Join the Tweet-Fest! Help Raise Awareness of Israeli Startups!

We have begun tweeting about our almost 1400 members on Twitter. And, there are several people in the US, Israel, and elsewhere who will retweet our tweets.
PLEASE JOIN THIS INITIATIVE  !!!   Let’s pool the power of our connections! Help Israeli startups get the attention they deserve.

Startups, here’s what to do:

- Join IsraelStartupNetwork  - http://www.meetup.com/IsraelStartupNetwork/
- Follow me on Twitter   @arlenemarom
- Send me your Twitter name so I can follow you.
- Send me your tweet about your product or service. It should be maximum 123 characters, including spaces, and it should include your URL. (The number of characters is important, since I have colleagues in the US and elsewhere who will be retweeting.) If you need help writing it, send the main points and I will put it together.  arlene [at] tech-river [dot] com
- Retweet my tweet about your company.
- Retweet the tweets about other Israeli startups.
- Follow the list we will create to make it easier for you to keep track of companies to retweet.
- Tell your friends to do the same.

Everyone else, here’s what to do:

- Follow me on Twitter   @arlenemarom
- Send me your Twitter name so I can follow you.
- Inform startups you know to follow the above instructions.
- Retweet the tweets about all Israeli startups. We will create a list to make it easier.
- Tell everyone who cares about Israeli startups to join the initiative and retweet on Twitter, fb, LinkedIn, and Xing.
- Contact me for the list of tweets that I have already done, so you can tweet previous tweets. arlene [at] tech-river [dot] com

I will be happy to retweet relevant posts from ISN members who are service providers, so feel free to send the tweets or the links to your posts.

I will be happy to connect with you on LinkedIn, fb and Xing. Once we are connected, we can also Share and Like the startup tweets on these additional social networks.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/arlenemaromtechriver
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=716472924
https://www.xing.com/profile/Arlene_Marom

Please become a fan of ISN on fb: www.facebook.com/IsraelStartupNetwork

Below you can see the list of startups that have already been tweeted. Contact me for the tweets about these companies, so we can get them maximum exposure.
arlene [at] tech-river [dot] com

If we work together, we can make this happen! Join TODAY!

All the best,
Arlene Marom
Organizer, IsraelStartupNetwork
--
List of Startups Already Tweeted

AItype
Astrolome
CAT
Commersphere
Dopa Music
E-Z-Safe
FishAbook
Hot Visitor
Inphodrive
IT Analyzer
i-traffix
Jfrog
MBAheadhunter
Nooly
Novo Speech
Pantry4Me
Porticor
PublishedIn
QleeQ
SentryCom
SEO Genie
SLB
Tippers

First 26 Companies Create Booths on IsraelStartupNetwork's Expo on Commersphere

These companies have already set up their booths on our ongoing virtual expo on Commersphere:

Agama
AItype
Armodello
C-True Face Recognition
Cam-trax Technologies
Corbomite Games
DataMills LTD
Dopa Music
E-Z-Safe
FishAbook
HotVisitor
i-Traffix
In.Sites Media Ltd.
IncrediCube
Inphodrive Ltd.
IT Analyzer
JFrog
KONOT
Mega AS
Porticor
Publishedin
QleeQ
SEO Genie
Smart Lamp Ballast
Tippers
Xpandion

All Israeli startups are welcome to participate in our virtual expo. It's free for the first 6 months.

Just join ISN here: www.meetup.com/israelstartupnetwork

Then, send me a request for the link: arlene [at] tech-river [dot] com

All the best,
Arlene Marom
Organizer, ISN

Israeli Startups Invited to Set Up Booth in Ongoing Virtual Expo

Hi, Everyone,

We have created an ongoing virtual expo on Commersphere for members of IsraelStartupNetwork (ISN).

All Israeli startups are cordially invited to set up a booth. 

The only requirement is to be a member of IsraelStartupNetwork. 
Join here:   http://www.meetup.com/IsraelStartupNetwork

Set-up takes only a few of minutes. You can just link to your website, and add materials as you go along. If you have no website, you can create an HTML page on the site.

The first 6 months are free of charge.

Please contact me for registration link. Arlene [at] tech-river [dot] com

We look forward to your participation and hope this project will assist you in gaining the attention you need to reach your goals.

Arlene Marom

Qmerce – You are the Game.

by Shelli Zargary

(See Shelli's BIO on the Contributing Authors Page)

Note: Qmerce won first place in IsraelStartupNetwork’s Recent Pitch-Fest, held in cooperation with Blumberg Capital.

"Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will… and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed."    Charles Baudelaire

The most brilliant startups are the simplest ones; those that make us scratch our heads and say, "Gee, why didn't we think of that before?"  A great startup begins with a cool idea that takes a simple, new and different approach to a familiar, common situation and brings new and innovative values and benefits not offered by the traditional approach.  The more familiar, obvious and easy-to-understand is the idea, the greater are the chances that the startup will be attractive, contagious and a surefire success. 

This is the kind of simple genius that empowers Qmerce. 

