Meet The 6 Israeli Startups On ‘Forbes’ Top 10 Health Tech Changing The World

When six of the ten companies on Forbes’ “Top 10 Health Tech Changing the World” are Israeli, it’s fair to say that Israel is not only the Startup Nation, but the Health Tech Nation as well.
By Maya Yarowsky, NoCamels

Israeli technologies overwhelmed the list not only with the variety of life-saving applications, but their ingenious and innovative way of doing so as well. Here are six startups on the list:

ReWalk
Over two years ago, we here at NoCamels posed the question, “Will Israeli Product ‘ReWalk’ Make Wheelchairs Obsolete?”, and now, with important advances in the robotic exoskeleton’s capabilities, we may finally have an answer. Created by seasoned Israeli entrepreneur and founder of ARGO Medical Technologies, Dr. Amit Goffer, who himself is paralyzed from the waist down, ReWalk was designed to help paraplegics and those with spinal cord injuries walk upright again. The ReWalk device is strapped on to the user’s legs and stimulates the movement of their pelvis and limbs. With the addition of crutch support, individuals who were previously confined to a wheelchair can now climb stairs and communicate eye-to-eye with those around them. ReWalk’s ability to restore upright mobility is revolutionizing the lives of wheelchair-bound, evidenced in Claire Lornas’s walk of the 2012 London Marathon in 17 days, a feat that she would have never been able to complete if it weren’t for Goffer’s incredible walking machine.
ReWalk from Argo Medical Technologies


Totally Pregnant
Bye, bye pregnancy books. Hello pregnancy apps! Like many of our precious moments in life, pregnancy too has gone high-tech, with numerous applications popping up to help budding mothers monitor their nine-month journey. According to “Forbes,” one app stands out from the rest and that is the Israeli-developed platform Totally Pregnant. The colorfully designed app available for iOS and Android allows moms to track the baby’s growth, their own health, receive expert advice based on their location and view 3D images of the fetus’ development. Users can share sonograms in photo albums, watch informative videos on things like pregnancy yoga and even shop for their little bun in the oven. The startup recently released an international version and is now available in the US and 64 other countries, helping the moms and dads of the world keep calm, cool and collected before expecting.
Totally Pregnant - The New Must-Have Pregnancy App


Telesofia
You’ve probably heard the modern-day adage that it’s best to avoid the internet when it comes to medical advice, but Israeli company Telesofia hopes to reverse the negative stigma with its platform. The startup

allows doctors from all around the globe to provide personal, accurate and interactive medical instructions through intuitive patient education videos. For instance, if a patient receives a new medication from their doctor and is unsure how to take it, Telesofia’s videos illustrate and simply explain how the medication should be used and what side effects to take note of, data which is tailored to the specific needs of the user, according to the information that they input into the platform. Telesofia’s videos are available on every kind of internet-powered device and according to the company, can be used by anyone anywhere to get immediate advice in cases as extreme as a deadly seizure, a terrible allergic reaction or even heart attack. Most of all, it’s good to know that someone is finally taking responsibility for the medical information on the internet, and with informative videos.


Surgical Theater
Airforce pilots and surgeons may not seem to have too much in common at first glance, but according to Israeli airforce pilots Moty Avisar and Alon Geri, who founded Surgical Theater, pilots and surgeons often make use of the same skills. Avisar and Geri proved it with their breakthrough medical platform, which allows doctors to practice intricate surgery with the help of 3D images taken from the patient’s CT and MRI scans and is already already being used by neurosurgeons in the United States. In order to get to know the brain (or other potential organs) they are about to work on, the doctors can meander through the patients cortex using joysticks to practice the operation, not unlike pilots or even video game users. The Surgical Theater was presented at the 2012 Congress of Neurological Surgeons where it was named a “new technology to watch”, and it has since secured FDA approval and been implemented in major US hospitals like Mount Sinai, the Mayo Clinic and NYU and UCLA hospitals. Following the success of their Selman Surgical Rehearsal Platform (SRP) , Surgical Theater is now looking to develop technology that will allow surgeons to look past organs and other arteries in their way during surgery, minimizing the chances for a dangerous mishap.
SNAP Sequence


