VC Cafe shining a spotlight on Israeli startups

Israel has the highest ratio of startup companies per capita, according to Ezequiel (Eze) Vidra, who founded the Web site VC Cafe to help shine a spotlight on that nation's entrepreneurs.

It's not that high-quality startups there haven't gotten the attention of investors or strategic buyers like AOL, which bought Quigo and its online ad network last year for $300 million.  

Still, while Israeli entrepreneurs are heavy on technical know-how, they often lack the marketing skills to bring their product to the U.S. market, says Vidra, a product manager for Ask.com in Oakland, Calif.

"That's the bridge I'm trying to build with VC Cafe...To facilitate VC money for early-stage startups by exposing tech innovation... in the Israeli business community."

Toward that end, he writes about Israeli companies in English, rather than Hebrew, to give those startups exposure to American investors.

Founded in 2005, VC Cafe has been featured in the Wall Street Journal. The site gets most of its traffic from the U.S., ahead of its Israeli and European audiences.

While Vidra runs VC Cafe as a part-time operation, he has plans to expand it in the future.

He recently launched what he calls the VC Cafe Network, which lets Facebook and LinkedIn users find people and ideas related to young Israeli-based companies. 

"VC Cafe is my labor of love. I devote a lot of my spare time to it and it's growing phenomenally, but in the long run I see it as a resource for everything connected to Israeli startups."