No venture capitalist’s week is complete without seeing a company in the semantic space holding steadfast to the assertion that its pre-money Round A valuation is a steal at $50 million. The situation wouldn’t be totally absurd if it were not for the facts that these technologies are mostly half-baked, or far from becoming a deployable product. And they are most definitely leaps and bounds from being able to generate revenue—let alone actually generating revenue at the time of their pre-money $50 million valuation pitch.
But in the middle of this circus is a modest and press-shy company called Peer39. The company, which has purposefully been under the publicity radar since its inception in 2006, is a promising example that semantic technologies have true monetization potential. Peer39 is demonstrating this thoroughly through semantic advertising, the next evolutionary step beyond behavioral advertising, which was preceded of course by contextual advertising.
Peer39 is spearheading this space with its semantic advertising network, which is on track to hit one billion impressions by the end of the year. Their network only handles display ads at the moment, charging advertisers based on a CPM (cost per thousand) or CPC (cost per click) basis.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Amiad Solomon, the company’s CEO, claims that through the networks’ 30 top-level categories and thousands of sub-categories, Peer39 is providing advertisers, on average, clickthrough-rate improvements of four times what they were getting before. Publishers hail from all verticals, including technology, automotive, finance, and health.
Powering Peer39’s ad network is SemanticMatch, an algorithmic engine able to perform precise matching of commercial offers with user-generated content content (blogs, forums, etc.). SemanticMatch employs natural language processing and machine learning to determine meanings, topics, categories and even sentiment. All this, mind you, is done in real-time and Peer39 does not employ cookies in any way, nipping many privacy-related concerns in the bud.
Peer39’s technology has been two and a half years in the making. The 44-strong Israeli R&D team includes the former VP of R&D at Nielsen Online, as well as scientists from the Technion Institute (Israel’s MIT) and the Israeli army’s prestigious intelligence units. Together they were able to tackle the challenges of breaking down text into small enough pieces to categorize text with algorithms that are 1) generic enough to be applicable across a wide variety of content categories, and 2) able to adapt themselves to new categories on-the-fly.
Unlike contextual analysis that seeks out key words, Peer39’s semantic analysis engine—SemanticMatch—looks at the entire page to derive its meaning and its relevant categories. Below are a couple of examples provided by the company (I’ve added the italics for emphasis):
Example 1: “Amazon is a great place to visit.”
Peer39’s Category Analysis: Travel, Brazil, South America.
Example 2: “Amazon is a great site to visit.”
Peer39’s Category Analysis: Ecommerce, Internet, Business and Finance.
Category granularity can go down to seven levels. For example:
Technology > Consumer Electronics > Digital Camera > Canon > Powershot > SD870 IS > SD870 IS Silver
Auto > Compact > GM > Chevrolet > Chevrolet Cobalt > Chevrolet Cobalt LS Sedan
Peer39 is also able to determine positive/negative sentiment. This is important because it allows Peer39 to offer its advertisers various brand protection thresholds, such as offensive content, negative content, mention of competitors, etc. Canon, for example, might not want to advertise on a page with a negative review of one of its cameras.
On the business execution level Peer39 is attempting to pull off a Tacoda or a Quigo exit. Both companies were able to develop sizeable ad networks by delivering quality ROI results and working closely with agencies.
The company has raised $11.7 million from Canaan Venture Partners, Dawntreader Ventures, and JP Morgan. (The company won’t disclose its pre-money valuation, but given how much it has raised, a valuation north of $50 million is a safe bet). Its board of advisers includes Eytan Elbaz, a co-founder of Applied Semantics (which was bought by Google and became the basis for AdSense) and the former president of Tacoda Daniel Jaye. Also, the company just announced that Matthew Goldestein, former SVP of Revenue Operations at Tacoda joined as COO.
This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.
Meet Jogli, a music search engine that claims to offer immediate listening access to 500M songs and 12M albums.
It would be valid to argue that there can’t possibly be more room for yet another music destination. However, having spent the past few days using Jogli, I have to conclude that it strikes me as having the potential to shake-up competitors including Songza, MeeMix, Deezer, SeeqPod, and a number of others.