HelpAround
Anyone who has diabetes or knows someone with the common insulin-resistant condition can tell you that it involves a lot of equipment and care. However, even if a diabetics takes impeccable care of themselves, that still does not always prevent disaster, which is why the Israeli-developed application HelpAround wants to

keep as many people as possible in the loop. The mobile application allows diabetes patients of all walks of life to find someone in their vicinity with a glucose tablet, meter or dose of insulin to share. In addition, if a diabetic person suddenly goes into a diabetic coma or has a seizure, the emergency response of nearby nurses or people simply familiar with diabetes can be rendered with the touch of a smartphone button. HelpAround has something even for the diabetic who knows it all, with a unique crowd-run and anonymous platform for advice and support from those using the app nearby. Recently, the startup has begun to promote its service in another, and just as common medical problem – food allergies.


uMoove
This may sound overly ominous, but soon enough your device will be watching you. One of the leaders of eye and facial-tracking technology, Israeli startup uMoove has developed a platform for gesture-recognition on mobile devices, allowing users to play games or companies to observe user interest all with the blink of an eye. While the company has already developed platforms enabling video games to react to facial expressions, as well as other commonly used mobile components, uMoove now hopes to apply its technology for important medical uses. According to a report in “Scientific American,” eye-tracking software, like uMoove’s, could be used to discover serious brain disorders, such as autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and Parkinson’s disease, just to name a few. The eye and facial recognition technology can analyze an individual’s world view, which, as Moshe Eizenman, an eye-tracking researcher at the University of Toronto explains, “reflects a model of the world that exists inside the brain of each individual.”

Israel And EU Sign €80 Billion Scientific Research Agreement

Israel and the European Union signed a key agreement, Horizon 2020, on Sunday, marking the beginning of a unprecedented partnership agreement for the funding of scientific research and innovation. 

by Maya Yarowsky, NoCamels  

During a visit to Israel, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Science, Technology and Space Yaakov Perry to sign and finalize the agreement that will secure €80 billion ($109 billion) in funding over seven years for grants in scientific research and technological innovation. The Horizon 2020 program is part of the EU’s Framework Program for Research and Innovation and Israel is reportedly the first non-European country to gain access to a program traditionally limited to EU Member States and Associated Countries. In return for joining the program, Israel will contribute to the Horizon 2020 budget for grant funding.

President Barroso stated: “Israel is a strong player in research and innovation and for this reason an important partner for the EU to address societal challenges of common concern, such as aging, food safety, environment protection or cleaner energy, and to strengthen the competitiveness of our industries. I am pleased that we are signing the agreement today since it reflects the mutual importance we attach to cooperation and partnership in research and innovation.”

With more than four percent of the country’s GDP devoted to investments in civilian research and development in the fields of science, medicine, technology and the environment, Israel is sure to make a strong partner for EU cooperation and will shift the focus from more traditional research to innovation and disruptive technology.

While Israel has been associated with EU research and innovation programs since 1996, the new Horizon 2020 agreement, once it is ratified by Israel, will allow Israeli researchers and innovators to take a more active role in all of the activities with their EU and international partners. The current Horizon 2020 agreement, with a budget of over €80 billion, is the largest ever EU research and innovation program and one of the biggest in the world.

Israel’s involvement in Horizon 2020 was put in jeopardy last year when the EU published guidelines that prohibited EU support to Israeli projects based in settlements. But in November 2013, Israel and the EU were able to agree on a final working document.

Brazil universalized childhood education, primary and secondary

The president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, receive the National Education Plan (PNE), after waiting four years in the Congress for approval

President Dilma Rousseff signed on Wednesday, 25 without vetoes, the National Education Plan (NEP), which establishes guidelines in the area of ​​public policy for the next ten years. Among the goals of the NEP

are increasing investment in education to 10% of GDP at the end of the decade, the eradication of illiteracy, the offer of full-time education by at least 50% of public schools and the increase the enrollment in graduate to achieve annual target of 60,000 teachers and 25,000 doctors. The approval of the NEP should be published in a special edition of the “Diário Oficial da União” (DOU) on Thursday, 26, informed the Minister of Education, Henrique Paim.

"We have NEP to the challenges that Brazil is facing," said Paim in conference. "The NEP was constructed from several discussions with the society, educational movements. It was built from every contribution that Congress gave and the president acknowledged all this effort." Forwarded by the Presidential Palace to Congress at the end of the Lula government, the plan was processed for 3.5 years to get to Dilma’s table. One of the main resistances of the government was the goal of reaching the level of 10% of GDP invested in education after ten years (currently it is 6.4%) - Finance Minister, Guido Mantega, even claimed that the measure would "break" the Brazilian State.

