I’m excited and proud today to announce the launch of the TechAviv Angels. Born out of the TechAviv spirit of giving back to our community, the TechAviv Angels are a group of Israel’s most successful Internet, Web & Mobile startup founders that have come together to help identify, fund and mentor our next generation of big winners. We’re an informal Angel Club that gathers every two months in Tel Aviv to see pitches by Israel’s most promising Angel-stage startups. Our first “Demo Night” is November 24th. If you’re an Angel-stage Web, Internet or Mobile startup seeking funding apply here. The “Angels” tab will also be a permanent fixture at the top of this site. Applying and presenting is 100% free. Like Jason, we don’t believe startups should pay to pitch, ever.

Over the past two years of running TechAviv Founders Club events worldwide it had become painfully apparent that there are great inefficiencies in the pairing of quality founders with quality Angels in Israel. We hope to establish a platform that streamlines and ignites the funding of more early-stage Internet, Web and Mobile startups by investors that can play a pivotal role in their success. We believe these startups are the future of Israeli hi-tech.

Dream Team

Founding members of the TechAviv Angels include the founders of Israel’s biggest Internet, Web and Mobile exits over the last decade, including Yair Goldfinger (ICQ), Amir Ashkenazi (Shopping.com), Yaron Galai (Quigo), Ofer Adler (Incredimail), Jon Medved (Accent), Oren Dobronsky (Hotbar, SmartShopper), Eilon Tirosh (Exalink, Olista), Eden Shochat (Atternity), Itai Kohavi (Neat Group, Comfy), Ofer Vilensky (Jungo), Nimrod Lev (kSolo) and Avichay Nissenbaum (Yedda). See Full 30 Member List. Combined exits of the founding members exceed $3 Billion USD.

TechAviv Angels will invest individually at first but that may change down the road. Collectively we provide all presenting startups with critical feedback and connections. The platform is designed to facilitate more early investments in quality startups by “Mentor-Angels” that have extensive hands-on experience running similar businesses. We ultimately hope to foster lasting personal relationships that will lead to the building of great Israeli companies. As such, also participating in our Demo Nights are Israel’s top early-stage VCs that have a proven track record of backing successful Internet, Web or Mobile startups. Participating VCs include partners from Sequoia, Benchmark, Bessemer, Gemini, Genesis, Carmel, Canaan, Rhodium, YL Ventures and Kaedan.

VCs in An Angel Club!?

Many have asked why we’re including VCs in TechAviv Angels Demo Nights. The answer is we’re all about helping great founders succeed, period. In some cases an Angel-stage startup’s ideal investment partner may be a forward-thinking VC, Angel or both. Regardless, having a relationship with the leading people in our business is critical to a founder’s success. The TechAviv Angels have been lucky enough to reach a certain level of success building and investing in startups and now want to fuel Israel’s most talented young founders in pursuing their own dreams. When investors compete for your business, everyone wins.

New Economics. New Models.

The cost efficiencies of building Web businesses has rightfully shifted founder’s funding needs and focus from VCs to Angels worldwide. $50K from a strategic advisor is game changing for a Web startup today. Mini-funds like Y-Combinator have proven that.  TechAviv Angels Demo Nights are your chance to get in front of investors who’s guidance and contacts are more valuable than their money. We hope the success of this platform will lead to more Angel investing by successful entrepreneurs and the formation of more Angel Clubs in Israel.

Are you brilliant, grounded and contagiously passionate about your Internet, Web or Mobile business? Let’s get you funded.

UPDATE: Some great initial launch coverage here:

• StartupMania
• VC Cafe
• Ouriel’s Blog
• TheMarker (Hebrew)

Yaron Galai is a lot of things to a lot of people. If you didn’t already know that he’s one of the most successful Israeli hi-tech entrepreneurs of all time, the soft spoken family man would strike you as more comfortable on a kibbutz than in a board room. What sets Yaron apart from the digerati of Israeli hi-tech is his selfless work helping fellow Israeli entrepreneurs. 

Whether mentoring students, matchmaking for Angels, defending friends or voluntarily helping young startups with priceless insight, direction and introductions, Yaron is always nudging and inspiring others towards success. It’s for this reason that I’m particularly happy to announce that Yaron’s current startup, Outbrain, a content rating and recommendation engine for blogs, has secured a recession-busting $12M second round of financing. The round, which brings Outbrain’s total funding to just over $18M, was led by new investor Carmel Ventures, with Zohar Gilon and Rhodium also joining previous investors Gemini,  Lightspeed and GlenRock Israel in filling out the round. Shlomo Dovrat, co-founder and general partner of Carmel Ventures will be joining Outbrain’s board of directors. Nice.

$12M for a blog plugin you say? I have to admit that if it wasn’t for Yaron at the helm, I’d be scratching my head on this one as well. At first glance (see yellow stars at the bottom of this post) Outbrain is a chimp-simple plugin for blogs that lets readers rate posts on a 5 star scale and get recommendations for other posts they might like. Seems trivial and there are many similar plug-ins out there. Outbrain however gets interesting when you consider the massive amounts of aggregate data it collects about reader tastes and blog content. Combine that with some nifty semantic web recommendation algorithms, perhaps contextual ad targeting in the future, a CEO who sold his last user-preference-targeted ad network for $363M and a co-founding CTO who ran tech for a little shopping site that sold for $634M and you start getting the bigger picture that has investors clamoring to write Outbrain a check. With no short-term goals for revenue the bet here is that Outbrain’s exceptional management will figure it out. My personal bias aside (Yaron is a good friend), its a dam good bet. These guys are in it to build a big business over the long haul and having a ton of fun at it.

Most techfluentials didn’t get Outbrain when the quiet startup first launched in 2006 as just a rating plugin for blogs. The introduction of recommendations got people talking and the contextual content aggregation space has been heating up ever since. The torrid pace of content creation and fragmentation on countless publishing platforms makes the need for a common, intelligent content aggregration and recommendation platform vital for organizing the noise on the web. Outbrain’s early start and extra layer of user-supplied content rating data positions them nicely for defacto status. The service has grown 11X over the last year and makes millions of recommendations daily across thousands of blogs and sites.

Check out the smarter Yaron presenting Outbrain and some tips for entreprenuers at the Jan 5th TechAviv Founders Club Meetup:

Jump to 4th white dot on the timeline (1:06:20) 

Mazal tov Yaron, Ori and team on this impressive milestone, and kudos to the stellar group of investors that continue to support Israeli hi-tech in the midst of a shaky economy. Onward and upward.

Get the Outbrain plugin for your blog, follow Outbrain on Twitter and get wise and inspired at Yaron’s Blog.