Israeli Startup Oktopost Simplifies Social Media for Businesses

Everyone knows that businesses have to be social now. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+…wherever your customers are, there you should be, too.

But, social media marketing can be very time consuming, and it’s hard to prove the ROI on it. It’s always been more of a warm fuzzy attached to your brand than something that’s easily measurable.

But, with a recent $800k seed round in the bank, Israel’s Oktopost is looking to change that. Check out our Q&A with Oktopost below:

What is your startup called?

Oktopost

What’s the story behind your idea?

Prior to launching the company, Co-Founder Daniel Kushner was Head of World Wide Marketing at Nolio ( Purchase by Computer Associates for $40 Million in 2013). During his time at Nolio, he realized that social media marketing for a B2B was time-consuming and its effectiveness could not be proven. He reached out to fellow Co-Founder to work on a solution that has become what we now know as Oktopost.

Oktopost is a social media marketing platform, designed for the unique needs of B2B. The platform allows for the distribution of social content on a large scale, particularly capitalizing on LinkedIn discussion groups. Oktopost also lets marketers see the actual ROI of their social media activities.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Daniel Kushner Co-founder and CEO

Daniel Kushner is a marketing expert and social media guru. As the former VP of Marketing at innovative high-tech company Nolio, Daniel doubled sales growth year over year. Daniel has been in the field for more than a decade and has successfully led the online marketing departments of various global organizations.

Liad Guez Co-founder and VP Product

Liad is a talented web professional who led his own web agency for seven years, in which he has provided interface design, social marketing and web development services for high profile companies on dozens of successful projects.

Where are you based?

Yokneam, Israel

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

Israel is known as the “Startup Nation” – There is really nowhere in the world that has as exciting of a startup scene as we do. Israeli founders have a healthy dose of what we call “Hutzpah” and are willing to take risks in order to pursue technologies they believe in.

What problem do you solve?

B2B marketers face 2 main problems when it comes to social media:

Being able to distribute content on a very large-scale across the social web
Being able to prove the actual ROI of social media

Oktopost solves both of these problems, and for the first time lets B2B marketers take full advantage of social media as a marketing tool.

Why now?

There is no one that does what we do. There are large social media marketing platforms, but most focus exclusively on B2C. No other solution has the capabilities with LinkedIn posting that we have, and no other platform can let you see the actual ROI of social media in the detail that we do.

The real question is: Why NOT now?

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

We have recently raised our seed round of $800,000
After less than 9 months out of beta, we have hundreds of paid customers
Our customer base includes several publicly traded companies
We recently launched a campaign where we are offering access to our platform for free to early stage startups. Click here for more info

What are your next milestones?

Building our customer base so that every B2B company, everywhere, can finally take full advantage of social media.

We are putting extra focus on providing our solution for B2B marketing agencies, as we believe we can provide them with the best possible tool for running their clients’ social media marketing.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

People can check out our website – we offer a 14-day free trial of our platform.

Our blog is a great place to read valuable information on content marketing, social media and all things B2B marketing.

Our social channels:

Facebook

Twitter

Google+

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Thanks To Israeli Startup Webydo, Great Designers Don’t Need To Know Code

Some of the best graphic designers in the world don’t know a lick about HTML, CSS, Javascript or anything else involved in web development. Unfortunately for many of those designers, their great work can be hacked up quickly when trying to fit the best designs into the limitations of the web.

Now, thanks to a startup based in both Israel and New Jersey, called Webydo, professional designers can create and manage cross platform websites without knowing one bit of code.

More than 38 million graphic designers currently working to create professional websites are enslaved to an old process that depends on handwritten code. This process is slow, expensive and cumbersome, marginalizing the designer’s role and preventing direct communication between designers and their clients. On the other hand, the DIY platforms offer only preformatted templates that are not suitable for professional web creation.

Webydo solves this problem with a sophisticated DMS (Design Management System) that liberates designers from their dependency on handwritten code or limiting DIY templates. Using the company’s sophisticated online software, designers can bring any creative web design to life. With the click of a button, an advanced HTML website is published online including a friendly built-in CMS (Content Management System) for the website owner. No programming or technical knowledge is needed. With Webydo, DMS plus its CMS integrated system, designers can finally focus on the creative side of web design.

