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<ul><li><keyword id="9083152" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="waze-founder">Waze founder</keyword> <keyword id="9082937" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Uri-Levine">Uri Levine</keyword> has been appointed as an independent director of <keyword id="6354512" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Infosys">Infosys</keyword>.</li><li>Levine founded Waze in 2007 and built it to be one of the largest community-based traffic and navigation apps. Waze was acquired by Google in June 2013 for a whopping $1.1 billion.</li><li>Levine has also founded “The Founders Kitchen” – an investment fund.</li></ul>Indian IT giant Infosys today announced that they have brought in Waze founder Uri Levine as an independent director. <br /><br />“We are delighted to welcome Uri on the board of Infosys. He is a much admired serial tech entrepreneur with extensive and in-depth business understanding of emerging technologies and will bring tremendous value to the company,” said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, independent director and chairperson of the nomination and remuneration committee of Infosys.<br /><br />Levine will be on the board of Infosys for three years, subject to approval of shareholders, the company said. <br /><br />Levine founded Waze in 2007 and built it to be one of the largest community-based traffic and navigation apps. Waze was acquired by Google in June 2013 for a whopping $1.1 billion. However, Levine <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/waze-cofounder-sold-his-startup-to-google-for-over-1-billion-but-he-still-doesnt-own-a-house/articleshow/48490173.cms">reportedly </a>walked out with $38 million and decided to venture out on his own, instead of joining Google unlike his colleagues at Waze.<br /><br />“My vision is specifically intended to disrupt inefficient markets and improve under-functioning services, focus on solving ‘BIG problems’, saving consumers time and money, while empowering them,” the Israeli entrepreneur says on his website.<br /><br />He is also a trustee in Israel’s Tel Aviv University. As a mentor, he also teaches an academic workshop called “How to Build a Startup” to undergraduate and graduate level business students.<br /><br />Levine has also founded ‘The Founders Kitchen’ – a fund which invests in startups that address “big problems, disrupt inefficient markets and improve dysfunctional services, empowering users with relevant and timely data and tools”. He made several bets on startups like Fibo, FairFly, Moovit, Seetree and LiveCare.<br /><br />See Also:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/corporates/news/infosys-earnings-q4-2020-revenue-dividend-profit-and-margins/articleshow/75252356.cms">Infosys’ fourth-quarter revenue is 0.8% less than three months ago</a><br />

Uri Levine, the man who sold his startup to Google for a billion dollars, now sits on the board of Infosys

<ul class="summary-list"><li>What should you do if you're on the fence about a job candidate?</li><li>Speak with their references, of course, the Waze cofounder Uri Levine says.</li></ul><p>Speaking with a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/reference-checks-key-to-hiring-extraordinary-people-2013-10">job candidate's references</a> can help you decide whether they're a good fit for the job. But what exactly do you ask them?</p><p>Uri Levine, a cofounder of the traffic and navigation app <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-waze">Waze</a>, has a few questions he always falls back on. He discussed his process in an <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4ORGGEJcA">episode</a> of "Lenny's Podcast" released Sunday.</p><p>"Even in the hiring process, most of us are going to interview candidates and then decide that they like or dislike the candidate, but they don't know," Levine said. "Then speak with someone that does know. Speak with the reference."</p><p>Levine keeps the questions simple when talking to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-ask-someone-to-be-a-reference">applicant references</a>.</p><p>"Would you hire him or her?" he asks them. "If they tell me yes, then I would ask them, 'Why didn't you?'"</p><p>In some cases, the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-interviewer-why-tech-hiring-process-is-long-2023-9">hiring decision</a> is clearer.</p><p>"Someone asked me for a reference on someone that I really enjoyed working with — I really think highly of them," he said. "And he asked me if they can schedule a call for half an hour, and I said, 'Look, I'm traveling. I don't really have time. But if you want an email in one word, take the guy.' And then he was trying to outsmart and ask me back, 'Can I have that in two words?' And I said, 'Yeah, take the guy fast.' When you know, you know. That's it."</p><p>Levine also discussed other hiring tips from his <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/waze-cofounder-explains-test-used-decde-fire-employee-quit-2024-6">recent book</a>, "Fall in Love With the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs."</p><p>He follows a "30-day test," for example, in which he puts a note on his calendar for 30 days after he's hired someone to ask himself whether, knowing what he knows now about them, he'd still bring them on board. If not, it's probably best to let them go, in Levine's opinion.</p><p>Levine did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p>

