Some ventures I learned of at today's Jeff Pulver breakfast:
- Wizario. An Israeli-led recommendations engine for consumer electronics based on someone's personality.
- Semavo. Represents information in 3-D fashion "like a galaxy." Differs from something like LivePlasma because the user defines the "galaxy" that will be at the hubs. So, of someone's interested in a given actor or musician, they can find the links to that person with a 3D representation.
- Matchmine: A media recommendation engine that's supposed to learn a user's preferences as they surf (or serf) their partner sites and carry those preferences in a unique "MatchKey." So, over time, the engine learns that you like cowboy movies and education blogs and smooth jazz. When I said it seemed like a good match for behavioral targeting -- serve ads to people based on knowing their preferences -- bizdev director Ken Gellman said they'd been thinking of that based on what others had said and that it was in New York, not the Bay Area, that he heard such advice on ads . Out West, he hears a lot of questions about the underlying technology and how to differentiate itself from other such engines. Different mindsets
Jeff Pulver, VOIP entrepreneur and co-founder of Vonage, now spends his time investing money (13 seeded ventures at the moment), writing a blog, throwing breakfasts, doing a Web TV show, and generally being as energetic as he can. (Though he did tell me he has a lot of time.) Today's breakfast, at Friend of a Farmer near Gramercy Park, brought together a few dozen entrepreneurs, and tech/media types, including a bunch of Israelis.
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