Behind the scenes, Webydo’s innovative code generator (US patent pending) automatically generates both a cross-platform HTML website updated to the latest industry standards and optimized for SEO, and a friendly built-in WYSIWYG CMS that enables the website owner to update the website content, independently.

Webydo is a community driven platform created for designers, by designers who know what they need from a SaaS product like this.

“In essence, Webydo is about unchaining millions of graphic designers from the rusty old ‘designer-programmer-client’ process of designing and managing websites,” said Shmulik Grizim, Webydo’s Co-Founder and CEO. “With Webydo’s powerful cloud platform designers can finally bring any web design to life, without writing code. Now, we want to share this technological innovation with the global design community.”

Webydo launched last week at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 and we got a chance to spend some time with Grizim. Check out the video interview below and for more information visit webydo.com

Now check out over 30 more startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013

Clap On, Clap Off With Israeli Startup ClapTo [interview][disrupt]

The old lady in “The Clapper” commercials would be very proud of Israeli startup, ClapTo. We found them in the Israeli pavilion at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.

Shay Dadush, the founder of ClapTo, created the starutp after experiencing a real world problem that many workers face. Whether you work in a customer service center, data entry office, or coworking space, if you work with headphones on, communicating within the workplace can be a challenge.

“Sometimes you think someone wants you and they don’t, other times the boss wants you and you don’t hear them” Dadush told us at Disrupt. That’s why he created ClapTo.

ClapTo is a piece of software that fits ontop of your audio settings and listens for two claps in a row. If ClapTo hears the right claps then it quickly pauses whatever audio source you’re listening to so that you can hear what’s going on around you. Now all Mr. Lumbergh would have to do is clap two times to cut your music off so he could ask you to work this Saturday.

Dadush tells us that ClapTo knows the difference between the clapping, and someone making a loud bang.

This seems kind of cool but if ClapTo builds massive scale what’s going to happen when 30 people in the office have it installed and someone claps. Tell us what you think of ClapTo in the comments below.

Here’s the video, you can find out more at clapto.com

Now check out what Ashton Kutcher said about Bitcoin at TechCrunch Disrupt

Evento Helps Online Ticket Sales Become More Social

Millions of people are turning to online channels to purchase tickets to sporting events, concerts, plays and other ticketed events. As this trend continues to grow, ticket promoters have been looking for ways t make the process more social.

Sure some ticket sites let you tweet, or update your Facebook startus to say you purchased a ticket or you’re attending an event. To make the experience more engaging and more social Israeli startup Evento has released a “socially smart’ consumer facing Facebook ticketing app. The team behind Evento claims that their platform has almost unlimited customizable promotion capabilities.

Co-founders Ophir Zardok and Harel Shemer are hoping to increase a ticket promoters bottom line by using the same customers that purchased tickets to socially share their events.

We got a chance to talk to the team behind Evento. Check out the interview about their startup and the Israeli startup community, below.

Israeli Startup Intucell Acquired By Cisco For $475 Million

An Israeli company that created a technology that allows cell phone towers to communicate with each other, has just been acquired for $475 million dollars.

Business Insider reports that Israeli startup Intucell, started four years ago, and prior to this acquisition, had only raised $6 million dollars. The initial investment round had one investor, Bessemer.

After Bessemer’s investment was reported in 2011, AT&T quickly started using the technology.

On Wednesday, All Things D suggested that this was a very good investment for Cisco. The report by Arik Hesseldahl suggests that strategically this makes sense because of the relationships that Intucell has with wireless carriers globally.

Another key factor is the technology deals directly in computer aided, customizable software to control networking.

The idea is basically this: Software controls can define and dynamically control the size and configuration of a network, rather than swapping out hardware. Hesseldahl said in his piece.

Shimi The Dancing Robot From Atlanta Startup Tovbot Debuts At CES 2013

You’ve always wanted a dancing, djing companion robot for our iPhone right? Well if you did you’re in luck. A group of entrepreneurs hailing from Georgia Tech, IDC in Israel and MIT Media Lab formed a company called Tovbot and have now introduced their first product to the world, and it’s name is Shimi.