Waze cofounder explains the 2 questions he asks a job candidate's reference

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-waze">Waze's</a> cofounder said underperforming employees drive away top performers and can harm a company.</li><li>Cofounder Uri Levine said he uses a 30-day test to determine if he should fire a new employee. </li></ul><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-waze-co-founder-spends-his-money-2015-8">Waze cofounder Uri Levine</a> has founded 10 companies, served on the board of 20, and advised more than 50 — and he believes underperforming employees can be a liability to a startup.</p><p>Levine said on an episode of "Lenny's Podcast," <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4ORGGEJcA">released</a> Sunday, that when there are people who shouldn't be on a team, top performers leave. Then, it becomes "mission impossible" to achieve success.</p><p>That's why Levine likes to cut to the chase when it comes to firing, as he detailed in his new book "Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs." In his chapter about firing and hiring, he said in the interview that he implemented a 30-day test to determine whether to fire a new employee.</p><p>The test involves marking his calendar 30 days after the person starts the job. Levine said once it hits the 30-day mark, he asks himself, "Knowing what I know today, would I hire this person?"</p><p>If the answer is yes, he suggests reaching out to the employee immediately, giving them more equity in the company, and buying "their loyalty for life." If the answer is no, he said the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bringing-whole-self-to-work-limits-jobs-politics-google-firings-2024-4">employee should be fired immediately</a>.</p><p>"They're already set on a trajectory of not being successful," Levine said. "And they are creating damage to you, to the rest of the team, and to themselves."</p><p>Levine said the employee deserves to be successful, but in this hypothetical case, it's not going to happen there. The test prevents a situation in which a team faces long-term issues that came from a single employee and were clear out of the gate. Levine said this was often the case when he spoke with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-startup-shutdowns-in-2023-2023-12#:~:text=About%203%2C200%20startups%20failed%20this,with%20funding%20amid%20economic%20uncertainty.">entrepreneurs whose startups failed</a>.</p><p>Levine said that's part of why he named one of his book chapters "Firing and Hiring" instead of the reverse. The cofounder said CEOs need to learn how to make hard decisions before easy ones.</p><p>Waze did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment ahead of publication.</p><p>Levine said this test can be applied to "everything in your life," including relationships and directions you're going in life.</p><p>"Ask yourself, knowing what you know today, would you do something different? If the answer is yes, then do something different today," Levine said. "Today is the first day of the rest of your life."</p><p>The cofounder said he has five children in their 20s and early 30s, and they struggle with figuring out their career paths. He said he tells them to ask themselves why they don't like their jobs and if they can change something. Levine said he would follow up in 90 days, and if it's still the case, they should quit.</p><p>"If you don't set a timeline, it'll never happen," Levine said.</p>

Waze cofounder explains the test he uses to figure out whether to fire a new employee — and how it can be used to figure out if you should switch jobs

<strong>Giftcard Marketplace Zeek Raises $9.5M in Series B </strong><br />
<br />
Tel-Aviv based online gift card marketplace, Zeek, has raised $9.5 million in Series B round of financing led by Scale-Up Venture Capital. The round also saw participation from Blumberg Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, FJ LABS (Fabrice Grinda), Waze founder Uri Levine, Emery Capital, Ton Ventures, Radiant Venture Capital, iAngels and Target Global. Zeek stated that the investment will further be used in growth and expansion overseas.<br />
<br />
Founded by Daniel Zelkind, Ziv Isaiah, Uri Levine, Itay Erel and Pierre Schurmann in 2013, the company works as a mobile app and website that allows users to buy gift cards and vouchers from their favourite brands at a discount and sell unwanted gift vouchers for cash, providing a solution to the estimated $100 billion of unused gift cards globally.<br />
