you can celebrate the Jewish New Year with the correct support your loved ones’ bosoms need. Say hello to FITS, the iPhone app that helps you measure breast size. Happy new year indeed!
The story behind the app is that one of the developers at Digital… → Read More
Straight from the Benjamin Franklin department of “waste not, want not” comes upstart AfterDownload with a simple idea about how to enhance those typical download and ecommerce ‘Thank You’ pages … use them to promote more wares.
Good ol’ Ben would surely ask: ‘Why let them go to waste when you can squeeze them for some additional revenue? Am I right, or am I right?’ → Read More
Sometimes, hurling a timeless classic into modern times can be a formula for success. Case-in-point P-Kama, an Israeli company with $1.8M in funding that purchased the licensing rights to market Rummikub online.
What’s Rummikub, you ask? True, it’s not as synonymous with boardgames as Monopoly is, but the tile-based game sells 3 million units a year globally. Add an avid following since the… → Read More
Remember how back during the Antennagate press conference, Steve Jobs explained that all smartphones have an Achilles Heel known as their antenna? Oh sure, we all rolled our eyes and then oohed and aahed when we learned we’d get bumpers. Well guess what… Jobs was right. Again. And now, courtesy of Tawkon we’ve got the proof.
A video produced by Tawkon clearly demonstrates that when the iPhone… → Read More
Into Zynga Poker? Want a bit o’ artificial intelligence to tweak-up your game play? Then meet your new buddy, PokerBuddy Pro that is.
The PokerBuddy team spent nearly two years perfecting algorithmic and statistical analysis for no-limit Texas-Hold’em. The result is a Windows-only software client that provides players advice, in real-time, throughout their game play. In case you’re wondering… → Read More
If you’re reading into the OfferPal layoffs story that the ‘offer wall’ model itself is what is stuttering, think again.
With $1M in funding under its belt, Israeli MATOMY is announcing today the ‘Engage Bar‘, an offer wall based JavaScript widget that I expect many publishers will clamor for.
If you’re an offer wall hater though, start sharpening your pitchfork. → Read More
A couple of months ago we first covered Soho OS, describing its offering as a soup-to-nuts “hybrid of Quicken + Zoho + SalesForce”. Today, the company is announcing that it has secured $1 million in funding from The Time. This is on top of the $250K the company had raised in its pre-seed round.
In our initial post, the company offered 1000 beta invites to TechCrunch readers, and in response, 7000… → Read More
It’s safe to assume that there’s no Web user out there that hasn’t experienced auto-complete. Whether on Google site search and toolbars, Facebook search, or on ecommerce sites like Amazon, auto-complete has become a de-facto usability feature. Its ubiquity means that there’s a very shallow learning curve for users to get accustomed to it when used outside of the browser setting, and that’s… → Read More
SimilarWeb, which will henceforth be known as SimilarGroup, has raised more funding, bringing the total of capital injected into the company to $1.1 million.
The fresh funding is considered to be the company’s Series A round and will be used to expand its line of products, based on the core technology we previously wrote about. → Read More
A hundred startups lined-up the Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt. Here’s just a small taste of some of the interesting companies that over 1,700 attendees were able to see:
6rounds, which we wrote about in a previous post can be best described as a snazzy one-on-one video chat product.
At TechCrunch Disrupt, 6rounds announced a new API for developers of game, entertainment and… → Read More
Tawkon, whose cellular radiation measurement iPhone app was initially rejected by Apple, is today announcing availability of an app with identical functionality for BlackBerry.
TechCrunch’s initial review of Tawkon created a wave of interest for the iPhone app, along with additional frustration at Apple’s rejection of it. It seems this did not go unnoticed by the good folks at 1 Infinite Loop… → Read More
What single adjective best describes Navigaya? Gorgeous? Stylish? Addictive? Having spent a few weeks playing with it, I’d have to concede, all of the above.
There really is just no way around it, Navigaya is one of the most mesmerizing content products I’ve seen in a while. Just watch the video demo above for a taste, or better yet, be one of the 1000 TechCrunch Readers to gain exclusive access… → Read More
Do SQL injections turn you on? How about double SQL injections? If the answer is ‘yes’ then 1): Good luck with your dating life, and 2) Boy are you in some luck! A new of breed of security product called Seeker produces some vivid hacker pr0n in the form of a video (see above) of how it broke and exploited every nook and cranny of your unsecure code. Yes, I’m going to say it, Seeker might be the… → Read More
If you are a regular TechCrunch reader, describing a product as a SaaS hybrid of Quicken + Zoho + SalesForce, would paint a fairly clear picture in your mind of the product. And this is pretty much what Soho OS is. Thing is, the odds that their target user bases, small and micro-business, are regular TechCrunch readers, are slim.
But let’s push the ‘how to succinctly describe the offering’ issue… → Read More
Stealth Israeli startup UnitedParents is stepping closer to the bright lights today by announcing a $900K seed round, and the beta availability of its online child safety product, aimed at alerting parents whenever their children become involved in a potentially dangerous relationship with online predators and / or cyber-bullying.
UnitedParents’ consumer product is a downloadable piece of… → Read More
Here we go again . . . Apple App Store Fail No. 5102928. A few weeks ago stealth Israeli startup Tawkon gave me a sneak-peak developer build of what I believe is the most important app on my iPhone. What does it do? It analyzes the cellular radiation your iPhone emits at any given moment, at any given location, whether in standby mode, or within a call.
Sounds like science fiction, right? Well… → Read More
Kamyple , maker of a user feedback analytics platform, is finally confirming a round of financing it closed in 2009. I had a chance to sit down with Kampyle CEO Ariel Finkelstein who officially confirmed that Carmel Ventures led the company’s $1M Series A round, closed back in January 2009. He also shared with me that the company has begun beta testing a new feedback product for downloadable… → Read More
This is the story of Time To Know, an enigmatic Israeli startup that has somehow managed to remain under the radar of Israel’s tightly knit startup scene. What makes this feat wondrous is not only because of the daunting challenge the company has chosen to meet, but that it has quietly ramped to 350 employees and no less than $60M in funding—all without attracting attention.
Time To Know is the… → Read More
Although there is no shortage of businesses large and small making great use of Twitter, many are still trying to make heads-and-tales of how to harness its power to communicate with existing and prospective clients. CoTweet and HootSuite are trying to meet this opportunity with feature-rich CRM applications, but for businesses who are Twitter newbies, these apps can be daunting.
Followbase saw… → Read More
If you think that the online job board vertical occupied by the likes of Monster.com can’t be shaken up, think again. Case in point: Realmatch, an Israeli founded startup that is climbing up the job classified food chain. In only three years, it has managed to form a 1200-strong partner network that is reaching 37 million job seekers per month with 60,000 positions available at any given… → Read More
The irony is that many get pretty far down the development path before realizing that adding billing infrastructure to their offering may not be as simple as integrating with PayPal’s API or some other payment processor.
Choosing the right processor, and many times, processors, from a confusing multi-layered vendor ecosystem can be tricky. Poor decision-making when it comes to issues such as… → Read More
The importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is nothing new. Yet, it seems that more and more advertisers are realizing that the significance of SEO to their business has risen as they have essentially hit a ceiling with their SEM activities. As the SEMPO State of Search Engine Marketing 2008 report puts it: “Despite increasing ad spend and year-to-year growth in the value of search engine… → Read More
Here’s a quirky story: Israeli iPhone app dev house ApParty released an app back in December 2008 called iFog (iTunes link).
The premise being that the user selects a photo which then has a steam effect superimposed upon it. The steam can be wiped away by running a finger over the screen surface. Blowing on the iPhone microphone fogs the screen back up.
Cute. Simple. And lucrative—it was… → Read More
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