I've been known to (occasionally) hit trends right on the nose, just as it happened when I listed these online marketing trends on Venturebeat and they ended up coming to life.
With 2015 rapidly nearing a close, speculations are beginning to ensue regarding new features, products, and pivots in the tech world for 2016. It’s an exciting time not only for the men and women watching and writing about the coming evolutions, but also for the people creating them.
With so many groundbreaking Israeli startups gracing the stage in 2015, one thing we can know for certain is that 2016 is going to be another booming year for businesses doing anything from interactive content, to community building, to sports and ioT.
I've been asking, researching, surveying and meeting colleagues from the industry and after a month of work, here’s the forecast for 16 startups positioned to break the global market in 2016.
Needless to say there are many, many more and I just wanted to recap 16 of them. Also, their rank in this list is completely random.
1. Umoove
Umoove has developed patented mobile face and eye tracking technology and originally brought their tech to market in a gaming app. Their second app is Uhealth, which helps its users increase concentration and focus and can be used from any mobile device. Umoove is making waves in a medical world that has traditionally used expensive hardware to facilitate precise eye tracking.
I actually got a sneak peak into Umoove's technology over a year ago when my pal Hillel Fuld let me try a game based on their system, and I was blown away.
2. LogDog
LogDog is a mobile app used by hundreds of thousands of people, designed to alert you at the first sign of a suspicious login, allowing you to take charge before any real damage is done. Their new product, The LogDog Inbox Detective scans your email account for any potential threats and assists you in getting rid of them (think shared credit card information, social security number, etc), highlighting the areas hackers relish in.
LogDog has recently raised its A round - and is an App I personally use on my Android device.
3. Pulse Play
Pulse Play is a smartwatch designed to handle energetic, intense and animated sports games—specifically tennis, table tennis, badminton and squash. It score keeps the games in real time (say goodbye to cheating friends) and connects to the cloud, so that users can find nearby opponents, see how they rank against other players worldwide, and even track their improvement over time.
Pulse Play was innovated by Andy Ram, a three-time Grand Slam champion, and raised $75,000 in crowd-funding on Indiegogo.
4. Mapme
Mapme is an interactive mapping tool that permits users to build beautiful, "smart," collaborative maps. Because its platform doesn't require any coding skill, just about anyone can create an interactive map and ask the Mapme community to join in and add to it.
Its use cases are endless—Mapme currently powers thousands of maps serving the strategic needs of governments, publishers, and other organizations. Mapme raised $1M in seed round funding and is planning to expand to the US in the coming year.
5. Apester
Apester is a storytelling platform that embeds interactive polls, surveys, personality tests, and video quizzes into big website's editorial content. In doing so, Apester is facilitating an open dialogue among the publisher, the reader, and occasionally, the brand—in turn, increasing engagement rates, time on site, circulation, and shareability tenfold.
According to Apester's CMO, Ran Peled, the platform boasts more than 250 million impressions a month and is used by 400+ leading publishers, including AOL, Telegraph, The Huffington Post, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fox News, The Next Web, Weather.com, and others.
In July 2015, Apester closed $7M in Series A Funding.
6. Webyclip
If you have cruised ebay for products, and got convinced to make a purchase after seeing a video that matched the product - you probably ran into Webyclip's technology.
The ecommerce marketplace is begging for video optimization and an interactive web experience, and this is exactly where Webyclip has found its niche, according to Ariel Shemesh, Co-founder and CEO. Webyclip was founded in 2013 and is currently at 4.2 million in funding.
Retail stores, mobile sites and cloud platforms alike are using Webyclip for their ‘videoization’ platform that is promising to skyrocket user experience and conversions.
7. Guesty
Guesty is a management service for Airbnb hosts and property managers relying on Airbnb’s platform.
According to Nathan Tobin who leads Guesty's marketing, at the beginning of the new year, Guesty will open its service to also market and manage bookings for short-term rental properties on more traditional vacation rental platforms in addition to Airbnb, such as HomeAway, Booking.com, and VRBO.
This way, with Guesty’s expertise, Airbnb hosts can expand their market listings and manage bookings from multiple platforms, and general property managers can familiarize themselves with the Airbnb trend.
Guesty has raised $1.5M in seed funding and was one of Israel's only YCombinator representatives.
8. Roojoom
If you haven't heard of "Content journey" enough in 2015, you're in for a surprise in 2016.
Interactive content and digital storytelling are being constantly talked about by UX designers and marketers alike. Roojoom, founded in 2013 and a Microsoft Ventures graduate, is essentially creating a user driven website that actively engages the user with moving images and a structured content journey.
While many products are great for assisting in creating interactive content externaly, Roojoom lets companies and brands build that journey on their own website.
9. ZCast
ZCast by Zula is a social network for podcasters, offering a platform for podcasters to broadcast live and interact with their listeners in real-time. There has been an incredible increase in podcast consumption this past year, nearly doubling since 2008, and ZCast is on track to lead the way in 2016.
ZCast has raised capital from Microsoft Ventures, Kima Ventures, 2m, Ourcrowd, and several other strategic angel investors. Although currently in beta, ZCast will be publicly available in the coming weeks.
10. Spot.IM
Spot.IM is making major waves in the field of user-generated content, especially since the launch of its new version. According to its founders Nadav Shoval and Ishay Green, Spot.IM gives publishers the opportunity to increase user engagement and retention through the use of onsite social elements such as a personalized newsfeed, realtime commenting, and localized notifications.
This way, online publishers no longer need to rely on Facebook to provide a social experience to their users and can instead keep their community thriving on their own site. Spot.IM has grown significantly in the past few years, gaining a diverse clientbase such as EW.com and LittleThings.com. They have now expanded globally, with offices in both Tel Aviv and New York.
11. RoundForest
Roundforest is a data-driven eCommerce startup that optimizes every step of the consumer's purchase path. Founded in May 2014 by Alon Gamzu and Yonatan Leowidt (who previously worked at Google and Intel), the vision of Roundforest is to help consumers discover relevant products and make better shopping decisions.
They developed a proprietary automated engine, removing the guesswork out of performance optimization. By adopting data analysis and predictive analytics technologies, they were able to operate in the world's most competitive eCommerce verticals, developing designated consumers tools for each one.
RoundForest is currently reaching more than 10M users a month.
12. SaferVPN
A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, secures your computer's internet connection to guarantee that all of the data you're sending and receiving is encrypted and secured from prying eyes. SaferVPN aims to take that one step further by bringing speed and simplicity to a now essential service in our technology dependent world.
Founded in 2013 by Sagi Gidali and Amit Bareket, and according to them the ultimate goal of SaferVPN is to differentiate themselves by appealing not only to experts in the field of online security - but also to people of all ages and with varying technical skills.
Moreover, the company strives to offer their innovation for the greater good. As proponents of Internet freedom and freedom of expression, they’ve joined forces with Advancing Human Rights and their crowdsourcing platform Movements.org to provide unrestricted Internet access to dissidents living in closed societies around the world
13. Kidoz
KIDOZ is a content discovery platform for kids that was established to provide children with a safe and relevant way to access digital tools. Recently, the company released an SDK to help app developers and content owners reach children with relevant and engaging content. With $3.5M in new funding, the company plans to expand the KIDOZ Network and work with developers to provide children with great digital content.
14. Veed.me
Veed.me is a simple e-Commerce type platform for modern marketers to order video production services. With a fast-growing repository of priced videos created by a vetted community of pro videographers, Veed.me demystifies a once complicated process and makes ordering custom video content as easy as “Browse, Search, Buy.”
Veed.me previously established partnerships with Google, YouTube and several large U.S agencies. In 2015, Veed.me closed its seed round with investors that included Marker, AOL and UpWest Labs.
15. ZUtA Labs
ZUtA Labs took a look at the modern printing landscape and decided something needed to be done. So they revolutionized it and invented the Robotic Printer, a little robot that runs on the paper and prints, instead of having the paper feed through the device, allowing the printer to be very small in size and at the same time print on different sizes of paper.
The company launched with a successful Kickstarter campaign, has won prestigious awards, including the Best of Innovation at CES 2015, and is preparing to release its product in 2016 together with the top retailers across the globe.
16. Shopnfly
Shopnfly aims to bring ease and convenience to international travelers by digitizing duty free shopping. Its platform allows users to browse duty free shops online, order the items, and pick them up at their destination, whether at the airport, hotel, or on the flight itself. Shopnfly is available in nearly 100 airports worldwide, and with the travel shopping industry topping $260B this year, Shopnfly’s influence is sure to only increase.
They are currently partnered with Amadeus and EL AL and are also in the midst of launching piloting programs with EL AL, Lagardere, IAG, and Chinese Online Travel Agency.
Israel’s burgeoning startup world is a stage for big ideas and and brilliant executionists as each year proves more and more fruitful for startups spanning all genres. These 16 startups are bracing to make a huge impact on the startup ecosystem in their relative fields.