Jogli crawls the web for music and music clips and then indexes them for search (the majority of songs come from YouTube, but the site will crawl other services). Jogli then lets users listen to the music it has discovered through a player integrated directly within the Web interface. Sure, “search, click & play” is nothing new, but applying it on 500M songs is a significant feat.
From my personal testing Jogli provides effective music search for artists, songs, whole albums, and clips. I easily found every non-mainstream artist or song I searched for—examples: The song ‘Thin Line’ by Jurassic 5 featuring Nelly Furtado, and Nick Cave’s album ‘Let Love In’.
The trend of piggy-backing YouTube via its API is changing the rules of the game for music services. Remember, Internet radio services like MeeMix and Last.fm have to pay royalties, while Jogli pays none. They don’t even pay streaming or storage costs—YouTube (meaning Google) foots the bills. Of course, this trend may not last long if YouTube starts cracking down on these music videos.
Jogli is in Beta so it’s far from perfect. Community and discovery features, for example, are practically non-existent. However, an inventory of 500M songs is surely enough to get Jogli foot in the door.
This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.
The validation panel is picking-up steam… Gil Keret, the founder of Brooks-Keret, just joined the team of experts. Gil brings with him immense know how and will surely be a fine addition to the team. Welcome aboard Gil!
Had to share this one… Thank god I have kids to wake me up early on a Saturday morning(!)
It looks like there was a major leak last week of 9 tracks from the long-awaited (as in over a decade) G n’ R album Chinese Democracy. Off I went to a friendly torrent site and within minutes had it ready to go… AND:
Mother of god! It’s amaaazing!
I don’t care what it costs, I’m buying it when it comes out!
For the benefit of TechCrunch’s American readers, let’s first set a basic ground rule for this post: Football = Soccer. You know, the game played 90 minutes that can end in a 0-0 draw but can still be regarded as an excellent match. With that out of the way…
Second to the iPhone 2.0 announcement (and maybe the Yahoo-Google deal), what was the most important event of last week? The start of Euro 2008 tournament of course! So if you’re going to soft-launch a football oriented social network like Footbo.com, this is the month to do it (the tournament runs throughout June).
Footbo is the type of niche-oriented social network we have grown accustomed to. From a feature perspective there’s no attempt to reinvent the social network experience—in fact, the current interface doesn’t offer any Ajax/DHTML/CSS pizzazz. The idea of “less is more” rings true in Footbo’s case, which focuses on offering an information and interaction hub for everyday football fans, as opposed to cutting-edge functionality and interface design. Even so, the design is at times rough around the edges with tables running amuck and such.
Footbo provides football-related content in the form of live feeds, line-ups, game schedules and tables from about 70 leagues around the world. A Predictions section allows users to predict the final scores of games. These can be submitted/edited until the kick-off of each match. Users can also grade player performance, thereby electing the “Top 11? of each league or round. Integrated wiki functionality lets users add and edit content about teams and players. There are already tens of thousands of existing profiles with basic info on teams and players. Game pages feature fan boards and live discussions. The Euro 2008 section leverages these features on a single page for a “one-stop” experience.
Footbo is predominantly a European play targeting individual fans, fan clubs, and amateur teams. For the sake of context, Footbo estimates there are 170,000 amateur football teams in Germany alone. Properly executed, there could be plenty of business servicing this niche alone. However, Footbo’s scope is wider as is evident by the fact that the site is available in English, German and Spanish.
Footbo will launch its official Beta in August with a host of new features. It’s up against some serious competition from ESPN’s Soccernet and less serious competition from Joga.com (a soccer social network that was created as a joint venture between Nike and Google’s Orkut which is now seemingly defunct—all that is on the site is a splash page promising that something called JogaTV will be “coming soon”).
North American readers: You can now revert back to the term “Football” referring to a game with far too many rules played with an egg-shaped ball.
This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.