To get around this, the Planalto sponsored an accounting maneuver to include in the numbers, for example, the “University for All” Program (ProUni) and partnerships with private institutions of the “Science Without Borders”. Paim supported the inclusion of these programs as part of the investment in education. "By offering scholarships from Pronatec (National Program for Access to Technical Education and Employment), and from “Science without Borders”, which are the best universities in the world, we are creating educational opportunities. Unless we have partnerships with private institutions, we will not move forward. All this has to be accounted for." said Paim.

One of the main innovations of the NEP is the institution of the concept of student cost-quality (CAQ), a new financial parameter of basic education, which stipulates a minimum application per student. The target is to

include this parameter in the Union supplementary funding to all states and municipalities that fail to reach the minimum value – this mechanism was likely to be vetoed by President Dilma Rousseff, but eventually was kept.  The Ministry of Education (MEC) himself recommended the veto, but the Casa Civil worked to maintain it. Asked about it during the conference, Paim said. "This is an internal government discussion"

The plan provides that, in two years, i.e. in 2016, the initial CAQ (CAQi) will be implemented. "There is no definition of what the CAQ is, in fact, the law states that we have to define the student cost-quality. We have two years to implement the CAQi, first I have to define what is student cost-quality, and right now it would be premature to make any calculation about additional resources." concluded the Minister.

CuBox - the smallest computer ever

CuBox, the smallest computer ever, is made in Israel by an Arab-Israeli company aiming to power the Internet of Things.
by Abigail Klein Leichman, ISRAEL21c

The 2x2x2-inch CuBox-i is the smallest computer in the world. It sells for just $55 and is made in Israel by SolidRun, a 10-person company cofounded by two Arab-Israeli electrical engineers with a background in the high-tech industry.

CuBox-i is the newest model from SolidRun, which launched its first CuBox low-power, miniature micro-PC and media center at the end of 2011, just a year after going into business. The tiny, yet powerful computer is not designed for tasks like word processing or photo manipulation. It’s mainly meant for the Internet of Things (IoT), among other uses.

Weighing only about three ounces (91 grams) with a built-in operating system and WiFi, CuBox can be your Android TV box, multimedia streamer, networked storage solution and pocket-size personal computer, running Lite Desktop and infinite open-source applications. If you need more juice, you can scale up to the CuBox-i2 ($80) or CuBox-i4 Pro ($140) without scaling up in size.

“As of today, we are the smallest computer in the world,” CEO Kossay Omary tells ISRAEL21c. “You do see computers getting smaller, but no competitor has achieved this extreme size and efficiency. It’s good news that the market is moving in this direction, though, because it validates that we chose the correct path.”
Cofounder and CTO Rabeeh Khoury adds, “Given the open-source SDK [software development kit] and tons of available software packages, our computers can be used in a huge range of scenarios limited only by your imagination; ranging from embedded, multimedia, education, cloud client, HMI and many other fields, as well as all the fun projects you always dreamed of.”

May Newsletter - Big Data Security and Privacy

Vega newsletter is published monthly by Vega BI, and distributed to our partners to facilitate pursuit of a common interest in top-notch technologies.

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. Security and privacy issues are magnified by velocity, volume, and variety of big data. Therefore, traditional security mechanisms are inadequate.

Big Data Security and Privacy is our topic of the month. Read an executive summary of our monthly technical 

Ten Big Data Security and Privacy Challenges

Introduction

The term big data refers to the massive amounts of digital information companies and governments collect about us and our surroundings. Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data—so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. Security and privacy issues are magnified by velocity, volume, and variety of big data, such as large-scale cloud infrastructures, diversity of data sources and formats, streaming nature of data acquisition and high volume inter-cloud migration. The use of large scale cloud infrastructures, with a diversity of software platforms, spread across large networks of computers, also increases the attack surface of the entire system.

Therefore, traditional security mechanisms, which are tailored to securing small-scale static (as opposed to streaming) data, are inadequate. In this paper, we highlight top ten big data-specific security and privacy challenges.