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<strong>Agritech Startup Dealing in Deep Learning Capabilities Secure $7M</strong><br />
<br /> Israeli startup <keyword id="3517788" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Prospera">Prospera</keyword>, machine learning agritech company, has raised $7 million in series A round of funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The round also saw participation from Hishtil and prominent angel investors.<br />
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Founded by Daniel Koppel in 2014, the company creates advanced techniques in data science and deep learning to provide farmers accurate remote agronomy and management solutions.<br />
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<strong><keyword id="36015" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="ian">IAN</keyword> Invests in Shared Accommodation Startup Square Plums</strong><br />
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Square Plums, shared accommodation startup, gas closed $446,000 in a round led by Indian Angel Network (IAN), and VGN Prakash, Amitabh Shrivastava, Krishna Jha and Ravindra Krishnappa. As a part of contract, VGN Prakash will be joining the board of the company.<br />
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Founded by Rajesh Kumar Kotta, Hemant Attray and Krishna Jha in 2015, the startup provides fully furnished houses to bachelors, and also helps users to find a roommate. It also helps owners by letting out a fully furnished house with up to 50% higher rentals without even spending on furnishing the house. <br />
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<strong>Mobile Learning Platform Secures $700k of Seed Funding</strong><br />
<br /> Mobile learning platform, <keyword id="3362619" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Byndr">Byndr</keyword>, has raised $700,000 in seed funding from a group of prominent angel investors, Education Design Studio and Ben Franklin Technology Partners.<br />
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Founded by Joseph Freed, Praveen Vangeepuram and Marc Garabedian in 2015, the startup offers mobile-first communication and learning management platform for education in emerging markets, where millions of students only access the internet via their mobile device<br />
 <br />

<b>FundUp: Agritech
Startup Prospera Raises $7M, IAN Invests in Square Plums & More</b>

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Anthony Harvey/Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">Uri Levine</p></div><p></p></div></div>Uri Levine will flat-out tell you that the co-founders of Waze didn't own much of the company when they sold it to Google for more than $1 billion in 2013.</p><p>Most of the money went to the investors, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-google-bought-waze-the-inside-story-2015-8">he told Business Insider.</a></p><p>The gossip in Israel is that Levine didn't walk with that much cash given the total amount involved. One <a href="http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-1000851150">Israeli news site</a> estimated his take was about $38 million, or about 3%.</p><p>Even so, that's still a lot of money. Enough to immediately go out on his own instead of working for Google. (The rest of the co-founders and execs did choose to go to Google.)</p><p>We heard tales that Levine was enjoying a jet-setting life, dashing off the Alps to ski at the drop of the hat.</p><p>That's sort of true, and sort of not.</p><p>It's true he's a big skier and travels frequently to the Alps. But this was a hobby he was into before Waze was bought, going four or five times a year for week-long ski trips, he told us.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Thomson Reuters</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>That's a first-world hobby, for sure, but a plane ticket from Tel Aviv to the Alps isn't astronomical. It can cost less than $500 for the 4+ hour flight.</p><p>His big splurge, he said, was to spend an 8-week vacation in the Alps skiing after the deal closed.</p><p>And the first thing he bought after the acquisition? A new mountain bike, a carbon Specialized StumpJumper. That's a good bike that can run you over $3,000, but it's not a top-of-the-line splurge like an Specialized S-Works StumpJumper, which costs about $10,000.</p><p>Why didn't he get the top-of-the-line bike? He's not "that aggressive" of a rider, he told us. And he likes to commute on his bike, too.</p><p>Has he bought houses or cars? Nope.</p><p>"Nothing crazy. I live in a rental apartment. It makes perfect sense for me," he told us. And he doesn't own a house in the Alps either.</p><p>What he does spend his money on is in investing in startups. He's become a major Angel investor <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/china-is-all-over-israel-startups-2015-8">in Israel's hot startup scene</a>.