Tovbot says they specialize in social, expressive, connected robots and Shimi definitely speaks to that mantra.

“Shimi is a robotic musical companion. He’s like your personal DJ, the guy that knows how to keep a party going and always knows what you want to hear next” Tovbot says on their website.

While companies have been trying to make robots interact with music for quite sometime it seems like Tovbot has really nailed that goal. The robot also doesn’t feel like some cheap piece of crap that’s going to have howling, treble filled speakers. The sound that comes out of Shimi is pleasant, although we didn’t get to hear it that loud.

Check out the video below from our interview at Eureka Park at CES 2013:

Over 130 startups, and over 1800 attendee tickets sold so far for the largest startup conference in the US everywhereelse.co The Starutp Conference

Israeli Startup: tawkon Is Like A Geiger Counter For Your Smart Phone

Depending on who you talk to the verdict on the radiation generated from cell phones is still out. However it is a legitimate concern to many. An Israeli startup called tawkon wants to help smartphone users be aware when radiation levels emitted from their smartphone, become troublesome.

tawkon insists they aren’t trying to make people afraid of using their phones, in fact they tell us it’s quite the opposite.

“The goal of tawkon is not to have people fear using their phones, quite the opposite. In fact, 90% of the time phones are operating at low radiation, but the level of exposure someone gets from a phone at high radiation for one minute is the same as they would get for five hours at low radiation. It’s that 10% that we want to help you avoid.

When radiation levels from your phone spike tawkon will alert you and provide you with suggestions on how to lessen your exposure (such as using a headset or speakerphone). The app tracks your weekly radiation exposure and gives you valuable data on how many minutes of “high radiation” you have been exposed to.” Mark Lerner, New Media & Marketing Manager for Tawkon told us in an interview.

tawkon wants to give their users piece of mind to be able to use their smartphones whenever they want, knowing that if the radiation emitted from their phones ever becomes a concern Tawkon will alert them.

We got a chance to interview Lerner in depth about Tawkon check out the interview below.

Israeli Startup: Hopflow Launches Beta For Content Sharing Platform

Hopflow is a new content discovery and sharing platform based in Tel Aviv. The startup was founded by Erez Pilosof the cofounder of Walla which is Israel’s largest internet company, equivalent to the likes of Yahoo in the United States.

With Hopflow users are served up content “automagically”. The platform automatically matches users to content that they would like and allows the end user to stream that content. Unlike other socially driven discovery platforms, Hopflow doesn’t require the user to manually follow other users. Their aggregation algorithms find and serve up the content with very little extra input needed.

On Tuesday the startup announced they’ve entered into beta on both their web and mobile platforms.

As consumers seek simpler ways to receive and share more relevant and personalized content, traditional aggregation platforms and social networks have been slow to evolve. Hopflow saves users time and effort, as well as improves content discovery by eliminating the need to manually find and follow generalized sources and filter through uninteresting or irrelevant information.

Hopflow’s network also provides a new ecosystem where content creators can break through existing online social barriers and get discovered by like-minded people. Unlike with other social networks, Hopflow doesn’t require content creators to get people to manually follow them, because every post they create and share is automatically distributed to relevant users in the Hopflow community.

Hopflow’s ‘automagic’ technology aggregates and organizes news, blog and multimedia content from all over the social web and automatically presents it through a simple, image-rich platform according to specific topics. Users can then easily re-hop (share) to their social platforms or ‘like’ the content they receive. The platform is designed to continually learn from this activity to fine-tune and deliver an even more targeted and personal experience.

Of course they realize that social discovery and aggregation is by far a new idea, but with the Pilosof behind it, we’re sure it’s different.

“The social web is full of content platforms that force people to manually follow and filter through sources and information. In this contextual age, people want tools that are simple and provide targeted information,” Pilosof said in a statement. “We believe that discovering and sharing stories about the things that interest you shouldn’t be tedious and time consuming but rather fun and easy. Hopflow eliminates unwanted noise and allows users to sit back and enjoy a beautiful image-based ‘flow’ of relevant content outside of their current social networks.”