1. Secure computations in distributed programming frameworks
2. Security best practices for non-relational data stores
3. Secure data storage and transactions logs
4. End-point input validation/filtering
5. Real-time security/compliance monitoring
6. Scalable and composable privacy-preserving data mining and analytics
7. Cryptographically enforced access control and secure communication
8. Granular access control
9. Granular audits
10. Data provenance

 For more ...... See Vega's May  Newsletter

Ten Big Data Security and Privacy Challenges

Introduction

The term big data refers to the massive amounts of digital information companies and governments collect about us and our surroundings. Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data—so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. Security and privacy issues are magnified by velocity, volume, and variety of big data, such as large-scale cloud infrastructures, diversity of data sources and formats, streaming nature of data acquisition and high volume inter-cloud migration. The use of large scale cloud infrastructures, with a diversity of software platforms, spread across large networks of computers, also increases the attack surface of the entire system.

Therefore, traditional security mechanisms, which are tailored to securing small-scale static (as opposed to streaming) data, are inadequate. In this paper, we highlight top ten big data-specific security and privacy challenges.

1. Secure computations in distributed programming frameworks
2. Security best practices for non-relational data stores
3. Secure data storage and transactions logs
4. End-point input validation/filtering
5. Real-time security/compliance monitoring
6. Scalable and composable privacy-preserving data mining and analytics
7. Cryptographically enforced access control and secure communication
8. Granular access control
9. Granular audits
10. Data provenance

The 20 Hottest Startups From Israel In 2014

Israel is a 65-year-old country of about 8 million people that is home to between 4,000 and 5,000 startups.  It is second only to Silicon Valley as a hub of tech innovation.

Julie Bort, Business Insider

As Israel's tech industry matures, it has, so far, produced 68 public companies traded on Nasdaq.

It has also increasingly attracted investment by venture capitalists worldwide. And it's hottest companies have been a big target of acquisitions, particularly by big U.S. tech companies.

For instance, among the 20 hottest startups we named on our 2013 list, Waze was bought by Google for $1.1 billion, PrimeSense was bought by Apple for $345 million, Soluto was sold to a company called Asurion for an estimated $130 million, and Wix had a successful $119 million IPO.  Once again we compiled this list by asking people in the Israeli tech scene to name the buzzy, hot companies they are watching. Plus we threw in a few of our own. We used CrunchBase as our source for venture funding information.

CyActive: seed money raised

CyActive came out of stealth earlier this year as one of the first security companies to be part of the Cyber Labs incubator. The incubator is a partnership between Ben-Gurion University and one of the Israel's biggest VCs, Jerusalem Venture Partners.

CyActive claims that it has tech that can end nearly all computer viruses for all time. The founders noticed that 94% of viruses are some combination of old viruses. It is building a smart engine that can recognize that existing code, even when hackers have changed it to escape detection.

The young company has not announced how much seed money it has obtained, but JVP did invest in it.

Bizzabo: $1.5 million raised

The main reason people go to conferences is to meet other people. But dealing with a handful of business cards is ridiculous in this day and age.

Enter Bizzabo, which allows you to connect with other conference attendees through their social media profiles, or to easily add them to your email address book.

About 3,000 conferences have hired Bizzabo to to handle this social networking piece, it says.

It's backed by $1.5 million in seed money from angel investors including Jeff Pulver, co-founder in Vonage.

Israeli drone helps Brazil catch fugitive drug lord

The willingness of Israeli companies to share their technology has established IAI and Elbit as leading suppliers of unmanned aerial vehicles to Brazil.Israeli technology helped Brazil track down a wanted drug gang leader in the lead-up to the World Cup, Bloomberg News reports.
By Haaretz


Arrested on March 26, the drug king known as "Little P" was tracked for over a month by police using a Heron drone outfitted with a heat-sensing camera. Supplied by Israel Aerospace Industries, the drone enabled police to monitor the suspect day and night, including when he was out of view and earshot.

Little P became a key target for police as he expanded his control of Mare, one of Rio de Janeiro's largest favelas, or slums. In the days leading up to his arrest and the occupation that followed, 16 people were killed in Mare, according to a report by Rio’s state security secretary.

Adriano Barbosa, the chief of the federal police’s intelligence division, said the use of drones may have prevented the loss of more lives. “Instead of having to send police into the favela, you’re using drones in controlled airspace,” he said. “It reduces the risks.”

