Three Israeli companies made the "Business Insider" list of top 20 international start-ups: Animation Lab Ltd., MyHeritage Ltd., and SohoOS Ltd..
"Business Insider" writes, "The world is big, and Silicon Valley is no longer the center of innovation. This means a lot of innovative, strong startups are getting founded outside the US. And, maybe, just maybe, they're coming over to eat your lunch."
The list of top 20 start-ups includes companies from the US, Europe, Israel, India, and two each from Kenya and South Africa.
MyHeritage already has 57 million users, 18 million family trees, and 800 million profiles, which include hundreds of millions of family portraits. The company has raised $24 million since CEO Gilad Japhet founded it in 2003.
"Business Insider" says, "Online genealogy is big business - Ancestry.com is publicly traded and worth $1.5 billion. And Israel-based MyHeritage is a strong contender in the space, despite being turned down by investors for the first years it was around. And now MyHeritage wants to take over the world."
Animation Lab was founded at Jerusalem Venture Partners Media Labs four years ago in Jerusalem. JVP managing partner Erel Margalit sought to gather together Israel's best creative minds and empower their work with state-of-the-art technologies.
"Business Insider" says, "Animation Lab has an ambitious plan to make animated feature films and be as successful as Pixar. It's currently working on its first film, The Wild Bunch."
SohoOS offers small businesses business and customer management tools for free. The company has raised $1.25 million from TheTime since CEO Ron Daniel founded the company in 2009.
"Business Insider" says, "SohoOS is an ambitious Israeli startup that wants to make it as easy as possible to run a small business. To that end, it's taking all the online tools that small businesses typically pay for - think CRM, accounting, invoicing - and giving them away for free. And it's building a big social network where entrepreneurs can interact and trade tips."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 11, 2011
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