CloudShare, an Israeli start up previously known as IT Structures, has reported a series B of $10 million led by its existing investors Sequoia Capital and Gemini Israel Funds as well as new investor Charles River Ventures. This ‘Up Round’ brings CloudShare to a total of $16 million raised to date.

CloudShare offers a Virtual Sales Engagement SaaS platform that enables small and mid-sized software and appliance companies to deliver demos, evaluations, and proof-of concept projects online by making solutions available via its platform. The company’s target customers usually lack the resources to buy expensive web cast and streaming technologies, and so Cloudshare provides a cost-effective on-demand tool for marketing, and direct and channel sales.

a Team Manager or Campaign Manager, you’d be able to build new environments (eg, add servers, storage, and networks), change environments or customize them en masse, and add or view other Sales Engineers or Channel Partners and their staff usage

In the press release posted on the company’s website, CloudShare’ CEO Zvi Guterman, commented on the importance of this round:

“Since founding CloudShare in 2007 we’ve been focused on developing our technology, with the promise that it will revolutionize the way sales demos and PoC’s are conducted. We’ve officially come out of stealth mode with marquee customers, a proven cloud-based technology platform, and $10M in funding to help build out our vision. We now have all the right assets in place and we look forward to reaping the benefits in 2010 and beyond.”

Ophir Kra-Oz and Zvi Guterman founded IT Structures in 2007 and have kept the company in stealth mode until Dec 11 2009. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Cloudshare plans to expand its R&D center and hire additional developers locally. With its double digit growth and an impressive line up of clients which includes asVMware, Cisco, and SAP, I see a bright future for this Israeli start up.

The Dashboard enables analyzing partner performance

See also: Globes

The high tech sector is renowned for its capacity to churn out companies that dominate their respective markets. Once a company has emerged as a clear winner – consider IBM in mainframes, Microsoft in desktop operating systems and Google in search – there is a need for paradigm shifting innovation before the dominant firm can be upended by a new upstart.

Yet despite this tendency it is interesting to see how, in the early stages of a market’s development, companies bet differently to one another on the future direction that the market is likely to take. This week we consider two venture-backed Israeli startups: FixYa and SupportSpace. Both companies are addressing the market for online technical support but in very different ways.

FixYa: an information marketplace

FixYa is the largest online tech support community and has 15 million unique visitors per month. Users can search through an enormous database of troubleshooting questions relating to 800,000 products, and are able to lodge requests to the company’s network of tech support experts if a question has not been covered previously.

Users can also call on the personal attention of FixYa experts, of which there are over 160,000. Personal assistance is a paid-for service, which begins at $12.99 for one-time premium email support. Other options include 1 month of unlimited email premium support for $19.99, and live chat assistance for the same price per session.

In addition to these direct-to-consumer offerings, the company offers an out-of-the-box solution for retailers and small businesses. FixYa SMB provides retailers and small businesses with free access to the database and expert network – a white label solution, essentially – as it represents a way of achieving wider distribution of FixYa’s content assets and experts.

Evidently, FixYa is heavily focused on leveraging and extending its database of technical support questions and answers. The network effects for this type of service are clear. The more consumers visit the site and ask questions, the greater the likelihood that future visitors will find what they are looking for. The company was founded in 2005 by Yaniv Bensadon, a seasoned internet executive, and has raised a total of $8 million over two rounds – the most recent took place in March 2008 and was led by Mayfield Fund and Pitango Venture Capital.

FixYa: Problems and Solutions for the Apple iPod Nano 3rd Generation

SupportSpace: a services marketplace

SupportSpace, founded in 2006 by Doron Elgressy and Yair Gridnlinger, is an online technical support marketplace. Certified experts deliver a series of pre-defined and custom services to consumers via SupportSpace’s SaaS platform and support tools. The focus here is on solving technical issues occurring on web-connected devices, principally PCs, rather than answering questions about problems with consumer products in general.

Users can come to the site and browse through pre-defined services – examples of pre-defined services include Email Account Setup ($65.99) and PC Transfer ($41.99). Users are also able to pay for Expert Services which can be delivered as Express Sessions, priced on a flat-rate basis, or Premium Sessions, priced on a per job basis.

Service delivery is made possible through SupportSpace’s platform, which includes CRM, collaboration, desktop sharing and diagnostic tools. The company emphasizes that all SupportSpace Experts are required to go through a certification process, including background verification, a serviceability test, a phone interview and training.