</p><p>The investment theme he loves to back? Saving money.</p><p>For instance, he's chairman of a startup he launched while still working at Waze, called <a href="https://www.feex.com/">FeeX</a>. That's a service that helps you save money on financial services and investment funds. (Levine says saves its users an average of $50,000).</p><p>Another startup is <a href="http://www.fairfly.com/">Fairfly</a>. It monitors airfare prices <em>after</em> people buy their tickets and if it finds a lower one including cancellation fees, it re-books the flight for them.</p><p>"People over-pay $100 billion a year because don't check the prices after they booked a ticket," he says. So, to his way of thinking, Fairfly is looking at a $100 billion market opportunity.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider/Julie Bort</span></p><p class="caption">Uri Levine</p></div><p></p></div></div>Then there's <a href="https://angel.co/fairsale">FairSale,</a> an app in stealth that saves you money on stuff you already bought. Scan your receipt with your phone and if that product goes on sale, it helps you collect on a store's price guarantee. Levine says people throw away $130 billion by ignoring such low-price guarantees.</p><p><a href="https://www.zeek.me/">Zeek </a>is a service that helps you buy or trade store credit/gift vouchers, rather than letting them expire.</p><p>Engie is new one in the works. It's an app that saves you money on car repairs by connecting to your car's diagnostics computer so you know exactly what's wrong before you take the car to the mechanic.</p><p>Plus, he's involved with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pub/uri-levine/0/89/853">handful of other startups</a>.</p><p>One interesting note: he has five kids between the ages 14 and 25. The two oldest, ages 21 and 25, are both doing startups themselves.</p><p>Can they count on their dad, one of their nation's most famous and prolific angel investors, to back them?</p><p>Yes, but only to a point.</p><p>"I want them to be successful and happy, independently and not because of me," he tells us.</p><p>So he's willing to offer seed money but no more.</p><p>"In general, I'm not supporting them after the seed round. If they are unable to raise funds independently, then sooner or later they will fail," he says.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/slacking-red-bull-backflip-sport-baylines-2015-6">People doing backflips on a two-inch wide strap is a real sport called slacklining</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="J1cDZvdToyxik-Ww0y-RX8k6QQqJs9ZD" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Waze cofounder sold his startup to Google for over $1 billion, but he still doesn't own a house

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider/Julie Bort</span></p><p class="caption">Uri Levine</p></div><p></p></div></div>In the weeks that preceded Google's $1.15 billion purchase of Israeli map app Waze, there was a constant stream of leaks about the deal, and about a bidding war between Google, Facebook, and Apple.</p><p>The sale was a milestone for <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/china-is-all-over-israel-startups-2015-8">Israel's young-but-huge startup community</a>: The first Israeli consumer app company to be bought for $1 billion-plus. In an instant, the whole "Startup Nation" decided to quit aiming for fast exits and build billion-dollar companies instead.</p><p>Among Israel's tight-night tech scene, some say the leaks were orchestrated by Waze's top PR person at the time. Waze's CEO at the time, Noam Bardin, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140403204459-174756-a-unicorn-in-israel">later wrote about the deal</a>, saying one of Waze's "mistakes" was to sell off too big of a chunk of the company to venture investors in its Series A financing, hinting that Waze felt obligated to sell because of its investors. </p><p>Business Insider recently met with Waze co-founder and former CEO Uri Levine, the only one of Waze's co-founder executives who didn't go work at Google after the deal closed.</p><p>He's working as an angel investor to a bunch of startups (many come from his own ideas), and as chairman for one of them, <a href="https://www.feex.com/">FeeX.</a></p><p>We asked him to tell us about those leaks and what happened. He was as open about it as he could be. (We've heard from people who sold their companies to Google that a lifetime gag order can be one of Google's conditions for the deal.)</p><p>The upshot from his point of view:</p><ul><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">There was no orchestrated PR push to leak info.</span></li><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Waze did never hired a banker and was not looking to sell.</span></li><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The offers rolled in when Waze was in the middle of a financing round.</span></li><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The co-founders had told themselves in the early days that if someone ever offered them $1 billion, they would sell.