The arrest of Little P was only one of many success stories for Israeli defense technology in Brazil, a country with more than 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles) of borders and one of the fastest-growing defense budgets in the world.

As Brazil turns to unmanned aircraft for everything from border surveillance to crop inspection and crowd monitoring at World Cup games, IAI, Elbit Systems and other Israeli companies are regularly winning Brazilian government contracts in the face of larger global competitors.

One reason for that success is the willingness of the Israeli companies to share their drone technology. “Brazil wants to build its own defense industrial base, and rather than do all the R&D themselves, they like to partner up,” said Michael Blades, an analyst at consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.

“Israel has been very strong, and from what I understand more willing to transfer some of the technology.”

Elbit’s local subsidiary AEL Sistemas, a maker of avionics systems, formed a joint venture with Brazilian jetmaker Embraer SA (EMBR3) in 2011 to focus solely on drone production.

“It’s not just for events like the World Cup; these things are needed for day-to-day things as well,” said Vitor Neves, vice-president of operations at AEL Sistemas in Porto Alegre. “Public security secretaries are looking for more and more solutions.”

IAI is negotiating its second investment in a Brazilian company in order to compete for more government contracts, said Henrique Gomes, chief executive officer of IAI’s Brazilian unit. “The idea is to have a Brazilian-made drone soon,” Gomes said in a May.

Israel is reportedly the world's largest exporter of drones, with $4.62 billion of sales between 2005 and 2012 – almost 10 percent of its defense export industry in the period, according to a March 2013 report by Frost & Sullivan. Globally, the drone industry will reach $72 billion by 2020, according to Blades.

Will The Real Big Data Players Please Stand Up?

Which companies serve as the target audience for Big Data? Why are these businesses in particular benefiting from Big Data analytics?
By SQream Technologies


There have been recent articles floating around mentioning that Big Data is really just “small potatoes,” or that companies with small data aren’t benefiting from Big Data analytics. While some of these statements

contain some truth (how can a company benefit from Big Data analytics if they only have small sets of data?), there are many enterprises that are actually making improvements from Big Data analytics.

Five markets in particular are reaping the benefits of Big Data. These markets include: The Internet of Things, healthcare, cyber security, telecommunication and finance. Why are these five sectors finding the most success with Big Data? Because these markets all have large volumes of data which need to be analyzed in the fastest way possible in order to derive valuable business insights.

Big Data Gets Smart
The idea of “smart” has hit a whole new level with the Internet of Things. We’ve gone from smart people, to smart technologies (phones), to smart cities (meters), to smart structures (houses), to smart appliances (refrigerators), to smart transportation (cars) – the list seems endless.
And just as the human brain produces continuous thoughts, connected devices constantly generate large volumes of data in real-time. And sometimes, just as humans need to have their thoughts evaluated to make better decisions, the data from these devices must be analyzed to derive valuable insights.

With that in mind, it’s safe to say that Big Data is the real driving force behind the Internet of Things market. An IDC report estimates that companies could generate $1.6 billion in additional revenue and cost savings over the next four years if they are able to better understand their data.This also means that a reliable Big Data technology must be put in place to analyze the large volumes of data coming from connected devices, which is exactly what SQream Technologies aims to do with their revolutionary Big Data database. Data driven organizations using SQream’s database are able to manage more machine data in less time. The smart GPU technology behind SQream’s database enables 20X faster performance in terms of query processing and ETL runtime, providing instant analysis from machine generated data.

Microsoft Ventures opens in Israel the first cybersecurity accelerator

Summary: Microsoft and its venture capital partner are looking for the next million-dollar security idea.

By David Shamah for Zdnet Tech 

Microsoft Ventures, Microsoft's startup investment arm, is to set up its first accelerator dedicated solely to companies in the cybersecurity area.

The four-month programme aims to provide startups with tools to succeed in business, from mentorship to help with development to marketing expertise. Companies that get through the program will have an opportunity to get $1m in funding, courtesy of Jerusalem Ventures Partners (JVP), which has partnered with Microsoft Ventures on the project.

Now in its third year of operations, Microsoft Ventures' accelerators have hosted dozens of startups in the six cities across the world where it now operates — starting out in Tel Aviv, where the model for the franchise was first developed.