SupportSpace does not offer open access to a knowledge base and is principally focused on connecting qualified experts with paying customers. Analogies could be drawn with oDesk and Elance though, as opposed to providing a general platform for freelancers, SupportSpace is focused on delivering tech support through its SaaS platform and tools.

The company maintains a US Headquarters in San Francisco and an Israeli R&D center in Netanya, and has raised a total of $14.25 million in financing since October 2006. The most recent round of $10 million was closed last month by Gemini Israel Funds and BRM Capital.

SupportSpace: menu for iPod, Zune and MP3 Help

***

Both FixYa and SupportSpace have demonstrated that there is significant consumer demand for online technical support services by taking very different approaches. While FixYa provides free access to a large repository of valuable troubleshooting insights, in addition to expert services, SupportSpace connects consumers with certified experts that resolve technical problems on web-connected devices.  It will be interesting to see how the companies continue to evolve going forward, though early signals suggest that their respective market segments are sufficiently large to sustain growth for some time to come.

Data protection software startup Axxana has secured a $9 million Series B investment led by Carmel Ventures. The investment proceeds will be used to help accelerate greater adoption of Axxana’s Phoenix System.

The Phoenix System is a data lossless system and the self-proclaimed “holy grail of disaster recovery systems”. The company’s Phoenix System™, which is targeted at storage vendors, consists of multiple components: the Black Box, which holds the data at the main site; the Collector, which processes, encrypts and stores the data onto a SSD contained in the Black Box; the Recoverer, which is installed at remote sites and manages the recovery process: and the Management Tool, which helps monitor and manage the whole system.

The core value proposition is that Axxana is that it delivers disaster recovery with no data loss over any distance while delivering costs savings relative to traditional data mirroring systems. The approach is different to traditional synchronous mirroring implementations and has received praise from storage industry analysts. Earlier this year it was identified by Gartner as on of the “Cool Vendors in Storage Technology, 2009”, a list highlingting “interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services”.

The financing follows on from a $5 million Series A which was led by Gemini Israel Funds in June 2007.

Big day for Israeli start ups today as two companies announce funding from unexpected sources. No VC money? no problem!

Modu Mobile, Dov Moran’s mobile company aiming to create the world’s smallest cell phone, gets an oxygen injection today with the announcement of a $7 Million dollar round from chip manufacturer Qualcomm. The strategic agreement signed between the companies also gives Qualcomm the rights to make the chips inside Moran’s cell phones.

The investment is strategically important for Modu at this point in time. After laying off 35% of its workforce, and raising only $65 million out of the intended (and ambitious) goal of $100 million (Gemini and Genesis are among investors), Modu seemed to have hit the rocks. The company’s absence from CES this year was mentioned by Israeli media outlets as a potential sign of trouble.

Dov Moran was the founded of M-Systems, inventor of the flash drive that we all love.  His previous company was sold to Sandisk for one and half billion a year and a half ago. Modu’s flagship product is a tiny phone weighing only 40 grams, which serves as the ‘brain’ in additional products such as navigation devices, digital cameras and mp3 players, through the use of ‘jackets’.

Exclusive source in Hebrew can be found here and previous coverage on Modu is here.

Next in line was Ginger, a small start up developing spelling check software. The Israeli start up founded by Yael Karov and Avner Zangvil has announced a first round of $3 million led by private investors in Israel and the US. Ginger distributes a free program that helps users with Dyslexia by providing automatic text correction English using patent pending technology.

The target market of Ginger is apparently 15% of the western world (see learning difficulties organizations here). There are 50 million people suffering from Dyslexia in the US and UK alone.  and the company claims it has the potential to correct 95% of their errors. Even though word processing software is already equipped with spell checkers, Ginger says it can correct heavy misspellings that are far from the ‘right’ word, as well a full sentence correction.

Started in 2007, Ginger has raised $4 million from private investors to date, including Yoni Hefetz, a serial entrepreneur and a partner at Lightspeed as well as Zohar Gilon, an angel investor who also founded B-Hive and Oberon.

To download the program, sign up for Ginger here.  Source.

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2. Bitesize Monday: Israeli startups in the news Seems like we had a little breather this past week....
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Investing in stocks is a risky business, especially when the markets are a roller coaster like today. Rather than putting all your money in US government bonds until the storm is gone, one can use the web to alleviate the risk by following every move of experienced money managers with verified track records.

That’s exactly what Israel-based Vestopia does best. Vestopia lets you follow, in real-time, the real transactions and holdings within the personal portfolios of 14 professional investors. I took advantage of the free subscription and gave it a try. After a short setup, I was able to shop for investment directors based on performance in the past three months. Even though they are experts, only four of them had a positive balance. Dan Knight, CFA had the best performance, with 9.3% returns (risk was n/a) and Kirby Cundiff, a finance professor had a tougher luck, with  negative returns of %59(!). I was able to shop for investment directors by filtering for investment approach, equity strategy, investment timeframe and their individual strategic profile.

Shopping at the “eBay of money management“:

Vestopia is not a tips site, but it’s easy to find investment ideas by  looking at 14 portfolios. The blogs written by the investment directors were a great resource. Dan, my top performing adviser posted on the recent developments: “After Big Market Declines, Value does best”, making Vestopia not only a trading log, but also an educational tool.

Looking for investment ideas, I snooped around my expert’s portfolio (click to enlarge)

Vestopia started it’s career as IncrediTrade, back in August 2006. In January of 2007, Vestopia raised an undisclosed amount led by LGiLab, a joint venture between Lightspeed Venture Partners and Gemini Israel as well as Ofer Hi-Tech, where the idea was born. Led by CEO Guy Hirsch, Vestopia has its business office in Menlo Park CA, and a development center in Israel.

To answer some of the questions that came to mind, I interviewed Mike Mor, Vestopia’s CTO. Below is the transcript:

1) Mike, in a few words, how would you describe Vestopia?

MM: Vestopia is the most transparent form of money management. Members benefit from watching sophisticated investors manage their real money in real time.

2) So, how was the web traffic to Vestopia affected during the recent Wall Street slump this week?

MM: At times of uncertainty, folks looking for answers turn to seasoned pros, such as our Investment Directors. This may explain why our recent traffic has been significantly above its normal levels.

3) Who’s money are the Investment directors investing? Does Vestopia have its own portfolio?

MM: It’s the Investment Directors own, personal money … which is why this is so interesting. The performance the Investment Directors experience in the accounts Vestopia members view truly affect their net worth - their personal savings, their retirement funds, their children’s college tuitions, etc. Results matter. Vestopia itself is exploring running money.

4) Let’s talk about competition. Vestopia is often compared to Covestor. What would you say are the main differences between you two?

MM: Clearly we’re looking to accomplish a similar goal, so we respect what Covestor is doing. The main differentiator is that Vestopia’s business model is focused around the investment decisions of folks who have been personally vetted (not democratically), and meet our rigid standards. They are people with real names, photo’s, biographies. You can get to know them. They are not anonymous. Further, Vestopia has also enabled a rich ‘content’ layer, where the Investment Directors can explain their every move to their members.

5) Can you share your lessons learned with first time investors, looking to “buy cheap” these days?

MM: At Vestopia, we’re very much focused on true investing, rather than short-term trading. There is a discipline. While global markets continue to find new lows, we believe there is a lot of opportunity hidden amongst the fear!

Thank you.

Vestopia is with no doubt an interesting idea, with a big challenge ahead. Can you make your first million trading? Sign up for free and let me know.

The AlwaysOn Venture Summit is a two-day gathering that highlights the significant economic, political and technology trends impacting the global growth investor, hosted in Half Moon Bay, CA. This year’s summit attracted five hundred of the most influential members of the tech investment community including “best of breed” CEO presentations, VCs, investment bankers, research analysts and so on.

On of the panels this year was on a very relevant topic to VC Cafe, titled: “Why Invest in Europe & Israel“.

The moderator Paul Deninger, Vice Chairman of Jefferies & Company asked tough questions to the group of investors below:

• Christopher Spray, Partner, Atlas Venture
• Bart Markus, General Partner, Wellington Partners
• Danny Cohen, Partner, Gemini Israel Fund
• Tod Bensen, Founder and former CEO, Cazenove Private Equity
• Yves Kraemer, Team Cote D’Azur

Danny Cohen from Gemini Israel Funds posted his main takeaways on the European VC industry:

Europe is also seeing an increase in the number of serial entrepreneurs (Although not as much as in Israel).

The amount of $$ spent online in Europe is larger than the US, and is growing at a faster pace.

It seems that that VCs can invest in companies that will focus on a single
European market (Germany or UK) and still become very substantial (I wish that was true in Israel as well).

So, why invest now in Europe and Israel? the panel of VCs from outside Silicon Valley seems to think that the other side of the pond is ripe for VC.