</span></li><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Most of the money went to the investors, yet Levine is still using VC funding for his current startups because it's "part of the game."</span></li></ul><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Here's a lightly edited transcript from the interview:</span></p><p><strong>Business Insider: There were a lot of rumors and leaks before Waze was sold to Google. Some people say they were orchestrated by Waze. What really happened?</strong></p><p><strong>Uri Levine: </strong>So let's start with the facts. Waze never did any PR campaigns about M&amp;A, and not about any of the dialogues that we had.</p><p><strong>BI: But you heard those stories about the leaks, right?</strong></p><p><strong>UL:</strong> They were all over. They were in the newspaper. I read them in the morning, and I figured out maybe there's something going on here. [He laughed.] But we never published anything except after the deal was signed. Eventually there was a dialog with Google and they offered what they offered us and we said yes.</p><p><strong>BI: Was there a bidding war going on?</strong></p><p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Waze</span></p><p class="caption">RideWith, by Waze</p></div><p></p></div></div>UL:</strong> I don't know what made Google trigger to make us an offer. But they made us an offer. The terms were right, so we accepted.</p><p><strong>BI: Were there bankers involved?</strong></p><p><strong>UL:</strong> We didn't have a banker. Not before and not during and we were not looking to get acquired. But usually this is the case, right? You are making significant progress and you get the attention of everyone.</p><p>During the time that Google made an offer, we were in a round of financing dialogs. Usually when you are in a financing round and there is an offer, then it could make sense.</p><p>What made Google pretty attractive for us that No. 1, the company stayed in Israel. No. 2, we remained with our mission, to help drivers avoid traffic jams. </p><p><strong>BI: What does it feel like to get a $1 billion offer for your company?</strong></p><p><strong>UL:</strong> Two thoughts, at the same time. One of them is, "Oh wow! I never saw a billion dollars. I don't even know how to write it." So that was impressive.</p><p>And at the same time, we were telling ourselves that we are doing the right thing and moving in the right direction, and if we keep doing that, then maybe we would be worth much more than that.</p><p>But the $1 billion mark was important milestone for us. Way before, we said that if someone offered us a billion we will sell the company. It was a target, a mark and important amount for us.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider/Julie Bort</span></p><p class="caption"> A table made out of a long board at Google's Tel Aviv, Israel offices where the Waze team works. </p></div><p></p></div></div>This was the first time there was a billion-dollar consumer app out of Israel. We thought we were setting a new beacon for the industry.</p><p><strong>BI: And you did. You <a href="The startup scene in Israel is going bonkers, and the Chinese are swooping in">can see how you changed Israel </a>in just couple of years.</strong></p><p><strong>UL:</strong> Yes. Today when I speak with young entrepreneurs, their whole motive and their beacon model is different than it was a few years ago.</p><p><strong>BI: So your current startup, FeeX raised $9.5 million from VCs like Blumberg Capital and Chinese billionaire Li Ka-shing's fund Horizon Ventures. Why raise money instead of self-funding? Do you like the VC system?</strong></p><p><strong>UL:</strong> The VC industry is very problematic.</p><p>From the entrepreneur's perspective at the end of the day, when Waze was acquired, the employees and the founders had too little of it. Most of the money went to the VCs and to their investors. The reality is that this is what happens.</p><p>If you are raising an A round, and this would be an average Israeli [deal], of $3 million funding at a $6 million pre-money valuation, and you are putting aside a pool of options at 10%, you already gave up 33% of the company.</p><p>If the next round is going to be similar ratios, you're going to be diluted by another third, you'll already be left with about 40%. Take that one or two more rounds, you'll be left with 15%, and that's it.</p><p>[As for FeeX], Blumberg was the first investor and Horizons came a little bit later. I think we are still in a pretty good position as founders in terms of equity. But eventually we will be diluted further. And that's part of the game.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/song-made-using-coins-drummer-music-video-2015-7">This drummer created a whole song using only the sound of coins</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="s1ZDM1djoe2BbhjqVRCIwkLubOlkcQgk" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Waze founder tells us how its $1 billion sale to Google really went down