A Great Startup Begins with a Brilliant Idea

For Moti Cohen, company founder, the concept behind Qmerce of an interactive platform for selling and promoting products and services through gaming is a natural extension of his personal lifestyle.  A lifetime gamer, when Cohen started using the Facebook platform, he naturally became an active Facebook gamer and recognized the distinct advantages of the Facebook platform for interactive, multi-player game applications. 

When looking for a business opportunity in the Facebook realm, Moti's background made him keenly aware of the large gap on Facebook separating game playing and commerce.  Armed with his new idea, he hooked up with his childhood friend Edi Dubinin, now Qmerce Chief Creative Officer, to make his vision a reality.  The pair applied their gaming experience to create a new sales paradigm to replace the tired and overused on-line auction and traditional on-line sales methods.  Qmerce creates an entirely new venue where Facebook gamers can earn not only points and recognition, but also valuable products, while at the same time offering vendors an exciting, innovative and interactive strategy to reach wider audiences for both promoting and selling their products and services.  

Qmerce will deliver a social e-commerce platform for vendors to distribute content about their products via games that integrate the consumer-players on a new level. Vendors can devise tournaments, contests and competitions in which consumers will compete for product "prizes", ostensibly improving their chances of winning by demonstrating knowledge about the products.  Consumers can elect to earn products by participating in games that enable them to obtain the products for a fraction of their list prices by achieving the highest scores in the games.

Qmerce's first natural target is to gain the attention of Facebook users that are familiar with playing casual and social games and seek benefit beyond points.  Looking at the experience of social gaming to date, these users will rapidly spread the word about Qmerce across their networks of friends like wildfire. To achieve commercial success, Qmerce targets vendors looking for a new and unique way to sell their products that will elect to sell them via Qmerce games.  Another side target is basic Facebook users looking for an interesting platform for creating content that can choose to create games for their friends.  The value of Qmerce lies not so much in attracting game players who seek to "purchase" products by winning them via games, but more in creating exciting and entertaining events that attract a huge audience of onlookers that are exposed to the product promotions.

Today many Facebook users join different groups for social purchasing where they receive a variety of offers, promotions, discounts, etc. The Qmerce engine will be similar, but the promotions will be in the format of games that are a fun way for people to learn about new products and services.  By participating in a game, the consumer is actively interacting with the vendor for an extended period of time. The gaming process not only gives added value to the consumer in the form of the products he or she wins, but also increases the consumers' brand identification and loyalty and reinforces brand values.

Contact: Moti Cohen at qmerce [at] gmail.com

A Successful Startup Needs More than a Great Idea

Edi and Moti have been close friends since childhood, but working together intensively for more than a year and half to bring Qmerce to market has only brought the two entrepreneurs closer.  Before Qmerce, Moti worked as an account manager at a large private investment house, while Edi worked in sales and business promotion, consulting for numerous firms. But as important as the business skills he invests, Moti also brings years of gaming experience to the table. From his Atari days, to Mega-son through Nintendo, Playstation and X-box, along with hours and hours invested in playing on-line computer games, Moti has always loved the world of gaming.  To complement their business savvy and content knowledge, Moti and Edi hired two skilled in-house programmers to develop the Qmerce technology, involving altogether about seven people in the venture.  Long hours of pizza and Java have made them a close-knit team.  They chose the name "Qmerce" representing a combination of game tokens and commerce to indicate that sales can be fun, simple and easy.

When asked what he has learned about making successful startups from his Qmerce experience, Moti emphasized the fact that while they invested a great deal of effort in planning, the most important thing they had to do at Qmerce was to be flexible and agile and be able to roll with the punches. That was one factor that has made the development of Qmerce especially rewarding for him.

Winning the Israel Startup Network-Blumberg Capital Pitch Fest

The ability to think and act fast also enabled Qmerce to sign up for the ISN-Blumberg Capital Pitch Fest despite its very short deadline.  Winning first place in the contest has been a great coup, bringing the startup exposure and attention from important market players as well as the chance to obtain funds for seed financing.  But the entrepreneurs haven't let their victory at the Pitch Fest make them over-confident; they are too busy investing their time in finalizing product development.  The team expects to close their Beta version by April.  They hope that from their connection with Blumberg Capital, they will get the opportunity in the next round to meet with the most serious players in the market that can give Qmerce the kind of exposure that will guarantee it a resounding success.  Delivering the platform today as a Facebook application, Qmerce also plans to later extend the scope to mobile and other platforms.

When asked what was his vision for Qmerce, Moti Cohen remarked, "I believe that life is a kind of game, and Qmerce lets people apply this concept in the virtual reality where they carry out so much of their social activity today. Ultimately, we want to integrate between the worlds of e-commerce and gaming so that the game and the product are combined in a special, unique way.  Different users will expand on the idea in different directions.  By leveraging their love of games to learn about and connect with different companies and products, Qmerce lets people expand their horizons."

For more information about Qmerce, contact Moti Cohen at qmerce [at] gmail.com