Added Mr. Pilosof, “At some point, we’ve all experienced the frustration of being overwhelmed with too much information on our social network feeds. A portion of the content we receive when we follow individual sources is personally interesting, but a large amount quickly becomes ‘noise’ that forces us to manually organize the information or eventually decide to un-follow the source. Hopflow completely rethinks the follow model and aims to lead a paradigm shift based on following interests.”

Linkage:

Check out Hopflow here

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Israeli Startup Walkme Raises $5.5 Million

Less than two weeks ago we brought you an interview with Israeli startup Walkme. Walkme is the easiest way for companies, startups and anyone on the web to create walk-thru’s for your readers and end users.

No matter how easy or complex your task is, WalkMe wants to provide you with the tool to create an easy step-by-step “Walk thru” guide to everything. Walkme is a simple to use plugin.

Once you have it installed you just move about your screen in the natural steps it takes to do whatever process you want to teach. As you begin to complete each step you write what the step is, how to do it and add your text balloon and move on to the next step. You can easily create “walk thru” instructions while you’re creating your WalkMe walk thru. Anything from how to complete an order, to how to change your password, can easily be explained using Walkme. If you want to show someone an easy to use trick on your own website, you can create a WalkMe “walk thru”.

Basically if you can do the task you want to teach, and if you can use a mouse, than you’re in business.

Walkme’s $5.5 million dollar series B round was led by Gemini Israeli Ventures. Mangrove Capital Partners and Giza Venture Capital also participated. Mangrove Capital Partners provided an undisclosed amount of capital back in April for Walkme.

“Using online services is a necessity for everyone. However, businesses are struggling with ineffective and costly solutions to make sure their users are able to use their offerings,” said Eran Wagner, General Partner at Gemini Israel Ventures. “WalkMe is a disruptive system that can fundamentally change the way online services engage with their users online. WalkMe’s ability to increase visitor clarity, satisfaction and conversion while dramatically reducing help-desk costs, makes it a no-brainer for a business of any size. We look forward to seeing WalkMe maintain its explosive growth and become an industry standard for guidance by replacing video-tutorials and help sections on websites – just as GPS systems have become a standard replacement for maps.”

Dan Adika, CEO of WalkMe, said, “the demand for our online guidance solution is growing exponentially and we sought funding to support this growth. We now have thousands of registered businesses that are utilizing WalkMe’s revolutionary technology to better guide their users online. With this round, we’ve found investors who shared our vision of creating a company that changes the way people use the web.”

Linkage:

Check out Walkme here

Here’s our interview with Walkme

Source: GigaOM

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Boston TechStars Startup: Saverr Offers Coupons From Receipts, You Know The Things You Actually Buy

The intuitiveness of the algorithms used to deliver Google adsense and Amazon suggestions can seem eerily close to home, but even as good as they are they still sometimes miss grasping what you are really looking for and what you really want to buy. Proximity based coupon apps are great but unless they are generic in nature it’s hard to say what you’re going to buy.

That’s why Boston startup, and Techstars alum, Saverr offers the best couponing proposition to the coupon user. Saverr gives you coupons based on what you actually buy based on what you actually bought using your receipt.

You know those machines that set next to the register tape at Target and the grocery store? You know the ones that spit out the coupons at the end of your visit? Well Saverr is giving you that machine, inside your phone. Pretty bad ass huh?

Saverr uses your actual receipt, the entire receipt, to give you coupons on the items that you just bought. Most likely you are going to buy them again right?

The idea came about when the Israeli team was trying to create a shopping discovery app of sorts. What they quickly found wasn’t that the world needed another discovery app, but the world needed a money saving app. Their proprietary receipt scanning technology is the back bone of their app.

The best part for the consumer is since Saverr is working on the manufacturer coupon side of the world, you can get coupons based on receipts from all types of stores. You’re not relegated to the store that you’re currently shopping in.

We got a chance to talk to the Saverr team which relocated to Boston for Techstars and is staying around for a while. Check out the interview below:

Israeli Startup Ringya, The First Collaborative Address Book For Smartphones?