It’s a Wii without the $250 console. It’s virtual Pong and so much more. Any object is now an input device, even your fingers. Bang, bang! But there’s no better way to introduce you to CamSpace than by letting you watch the demo video below:
CamTrax’s core technology is a pure software solution that allows nearly any ordinary PC webcam (95% are supported) to track up to four objects—even as small as 5mm—in real-time and with very high accuracy and reliability. (It works only on Windows). Locking and tracking (X, Y, and Z axes and angle) are all automatic. Yaron Tanne, founder & CEO of CamTrax Technologies, the company behind CamSpace, has been developing the technology practically single-handedly for three years in his apartment in Tel-Aviv.Tanne claims that most of the algorithms used are in the public domain but have been enhanced. There are also completely new algorithms developed from scratch.
CamSpace requires an agent application to run locally in order to emulate a mouse, a keyboard, joystick, or other input device. Users can then program the emulation based on the game they want to control and the object(s) they want to control the game with. For example, one user could program a steering wheel for a racing game, where moving the wheel on the Z axis shifts the gears up and down. A different user can use two objects for the same game, programming the second object, say a coke bottle, to shift the gears.
Once a good portion of most popular games are emulated, the company will provide a portal where these emulations will be rated based on popularity and then offered for download.
Assuming there are no patent infringement issues, CamTrax could be a hit in several sectors, the most obvious one being gaming. While certainly the big game studios could take advantage of the technology, I can see a wider and quicker adoption among casual gaming entities such as Zynga and SGN. Cam-Trax could also find success in providing solutions for handicap individuals that cannot use standard input devices. Another application would be to emulate multi-touch control over media-centers. Some more ideas:
Fitness programs using body movements
Virtual instruments (air drums, xylophone, etc.)
Drawing “in the air” applications for kid
These are just the tip of the iceberg… Remember, all you need is a standard webcam—that’s a VERY low barrier to entry these days.I’ve had the chance to play with CamTrax’s technology on several occasions and it works like a charm. This is true even in low and changing light conditions—based on first-hand experience. It really is hard not to be impressed with the technology, especially seeing as it still has Alpha status.
The four-man team recently raised $200,000 in seed financing from angel investors and plans on raising a Series A round in the coming months.
In the meantime, the company is working on a developer platform which will allow the integration of CamTrax technology into casual games and mini-applications. Expect a follow-up post when this happens in the coming weeks.
This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.
I assist startups launch new products & services. This includes Beta & General Availability Launch Programs, Blogoshpere Strategy, and Community Marketing. I also cover the Israeli startup scene for TechCrunch.com.
No venture capitalist’s week is complete without seeing a company in the semantic space holding steadfast to the assertion that its pre-money Round A valuation is a steal at $50 million. The situation wouldn’t be totally absurd if it were not for the facts that these technologies are mostly half-baked, or far from becoming a deployable product. And they are most definitely leaps and bounds from being able to generate revenue—let alone actually generating revenue at the time of their pre-money $50 million valuation pitch.
Meet 
From my personal testing Jogli provides effective music search for artists, songs, whole albums, and clips. I easily found every non-mainstream artist or song I searched for—examples: The song 
I got an email from Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop.com that my blog is now featured in its Israeli Section (
Had to share this one… Thank god I have kids to wake me up early on a Saturday morning(!)
For the benefit of TechCrunch’s American readers, let’s first set a basic ground rule for this post: Football = Soccer. You know, the game played 90 minutes that can end in a 0-0 draw but can still be regarded as an excellent match. With that out of the way…
It’s a Wii without the $250 console. It’s virtual Pong and so much more. Any object is now an input device, even your fingers. Bang, bang! But there’s no better way to introduce you to 
CamSpace requires an agent application to run locally in order to emulate a mouse, a keyboard, joystick, or other input device. Users can then program the emulation based on the game they want to control and the object(s) they want to control the game with. For example, one user could program a steering wheel for a racing game, where moving the wheel on the Z axis shifts the gears up and down. A different user can use two objects for the same game, programming the second object, say a coke bottle, to shift the gears.