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>FeeX</span></p><p class="caption">Part of the FeeX team. Levine is on the right. </p></div><p></p></div>After Google bought the social-navigation app Waze <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/waze-ceo-explains-why-he-just-sold-his-app-to-google-for--1-billion-2013-6" target="_blank">for $1.1 billion last June</a>, it's co-founder Uri Levine decided that he wasn't done trying to solve big problems. </p>
<p>Today, Levine and his co-founders - Yoav Zurel, David Weisz, and Eyal Halahmi - launched FeeX, a startup that tackles the hidden fees that financial services dupe people into paying.  </p>
<p>Like Waze uses crowd-sourcing to help users avoid traffic jams, FeeX will work with crowdsourced info to help users compare retirement plans, mortgages, life insurance options, and more (though it's launching with retirement capabilities). The service is free for now, though the company plans to roll out premium features that it will charge for eventually.  </p>
<p>Dubbed the "Robin Hood Of Fees," FeeX will analyze a users financial data to help them understand how much they're losing in hidden fees and, if it's a lot, find better, cheaper plan alternatives. Levine became interested in fighting outrageous hidden fees after he discovered that his bank charged him a mysterious $250 annual fee. When he called it out, the bank waved the fee, because that charge was essentially trimmable fat. Right now, Americans spend about $600 billion a year on hidden or obscure financial fees.</p>
<p>Before the company launched, Levine mentored two of the company's co-founders, including FeeX's CEO, Yoav Zurel, at an Israeli entrepreneurship program. Zurel told Business Insider that after Levine asked him to search for more hidden fees like his own, he realized that his own parents would lose about a third of their retirement savings to fees they didn't understand. They didn't know how much they were paying, so they were paying way, way too much. </p>
<p>"<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Both of my parents are highly educated and well-aware of their expenses - They've been working very hard to have a great retirement," he says. "And then there were all these fees they didn't even know about. That's what made me emotionally attached to this problem."<br /></span></p>
<p>The FeeX team believes that by fostering awareness and transparency, it will push people to choose better services. This, in turn, will motivate financial providers to offer plans with lower fees. </p>
<p>FeeX is 28-year-old Zurel's first company, and he says that it's exciting to work with Levine, who's reentered the startup world even after Waze's enormous Google sale.</p>
<p>"<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">He can't ignore big problems - he must take action," Zurel says. "It's very inspiring."</span></p>

After Selling His Startup To Google For $1.1 Billion, Waze Co-Founder Is Working On Another Startup  

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider/Julie Bort</span></p><p class="caption">Waze and FeeX co-founder Uri Levine</p></div><p></p></div></div>This summer, it's raining unicorns - tech startups valued at more than $1 billion - and as a result the Israeli tech scene is going absolutely crazy.</p><p>Business Insider just spent a week in Israel meeting with over a dozen tech companies, and VCs. They all told us:</p><p><strong>Everyone is dreaming of becoming the next unicorn.</strong> Instead of selling their startups for $1 million to $30 million, founders are turning down multi-million acquisition offers wanting to build big companies.</p><p><strong>2015 is a record-breaker for </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>VC funding.</strong> For the first half in 2015, 342 companies have attracted $2.1 billion, up from 334 companies nabbing $1.6 billion in the first half of 2014.</span></p><p><strong>The private equity bankers have arrived in droves</strong>, including Blackstone, SilverLake, KKR, Apax Partners, TPG, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, and they're writing writing huge checks.</p><p><strong>Chinese investors are swarming the country</strong>, joining Israeli VC funds as limited partners as well as doing a lot of huge, direct investments into startups, too.<br /><br style="line-height: 1.5em;" /><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Chris McGrath/Getty Images</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>"If we're going to do $4 billion in venture in 2015, the estimate I heard is that at least $500 million of that will be Chinese money, and that's direct investment not including the LP stuff," Israeli powerhouse VC Jon Medved told Business Insider. <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"And I think that's probably underestimated." </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Medved, founder of </span><a href="https://www.ourcrowd.com/">investment startup OurCrowd</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and is widely known as one of the fathers of Israel's tech startup scene.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Chinese investors are "at all the parties" a startup founder told us.</span><br style="line-height: 1.5em;" /><br style="line-height: 1.5em;" /><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The joke here is that Israeli border control needs to open up a special customs line "just for Chinese investors with bags of money that they can just get in the country for free," Medved quipped.</span></p><p> This hot economy has led to ... </p><ul><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Big well-funded Israeli companies starting to acquire other Israeli companies for big sums of money, too.</span></li><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The first crop of Israeli serial entrepreneurs, such as Avigdor Willens, who sold Annapurna to Amazon earlier this year for a reported $350 to $375 million. Willens sold his first company, Galileo, </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">for $2.7 billion in stock back in 2000 to Marvell Technologies.</span></li></ul><h2>It started when Google dropped a billion on Waze</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider/Julie Bort</span></p><p class="caption">Israeli flags fly in Jerusalem</p></div><p></p></div></div>When Google bought Waze for $1 billion in 2013, it was a milestone event for the country, says Medved. </p><p>"Billion-dollar companies are now all over the place. Waze was the first and most important," he told us.</p><p> Waze co-founder Uri Levine explained to Business Insider, "This was the first time a billion-dollar app, and a consumer app, came out of Israel," and it set "a new beacon for Israel" telling entrepreneurs to aim higher than a quick exit.</p><p>The next year, Japan's Rakuten (the eBay of Japan) acquired Israeli messaging app Viber for $900 million  and unicorn fever in the country began.</p><p>Over and over, startup founders told us they had no interest in selling their successful companies, some of which were doing millions of dollars in revenue, some of which were doing hundreds of millions in revenue.<span class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>They wanted to grow their companies past $1 billion to many billions.</p><p>"Israel entrepreneurs are obsessed with building unicorns,"<span class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>Hillel Fuld, CMO of Israeli startup Zula told us.</p><h2> Billion dollar startups include …</h2><ul><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Taboola (who raised $117 million in February, $157 million total)</span></li><li>IronSource (who raised $105 million in two rounds from private equity funds run by JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley),</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Outbrain (who filed confidential SEC documents for an IPO at a reported $1 billion valuation)</span></li><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Conduit, who said it was the first Israeli internet unicorn, in 2012</span></li></ul><p>There's also a new crop of public tech companies worth $1 billion:</p><ul><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">MobileEye: IPO'd in 2014, with $12 billion market cap today</span></li><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">CyberArk, also IPO'd in 2014, market cap of about $2 billion</span></li><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Wix, IPO'd in 2013, market cap of about $900 million</span></li><li>And there's some half-unicorns, like Varonis Systems, which IPO'd in 2014 and has a market cap of nearly $600 million, nothing to sneeze at.</li></ul><h2><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Asian money everywhere </span></h2><p> "The Asia stuff is very dramatic, very real and very new," says Medved.</p><p>"China is the big story. But Japan for example - there had never been a visit of a Japanese Prime Minister to Israel before. In all the years of Israel's existence, what did they have to come here for? This year, the Japanese Prime Minister shows up for four days, all tech." <br /><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>OurCrowd</span></p><p class="caption">OurCrowd founder, Jon Medved</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Meanwhile, Korea's Samsung Ventures has now made "8 investments here over the last year," says Medved. Plus, "there are now Israeli companies going to list on the Singapore exchange."</p><p>Israel will also be hosting the Indian Prime Minister for the first time. In February, Indian company Infosys (now run by SAP's former US CTO Vishal Sikka) bought Israeli company Panaya for $200 million. India has plans to build an R&amp;D center here. </p><p>Still China overshadows them all. Investment are pouring in  from Baidu, Fosun, Alibaba, Tencent, RenRen and others.</p><p>Famous Chinese angel investor (and billionaire) Li Ka Shing and his Horizon Ventures fund are all over the country.<span class="Apple-converted-space">  </span>Horizon was an early investor in Waze. And he's invested in about 29 Israeli startups, including Waze founder Levine's latest baby, FeeX, (raised $9 million).</p><p>If there's a downside to all of this, its that Israel is starting to experience a severe talent shortage. They are now poaching each other's employees and trying to keep employees from leaving by offering better and better Valley-like perks.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider/Julie Bort</span></p><p class="caption">IronSource CEO and co-founder Tomer Bar Zeev and deputy CEO and co-founder Omer Kaplan</p></div><p></p></div></div>IronSource, for example, flies its 550 employees to one exotic offsite meeting every year. The whole company just got back from Greece.  </p><p>"Once a year, we party," CEO Tomer Bar Zeev told us. "That builds culture.  It's one of the best investments we can make, investing in the company."</p><p class="p2">If that fails, Chinese billionaire <span>Li Ka Shing has an answer. He</span> also donated $130 million to Israel's Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology (like the MIT of Israel), one of the largest ever donations received by an Israeli university.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/israeli-firm-solar-power-energy-business-invention-2014-9">An Israeli Company Just Solved Solar Energy's Single Most Mystifying Problem</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="1jbHlvcDqSkVm1c2NvsGYgno10q1fVAD" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The startup scene in Israel is going bonkers, and the Chinese are swooping in

<p><div class="image-container float_right click-to-enlarge" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><a title_source="Business Insider/Julie Bort" title_caption="Pixtr cofounder Aviv Gadot" class="zoomin" href="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/51770484eab8ea3c30000000-960/pixtr%20aviv%20gadot.jpg"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a></div><p class="source">Business Insider/Julie Bort</p><p class="caption">Pixtr cofounder Aviv Gadot</p></div>Aviv Gadot, cofounder and CEO of Israeli startup <a href="http://pixtr.me/">Pixtr</a>, is a good-looking man with a beautiful wife. He loves taking photos of her with his iPhone and posting them to Facebook, but she was never happy about it.</p>
<p>"My wife was always grabbing my phone and deleting most of my pictures. She's beautiful and she feels bad about how she looks in photos. That's wrong. I wanted her to feel good about herself," he said.</p>
<p>So, he used his engineering skills to build an app that would automatically airbrush each photo to counteract his less-than-perfect photography skills.</p>
<p>It turns out, lots of people are terrible photographers who take ugly pictures of their loved ones. So with two of his college buddies, he turned the app into a company, Pixtr.</p>
<p>Here's how the app works: Open the picture on your iPhone and open the app. It uses face recognition software to scan the photo and make minor adjustments like slimming a nose or a jawline, trimming eyebrows, correcting camera distortion. It takes into account things like sex, hair color, age.</p>
<p>In a few seconds the photo is "fixed." Notice the eyes, nose, lips, all done instantly and automatically.</p>
<p><div class="image-container click-to-enlarge" style="width:620px"><div class="image"><a title_source="Pixtr/Aviv Gadot" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/517700a3eab8ea3023000006-960/pixtr-before.jpg"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a></div><p class="source">Pixtr/Aviv Gadot</p></div>It doesn't do anything big, like Photoshop 20 pounds off your tummy or let you swap in a body builder's biceps.</p>
<p>The app is free. Pixtr charges $1 to edit a batch of photos, like all the pics from your vacation. That's $1 per batch, not per photo, too.</p>
<p>Pixtr is one of 13 cloud computing companies that just graduated from <keyword id="10387" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Microsoft">Microsoft</keyword> second Azure accelerator program in <keyword id="6355882" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="israel">Israel</keyword>. Gadot is in the process of lining up investors and has already signed one big angel: Uri Levine, co-founder of the navigation app, Waze. (Waze is like the Facebook of Israel, today's hottest homegrown startup).</p>
<p>The app launched two weeks ago but the company just came out of stealth this week. With no marketing, it already has 1,500 downloads mostly from Denmark, Italy and in Los Angeles.</p>
<p><em>(Disclosure: Microsoft paid some of the travel expenses for Business Insider to attend the cloud computing event in Tel Aviv on Tuesday where we met Pixtr.)</em></p>

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