An Israeli startup called Ringya has put an interesting new twist on the address book. They’ve taken, probably your most social set of data and added social functionality. Ringya allows users to share their address book, as much or as little of it as they want, as seamlessly as sharing a photo, video or other digital asset.

Sure you’ve always been able to share vcards and contacts via text, but Ringya groups contacts together any way that you like and than allows you to share them individually or in lists. Say you have a project management list, or a soccer team list, whatever list you have set up for contacts, if you need to easily share that list you can.

What’s even more interesting though is Ringya’s ability to turn paper lists into smartphone contact lists. Simply snap a picture of an actual paper contact list and Ringya will extract that information and put it into digital contact format and keep the list in tact.

In the interview below Gal Nucham, founder of Ringya, explains that all you have to do is snap a picture of a contact list and email it to a specific Ringya address, moments later you get the same list back, digitally. This would make migrating paper phone books, address books and black books a cinch.

It’s hard to believe that until now, no one has done this before. Check out our interview with Nucham, after the break.

Walk Thru’s Made Easy With Israeli Startup WalkMe

By a show of hands how many people out there have “walk thru” still on their to-do list. Everyone wants to do a great walk thru for their company, business or startup but many people have the hardest time getting this project off the ground. Either they don’t think they have access to the resources to create great “walk thru’s” or they don’t think they can afford it.

Well a startup in Tel Aviv called WalkMe is about to solve both of those problems for everyone.

No matter how easy or complex your task is, WalkMe wants to provide you with the tool to create an easy step-by-step “Walk thru” guide to everything.

Walkme is a simple to use plugin. Once you have it installed you just move about your screen in the natural steps it takes to do whatever process you want to teach. As you begin to complete each step you write what the step is, how to do it and add your text balloon and move on to the next step.

You can easily create “walk thru” instructions while you’re creating your WalkMe walk thru.

Anything from how to complete an order, to how to change your password, can easily be explained using Walkme. If you want to show someone an easy to use trick on your own website, you can create a WalkMe “walk thru”. Basically if you can do the task you want to teach, and if you can use a mouse, than you’re in business.

We got a chance to talk to the team from WalkMe about their easy to use tool. Check out the interview below:

Israeli Startup: Vidimind Lets Any Brand Become A TV Provider INTERVIEW

So hearing about Israeli startup Vidimind got me thinking, how cool would it be if Nibletz could own it’s own TV service. You could get a cool Android powered Nibletz TV service box for your home, and then use that box to stream tv, access tv apps and games, all the while under the brand “Nibletz TV”. Pretty bad ass huh…

Well that’s exactly what Vidimind does. This innovative Israeli service allows any company to purchase it’s white label tv service. The service is offered through an Android powered set top box. The box can be plugged into the TV or shared via wifi to smartphones and tablets in your home as well.

Through Vidimind the end user gets a robust tv service via their set top box. The company, or brand, gets access to vital subscriber data and can offer subscribers custom data as well. Brands and companies can offer deals, promotions, contests and more through the Vidimind box giving companies an advertising vehicle, in the living room, that’s rivaled by nothing else available on the market today.

With the power of the internet, Android and a set top box, any company in the world can become a tv service operator.

We got a chance to interview the team behind Vidimind. Check out the interview below:

Israeli Startup: Summer Lets You Easily Look Up Anyone On A Web Page

Summer, a new Israeli startup, has designed a way to easily look up the people who’s names you come across on web pages. Using their Google Chrome extension (coming soon to Safari & Firefox), Summer uses a semantic web engine that crawls the web site you’re on and then allows you to look up those mentioned by name on the page through over 70 different sources.

For example let’s take Mark Cuban for instance. Now we realize a lot of websites may link key figures names’ to previously published articles on their site, however when you use Summer, the plugin will quickly check ESPN, the New York Times and several other sources for information about Mark Cuban. When you click on Cuban’s name in an article on nibletz.com a side wall will pop up giving you information on Mark Cuban in a biography format, other story links and links to people that Cuban is somehow connected with. As the startup continues to grow, more and more information will be added.

Ohad Frankfurt, Lior Degani, Shlomi Babluki and Oz Katz have been friends for nine years and they are all co-founders of this unique new startup.

We got a chance to talk with Summer. Check out our interview below: