Announcing the 2008 Israel Web Tour

The California Israel Chamber of Commerce has just announced the return of their highly successful IsraelWebTour competition and roadshow. Current returning sponsors include Google, Yahoo and Adobe.

The Tour will kick off on February 4th, 2008 when fifteen chosen CEOs from Israel’s most exciting startups will arrive in Silicon Valley for a week of activities. The companies will meet with investors, strategic partners, customers, entrepreneurs and industry leaders in a mix of private one-on-one meetings, roundtable discussions and ad-hoc networking events .

The highlight of the week will be a public showcase on Wednesday, February 5th where each start-up will present their business to the industry and press . The Tour will end with a closing night party in San Francisco on Thursday February 7th.



The CICC is now soliciting applications for participating companies and sponsors. If you want to participate in this year’s IsraelWebTour, submit an application to CICC by Monday, December 3rd at 5:00 PM PST. Conference organizers & Steering Committee will select 15 companies to participate in the tour.

Highlights From Last Year’s Israel Web Tour:
- A series of private tours and meetings at Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Adobe, Ebay
- A week of panels and roundtable sessions were held with the following industry leaders:

• Mike Moritz, General Partner, Sequoia Capital
• Alex Kazim, President, Skype
• Michael Arrington, Editor, TechCrunch
• Caterina Fake, Co-Founder, Flickr
• Gokul Rajaram, Director, AdSense
• Keith Rabois, VP Business Development, LinkedIn
• Sundaresan Neel - Director, eBay Research Labs
• Amir Ashkenazi, CTO and Founder, Shopping.com
• David Tenenhause, VP of Platform Strategy, Amazon
• Geoff Yang, Founding Partner, Redpoint Ventures
• Jeff Crowe, General Partner, Norwest Venture Partners
• Michael Sippey, Vice President Product, Six Apart

The Bottom line
- Five of the 15 companies who participated in 2006 IsraelWebTour raised venture funds from US and Israeli VCs.
- One company was acquired.
- Four companies launched their US operations within 9 months of the tour.




The 2008 IsraelWebTour Steering Committee:

• Dr. Yossi Vardi, Chairman, International Technologies
• Gil Ben-Artzi, Corporate Development, Yahoo!
• Jacques Benkoski, USVP
• Daniel Cohen, Partner, Gemini Israel Funds
• Etay Gafni, Sr. Director, User Experience and Web 2.0, SAP Labs
• Jason Harinstein, Corporate Development, Google
• Eyal Keren, VP, Business Development, The Pudding Inc.
• Ido Sarig, Partner, Tomas Weisel Partners
• Deborah Schultz, Social Software Strategist, P&G Global Advisor
• Yaniv Vakrat, Director of Corporate Development, Adobe
• Jeff Pulver, Technology anthropoligist, Pulver.com

Related Links:
Application Form
Facebook Group: IsraelWebTour

It is going to be a great event.
Please forward this information to your friends and hope you see you all soon!

E.T.

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