Companies in the Ventures Accelerator programs get to work with mentors who teach them the tricks of the trade — how to develop a presentation, how to reach and appeal to investors, and how to navigate a company towards an exit. The 40 companies that have graduated from the accelerator in the past two years have raised an average of over a $1m each.

Israel is now trailblazing another path for Microsoft Ventures, with the country hosting its first accelerator dedicated specifically to security.

The accelerator will be located in Beersheba, a city in southern Israel where a new industrial park dedicated to cybersecurity is being built. The Beersheba Advanced Technologies Park (ATP) will eventually include almost two dozen buildings with 190,000 square metres of office and shopping space.

Brazilian government hit by cyberattack

Summary: Internal communications platform has been targeted by hackers.

By Angelica Mari for Brazil Tech

The internal communications system of the Brazilian Ministry of External Relations has been hit by hackers earlier this week.

The authors of the attack to the system — which serves the External Relations ministry, as well as Brazilian embassies worldwide and carries a certain amount of sensitive information that is sometimes encrypted - and the objective of the hackers are still unknown.

According to the Ministry, this was a phishing attack, which would have reached not only staff emails, but also Intradocs, an internal communications system used by diplomats, but has not reached a separate platform that carries classified correspondence between embassies and other diplomatic posts abroad and the ministry in Brasília.

Following the attack, access to the system was temporarily suspended and passwords to the servers in Brasília and overseas were changed.

A possible leak of confidential information has not yet been confirmed — despite the fact that this would have been possible since Intradocs has been compromised. An investigation by the Federal Police and the Institutional Security Cabinet, the body responsible for the security of the Brazilian government's information, is ongoing.

Earlier this year, when Brazilian hackers told the press about their plans for cyberattacks around the time of the World Cup, the authorities did not seem to be all that concerned.

"It would be reckless for any nation to say it's 100 percent prepared for a threat," General José Carlos dos Santos, the head of the cyber command for Brazil's army, told Reuters at the time. "But Brazil is prepared to respond to the most likely cyber threats."

Brazilian IT industry grows 15 percent in 2013

Summary: The country now ranks seventh in tech investment worldwide, says IDC.

By Angelica Mari for Brazil Tech 

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Investments in hardware, software and services in Brazil have seen a better-than-expected 15.4 percent uplift in 2013 in relation to the previous year, according to an annual report on sector performance by IDC.

The growth achieved last year equals an investment total of $61.6bn and surpassed the 14.5 percent rate for

2013 predicted in the previous edition of the report and ranks Brazil seventh in the global IT investment league, according to the research, commissioned by the Brazilian Association of Software Companies (ABES).

The research also suggests that Brazil accounts for 47.4 percent of the IT market in Latin America, despite having lower economic growth than Argentina, Peru, Venezuela and Chile in 2013. The total investment in IT in 2013 means Brazil retains a 3 percent slice of the global market.

"The 15.4 percent growth in IT investments exceeded the most optimistic expectations, driven primarily by growth in sales of new mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. The software and services industry grew 10.1 percent, impacted by the appreciation of the dollar against the real," says the president at ABES, Jorge Sukarie.

About $10.7bn were generated by the software sector alone, while services represent a $14.4bn chunk of the total amount invested in IT in Brazil during 2013, according to the IDC study.

Regarding the acquisition of software for sectors of the economy, the finance sector was the main buyer, with 26.3 percent of the total investment, followed by telecommunications with 24.4 percent and manufacturing with 20.2 percent.

According to the research, the Brazilian market for software and services is made up of micro and small enterprises, accounting for 43.9 percent and 49.6 percent of the sector, respectively. Mid-sized businesses account for 5.2 percent of the market, while large businesses account for only 1.3 percent of all companies active in the sector.

Funniest Israeli Startup Videos!

Israel is known as the source of some of the most successful startups and innovations in the world. But a good product only good so far. Behind the scenes, marketing managers and copywriters are working hard to promote the startups’ products and ideas. And most of them know that there is nothing like good humor to draw consumers in.

So prepare to laugh, as we compiled a list of the  funniest Israeli startup videos. These include everything from poisoning Bar Refaeli, to featuring the fake sign language interpreter from Mandela’s funeral, to our very own NoCamels’ Managing Editor – and sometimes TV star – Avner Meyrav (guess which video).

By Yuval Haimovits 

MyCheck